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Books Businesses

Libraries Could Preserve Ebooks Forever, But Greedy Publishers Won't Let Them (gizmodo.com) 125

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
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."
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Libraries Could Preserve Ebooks Forever, But Greedy Publishers Won't Let Them More

Libraries Could Preserve Ebooks Forever, But Greedy Publishers Won't Let Them

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  • "Greedy" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Peptidoglycan ( 5157521 ) on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @04:57PM (#59793488)
    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.
    • Are you kidding? How many software developers get paid royalties every time someone uses their software?

    • Greedy: wanting access to someone elseâ(TM)s creation for free.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dryeo ( 100693 )

        That's what libraries are about.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rakhar ( 2731433 )

        Free != paying once

    • 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

  • Wider availability of free ebooks will mean less income for writers, obviously.

    • 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Yes, we should shut down those terrible libraries immediately! They're all communists, letting people do something without paying! /s

    • Didn't Amazon demand that authors provide proof of purchase of their ebooks to get paid within the last couple of months? That's $0 income without screenshots from purchasers. You cannot get more blatant than that.
    • Baen Books proved this false twenty years ago when ebooks were first becoming a thing. baen.com has a selection of free ebooks by all of their authors. Their ebooks are cheaper than most of the industry. If you buy a hardbound copy of a book it comes with a copy of all the prior books in that series. All their ebooks are DRM free. Greater availability of free and easy to share ebooks increased their sales substantially.

      Making this setup to be very profitable for the publisher and for the authors.

  • Are authors greedy for wanting to be paid? (Score:3)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @05:05PM (#59793536)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by crow ( 16139 )

      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).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jhon ( 241832 )

        " 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.

      • 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.

    • There is only one solution: go web and drop publishers in favor of ad-supported model or Patreon. Limiting copying is nonsense and will remain unpopular among actual readers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Calydor ( 739835 )

      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.

  • 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)

    by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @05:20PM (#59793636)

    From the article:

    “I personally don’t believe that circulating a book through the library, whether or digital or print, erodes sales for that book,”

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by suutar ( 1860506 )

      expires? What is this word you use?

    • They should keep limitation 1 but drop 2. If a library wants to lend two copies of a book, it should get two licenses. But those licenses should not have a limited duration. Sure, physical copies of popular books wear out quickly and libraries will have to purchase new ones eventually, but I seriously doubt that the impact of wear on library books amounts to anything more than a rounding error when it comes to the author’s profit.

      The only time based limit should be on copyright itself. 30 years af

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by murdocj ( 543661 )

      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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

      From the article:

      âoeI personally donâ(TM)t believe that circulating a book through the library, whether or digital or print, erodes sales for that book,â

      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

      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)

      by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @07:57PM (#59794430)

      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.

    • Why not a compulsory license for libraries? Something like a quarter per week per work per patron.

  • Why? (Score:3)

    by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @05:28PM (#59793686)
    So a physical book. The library can buy one at a bookstore and put it on the shelf.

    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.

  • The data hoarders will save the ebooks.

  • 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

    • 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

      • 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.

  • 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

  • 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?

    • >>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,

  • This stuff is just unique information patterns.

    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

    • "This stuff is just unique information patterns."

      So is print.

      • A unique digital information pattern is just a sequence of bits strung together.
        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?
  • just sayin'...

    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

  • Registering a copyright (necessary if you wish to collect more than damages incurred for copyright violation) involves sending a copy to the U.S. Copyright Office [copyright.gov]. Ostensibly so they can preserve a copy forever (no idea how effective they are at it).

    The issue with ebooks at at libraries is availability. Not preservation.

  • In 150 years or so ... (Score:3)

    by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @07:02PM (#59794154) Homepage

    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)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @07:15PM (#59794214) Journal
    ..the more I like printed books.
  • At some point, people will be able to pay a monthly/yearly fee and be able to consume any media in its digital form on any digital device you have, all cross-referenced and searchable.

    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.

  • 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.

  • Picture a local library with a digital copy of every popular movie and TV show. Imagine borrowers, any number at a time, could log in to watch any of those videos for free. Who would pay for Netflix or Disney+? And would there be any new movies or TV shows if nobody earned from them?

    Why should ebooks be any different?

  • 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.

  • Maybe if the libraries stopped buying those damned ebooks things would change.

  • 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.

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