"ebooks" should not be "books"

Cory Doctorow writes "It seems to me that electronic books are different from paper books, and have different virtues and failings." He largely attributes the current "failure" of ebooks to the fact that copyright laws and publishers/authors that those laws are supposed to protect have not caught up to, or in some aspects even acknowledged, the onset of a new paradigm - namely the proliferation of information technology, and the connectivity and file-sharing capabilities it has brought.

I agree with Doctorow in that there is something inherently paradoxical in the way publishers distribute and market ebooks today. Take, for example, the e-textbooks that are sold in the Cal Student Store. The benefit of making anything digital lies in its increased maneuverability and convinience. In order for ebooks to be beneficial, they need to be fully searchable, easily copied and quoted, and accessible anywhere. However, these commercial ebooks can only be viewed through a web-browser with internet access after a password protected log-in, the text and images cannot be copied, and they can only be printed one page at a time. So what is the end product? Something very close to a paper printed book, only it is projected on a compute screen, with none of the added functions a computer is capable of providing. This situation is analogous to someone computing 5 + 5 on a modern supercomputer. We don't need an alternate version of printed books; simple paper will suffice for that function, just as it has for centuries. The computer wasn't invented to mimic the function of paper books, and to limit its functionality is like limiting the functionality of a super computer to only perform the functions of a pocket calculator. Furthermore, this attempt by publishers to enforce their copyright not only leads to no additional benefit for the reader, but it is in fact crippling the usability of ebooks. Instead of just opening a paper bound textbook, we now need to start our computers, find internet access, log onto the site, etc. etc.

What we need is an entire paradigm shift. We don't just need to loosen our paranoia of copyright infringement, but also need to rethink the entire concept of a "book" in an electronic context. The name "ebook" is somewhat of a misnomer, because it has the capability of being something completely different from a "book". The traditional book, by the restrictions placed on it by its simple media of paper and ink, have been largely sequential. But electronic books do not have this restriction. No longer should we need to read "explanations of this idea is given later on in the book" or "see footnote". With the power of hypertext, a book should resemble not a tree-like structure, but a brain map of interconnected thoughts. And who is to say a published "ebook" cannot contain a link to Wikipedia to explain relevant context? What about the incorporation of audio, graphics, video, and other multimedia content into a "book"? Who is to say that a ebook file of a chemistry book cannot contain rotating 3D graphics of a molecule, or that a ebook of Shakespeare's plays cannot contain a interactive image of the stage set?

I believe we need to let go of the idea that "ebooks" are "books". True, they are "books" in the sense that it contains text that conveys some kind of information. But other than that, placing the restriction of "books" on "ebooks" cripples the functionality of this new form electronic media.