Response to Carr

The most important benefits of e-books that I immediately see are accessibility and the ease of correcting typographical errors. Accessibility is the factor that has popularized e-books in the first place. Every time I buy textbooks, I'm onboard. My choices are to make the 5-mile hike to the bookstore in the freezing rain, or order from home and wait 5 to seven business days for my books to show up, and either way half my money goes to paper and ink? I think I'll pass. And how often have you found a typo in a book and thought to yourself, "That's not a word. Who got paid to edit this thing?" knowing that it would not be corrected until the next printing (maybe). It would be satisfying to know that you could post a comment in a forum and have a corrected version of your book in your hands this week.

Convenience, however, comes at a high price. The benefits of e-books are overshadowed by the possibility of manipulation. The very word "censorship" leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but it is a legitimate threat when media becomes digitized. The possibility of perpetual revision is also disconcerting, but digital media is the present and future, so we must learn to deal with its mutable nature. This is not an issue to be dealt with through legislation. When I read the phrase, "Such abuses can be prevented through laws," the anarchist-leaning libertarian in me shouted "I object!" Publishing protocol should be to assign a new edition number each time an edit beyond the correction of minor typographical errors occurs, in order to make it clear that the text differs from earlier editions. This introduces yet another obstacle. Can you imagine a trying to teach a piece of literature in the classroom? Teachers would stand in front of classes and say, "Make sure you download The Invisible Man edition 19.2; edition 19.3 is crap." For now, I am going to choose to have enough faith in my country to trust that its government would not be authoritarian enough to severely censor my books, and say that the ethical treatment of digital text is ultimately the responsibility of publishers, and the demand thereof is the responsibility of consumers. Citizens of countries under such authoritarian rule can't afford e-readers anyway.