I Find Myself on a British Isle

Books don't work the same way in Jordan. Intellectual property rights have been a moving issue for me over the past few years. I've evolved from a juvenile profligate user of bit-torrents, to a model of minimal long-term possession, and now a profound respect for the need to protect and reward creators of ideas. This transformation took place as I matured from a very narrowly focused consumer of content to a voracious reader with a much broader sense of the media and cultural environment.

I imagine most of you have heard of piracy in China where DVDs and CDs go for the price of a disc plus fifty cents. I knew these stories and others. I followed controversy and combat between producers, publishers, and media magnates over combating the scourge of piracy. I still believe that the media environment must evolve dramatically in a world where knowledge is essentially anywhere, anytime, anyhow, but I have been stunned by the lack of respect for all types of intellectual production that I find in Jordan.

Piracy in America is a private and illicit activity taking place before the screens of a hundred million savvy technophiles. Here it is brazen, universal, and tragic. Everywhere are stores, vans, and stalls offering the latest films (Avatar, It's Complicated, etc.), software, and music. Beyond this, the bookstores surrounding the university function largely as copy centers, selling cheaply bound packets replacing actual textbooks.

The option to buy my international relations textbook fro JD10 was distasteful to me on a number of levels. I resolved to obtain my academic literature by other means. This necessarily drove me on a frustrating quest to understand the public lending library of Amman. Websites throughout the region are largely incomplete, in Arabic only, and laced with dead links and broken promises. 

I ultimately settled on a set of international scholarly institutions near the university: The American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR) and the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL). Both are primarily focused on archeology, supported by foundations and partnerships, host students and fellows in hostels, and have free reference libraries with wireless Internet. With my sights set on The Middle East in International Relations by Fred Halliday I headed u the hill to CBRL where the library was open just that crucial bit later.

Several hundred feet higher I found myself outside a walled compound with military police protection nestled amongst upscale condos and apartments along streets with the occasional Porsche and Jaguar leaving an otherwise peaceful atmosphere rare in Amman. I buzzed my way in and was greeted by the blatantly obvious and yet still surprising, a charming and rather worn British woman who gave me a brief tour of the library and office before imploring me to return the following morning when they were open.

This morning I made CBRL my first stop off the bus. After a brief hike up I had been issued with a library card and was nestled in a corner of the otherwise empty library reading about the different theories of international relations and their specific failings when confronting the complexities of the Middle East. An experience I look forward eagerly to repeating.