The right to search and the right to copy. Reflecting on books in the age of AI (part 1)
Do I have the right to search through the contents of the books I buy? That question pops into my mind when I consider that e-books, usually cheaper than printed books, offer more functionalities. One may be tempted to answer "yes, because the books are mine". However, things are not always so easy. For example, I do not have the right to copy the contents of the books I buy and do whatever I want with that content. That right is held by the publishers and the authors, and that is, generally speaking, what we mean by "copyright".
Another difficulty that arises is: What does "the right to search through a book" even mean when we are talking about printed books? Of course, I can read through the whole text and look for whatever I care to. And, as long as I do not share it with others, there should be no objection if I take the pain to scan every single page, apply an OCR, and search for what I need.
Now is where things get complicated. We are in the age of AI and "vibe coding". It is becoming easier and easier for a wider range of people to create new apps using these tools. The question is, what happens if somebody creates an app that allows everyone to scan a book with a smartphone? Can anybody just vibe-code this app?
I'm almost sure we are not there yet. This app would basically consist of two parts. One is the user interface and the basic functions of recording photos and videos, which can be easily vibe-coded. But the core functionality involves complex image processing, including reverse perspective transformation, filtering shadows and other image artifacts, and of course, OCR. I might be wrong, but putting together all these functionalities to build a handy app is not an easy task to accomplish, even with the help of AI.
However, things are moving fast. This app may appear in a not very far future. And it raises many questions. When everybody can easily scan a book, and therefore share it with the whole Internet, what will happen? What will happen with the business of printed books? Remember how peer-to-peer networks impacted the music industry. Who buys a CD now? So, if that app ever exists, what will that mean for authors?
This hypothesis raises these and many other questions. But now I would like to focus on a few of them. First, is it a good thing to build this app? Because it would enable us to make better use of the books we own, and there is no evident reason we should not be able to. But, on the other hand, at the moment that this app exists, people will start to share books without control. That is just what happened with music, and there is no reason to expect a different outcome. So, the second question is: Can we prevent this app from existing? Finally, there is another question. Should authors prepare for this scenario? How? Maybe the first thing we need is to rethink how we create text and intellectual content, and the business model that supports this creation. But this will be a topic for another post.