Sony Breathes New Life Into Library Books

Barence writes "Sony has launched a new range of touchscreen eBook readers — and is breathing new life into the concept of public library books. The readers offer support for free eBook loans from local authority libraries. If you're lucky enough to be a member of a local library supporting the service (50 have signed up so far in the UK) you'll be able to visit its website, tap your library card number in and borrow any book in the eBook catalog, for free, for a period of 14 or 21 days. The odd thing about this is it works in a very similar way to the good old bricks-and-mortar library. While a title is out on loan, it's unavailable to others to borrow (unless the library has purchased multiple copies); it only becomes available again once the loan period expires and the book removes itself from your reader."

Comments

The Nook already does this in the US.

[wiredog]

IIRC, most libraries that loan e-books use the EPUB format, so any non-Kindle reader should be capable of borrowing library books.

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. I've been loaning ebooks for my nook since nook came out. not only that I can buy books from b&n, kobo and sony ebook store and copy them into nook. I can also go into B&N store and read any ebook for free for 1 hour. If you're going into library to loan a book and read it in library for 1 hour or less, b&n made exactly that possible with their ebook reader.

  So how is this news post any news? to show how behind sony is?

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[cdrguru]

What this article is talking about is the Adobe format that most of the libraries in Arizona seem to be using. It has an expiration date built into the format.

Kindle didn't include the Adobe software and can't deal with this format. Unfortunate in some ways but not others. EPUB would be a good addition to Kindle and is likely to show up at some point, but I don't think we will ever see Adobe's mobile software there.

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[MoonBuggy]

You also need compatibility with the particular DRM scheme attached to those library EPUBs, but it is fairly widely supported (and one of the main things that swayed me to the nook rather than the kindle). Loaned books, especially free ones, strike me as one of the few valid uses of DRM I've seen. I haven't actually found an online library that lends them out yet, so the scheme might be limited (rather anachronistically) to bricks-and-mortar libraries that one is a member of (if so, does anyone have a convenient list of participants?).

In any case, more competition (and continued support for some kind of standards, DRM notwithstanding) is always a good thing. The Sony devices seem a bit overpriced to me, but then the full touchscreen might be a killer feature for some.

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[fincan]

Sony also does this in the US. I am using this with my first gen. ebook reader (PRS-500) for the past several months.

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[geminidomino]

Ditto. My 505 has been dealing with the "Digital Bookshelf" crap used by the site that my library contracts with, and has been doing so for over a year.

Better news, at least for me, would be along the lines of "Download Depot stops sucking ass."

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[networkBoy]

I thought the same thing about the DRM part.
This is the only 'good' use I've seen yet. I particularly like that it is automatic return from loan, that I don't have to drive to the library to return the books.
-nB

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[theaveng]

Uh oh..... here comes the Author's Guild. They are almost as bad as RIAA (except AG doesn't send extortion letters to private citizens). Anyway I think this is a great idea. I want to READ a book not own it, unless it's something exceptionally good (like Asimov's Best Science Fiction of ____ anthologies). So free borrowing via a Sony or Nook device is a great plan.

Pretty soon we'll be able to eliminate the brick-and-mortar library completely, the same way we've almost completely eliminated brick-and-mortar video rental stores.

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're in the US, many states have available ebooks, along with audiobooks, available online through the Overdrive service. Check with the library of your town (or search for it online) to see if they're signed up.

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[InlawBiker]

You can remove the DRM from EPUB, PDF and PRC (Amazon's flavor of Mobi DRM), but it's not easy enough for the general public to do. Google Mobidedrm and ineptpdf.pyw.

I do this for everything I've bought on my Kindle just on principal. Kindle doesn't support ePub, most likely so they can lock you into their evil monopoly plans. If I had it to do over again I'd get a device that supports ePub, just to avoid the hassle. In this case I don't mind the DRM too much.

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[nabsltd]

Loaned books, especially free ones, strike me as one of the few valid uses of DRM I've seen.

All eBooks with DRM are loaned.

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[Paracelcus]

See Adobe Digital Editions, available on many devices including PC's.

