THE DIGITALIZATION OF BOOKS AND THE EBOOKS MARKET: COPYRIGHT AND ANTITRUST ISSUES

Nowadays, it is widely believed that people live during the "Era of the Mediated Book", a symbolic expression of a historical moment marked by the progressive and massive digitization of books. The phenomenon of digitization has introduced the possibility to read books on screens and to generate texts each time people desire them. This great technological innovation has brought to the rise of the market of eBooks, where sellers like Amazon and Google Books interface and create new opportunities not only for reading but also for trading. However, this advancement comes not without issues: in the process of digitization, copyright issues have been raised, a significant number of main actors of this market have adopted anti-competitive behaviors, others have incurred in antitrust, and the publishers have been obliged to adapt rapidly to new kind of product, of market, of prices, of competitors, and of selling. Nevertheless, with technological innovation comes parallelly the regulatory intervention of the law. Given the high probability of the formation of digital monopolies in this kind of digital markets, the law is called to intervene with new tools aimed at anticipating the possible side effects that may follow. The most emblematic of these instrument is the European DMA, a recent antitrust proposal drafted by the European Commission in 2020 aimed at addressing unfair behaviour in the digital economy, and fostering greater consumer choice and innovation while balancing digital marketplaces. Although it is still up for debate, the DMA assures a substantial intervention in the digital markets, including the eBooks one.