A book is published with a minimal circulation, by a publisher that disappears. After a few years it is almost impossible to get a specimen despite the fact that some specimens remain in deposits. It is discontinued and virtually ceases to exist.
But there is someone who reads it and who thinks it is important to share it, takes the trouble of putting together a file with the book, scanning the covers, putting together a compressed file with all that, and uploading it to a cultural property exchange website.
If it weren't for that unknown person, who gained nothing from uploading the book to the Internet, it would be impossible to read that book these days. What doubt is there that this person did more for that book than the publisher itself? It is true, the author does not charge when someone copies the book, but neither does he earn when a used copy is sold, not to mention the low percentage that publishers pay for digital books. And that when they pay: difficult to know if the settlements are correctly made. The digital book is the most wonderful thing that happened to us readers. Thanks to the selfless work of people who make their ebooks available to other readers, today we can have thousands of works at our fingertips. Many times they are books discontinued by publishers, in others they are titles that have recently appeared and that many want to read but not all can buy.
If circulating ebooks for free allows us to enjoy books like when a friend lends them or we get them from a public library, why not do it? Who would dare to prohibit the loan of books without dangerously cutting off individual freedoms to instruct, cultivate and express ourselves?
That a digital copy is identical to an original copy is not a valid argument. The improvement of the format works in favor of the reader, not against him. Today there are many places to download free books. These sites fulfill an informative task and facilitate access to culture much more effectively than a ministry of culture. They are the digital equivalent of popular libraries, the same ones that we have throughout the country and that allow access to the book in paper format to people who cannot buy books or who prefer not to. But while a paper book can be read only by one person at a time, the ebook allows infinitely multiplying the copies making it much easier for the text to meet the reader.
Copyright is necessary, especially to defend writers from the voracity of publishing companies. Copyright, however, is not and should not be intended to limit access to reading. The purpose of a work is not only to earn money (and welcome when it arrives, I say it as an author) but that this work survives over time and the only way to achieve it is by copying the book in new formats. If today the different types of ebooks allow the book to multiply rapidly, let's take advantage of that improvement. And when a new format is invented, ebooks will have to be passed on to what comes. Only the copy saves the book. And the disinterested copy makes the copyist a hero.
Most of the classical Greek texts reached the medieval copyists on parchment copies and not on papyrus (as the original versions surely were). Papyrus had a lifespan that did not exceed 300 years, while parchment could last much longer. Someone (actually many anonymous beings like those who upload copies to the Internet) had the good sense of transferring these works from a format to a more modern and durable one. But how many works were lost along the way, how many were not lucky enough to have a copyist?
I wish there were more readers willing to upload books to the internet. Or people generous with their money who buy the very expensive ebook (how can it come out almost the same as the paper book?) And make it available for free so that others do not have to spend.
Literature is not going to be finished because authors lose potential profits by selling fewer digital books. On the other hand, culture will win the survival of works and the multiplication of readers. The rest is desperate marketing of a capitalism that does not accept to lose even the cultural battle.