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[spazdor]

What happens when it becomes possible to jailbreak a popular e-reader and circumvent the 'expiration date' feature of the DRM?

Suing libraries, I'll bet.

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[no1home]

That's who we use at our libraries in Pasadena & Glendale (Ca). I agree with others that this is the one good use for DRM. Self-returning library books is pretty cool. Sometimes, though, we have to 'clear' an account when the download doesn't work and the book gets locked in limbo.

The issue with DRM is interesting- The original files were PDF, but with DRM built-in. Then they switched over to a new file name extension just for this. Because of this DRM, you have to have Adobe Digital Editions. This can get weird when you try to open a PDF with Reader and get told it isn't compatible! This happens with some of the free-to-download-and-keep books from Google, depending on who the actual source is. So, with those, even though their labeled as PDFs, you have to open them in Digital Editions. Odd little pain in the butt. Found this out recently while doing some heraldry research.

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[BranMan]

Why not buy your books from Baen? It's great if you are into SciFi - I get mine there on principal too. NO. DRM. EVER.

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[JohnBailey]

All eBooks with DRM are loaned.

Agreed wholeheartedly. DRM is a rental, not a purchase. But in this case, it is stated up front, and never presented as a purchase.

Library books, streaming rented video, limited time anything, fair enough. The customer is under absolutely no illusion that they are doing anything but renting.

Where DRM is a con, is when customers are fooled into thinking that they own a copy of the transitory DRM infected object.

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most readers can read epub, but I think only the Sony reader can deal with the DRM on the file. My iPod Touch wasn't able to read the file without help. I have managed to remove the DRM from the library book files so that I could read them, but it was enough of a pain that I only did it a couple of times before I went back to paper and ink.

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[MoonBuggy]

Interesting link - I'm taking a look at some of their free library now, and if they turn out to be halfway readable I'll certainly throw a few dollars their way.

For the moment, though, I'm just hoping that their writing is better than their web design...

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[JohnBailey]

What happens when it becomes possible to jailbreak a popular e-reader and circumvent the 'expiration date' feature of the DRM?

How do you jailbreak an e-book reader? They don't come locked down and castrated, so no point.

Suing libraries, I'll bet.

How much..

ADE has been cracked for ages now. As has Mobi, and no doubt the mobi variant that the Kindle uses. So pay up..

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[spazdor]

They don't come locked down and castrated
Then how can an "expiration date" feature possibly exist?

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[Anonymous Coward]

Afaik sonys ereaders have been able to do this for a while...

Anothwr non neww item. I expextes an improvement.

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[BranMan]

The web site is beyond atrocious, but there is quite a lot of good stuff there. Some of the free stuff is really good - though I haven't read all of it by any means.

I hope this dies on the vine.

[grub]

I'm against this with every fiber of my being and hope it dies.

The odd thing about this is it works in a very similar way to the good old bricks-and-mortar library. While a title is out on loan, it's unavailable to others to borrow (unless the library has purchased multiple copies)

Sony has devised a system of artificially restricting access to books, effectively a short-term, no end-user-cost license. This is different than libraries buying X copies of a book for loan, it's DRM for books.

.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the same thing as a library except you can't steal the book. So go ahead and shut down every library out there.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it is DRM for book. But, you're only borrowing the book, for free, as you would if you visited your local library. You would end libraries? Get a grip. This is useful DRM.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[TheCRAIGGERS]

I know what you're saying, but seems like a decent compromise. Besides the obvious "give ebooks away for free" what do you think would work better?

Frankly, I'm surprised Sony is working with libraries at all given their previous stances on sharing copyrighted material.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[lxs]

I couldn't agree more. They may give some slack but you're still on a leash. However after stripping off the DRM (which is still legal in the civilized world) I find that I really enjoy reading ebooks.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[jimboindeutchland]

For Christ's sake, why do you have to be so negative? How is this any different to normal library books? I think this is a great idea and could save a lot of people money especially when it comes to school/technical/reference books. It would probably kill the O'Reilly bookshelf.

