The Last Bookshop

I am glad someone watched it! What did you think, Khamûl?

It's interesting to watch/listen to peoples dystopian vision of the future (like here) in relation to books (--& other matters: physical shops, money, etc). In respect to books, we're conflating two separate things though: books as objects & books as the repositories of information. They can be both, clearly; but people are really debating/speculating on the future format of books, not whether books (or the novel) will still be around. I don't think the latter is in any danger of disappearing, at all. Evidence (in the UK) suggests we're buying/consuming books more than ever. But will the codex continue as the format of delivering this information? Yeh, I suppose this is very much up in the air.

Yes, I agree that the plotline where no new books were being written was unrealistic and off the mark. I think the copyright issue hits closer to home (and in relation to Tolkien, too) - for example there have been a lot of court cases worldwide the past few years dealing with used books (who owns them, and are you allowed to resell them? Should the author get compensated? What about e-books?) and in general, I was particularly empathetic to the way the film portrayed the closure of bookstores.

Really? I haven\'t read anything recently about sell-on rights in regard to books i.e. secondhand selling. There is already (longstanding) provision for this under copyright law. Without it, selling secondhand books (still under copyright) would be illegal. I didn\'t think anything had changed. What are people contesting?

Thankfully, the courts have upheld first sale doctrine (so far). The worrysome part is that these made it all the way to the Supreme Court here in the USA in the first place...

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20 ... sale-supreme-court-rules/

Thanks for the link --interesting read.

I love the name of the organization in the film that closes the book shop, rhymes with Amazon :(