Libraries Could Preserve Ebooks Forever, But Greedy Publishers Won't Let Them (gizmodo.com) 125
Caitlin McGarry, reporting for Gizmodo: There are currently 342 potential borrowers waiting for 197 digital copies of Ronan Farrow's investigative thriller Catch and Kill at the Los Angeles Public Library. [...] Why can only one person borrow one copy of an ebook at a time? Why are the waits so damn interminable? Well, it might not surprise you at all to learn that ebook lending is controversial in certain circles: circles of people who like to make money selling ebooks. Publishers impose rules on libraries that limit how many people can check out an ebook, and for how long a library can even offer that ebook on its shelves, because free, easily available ebooks could potentially damage their bottom lines. Libraries are handcuffed by two-year ebook licenses that cost way more than you and I pay to own an ebook outright forever.
Ebooks could theoretically circulate throughout public library systems forever, preserving books that could otherwise disappear when they go out of print -- after all, ebooks can't get damaged or lost. And multiple library-goers could technically check out one ebook simultaneously if publishers allowed. But the Big Five have contracts in place that limit ebook availability with high prices -- much higher than regular folks pay per ebook -- and short-term licenses. The publishers don't walk in and demand librarians hand over the ebooks or pay up, but they do just...disappear. "You think about Harvard Library or New York Public Library -- these big systems that, in addition to lending out stuff for people to use, are also the places where we look to preserve our heritage forever," said Alan Inouye, the American Library Association's senior director of public policy and government relations. "You can't do that if it's a two-year license."
Ebooks could theoretically circulate throughout public library systems forever, preserving books that could otherwise disappear when they go out of print -- after all, ebooks can't get damaged or lost. And multiple library-goers could technically check out one ebook simultaneously if publishers allowed. But the Big Five have contracts in place that limit ebook availability with high prices -- much higher than regular folks pay per ebook -- and short-term licenses. The publishers don't walk in and demand librarians hand over the ebooks or pay up, but they do just...disappear. "You think about Harvard Library or New York Public Library -- these big systems that, in addition to lending out stuff for people to use, are also the places where we look to preserve our heritage forever," said Alan Inouye, the American Library Association's senior director of public policy and government relations. "You can't do that if it's a two-year license."
"Greedy" (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: "Greedy" (Score:2)
Greedy: wanting access to someone elseâ(TM)s creation for free.
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Shit don't want people to access, keep it to your fucking self, I don't care, so fucking what, nyah, nyah. Make it accessible and well, your choice. Copyright is copytheft, the right to copy, it to is a creative work, just a simple one. Want to eat, get a real job, suck it up.
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That's what libraries are about.
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Free != paying once
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Yes only truly deserving professionals like software engineers and late night television hosts should profit from their labor, authors and musicians serve at our pleasure and should count themselves lucky we share our air with them.
Many people discover new books in a library. It's one of the best marketing tools book authors and publishers have. I'm actually fine with authors/publishers/distributors setting whatever conditions they want, it's their intellectual property and their labor.
Simply have libraries refuse to carry any books, ebooks or their physical copies, if a author/publisher/distributor sets onerous conditions as described in TFA.
I'm betting that the loss in marketing exposure will quickly have those authors/publishers/di
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Re:"Greedy" (Score:4, Interesting)
Physical books get put in libraries and are lent out hundreds of times, an last way longer than 2 years, I get why you may want to limit it to only 1 copy out at a time, but why should limit the license to 2 years and cost more than buying the book.
Physical books getting resold and an occasional ebook being shared or pirated causes much less of profit loss than by default allowing a relaxed policy of people getting free stuff.
Where did you get that figure from,
Re: "Greedy" (Score:2)
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Precisely. eBooks offer the potential for unlimited duplication and unauthorized distribution, while print means you've got ONE book to share. Yes, you can share it. Yes, you might find a way, or there may even be made possible by the publisher for a way to 'gift' or share an eBook, individually, to someone, but if this is the equivalence of print, it goes to them and you 'lose' it. Maybe get complicated with some details.