I wish they'd start doing something like this but with music and movies. I know, it'll never happen.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[sonicmerlin]

But you get free access to these books, and you can download them from the comfort of your house. I don't like DRM either, but renting something for free doesn't strike me as a problem.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[dave420]

Without Sony's technique, no one would be getting free electronic books from these libraries at all. DRM often gives content providers the ability to get their content out into people's hands, albeit with restrictions, which is obviously better than them not having DRM and simply refusing to offer up their content in a digital fashion. Yes, the world would be a much better place without the need for DRM, but that's not the world we live in. Content providers need to do everything they can to protect their content, otherwise they will put it in a safe and never let anyone see it, as without their content, they are nothing. DRM, in this case, is the same as the glass cases around museum exhibits. Sure, they stop you from touching the contents, but if the museum didn't have glass cases they would not put anything on display at all, as the exhibit could be stolen or damaged. So the choice is glass cases & the ability to view the exhibits, or no glass cases and no chance of seeing the exhibits at all. Shit analogy, I know. I'll shut up now.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Is there any exception made if the book is in the public domain?

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the EXACT SAME "leash" you have with physical books. I hate DRM as much as the next slashdotter, but this is an attempt to have ebooks work identically to physical books. Sure it would be nice if they were better; but don't complain because it's the same.

This. Is. A. Good. Thing.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[TheCRAIGGERS]

I wonder, do you consider it a leash when you normally rent a book from the library? I mean, there are well-known rules and such around borrowing them, foremost being that you will return it within so many days.

Or is it only because this is an obvious restriction they invented?

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[arth1]

The main difference is that for physical books, the book can't be lent out to more than one person at a time. With e-books, this is an artificial barrier that makes absolutely no sense except as life support for a dying publishing industry.

Another difference is that if I don't return a library book at the due date, the library doesn't send out stealth ninjas in the middle of the night to replace the book with a brick. While I may have to pay a nominal fine if I return it late, I'm still in control of the book until I give up that control.

In this case, Sony wants what's best for the publisher and worst for the reader from each of the two technologies (paper books and e-books), which I think is neither fair nor is going to cause a lot of sales.

Barnes & Noble Nook also has a crippled lending scheme, the difference being that it's not library based, but allows people to lend books to others. Except that they too have crippled it into uselessness. First of all, it's restricted to some books (generally those that don't sell). And they have to be bought through B&N, and not any third party (like ereader.com, Fictionwise or others that also use the peanutpress format). And both the lender and borrower have to have active accounts with B&N, as well as a nook. And finally, there's also the same artificial imitate-dead-trees limitation of one reader at a time because that's more restrictive, not because it makes sense from a digital perspective.

I think it's time that the e-book producers stop pissing in the well, and realise that while getting more for more is sellable, getting less for more isn't.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[MozeeToby]

Your knee jerk reaction is everything that is wrong with blind idealism. Yes, this is DRM, it's DRM that opens up functionality that would not otherwise be economically feasible or even legally defensible. Do authors deserve to get paid for their work? Because unless they don't, you can't have libraries giving out unlimited, copyable, no-return-required copies of books. This is the only realistic way that libraries will continue to exist in any form if we move towards a 100% digital distribution, an idea that I personally believe isn't as far fetched as a lot of people seem to think it is.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree.

This makes libraries more accessable. Libraries are a special case in our society, but they work within a set of rules. You can't demand that they break all those rules because you don't want artificial restrictions.

Libraries buy books. That means that someone payed for each ebook, and not just once, but for each "copy" of that ebook. To abide the rules, they have to treat these ebooks like paper books, meaning that they need to "get it back" within the time limit set for you. The system works for them, the system works for me (I hold a library card, and while my library doesn't participate in this program yet they do have an ebook program) and the system works for publishers/authors. I think saying that you want the project to fail is very stubborn and selfish. Perhaps you think I'm being short-sighted, but I would say I'm looking long term and seeing this as a first step that all can enjoy rather than holding out and resting on your principles (however guided or misguided) for a system that is only marginally better for one group, most likely more expensive for another, and probably detramental to the 3rd.

By the way, I like this new reader. I had a PRS-505 until I cracked the screen, I didn't like the 600 because the touch screen felt like cheap plastic. Now I'm torn between a new Nook and one of these new readers. Wifi+price vs touch-screen page turns...

