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Joyce Valenza

Mygazines: (un)guilty pleasure?
September 1, 2008

Mygazines.com presents a huge variety of scanned popular and trades magazines in a lovely flipbook format. Jacquie Henry cautiously pointed to this site on LM_NET today.

And I was a kid in a candy store. (Albeit, one who knew far too much about nutrition.)

For a magazine junky, this is heaven.

Once in a magazine, you can zoom in on interesting images or parts of text. You can share, bookmark, comment on, email, tag, rate articles, or save articles to their mygazines space. You can access a list of titles or view thumbnails of each page. You can set pages to autoflip every three, five, or ten seconds. You can search within each title: in a cooking magazine for pasta recipes, in a fashion magazine for pencil skirts.

Another interesting feature is the ability to archive articles into your own personal magazines or mygazines

a collection of articles arranged just the way you like them. Each of your mygazines can be focused on an area of interest – you could setup "recipes" mygazines and store all those pie recipes you found. Redecorating your bedroom? Create "bedrooms" mygazines and store all the articles you find on bedroom décor. You can create as many mygazines as you like and store as many or as few articles in each as you like. The possibilities are endless!

I must admit that I was jumping up and down excited about being able to access even more of my guilty pleasure reading fantasies than those I already get in the high school library, but I wondered how the folks behind the site got copyright clearance for all these recent issues. (Jacquie wondered too.)

The Mygazine folks didn't choose to discuss this on their site, but a July 29th press release noted the reasons behind the site:

The mygazines concept is simple, essentially it allows its members to share magazines in the same manner a doctors' office, law firm, libraries, and hair salons would with their clients every day. mygazines allows users to read, archive and upload content for everyone to read and
share within the online magazine community.

This is not a new phenomenon in fact it is so common that publishers themselves promote their estimates of this "sharing" to potential advertisers. Mygazines levels the playing field in the industry, by allowing both large and small publishing houses equal access to potential
readers.

The press release also presents arguments for digital publication of magazines:

- Low Carbon Footprint. With 70% of newsstand magazines going unsold, our
goal is to eliminate the waste.(save the trees!)
- No unnecessary content. Allows users to access only the information
that is of interest to them, without having to pay for unwanted content.
- Efficiency. Reduces the need to physically carry and archive content.
- Universal. Allows foreign content to be available from anywhere to anyone.
- Monopoly. Eliminates the effects of conglomerates merging and controlling consumers' choice and distribution, within almost every region worldwide.

And, skimming the copyright issue just a bit, they express their interest in working with the industry:

To all the artists who provide such amazing content, and the publishers who supply the media, mygazines wishes to thank you and to clarify: www.mygazines.com has full intentions to work with the industry, with the aim of fortifying the future of all those either directly or indirectly
supported by the production, sales and distribution of magazines.

Paul Glazowski of Mashable discussed the site back in July:

I for one can’t imagine the number of copyrights the site and/or its users have infringed upon. It must be many, no doubt. (depending on whether they’re considered independent items or part of publishers’ portfolios). But perhaps the concept of Mygazines itself, in some form or another, is something that will eventually become a sort of standard for the industry.

I am a bit conflicted about all of this. It seems the legal issues are just beginning. I was brought back to Napster days and I wondered if there was any fair way to provide this type of browsing service. I'd be happy to pay for some kind of unguilty access.

For now, I suspect I will continue to browse Mygazines (quietyly) and I suspect I will let my students know about it when we can't access the articles or magazines they need. If my son read this blog and discovered the site, I know he would love access to those 95 sports magazines!

Questions and issues:

How to the publishers feel? Are they involved? Have they weighed in? Would they have an interest in promoting their titles this way? Does the fact that ads are included make a difference?
Do writers and artists deserve additional compensation for this new arena of publication for their content?
Will this type of service (another is Digi-zines) encourage folks to buy or avoid buying the magazines they browse through?
Portability is an issue that will ensure I continue to purchase print. We can't easily travel with these magazines, read them offline on a plane, in the doctor's office, at the hair dresser.
Though this site seems aimed more at browsers than researchers, will this type of publication have an impact on database use?
Is this a possible solution to my husband's issue with the magazines that seem to take over our bathrooms and counters?

I'll keep you posted as I discover more. Warning: This is not necessarily a K12-friendly site. The magazines cover many adult interests.