But the complaint that x people are waiting to loan out from the library one of y cop
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Mod up. Damn straight.
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The article also complains that 5X or so for an ebook isn't reasonable. That they might be more because they reduce the handling of returning the book physically before the next person can read them. I beg to differ. What are the biggest costs of library systems? Staff and physical space. What don't ebooks use? Another big cost: inter branch transfers: the library system getting the copy of the book from a branch on the other side of town for you to borrow next time you're in your local one. Those too can g
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Precisely. eBooks offer the potential for unlimited duplication and unauthorized distribution, while print means you've got ONE book to share. Yes, you can share it. Yes, you might find a way, or there may even be made possible by the publisher for a way to 'gift' or share an eBook, individually, to someone, but if this is the equivalence of print, it goes to them and you 'lose' it. Maybe get complicated with some details.
But the complaint that x people are waiting to loan out from the library one of y copies of an eBook isn't new or unique to eBooks. Print books have the same problem. And they are books. Copyrighted. Some day we'll better understand that the media, 'electronic' v 'physical', ought not make any difference. Whatever that published work, it belongs to the rights holder, and has value to them, presumably also to the borrower. Get in line.
But that's not the only complaint here. The other complaint here is the ebooks aren't just copyrighted, they licensed. So when the license ends, the ebook disappears.
If I'm a librarian and I know I can get [x] copies of [insert NYT best seller here] for [y] dollars and those [x] copies last as long as their circulation merits it, or I can get [a] ebook copies of [same NYT best seller] for [b] dollars (where a>x and b
As someone who does borrow ebooks from my local library, I find this math impossible
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setup an eBook system that gives the majority of the money to the writer
Publishers won't allow it, and unless someone is self-publishing through Amazon or some such the authors are legally bound to abide by their contract with the publisher. I asked an author that I liked if she could give a couple of her older books that were out of print and which the publisher refused to reissue to Project Gutenberg or some such, and she replied that her contract gave her absolutely no option to do anything with her books once she had delivered them. She said that coincidentally she had as
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While you may be right every part of the way in your argument (which essentially is "rights holders have the right to hold rights as they see fit"), you're wrong about the big picture: it's holding society, event humanity, back. As a whole.
Since this is slashdot, let me explain using a Star Trek analogy: there they have (a) replicators, and (b) limitless access to energy. This makes us free of material and resource availability limitations, i.e. the typical closed-system problem. Essentially this is the bas
Re: "Greedy" (Score:2)
And yet, in the Star Trek universe, fictional that it is, we see scarcity of resources. Ships not immediately available when and where they are desired, for instance.
But fictional societies aren't the model, my friend. Let's consider reality please.
Reality? (Score:2)
But fictional societies aren't the model,
Oh, but they are.
my friend.
I am not your friend.
Let's consider reality please.
Which reality? Your reality, in which we fuck everything up and essentially create the 20th century gap [theatlantic.com], or my reality, in which we realize that we're standing on the shoulders of giants? That nobody is solely responsible for their own mental output, but instead they're actually consuming large amounts of culture they've been embedded in and only adding their infinitesimal, often negligible, contribution to it? And that by extending copyright into oblivion, we're actual
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Next up, explaining why the works of Bach or Mahler aren't so readily available today.
I'm not claiming copyright enhances distribution. I'm pointing out that copyright is part of the author getting compensated. Books out of print are usually so because due to lack of demand. Cost of publishing is merely a factor in demand.
Making everything free is attractive, unless you have something to sell.
ps - I know you're not my friend. You don't seem to take mild rebuke well, or perhaps you missed that. The written w
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I can't explain everything. World's not so simple that one narrow look at it or other could explain it. But you haven't tried to explain my arguments away either, so I guess that's ok.
The reason I'm pissed (a.k.a. don't seem to take mild rebuke well) is because I perfectly understand all of our points, and they make perfect sense, but only when you're having an individual-centerd world view in which everyone is their own and only best friend.
