A little bit off-topic post about Kindles

AMAZON “KINDLES” THE COPY OWNERSHIP DEBATE, 12 YALE J.L. & TECH. 147 (2009). It struck a chord, mostly because it cites fairly extensively to an article I wrote back in 2005 on the law surrounding transactions in electronic information. (A Framework for Understanding Electronic Information Transactions, 15 Albany Law Journal of Science & Technology 277 (2005)) I had been under the distinct impression that no one had really read the article, so I was pleased to see that I was, once again, wrong.

This article, written by Yale law school student Michael Seringhaus, posits that Amazon's sale of e-books for use on the Kindle should be classified as a sale of a book rather than a license of information. It also suggests potential ways of applying technological solutions, rather than legal solutions, to enforce single-copy ownership of an e-book.

I, in the meanwhile, have e-mailed Mr. Seringhaus' article off to my Kindle, where I will be able to read it at my leisure along with other law review articles, Westlaw advance sheets, and other miscellaneous documents that I do not have time to read at my desk. As it turns out, the Kindle is well suited for this purpose because you can e-mail a pdf or Word document (as well as many other types of documents) to an e-mail address Amazon provides you, and the document is automatically transferred wirelessly to the Kindle device.