Michael Hiltzik: Which last longer, ebooks or physical books? The answer may surprise you
The internet engineer and entrepreneur Brewster Kahle took a shot at the book publishing industry a few weeks ago by pointing out something well-known to technologists but unappreciated by the general public: that ebooks and other digital artifacts have shorter lifespans than the physical items.
"Our paper books have lasted hundreds of years on our shelves and are still readable," Kahle observed in a post on the website of the Internet Archive, the invaluable historical repository of old web pages and other digital artifacts that he founded in 1996. "Without active maintenance, we will be lucky if our digital books last a decade."
It may be misleading to say that Kahle took a shot at the publishers. More accurately, he took another shot at them. That's because for more than two years Kahle has been embroiled in a bitter court fight with the industry over his effort to make digital copies of copyrighted books and lend them out for free.
Kahle says he's just doing in New York — Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House — have a different take.
