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Everytime I head a story like this it just energizes me to try to screw these companies out of as much money as possible. I joined Swapadvd, Swapacd and Paperbackswap and have decided to never buy a new DVD, CD or book ever again. http://www.swapadvd.com/ http://www.paperbackswap.com/ http://www.swapacd.com/

You're getting distracted by the example. Most people agree that pictures of naked women or men, in an artistic conceptualization, is free speech and the dividing line between that and pornography is fuzzy. I would tend to want to protect your right to pontificate about the evils you see in our government and that includes holding up signs, shouting slogans and standing up on a proverbial soapbox, holding forth on your opinions. I also think you would agree that this is free speech.

But, in certain circumstances, courts (not always the Supreme Court) have ruled that one may be arrested for standing on the side of the road with a sign that says "The President is a War Criminal." And, during the last administration there were zones along motorcade routes that had prohibitions from you holding such a sign so that the President could, possibly, if he was looking out the window at the right moment, see your sign. The ACLU had problems with this practice. And it would seem that the Bush Administration thought that the 9-11 attacks gave them the pretext to abolish the First Amendment

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Were these attacks on our freedoms to actually have seen the light of day in a courtroom, I believe the long precedents of re-labeling "speech" a "verbal act" in SCOTUS decisions offer the path that would have been gleefully taken.

According to Wirenius, the way you ignore the First Amendment in arresting someone for speaking, exercising press freedoms and so on, is to call it a "verbal act" and not speech, which is protected.

My good friend, John Wirenius some time ago published a book on free speech called "First Amendment, First Principles: Verbal Acts and Freedom of Speech." The book is kind of hard-going, so unless you're interested in carefully-researched legal argument covering the subject, you're in for a slow read.

My point is this (and John makes it in detail): Immediately upon the adoption of our current Constitution here in the United States, the Supreme Court began hacking away at this First Amendment -- and with a really large axe, rather than an ice pick. There are current definitions for what one may present or do or say that consider speech a "verbal act" that may be Constitutionally limited. It is this tortured creation of an action from one's words that really defies any and all logic.

Everyone is familiar with the "limitation" on "free speech" that is described thusly:

... crying "Fire" in a crowded movie house

Something like this is, presently no problem for the Supreme Court, as saying that word in that situation is re-defined, not as "speech" but as a "verbal act," and thus, not protected by the First Amendment. So, I don't really see Elena Kagan as proposing anything different than what has been going on in the United States for 200 plus years. The definition of "Free Speech" versus "verbal act" is one that is entirely subject to interpretation of any Court, be it local, federal, a court of original jurisdiction or an appellate court.

Get a FREE paperback book from PaperBackSwap.Com, then put it back into circulation when you're done.

I see a lot of good suggestions here to find really good Sci-Fi and Fantasy. I cannot believe that no one suggested http://www.paperbackswap.com/ You select a paperback you want and someone sends it to your mailbox. You trade the ones you don't want to keep. Comes with detailed descriptions, reviews, and recommendations. It only costs postage which is currently about $2.30 per paperback for the ones you mail out. Titles are mailed to you for free, and you post books that you want to mail to someone. Tons of titles and a wish list for those hard to find titles that are not posted yet. Can't beat http://www.paperbackswap.com/. A daily digest of new arrivals by category can be sent directly to your mailbox. It truly is an excellent resource for a good read. http://www.jollymoon.com/

I see a lot of good suggestions here to find really good Sci-Fi and Fantasy. I cannot believe that no one suggested http://www.paperbackswap.com/ You select a paperback you want and someone sends it to your mailbox. You trade the ones you don't want to keep. Comes with detailed descriptions, reviews, and recommendations. It only costs postage which is currently about $2.30 per paperback for the ones you mail out. Titles are mailed to you for free, and you post books that you want to mail to someone. Tons of titles and a wish list for those hard to find titles that are not posted yet. Can't beat http://www.paperbackswap.com/. A daily digest of new arrivals by category can be sent directly to your mailbox. It truly is an excellent resource for a good read. http://www.jollymoon.com/

As interesting as these movie download services are, it seems as though most have had trouble picking up enough steam to stay around. I run a few swapping sites and one them is specially for DVDs. (swapadvd.com - Shamless plug) There are other sites that compete in this same space but with slightly different models, peerflix.com, titletrader.com and switchdiscs.com. I would love to hear what the Slashdot crowd thinks about the swapping of media, books, CDs and DVDs.

i wonder if its possible to do book rental and if amazon will ever do this?

I doubt it, for a few reasons. First, shipping on a book is significantly more expensive than DVDs. Media mail is the cheapest way in the US, and it's something like $1.42/book for a much slower service than priority mail. Netflix gets you DVDs within a day or two of shipping them by using a combination of priority mail and nearby distribution centers.
 
The second reason is similar, and that is of total cost/revenue. Let's assume (but this is probably optimistic) that the higher shipping cost (nearly $3/book for both directions) is offset by the slower turnover (since people tend to spend longer to read a book than watch a movie). Still, given the reasonable rate of 4 books/month, your monthly fee would have to be quite low to entice people to choose it over buying books used or going to the library. If the fee is too low, it won't cover the rather substantial overhead of dealing with all the other costs of storage, purchasing new books, etc.

If, for whatever reason, the library isn't working well for you personally, there are alternatives. My wife is big into PaperBackSwap which has you mailing books you own to others and in turn other users mail you books back. You can use this either to get rid of books you're no longer interested in and get ones you really are, or use it like a rather expensive rental system. As long as you like the selection, it'd probably be cheaper for you than to try to use a company looking to make profit.