Note that I'm not arguing for the opposite (i.e. squashing of indi
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OK, so to dig in a bit, I'm not at all sure granting copyright protection for works beyond the author's or rights holder's lifetime is helpful or even correct. When these rights are assigned to other entities, corporations for example, I'm pretty sure that time frames of a generation are more than adequate. The fight becomes over how these works are made available when there is no profit motive for the delivery, and here classical music offers both hope and despair.
Classical music works are largely in the p
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Ah, now we're talking :-)
Sorry about the long post, I didn't have more time to shorten it.
First, about profits.
I grew up in communism/socialism, I know first hand of its problems, and there's no way I'm going back there. That being said, I'm not against "profits", I'm just not thrilled at profits being the motor of society. It gives bad incentives. It's one-sided, and except for a very narrow use case(*), it essentially rewards egoism in a runaway-condition manner. So I can be thankful to the capitalist mod
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Next up, explaining why the works of Bach or Mahler aren't so readily available today.
That's the crux of the matter. They aren't as readily available because physical books are a limited thing affected by supply and demand. A digital file on the other hand can be copied and passed around essentially forever. I'm not claiming that they should be copied freely, just pointing out that in the distant future I shouldn't have the same problem finding obscure materials because whether 100 copies were sold or 1,000,000 were sold the digital file still exist and can be copied with zero effort. No one has to spin up an old factory and print a new edition.
The problem, as presented in the summary, isn't that people want money for their work. It's that publishers are leasing digital files instead of selling them, thus negating one of the the biggest (if not the only) societal benefits of switching to digital files in the first place. E-books are cheaper to make, but cost more simply because they can. Even disregarding that (I vote with my dollar and just don't buy them), the problem is the shift to leasing instead of selling. THAT is the "greed" pointed out, and it comes at the expense of long term access to information. It's a double negative for the consumer (paying more to get less) and it's a negative for society in the future when publishers stop providing access to works and no one owns a copy because owning things doesn't exist.
The "but people can copy them" argument is bunk, as an e-book from a library comes with DRM and people have been scanning paper books and having a program translate the scan to plain text for over 20 years now. I was reading pirated digital books on my computer in the 90s before e-books were even a thing.
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Popular music has become mostly digital, and mostly subscription. Works, but of course, if you want to actually 'possess' the music you love, that's harder than ever.
Not a good model, but eBook subscriptions are probably the way to go. Music publishers sure have figured out how to do that.
Re: Reality? (Score:2)
Oh, I neglected to consider the costs of 'spinning up' a copy... That's all free, right?
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But fictional societies aren't the model,
Just to give an opposite example: the word and concept for "robot", one of the most relevant current socio-technical disrution mechanisms (...job automation etc), was invented by a fictional writer, Isaac Asimov, in his science-fiction stories.
Fiction, science or otherwise, is usually the first thing that we put to paper when we encounter a new idea. More often that not, the implications of that idea as explored through fiction end up determining our daily lives, as soon as technology becomes good enough to
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Well, if we 'aspire' to a society like that described int h Star Trek universe, we see one with ubiquitous access to energy, limited admission to Star Fleet Academy, and continued shortcomings of human (and other beings) nature. Human nature I cannot offer much hope for, as corruption, deceit, and the quest for power still arise, and other species will likely have similar problems. The thought that the rights of an author or researcher to be compensated for their efforts isn't explored much in that universe
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With proper DRM controls they are not easily copied so the copies the libraries buy (which should cost less than physical copies of paperback books let alone less than hardbound books) shou
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Baen has long flaunted this and found greater profits in their ebook sales than the other publishers. Their books are DRM free, cost less (though still too much in my opinion) and with many of their more popular series when you buy a hardbound copy of a new book you get the entire prior series to date included. They also have a nice selection of books by their various authors available for free, and found years ago that letting readers sample the first book or three of a series results in increased sales a
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That's pretty spiffy. I looked at them when I was trying readers out. I really wish that I could do e-books, but at the same time 99% of my book collection is used books. I'd guess that about half of the several hundred books that I own I paid $1 each for. If I'm willing to pick up books years after they've been released I feel no compunction to pay full price for a new copy, any more than I would buy a new car instead of paying half price for a slightly used one. I don't feel bad for "not supporting t
Re: "Greedy" (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see publishers coming to confiscate my printed books after 2 years. I'm all for limiting the number of copies that library can lend out but if they are purchasing a copy of the ebook then they should be allowed to continuing lending it out forever. This is especially true when the price they are paying per copy is drastically more than a hard copy would cost them.
