Librarians on File-sharing

When pirates make copies of music, television shows, movies, or books, they don’t just keep it for themselves, and they don’t sell them on for money – they share their files freely with their (illegal) community. That means file-sharing pirates are operating as underground librarians. Yet despite this, the most noise about piracy has come from musicians (whose album sales have fallen sharply because of it) and especially the media corporations who market them. But the people I most want to hear from about the ethics of file-sharing are the librarians themselves.

What do the librarians think about file-sharing? What do they think are appropriate penalties for operating an unauthorised library? Are there any librarians who would consider allying with pirates for legal distribution of material (e.g. out of copyright books)? Do you think the future of libraries and the future of file-sharing are related in any way?

If you are a librarian, I would love to hear from you, either in the comments here, or in a reply to the tweet that pointed to this post. And if not, please promote the discussion by retweeting the original tweet.

Comments

[Michael Hopkins]

I would have liked to see some comments on this article. Has this been published elsewhere with greater discussion?

[Chris]

Hi Michael,
Aye, I was very disappointed that this one 'bowled a duck'. I haven't pursued it elsewhere yet, but I would like to see this discussion take place!

Librarians: if you have a perspective to share, we would love to hear it!

Chris.