(ZDNet quoted by "Publisher's Lunch on July 13, 2001)

It is amazing that traditional archivists of human knowledge - libraries - failed so spectacularly to ride tiger of Internet, that epitome and apex of knowledge creation and distribution. At first, libraries, inertial repositories of printed matter, were overwhelmed by rapid pace of technology and by ephemeral and anarchic content it spawned. They were reduced to providing access to dull card catalogues and unimaginative collections of web links. The more daring added online exhibits and digitized collections. A typical library web site is still comprised of static representations of library's physical assets and a few quasi-interactive services.

This tendency - by both publishers and libraries - to inadequately and inappropriately pour old wine into new vessels is what caused recent furor over e-books.

The lending of e-books to patrons appears to be a natural extension of classical role of libraries: physical book lending. Libraries sought also to extend their archival functions to e-books. But librarians failed to grasp essential and substantive differences between two formats. E-books can be easily, stealthily, and cheaply copied, for instance. Copyright violations are a real and present danger with e-books. Moreover, e-books are not a tangible product. "Lending" an e-book - is tantamount to copying an e-book. In other words, e-books are not books at all. They are software products. Libraries have pioneered digital collections (as they have other information technologies throughout history) and are still main promoters of e-publishing. But now they are at risk of becoming piracy portals.

The plunge in book prices, lowering of barriers to entry aided by new technologies and plentiful credit, proliferation of publishers, and cutthroat competition among booksellers was such that price regulation (cartel) had to be introduced. Net publisher prices, trade discounts, and list prices are all anti-competitive practices of 19th century Europe. Still, this lamentable period also gave rise to trade associations, publishers organizations, literary agents, author contracts, royalties agreements, mass marketing, and standardized copyrights.

The Internet is often perceived to be nothing more than a glorified - though digitized - mail order catalogue. But e-books are different. Legislators and courts have yet to establish if e-books are books at all. Existing contracts between authors and publishers may not cover electronic rendition of texts. E-books also offer serious price competition to more traditional forms of publishing and are, thus, likely to provoke a realignment of entire industry.

Rights may have to be re-assigned, revenues re-distributed, contractual relationships reconsidered. Hitherto, e-books amounted to little more that re-formatted renditions of print editions. But authors are increasingly publishing their books primarily or exclusively as e-books thus undermining both hardcovers and paperbacks.

Luddite printers and publishers resisted - often violently - every phase in evolution of trade: stereotyping, iron press, application of steam power, mechanical typecasting and typesetting, new methods of reproducing illustrations, cloth bindings, machine-made paper, ready-bound books, paperbacks, book clubs, and book tokens.

Without exception, they eventually relented and embraced new technologies to considerable commercial advantage. Similarly, publishers were initially hesitant and reluctant to adopt Internet, POD, and e-publishing. It is not surprising that they came around.

Printed books in 17th and 18th centuries were derided by their contemporaries as inferior to their laboriously hand-made antecedents and to incunabula. These complaints are reminiscent of current criticisms of new media (Internet, e-books): shoddy workmanship, shabby appearance, and rampant piracy.

The first decades following invention of printing press, were, as Encyclopedia Britannica puts it "a restless, highly competitive free for all ... (with) enormous vitality and variety (often leading to) careless work". There were egregious acts of piracy - for instance, illicit copying of Aldine Latin "pocket books", or all-pervasive book-bootlegging in England in 17th century, a direct outcome of over-regulation and coercive copyright monopolies.

Shakespeare's work was repeatedly replicated by infringers of emerging intellectual property rights. Later, American colonies became world's centre of industrialized and systematic book piracy. Confronted with abundant and cheap pirated foreign books, local authors resorted to freelancing in magazines and lecture tours in a vain effort to make ends meet.

Pirates and unlicensed - and, therefore, subversive - publishers were prosecuted under a variety of monopoly and libel laws and, later, under national security and obscenity laws. Both royal and "democratic" governments acted ruthlessly to preserve their control of publishing.