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I don't see publishers coming to confiscate my printed books after 2 years. I'm all for limiting the number of copies that library can lend out but if they are purchasing a copy of the ebook then they should be allowed to continuing lending it out forever. This is especially true when the price they are paying per copy is drastically more than a hard copy would cost them.
They could. They should. By buying their own copy of the ebook from Amazon and using their own lending system.
The reason they have a problem is in playing the publisher's game in the first place. They use the publisher's lending software and they sign ridiculous license agreements for the books themselves. They have no reason at all to do either one. The American Library Association swings a very big stick if it can be bothered to wield it. It's time the Association paid to develop its own lending sof
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Unfortunately I don't think it would be feasible for them to just buy the book off of Amazon and then lend it out. Most ebook retailers have a clause in their EULA that prohibits sharing of ebooks. The DRM that the books are wrapped in is what is prohibiting this. Sure they could buy the ebook, rip off the DRM and then lend it out but that would also be against the EULA.
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One of the issues is, Physical books AGE. Especially in a library. Typically when a Library get a physical book, it's a special version. Harder spine, more resilient cover...etc. It's more expensive to produce and ship to begin with. But still they age, you see how people take care of rental cars. Books are even worse. Pages rip, covers get torn off eventually, they deteriorate.
Ebooks don't, which is great, but in trying to keep the business model afloat for Authors and Publishers, they need that "repl
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until someone can come up with a better plan that doesn't fuck someone over, this is it.
If it wasn't fucking someone out of more money for less product it wouldn't be business. The cost of physical book replacements is made up for in the almost zero cost of production and distribution of e-books. Publishers chose to keep that extra profit rather than align the cost of e-books with the value to the consumer, and the result is most consumers saying "No thanks". Saying now that they should be charging even more to compensate is disingenuous, and there is no argument to be made for leasing cont
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Re:"Greedy" (Score:4, Informative)
pgmrdlm blabbered:
Have you ever gone to a library yard sale? Where they sell old books, dimes on the dollar like a flee market after they reach a certain age?
Factually incorrect.
I was for several years the president of the Friends of the Library organization for my suburban, Bay Area city, so I actually know whereof I speak. The Friends of the Library are the ones who sell used books, not the library itself. And the books they sell are ones that have been donated to them, and not to the library. (There are good reasons why it has to work that way: taxes pay for the books in the library's own collection, and the library is not authorized to sell - or, for that matter, to give away - property bought with money from taxpayers, so, when books on the shelves wear out, the library has to pay a contractor to haul them away and shred them.)
Also, the vast majority of the books donated to the Friends organizations are paperbacks - which libraries never purchase, if they can help it, because they wear out WAY faster than hardbound books - and at least half of them are romance novels, for which there is essentially no demand. So, after they've hung around for three sales cycles, the Friends either throw them out, or take them to recycling centers that have bins full of paperbacks they encourage people to root through for books of interest to them.
Amusingly enough, the second-most-frequently donated type of books are L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth series - frequently complete sets, that are obviously unread. It's not hard to connect the dots: those books were all "bestsellers" simply because every Scientologist bought as many copies as they could he or she could afford, then donated the boxes of surplus copies to their local Friends group, rather than take them to their local garbage dump.
