Market activity to promote the use of electronic books is picking up this summer. Efforts should be made to improve the environment for the spread of e-books so it can lead to further development of the culture of the printed word.

Rakuten, Inc. a leading online shopping service, has begun marketing a low-cost electronic reader. U.S. online retailer Amazon.com, the largest operator in the market, will soon launch digital readers that can display Japanese. Meanwhile, more publishers are moving their distribution of e-books into full gear.

In reality, however, the e-book market now consists mostly of such publications as comics for cell phone users.

E-books are not widely used yet, primarily because digital readers are expensive and the number of books that can be read on them is limited.

Also, standards for e-books have yet to be unified, leaving users of digital readers unable to read all the e-books available on the market. As things stand now, the readership of digital books will not increase markedly.

Some have called 2010 the first year of e-books, as that year saw a boom triggered by the market release of e-book readers. It cannot be denied that the boom started with a roar but ended in a whimper.

This spring, Digital Publishing Initiatives Japan Co. was established with the financing of leading publishing firms and a public-private joint fund. It will support small and midsize publishing houses in releasing e-books of their titles, few of which have been digitized. The organization is expected to help expand the e-book market.

Needless to say, a large number of people can probably only truly enjoy reading books printed on paper. But if digitization of books advances, that will make it easier to obtain academic or technical books with a limited circulation. In some cases, paper books that were out of print were revived as e-books.

Among the most advanced e-books are those that allow readers to write words on the text or look up words in a dictionary. It is also possible for users to post comments on Twitter. Such features would certainly help create new readership of e-books.

In the era of digitization, new challenges are emerging, too.

For instance, if the contents of paper books are scanned, copied and distributed widely on the Internet without the permission of concerned parties, the damage would be immense.

Yet publishing houses responsible for the layout and editing of books are not guaranteed copyright protection under the Copyright Law. They are thus unable to take legal steps over infringement of their rights.

Because of this, experts are discussing whether publishing firms and other entities should be given so-called rights neighboring on copyrights.

A study group comprising Diet members and experts and tasked with discussing the improvement of the foundations of printed culture released an interim report designed to pave the way for the creation of such neighboring rights.

The group proposes that people who produce data for digital publications should be included among those protected by the neighboring rights.

Further in-depth discussion is needed to protect the culture of the printed word.

(The Yomiuri Shimbun)
(Asia News Network)