THE FUTURE OF E-BOOKS AND PIRACY

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No matter how effective copy protection may be, it still can't prevent the simplest form of book stealing: scanning a book page by page. In Japan, bookstores are wrestling with a new problem called digital shoplifting, where people use cameras in their cell phones to take pictures of books and magazines instead of buying them.

Perhaps the real future of e-books lies with e-paper, dubbed Gyricon (http://www.gyriconmedia.com) by its Xerox PARC creators. Gyricon consists of a thin layer of transparent plastic filled with millions of small black and white or red and white beads in an oil-filled cavity. When voltage is applied, the beads rotate to present a colored side to the viewer, mimicking the appearance of a printed page, complete with text and graphics. Gyricon can be reused, it is brighter than today's reflective displays, and it consumes minimal power.

If Gyricon becomes popular, trading e-books may become as common as trading MP3 files, and then the debate can start all over again about whether technology and legislation can ever regulate human behavior in lieu of ethics and honesty. And then book publishers will simply need to find a way to profit from this new form of distribution.

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