Which is where they inevitably wind up anyway - still in pristine, unread condition - because there's even less demand for them than there is for dog-eared Harlequin romances with the age-browned pages falling out ...
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>>and the library is not authorized to sell - or, for that matter, to give away - property bought with money from taxpayers, so, when books on the shelves wear out, the library has to pay a contractor to haul them away and shred them
BS. How do you explain the dozens of books I own that have "Withdrawn" stamped on them by the library? Browse your favorite title at abebooks.com and see how many are from libraries. Perhaps the library you worked didn't sell withdrawn books, but it's pretty common for jus
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I think it must vary between one municipality to another, I know that I've purchased books withdrawn from circulation from the Seattle Public Library.
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the second-most-frequently donated type of books are L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth series - frequently complete sets, that are obviously unread.
This is impossible, as there was no such thing as a Battlefield Earth "series." It is a single (albeit massive) book.You are most likely thinking of the Mission Earth "dekology" (like a trilogy, but with ten books.) The difference between these is hard to overstate - Battlefield Earth is a masterpiece of the Space Opera genre, the achievement of an author at the cusp of his powers as he rode the razor thin line between genius and madness. We know this because the following Mission Earth dekology basically d
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the library is not authorized to sell - or, for that matter, to give away - property bought with money from taxpayers, so, when books on the shelves wear out, the library has to pay a contractor to haul them away and shred them
That's the most fucked up thing I've read today. That's not a thing. If your city is doing that, it's fucked up. Our libraries can and do have book sales when it's time to cycle out older books or just to make room in inventory for new content. They sell them right there in the library. What kind of mental fucktard decided to argue that a library should destroy books before buying new books when the alternative is recouping a portion of the cost, thus saving taxpayer money?
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Oh, and PAYING A CONTRACTOR to do it...fucking Christ... Tax dollars at work. Fuck that city.
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Authors get a cut (Score:1)
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No, its not obvious, yes it maybe true, but to a point free availability serves as advertising. Just like if you hear a artists music you may go to their concert. Maybe if you read a book you may buy the next one as soon as it is released, if it doesn't get release to the library for a year.
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Yes, we should shut down those terrible libraries immediately! They're all communists, letting people do something without paying! /s
Re: Authors get a cut (Score:2)
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Making this setup to be very profitable for the publisher and for the authors.
Are authors greedy for wanting to be paid? (Score:3)
Publishers are in fact greedy, but the only people they are really taking overmuch from are the authors that publish books through them.
The fact that they limit virtual copies like physical books is a control that makes sense if you want authors to be paid pretty much anything at all. It's already very hard to make money writing, if libraries simply gave out ebook copies to anyone who asked with no extra competition to the publisher, how many writers (who are paid by the publisher in part by per-book sales) could afford to keep writing?
How would there ever be any writing of books beyond that point? The whole world would collapse into ill-constructed blog posts only.
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Yes, limiting them to one borrower per license makes sense. But then they put in limitations like expiring after two years or expiring after a certain number of checkouts. Yes, physical books do wear out and have to be replaced eventually, but I think they get far more use before being replaced on average.
Rules like that keep the ebooks limited to new popular titles (especially the time limits).
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" But then they put in limitations like expiring after two years or expiring after a certain number of checkouts."
Why wouldn't this make as much sense and limitting one barrow per license? The copyright holder has no obligation to sell you a license you can use forever. And they would actually be stupid to do so.
The OTHER end of the equation is how long copyrights last. We need to stop unlimited extensions... THAT makes no sense.
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Not only that but if a book is truly popular but irreplaceable for some reason a getting-worn physical copy can always be moved to a reserve section or a reading-room-only use where further damage can be minimized.
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Or scanned.
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Here's a thought. Instead of libraries buying a copy and lending that out to their patrons, have them pay a small fee to the publisher/author every time the book gets borrowed. The book gets borrowed 500 times in the first month? Great, lots of money immediately instead of a tiny little trickle for years.
