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Monday, February 6, 2012

Do E-Books Threaten Democracy? - Forbes

Do E-Books Threaten Democracy? - Forbes:

Do E-Books Threaten Democracy?

Do digital books threaten our democracy? Depends on who you ask.

eBooks are on trial once again. This time, they represent nothing short of an existential threat to democracy itself.

In the prosecutor’s corner we have novelist Jonathan Franzen, playing the role of ‘bookservative’ and decrying the rise of these anti-democratic digital tomes.

“Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do,” Franzen said recently.

“When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I tak