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Video on Demand From the Public Library
ye oulde library lover writes "In light of the recent story about Wal-Mart and movies on demand, readers should know there is a free service available from some public libraries that lets you download movies and tv shows. The service is just beginning, so selection is pretty mediocre, but the sponsors, Recorded Books and PermissionTV, make some big promises. If your library ponies up the dough for the top service, you will be able to download movies on the same day as their dvd release. All you need is a library card. You can see one of the early adopters — Half Hollow Hills Community Library in the library's blog. Look for MyLibraryDV."
Don't torrents pretty much do that? So when it's a community initiative, it's piracy, but if the goverment does it, it's ...
There should be a "-1:Groupthink"
I am a network technician at the Huntington Public library in NY next school district over from Half Hollow. We are looking into this service too. we are doing testing. Its not bad but you have to install a client. There are a couple of services that libraries can use.
Why would individual libraries be doing this? Wouldn't make more sense from a power by numbers point of view to have 1 online library that holds and distributes all the content? Kind of like the library exchange program. If my library doesn't have a book, then I can get to have it shipped from another library that does have the book. There's no reason why each library should have to have their own system. There should be at least a state level (province level cause I'm in Canada) if not national level program. If they really got their act together they could have 1 huge international digital library. With ebooks and everything.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
A good public library is one of the great resources anywhere. I love them.
Entertainment, information, fun, enlightenment, all for free.
Plus, even in these Internet days, you can still phone the library with a question and they will look up the answer!
Our local library has a really amazing collection of DVDs, both recent and classic and foreign films. Kind of like NetFlix without paying a monthly subscription fee.
It is inconceivable that one could create such an institution these days. No politician would ever - EVER - support the idea today. Can you imagine how the MPAA or RIAA would fight to prevent the free loans of their products? Could book publishers be far behind?
Libraries - gotta love them.
Three Squirrels
This looks like it could be a great service, but I can't help but think the movie industry will fight this one to the death. On the one hand, the libraries already have the right to loan movies for free (by law) as well they should be able to. On the other hand, the libraries are unlikely to have deep enough pockets to battle it out with the industry. And it is highly unlikely they will just pass on the chance to fight this one out. If this goes as well as it could (for us) it would severely undercut the industry, therefore destroying the profitability of film making in general. This of course would put the industry into its death-throes. I suspect the argument they could make will be something like "The library may have x copies of the DVD that they purchase. Therefore, x people may borrow the DVD at a time." That seems reasonable I suppose, but would also make this service a lot let useful, as it could be weeks before you get to view your video.
Here on long Island (where half hollow hills is) we have whats called "The Suffolk Cooperative Library System" It basically combines all the libraries in suffolk county into one semi unit. Our catalogs can be accessed by anybody in the system and books and dvds can be shipped between libraries. We even do some services as one unit. If it becomes a good service the whole system could offer it. I do not know how the rest of the country works though.
Great. Now my local library, already facing a funding crunch to purchase non fiction books... Has yet another way to waste scarce cash on entertainment. Libraries are supposed to supplement Blockbuster and Netflix, and do the things they won't because there's no money in it - not compete with them.
Libraries in their race to become relevant - are becoming meaningless.
My library has this and the librarians are clueless how bad this is.
The main problem is this the company and the librarians and the broshures they hand out say it's for MP3 players. well it's not: it only plays on WMA 10 compabtible devices. This means no ipods, very few Mp3 players even the ones that play the older WMA files. It won't play on a mac and it won't play on linux computers. And it won't even play on older windows machines that don't have WM player 10. Sure you can download it but is granny gonna do that?
Also the way the check out works is that you can check it out once for two weeks, renew it once for two weeks, and then you can never check out the same book a second time, making it essential to have multiple fake library IDs if you want to get through some long book.
Now given that the libraries have fixed budgets I'm sure this resulting in the purchase of fewer CDs . The 95% of the world that does not have a WMA 10 compatible "MP3" player is subsidizing this.
If you want to use it you have to not only buy a WMP 10 compaitble Music player, but now you also have to use some new music management system different from the one you use for your other players to transfer the audio. You have to have a windows computer too.
I guess the most galling thing to me was that librarians kept showing me the printed broshure from the company saying it worked with any Mp3 player and insisting I must be mistaken.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Nuh-uh. Not cool.
Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.
I don't like sounding like a GNU/Linux zealot, but it is disheartening when these people always choose windows only options, especially when there are easily availble ways to distribute media for any OS. I am near the half hollow hills district, I wonder if I get a cross library sticker (so I can borrow from them since they are in the suffolk county system) if it would let me download too :)
As a government institution, they are what the people want them to be. I can still remember the 80's when my local library had audio cassettes and even betamax movies available.
Either way, they continue to function as a repository of recorded media, be it printed or otherwise.
We just got this at the library I work at. We pay for a certain amount of downloads per month, if it exceeds this we have to pay more. So we only allow residents of the city to use it since they are the ones paying the taxes.
"Windows Media Player 9 or above with the most recent DRM security update. If Windows Media Player 9 is not installed you will be promped to do so."
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
Libraries in their race to become relevant - are becoming meaningless
No, libraries are responding to their customers. The customer is always right because the customer knows what he or she wants. And the customers of public libraries (who pay the taxes) want nearly everything.
During the VHS/betamax wars, the customers pressured libraries to provide this medium. The libraries responded. When books on tape became popular with a certain segment of the population, they asked the library to provide them. Libraries responded. When DVDs and CDs came along, customers asked libraries to provide them. Libraries responded. When the Internet became popular, customers asked libraries to provide free access. Libraries responded again. In many cases, the ONLY free access available is at your local public library.
Libraries responded to these new types of information pretty well, I think, while still providing a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction books, children's books, storytimes, programming, reference service, interlibrary loans, holds, local history collections, genealogy departments, classes, and all the traditional things libraries have historically done.
This particular service we've been discussing is new. There are only a couple of offerings. Yup, they are only windows. That's because, dear readers, the vast majority of people are not at all interested in Linux, slashdot, or whatever arcane OS is popular with geeks. It is simply not relevant. When someone comes up with a service that caters to all at once, libraries will get it. Many libraries are well aware of the MP3, iPod issues on some of these new services. But they are not going to wait until they've satisfied 100% of potential users until they implement, particularly on a trial basis, these new services. When LIBRARIES tell vendors their offerings are not good enough, the vendors will change. It happens every time. Libraries also generally have a vast array of "internet accessible" information you are not going to find with Google. This includes almost all periodicals and indexes, both popular and academic. Just go to your local library's web site and look at the list of "online resources." It's incredible. From JSTOR to Information Access, Proquest to Morningstar, Business Reference to Academic Index. That's a vast amount of information available.
If you don't use your local library, that's okay. They are quite busy enough already. I don't physically visit my library either; I do it all on-line. But criticizing libraries because they respond to their customers is crazy. If they didn't, they would already be gone. Lots of the criticism here is of organization that do NOT respond to their customers (e.g. Nvidia). You can't have it both ways.
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them." -Mark Twain
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Wow, the slashdot community meets it's twin! In a sort of Star Trek "Mirror, Mirror" way without the evilness. By that I mean that the Libraryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library community has been at the forefront of infotech since BCE putting the tech to real use for the general populace - making the info available. Tags? try the MARChttp://www.loc.gov/marc/overview.html/ based WorldCathttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldCat/, Deep Web? try your Nationalhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_libr ary/ Library or Consortia.http://www.library.yale.edu/consortia/ Come on slashdotters get in behind your Libraries and build the future!