New York City's Public Libraries to End Film Streaming Through Kanopy (nytimes.com) 42
Public library cardholders in New York City will no longer have access to tens of thousands of movies through Kanopy as of July 1, when the New York, Brooklyn and Queens public libraries end their partnerships with the streaming service because of the cost, the libraries said Monday. From a report: The San Francisco-based platform, which notified library cardholders by email on Monday, offers well-known feature films, like "Lady Bird" and "Moonlight," as well as classic movies, documentaries and foreign-language films not always available on other services. In a statement, the New York Public Library said, "We believe the cost of Kanopy makes it unsustainable," adding that it would use its resources to purchase "more in-demand collections such as books and e-books." The Brooklyn and Queens libraries also cited what they said were Kanopy's rising costs in dropping the service. About 25,000 people with New York Public Library cards -- about 1 percent of the library's 2 million cardholders -- used the service in the past year. The New York library -- with branches in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island -- and the Brooklyn Public Library first offered Kanopy in August 2017, and the Queens Library followed several months later.
Except... (Score:1, Informative)
Re: Except... (Score:2, Offtopic)
Geez.
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Being "Socialist" (i.e., facist/communist) is not the same as being "socialist", that is, government with compassion for its population. Which is the case in UK, Germany, France, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, but not America.
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But the koalas are relatively ok.
Does anyone know how much it actually costs? (Score:2)
Was it based on use, or just numbers of possible library patrons?
Next up? Amazon Library, /s
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I use this too - the service is managed by a company called Overdrive (IIRC). It’s been around quite a few years, but the Kindle format is a more recent addition. Prior to that I believe it was some Adobe format.
It works reasonably well, now.
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Overdrive also has audiobooks to take out via your local library. When your rental is over, they simply disappear from your player. No need to return a physical copy.
It succeeded (Score:1)
$2 per play
Mildly successful means it is too expensive to keep. We have movies available as long as no one watches them. WTF
It didn't say how many movies those 25,000 people watched. Not so sure about directly subsidising someone's movie watching. Doesn't sound like much of a deal either.
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Yup. They say in the linked article: the money grubbing digital copyright cartel demands $2 per "play", where "play" might be as little of 30 seconds of streaming. Wrong on so many levels. We knew this would happen.
I borrow books and audio from my library (Score:5, Interesting)
Benjamin Franklin According to History Magazine, âoethe oldest library in America began with a 400-book donation by a Massachusetts clergyman, John Harvard, to a new university that eventually honored him by adopting his name. Another clergyman, Thomas Bray from England, established the first free lending libraries in the American Colonie s in the late 1600s. Subscription libraries â" where member dues paid for book purchases and borrowing privileges were free â" debuted in the 1700s. In 1731, Ben Franklin and others founded the first such library, the Library Company of Philadelphia. The initial collection of the Library of Congress was in ashes after the British burned it during the War of 1812. The library bought Thomas Jeffersonâ(TM)s vast collection in 1815 and used that as a foundation to rebuild. It wasnâ(TM)t until waves of immigration and the philosophy of free public education for children that public libraries spread in the US. The first public library in the country opened in Peterborough, New Hampshire, in 1833. Philanthropist Andrew Carnegie helped build more than 1,700 public libraries in the US between 1881 and 1919.â
http://www.sturgislibrary.org/history/oldest-library/ [sturgislibrary.org]
Re:I borrow books and audio from my library (Score:4, Interesting)
I've started a private library before and it works well.
My town is small and has a tiny library so I pay a yearly fee to a neighboring non-profit library to use their services which are much better. They're also strong advocates and activists for personal privacy and freedom of information so I have multiple reasons.
The money extorted from me to support the town library doesn't do me any good. The townsfolk would be better off with a subscription to the better library. There are no grocery stores here so "lack of transportation" isn't a real issue and it's a rural town so only a few people can walk there anyway. If this is pointed out, adherents will say, "but meeting space!" which is a separate matter.
Frankly the library is mostly for the kids. I have sparse reading time and when I do read books I have ten books going at once and it can take me a year to get through an advanced physics text or a Nietzsche book. The library is incompatible with my mode of reading but Amazon's used book section works great.
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I can tell this creates a lot of cognitive dissonance for you, but I do have good news. These days, you can choose your own alternative facts i
Pressured by competition? (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps bowing to pressure from the commercial streamers who'd rather not have a free option available to anyone.
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Ya think.
A more affordable way (Score:2)
The cost of file sharing is much more sustainable. We should eliminate copyright so libraries can make video works available to everybody.
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Not eliminate it, but return it to the original length.
initial term of 14 years, renewable once by living authors for an additional 14 years, for works not yet published.
Library digitization (Score:2)
I've been using Overdrive at our local library for several years. The selection was abysmal at first, but it has grown markedly better lately. That probably means higher royalty payments for books, making it more costly to library systems.
I just found out about Kanopy a eek ago, and signed up for it. I wonder if our library is about to pull it because of rising cost?
Texas librarians will not have this problem (Score:2)
Because of a recent state appeals ruling, libraries there should not have to pay for content:
https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]