Like the Streaming Problem (Score:2)
With streaming services, different services obtain exclusive licenses, fragmenting the market, with the only real way to have a deep library is to fall back on the Netflix DVD rental. Likewise with library restrictions on ebook licenses, the only way to get a wide selection is to fall back on borrowing physical books.
Many have suggested that we should have some sort of mandatory licensing for video like we do with music to solve the streaming problem. Likewise, we could have mandatory licensing for librar
Same old same old (Score:4, Insightful)
From the article:
Except that it has exactly the potential for doing that.
Lets take the two main things that are being complained about here:
1. Limited number of copies lent at any one time per license
2. Limited duration of license
Lets remove them, and allow a library to:
1. Lend anyone who wants a copy a copy immediately
2. Place no restrictions on the length of the license so the library can have it available forever
Given that this is for an entirely digital activity, if a library has no limits on number of copies and can distribute pretty much at-will, then a library can remove all the friction currently in place that incentivises a user to buying instead of borrowing - they have immediate access, they dont have to necessarily go anywhere (they can do it on the device from their own home), its a perfect copy, and its available forever on demand. It makes no sense to buy in that environment - the same item is available whenever you want it, straight away.
So, either the license gets seriously more expensive, or the publisher eats the cost. And if the publisher eats the cost and sees lower sales (because theres no point in buying given the zero friction now in borrowing), then the publisher is going to go out of business. So the libraries are going to see some serious cost hikes. Which, no doubt, will get more of the same sort of articles decrying "greedy publishers" as this one.
The Amazon Kindle Unlimited lending library is probably a model that might be followed in the future - on demand access to a good selection (admittedly not a full selection) of books for a monthly cost. I use it heavily, and it works because the copyright holder receives remuneration per lend, so theres an incentive for them to do it.
Also, the archival aspect for preservation doesn't make sense - they can archive a copy of anything (they can digitise the physical books if necessary) until the copyright expires and then distribute it. The problem with archival only comes into play if they want to make the archived item available immediately.
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expires? What is this word you use?
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The only time based limit should be on copyright itself. 30 years af
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What annoys me about Kindle Unlimited is that it's very limited: a limited selection of books, and you can only have a limited # available. Seems like every time I go browsing for books the stuff I want is $7.99, rather than 0.00. Yes, I use it, yes it's convenient, but I keep thinking I ought to drop it.
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Let's. TFA complains:
"Last summer, one of the book world's Big Five publishers announced a change that will make ebook lines even
Re:Same old same old (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that this is for an entirely digital activity, if a library has no limits on number of copies and can distribute pretty much at-will, then a library can remove all the friction currently in place that incentivises a user to buying instead of borrowing - they have immediate access, they dont have to necessarily go anywhere (they can do it on the device from their own home), its a perfect copy, and its available forever on demand. It makes no sense to buy in that environment - the same item is available whenever you want it, straight away.
Assumes facts not in evidence, and is contradicted by multiple studies at this point.
I never buy any media without trying it for free first. I make extensive use of my local library. If the book was good enough to read twice, then I buy a copy. I own a lot of books. I don't own very many bad books.
At this point, the publishers can go die in a fire for all I care. They used to provide editing services to authors (and many authors desperately need it). No longer. It cost money. They got rid of their editors decades ago. Shit, they don't even have competent copy editors anymore. The number of books I've read with out-and-out typos in them in the past 20 years is appalling for someone who grew up on Golden Age sci fi. And the writing. Best sellers read like a high school English class writing assignment. I'm still filling out my collection of paper books at better than 60/40 going to authors long dead, because so many living authors are so bad at their jobs.
But you know where I find new (to me) authors? My local library. The one thing that matters for media today is publicity. Getting enough potential customers to even know you exist is by far the hardest part of turning your media into money. When you do that well, you don't even have to be very good at creating the media in the first place. And guess what: piracy contributes to purchases, of every media type. It's higher for some types and lower for others, but blatant copyright infringement earns money for authors. The only ones it hurts are the ones who are already extremely well known. Those also happen to be the ones who whine the loudest. Nothing makes an author feel more entitled than actually earning a little bit of money.