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[radtea]

I know what you're saying, but seems like a decent compromise. Besides the obvious "give ebooks away for free" what do you think would work better?

Almost anything that acknowledge this fact: bits can be copied an arbitrarily large number of times at almost arbitrarily small cost.

In the meantime, I have a GREAT idea: all these "horseless carriages" are really interfering with some technologically outmoded businesses, so why don't we put on an artificial requirement that every one of them should have a horse that runs along in front of it?

See, by just pretending that new technology has exactly the same limitations on it as old technology I'm sure we'll be able to save corporations from having to adapt or die! That's what capitalism is all about, isn't it? Using the power of the nanny state to protect some forms of social organization from ever having to face the real world?

[Note for the historically impaired: there was a brief period where automobiles in Britain had to be preceded by a person carrying in a red flag, effectively restricting them to speeds comparable to horse-drawn transport. That worked out about as well as you might expect, and the whole insane "lets pretend bits can't be copied la la la I'm not listening to you" gang will eventually go the same way, hopefully sooner rather than later.]

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[MozeeToby]

The department of Sony that runs their eBook stuff is apparently run quite a bit different from the rest of the company. They support open standards, don't heavily push DRM, and don't try to sue their customers into oblivion. It's a big company with a lot of diversity, I'd bet that 95% of the people that work in the eBook department have no significant contact with people in the games, movies, or music department. For all intents and purposes they may as well be their own company.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[delinear]

Sony is made up of many different wings under one umbrella. The hardware department responsible for pushing the e-reader obviously think this is a good move, since it's likely to shift a few units (actually if I'm paying money for a book I like the physical copy, I can put it on my bookshelf, it's easier to read and hold, I don't care if I forget it on a train, etc - being able to get a free copy from the library makes these e-readers marginally more attractive to me), and they're probably allowed to do this right now because it doesn't step on any other department's toes. I can imagine if it was the walkman department suggesting libraries allow free music loans, they'd be shot down in short order by the music wing of the company. Still, I think it's positive and while I'd wish they didn't impose the artificial restriction, I can see the reason why they'd want to (if they didn't you could effectively keep the book forever, the library wouldn't mind renewing it every two weeks or whatever because they'd have unlimited copies).

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Useful DRM"?

Get a hold of yourself, man.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Animaether]

Frankly, I'm surprised Sony is working with libraries at all given their previous stances on sharing copyrighted material.

I don't think they've ever had issues with sharing copyrighted material (okay, maybe somewhere in a board room they do) beyond the typical*. But neither a library nor filesharing are 'sharing' of the copyrighted material. A library lets you borrow the material. Once you borrow it, the library no longer has it. Filesharing on the other hand involves making a copy, and then distributing that copy. If they had issues with 'sharing' then you'd be looking at them having issues with e.g. a whole family watching a movie.. and not just the single person that bought the DVD/BluRay. * Of course when you extrapolate from there and start showing that DVD to a room of 50 total strangers, they may take issue with that.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[mcgrew]

What's wrong with giving them away? Giving them away results in greater book sales, odd as that sounds. Cory Doctorow credits his free downloads of his books to his status as a best selling author. One publishing company, trying to find out how badly piracy hurt book sales, was surprised to find that when the books were scanned and hit the internet a few weeks after initial publication, there was a second sales spike -- the piracy HELPED his business.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[z4ns4stu]

If it's public domain, it's probably already available for free on-line somewhere so you don't need to get it from the library.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm against this with every fiber of my being and hope it dies."

and what are u gonna do about it? Some hacker will circumvent this over night. It's like music, once it's unleashed it can be converted into non DRM

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[mcgrew]

I wish they'd start doing something like this but with music and movies.

Huh? You can check CDs and DVDs out at the public library here in Springfield. But I've never seen school/technical/reference books they'd let you check out at any library, and I've been going to libraries for over half a century.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

The main difference is that for physical books, the book can't be lent out to more than one person at a time.

I know that. It doesn't really matter, they shouldn't be able to rent out books to multiple people at once without paying more. So the logical thing to do is to prevent them to lend multiple books out unless they buy more than 1 copy.

