This week members of the Stowe Free Library staff participated in an online training session on how to use OverDrive. This wonderfull program, which is being paid for by a group of eighty libraries, will soon enable Vermont library patrons to listen to books which they have legally downloaded.
During the training questions were asked about burning discs, multiple uses, etc. The trainer pointed out the symbols that indicate what permissions go with the individual titles. Some titles may be burned; some not.
After the training I brought up the issue of copying music on CD. Stowe recently received a donation to purchase music and we've selected some great re-mastered versions of original Broadway cast recordings. Our patrons can listen to Ethel Merman in Call Me Madam, or the original Broadway cast (yes, it was a show before it was a movie) of Dreamgirls. When I pointed out that no one is allowed to burn, upload, or download the stuff there was an interesting reaction. A couple of staff members got the point, but a couple said they saw no reason to rain on the parades of library patrons who borrow library CD's to take home and burn. Since the technology is readily available to do it, and "everyone" does it, it's up to the music industry to come up with a way to prevent it.
I admit I have a personal interest in this issue, beyond the broadly ethical one. My husband's voice happens to be on a couple of the Broadway recordings we purchased, and every once in a while - less and less as the years go by - he receives a check in the mail for royalties owed him from purchase of the music. This is money that he, and the other actors/singers in the shows, is entitled to. Every time someone borrows the CD from the library and burns it rather than buys it, that's taking money out of his pocket. Stealing. It's illegal.
As Jeffrey Seglin, who writes the "The Right Thing" column in The New York Times said, " "the ethical perspective...(is) the same as the legal one. Copying someone else's CD for your personal use means that the people who made the CD, including the people who wrote and performed the music, won't be compensated for their efforts. There's nothing right about that."
As librarians, let's raise our consciousness and set the right example.
