Technology over the past few years has greatly expanded the digital capabilities of learning in and out of the classroom. Digital texts have been a large part of this expansion, allowing multiple books to be transported with ease and viewed at any time. Among the controversy includes copyright laws and genre barriers. Before reading the article in First Monday, I never had thought about genre and E-Books but I think it plays a vital role in the success of future development of E-Books. Obviously certain genres appeal to an E-book more than others would. For example, if the display for the E-Book is up-datable daily, a blog would be a great genre to be read on an E-Book display. However the converse would also hold true. If the display was not up-datable, this would eliminate an entire genre of readable content, thus lessening the possible value of learning.
The other part of the debate would be the legal portion of it. The First Monday article shows just how this is a problem. We need to think about the copyright laws and the fact that some of the older books have very tedious processes to reprint. This goes back to the genre point again, we would eliminate yet another genre. These two factors combined could run the digital industry almost into the ground.
Only the future holds where this industry can go. With advancements in technology, I could easily see the industry taking off. However at the same time there could be some major drawbacks and obstacles along the way. What are your opinions? What are the limits of this industry and what will make it flourish?