Copyright was invented so publishers could sue other publishers for printing copies of "their" books. It was not intended for the benefit of authors at all, and publishers have spent the intervening centuries lying, cheating, and stealing from authors and the public alike. This is more of the same, and in the United States especially, these expiring licenses are unconstitutional.
The Congress shall have Power [...] to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
They've implemented limited times all right. Exactly backwards to what the US Constitution says they're for. The purpose of copyright is to enrich the public domain. That's what it's for. It says so, right there. Books that disappear before they can reach the public domain are breaking the deal. And this is why I encourage copyright infringement: it's the only way to restore the terms of the deal since publishers still have far more money and are far more capable of wielding it to buy unconstitutional laws than any member of the general public.
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Why not a compulsory license for libraries? Something like a quarter per week per work per patron.
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Why? (Score:3)
The e-book, the library can't buy one and put it on the e-shelf.
I should be able to buy my e-book and donate it to the library, just like I can a physical book. The law needs to be changed. "on a computer" should not have special more restrictive rules.
Data hoarders (Score:2)
The data hoarders will save the ebooks.
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"The data hoarders will save the ebooks."
Unless they are caught by Bookman, the library cop.
https://ih0.redbubble.net/imag... [redbubble.net]
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Good Business, for both sides. (Score:2)
If publishers were forward-thinking about eBooks, they would create subscription setups for Public Libraries. This model would allow a library to pay a yearly subscription for a specific number of eBooks, and specific number of copies of each. Each month, the Library could modify which books they have 'in stock' for the public to check out.
While a library could have a very large list of books to offer, you might have to wait until next month to check it out because the book you want isn't currently on the
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I wonder if there is a practical limit to how short a loan can be. For example if I don't renew my loan daily for an ebook it becomes avaialble to the next guy in line more quickly, it's not as if any of this involves a trip to the library.
And why does any of this involve a library ? Libraries coudl be physical-artifact only lenders and the ebook "business" run on a server somewhere in the state capital or wherever. For that matter, why does it even have to involve the government, are there not private eboo
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Interesting point. Publishers could offer an option directly to readers for a subscription and allow them to have access to all their eBooks, one at a time.
Forever? (Score:2)
Really?
Do you suppose print works are going to be preserved forever? Not unless they are digitized, the digital copies are maintained and updated to be usable in available retrieval systems, and of course there is copyright permission to do so.
And when the copyright expires, that someone/something makes the effort to continue this process.
At one time you could copyright a work, send 2 copies to the Library of Congress, and there it is. How they handle wholly electronic works I dunno. But if it was in print
Stupid first-world problem (Score:2)
There are currently 342 potential borrowers waiting for 197 digital copies of Ronan Farrow's investigative thriller Catch and Kill at the Los Angeles Public Library. [...] Why can only one person borrow one copy of an ebook at a time? Why are the waits so damn interminable?
Let's see, 197 copies of the digital eBook and 342 people waiting in queue for the book? Assuming a two week limit on checked out books, this queue is exhausted in under a month. This is a non issue.
If you want to read Ronan Farrow's latest book, but don't want to pay for it, you're going to have to wait.
Maybe, instead of sponsoring a public library system the city should just sign up every family for Kindle Unlimited?
Re: (Score:1)
>>Let's see, 197 copies of the digital eBook and 342 people waiting in queue for the book? Assuming a two week limit on checked out books, this queue is exhausted in under a month. This is a non issue.
Really? What's the mechanism that prevents additional library patrons adding their names to the wait list? I'm pretty sure I'm NEVER the last one to put his name on a wait list for a library book. Do you really think the only people who want to read a book put their names on the wait list the first day,
Ahhh, artificial digital scarcity. Gotta love it. (Score:2)
Limiting the copying of pure digital information patterns is just bizarre.
We need to figure out how to just pay book creators based on a subscription based streaming model, kind of like movies, tv shows.
And it shouldn't be DRM'ed. People are probably willing to pay the subscription fee just for information organizing services like:
- Universality (and longevity) of availability through single place/way to search.
- Curation
- Organization and interest-based sugges
Re: (Score:2)
"This stuff is just unique information patterns."
So is print.
Re: (Score:2)
What that really is is one particular really big integer (a number.)
So what we're saying is: If you see that number somewhere, you're not allowed to copy it and write it down somewhere else.
Doesn't strike you as the least bit bizarre?
Re: Ahhh, artificial digital scarcity. Gotta love (Score:2)
Nope. No more bizarre than if I see a package on a shelf in a store I could just pick it up and walk out... Sight isn't ownership.
Though of course you don't bother with all that nasty https stuff, right? Information just wants to be free.
Re: (Score:2)
It basically says, if you are the creator/owner of a particular e-book / movie / tv show / tune you get a usage-proportional slice of a global tax that is collected to incent creation of interesting content.
Think of it as an alternative to the ad model.
Maybe you should be able to opt for the ad-supported "interweb" or the content-creator-fee tax version of the "interweb".
Sounds like something for AG's to look into (Score:2)
They already are preserved forever (Score:2)
The issue with ebooks at at libraries is availability. Not preservation.
In 150 years or so ... (Score:3)
a book will fall out of copyright, ie into the public domain. A book printed on paper will be available to be used by anyone & so enrich culture. But with a DRMed e-book it will remain locked up and quite possibly unavailable to anyone as the authenticating servers will have long stopped working. I think that everything locked up by DRM should be given, unlocked, to the national library in every country in which it is sold, to be freely released whenever. It suspect that future generations will not be able to read some of what we have today.
[[ The copyright term ends after the death of the author + 70 years in many countries.]]
The more I hear about 'e-books'.. (Score:3)
We're Still in Digital Infancy (Score:2)
The big wigs have got to figure out how to profit from the subscription fees without starving the content creators or fleecing subscribers. That will take a while. A long, long while.
Re: (Score:2)
Archive what thou wilt. (Score:2)
https://calibre-ebook.com/ [calibre-ebook.com]
Sometimes the solution to a problem is to not care about what those generating the problem want.
You can do what you have the power to do with impunity. Simply ignoring human obstacles can be quite handy. First step is not caring what they think, but only about what they have power to do.
Imagine the same argument for movies (Score:2)
Why should ebooks be any different?
Amazon and Disney owns your mind (Score:2)
Its long overdue to put a grievous crackdown on copyright laws. There's no such thing as owning thought or knowledge, except as a legal construct meant to benefit society, not bankers. Copyright should go back to 25 years maximum.
Customer pressure (Score:2)
Technology is ruining everything (Score:2)
There was a time when technology made our lives better. I think that time is gone, technology simply allows us to extract more money at the cost of our humanity. We are not working to make the world better and that means the world is becoming worse.
Re: (Score:2)
Why can only one person borrow one copy of an ebook at a time?
So no buy. Problem solved. Only buy paper versions. Case Closed.
Why can only one person borrow one copy of a book at a time?
Durr, duh, umm, dee durrr.
Re: (Score:2)
As a dedicated boycotter of all things DRM, I agree. Paper books. Read. Either shelve or truck to the yard sale / flea market / ebay. Problem solved. Don't want to spend the money to purchase? Then you didn't really want it all that badly.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, publishers have made ebooks pretty unattractive to people who need reference books. I like the idea of having all my reference materials in a bibliography manager but, because of DRM, the practicalities just don't work well enough. I just buy the paper books new or second-hand.
I can imagine that for libraries it's even more of a pain.
Re: (Score:2)
Free != pay once
Did you even read the summary? Anyone that doesn't want to pay leasing fees indefinitely suddenly wants everything for free?