Another difference is that if I don't return a library book at the due date, the library doesn't send out stealth ninjas in the middle of the night to replace the book with a brick. While I may have to pay a nominal fine if I return it late, I'm still in control of the book until I give up that control.

So basically you want to be allowed to steal the book. I think that's being an asshole to other people who also want to rent it, not something logical that should be allowed. You don't deserve that control at all.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

And with zero scarcity driving the cost down to zero for all books, publishing will will go from dying to dead. This is not the RIAA here, authors need book sales to get paid. Rant all you want about free information, but unless you have a real solution for the business model, the only authors you'll see dedicating themselves to the art are cranks writing manifestos and dilettantes who are already well-off enough to do it as a hobby.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[delinear]

In some ways it probably is a little better even than the current system. If I forget to take my book back or renew it, and they can remotely disable it without imposing a late fee, that's a net bonus to me (as someone who used to to this not infrequently when I was at university and couldn't always make it back to my local library). Additionally it opens up the possibility (and admittedly I don't know if they have any plans for this) of loaning library books over the air or via download on the internet, so I don't even need to go into my library - they could just fire me an email when the book's available, I click a link and get a file I can put on my device. Another bonus for the library user (it means I can get library books even when my working hours make physical access difficult). And finally, no more hunting for hours for a book which the system tells me is on a shelf but which is actually nowhere to be seen when I have no idea if it's just been moved or stolen, etc (although I guess things like RFID will help with this with physical books, but with digital books it's a complete non-issue).

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, it's restricted to some books (generally those that don't sell).

Given what does sell a B&N I think that this is a feature not a bug.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[EggyToast]

Agreed; it's hard to be upset about DRM on free products. It's not like anyone's paying for anything, so the idea of "ownership" is rather moot.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[michael_cain]

Without Sony's technique, no one would be getting free electronic books from these libraries at all.

Where have you been for the last few years? Libraries have been making free electronic book loans using systems based on Adobe Digital Editions for a considerable time. OverDrive is the predominant service, with something over 9,000 libraries participating. Granted, ADE requires a PC of some sort (Windows, Mac, Linux) to handle the main interface and then transfers a copy to your ebook reader. That doesn't bother me because I manage my ebooks on my Mac anyway, regardless of where I got them. And the ADE-based services support a large number of different readers, not just Sony's.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[IndustrialComplex]

Honestly, what would you want?

There has to be some sort of return on producing books, are we going to rely on people doing it as a hobby, or go back to the old days where you need a patron? (Hope there is some rich guy who likes your genre and hires an author?)

This isn't like the music problem where mandatory license fees prop up the RIAA and related companies who have a vested interest in keeping the market limited.

There is NOTHING preventing free books from being released by authors now. There is effectively ZERO barriers to entry. You don't even need your own internet connection.

1. Write book at home on an old 286
2. Borrow someone's connection and upload it to the web.
3. DONE.

Your book is infinitely published.

And unlike the music industry there are currently no major laws with regard to publishing which force authors to support one company that has been granted a monopoly. This system is evolving exactly as it should and probably in the best way it can.

If you were attacking the length of copyright terms, I could understand, but this IS the work produced by someone of their own free will and can be released in a manner of their choosing. I see nothing wrong with this.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[TheCRAIGGERS]

I'm not going to argue that the outmoded business that was based solely on a physical product need to reinvent themselves, but I still don't see a better idea in your reply.

Forget all the CEOs and semi-useless middle management that populate most of the publishing industry. If you freely allow bits to be copied, how are the authors going to get paid?

Yes, hopefully authors will someday realize that ebooks allow them to cut out the middle man. Humorously, Sony is kind of cutting their own throat here. The only thing holding back authors from selling their own goods at their own rates to everybody are the limited popularity of ebooks. Once most people have an ebook reader and the dead-tree book becomes a thing of the past, publishers will be screwed. All the benefits and services they have provided over the years will become moot- printing, shipping, getting stores to put them on the shelves, etc. The authors only have to realize that the tables have turned.

We're already seeing this happen in the music biz- all because of the ipod. The Kindle is ebook's ipod, and the change is coming.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[delinear]

Yes - DRM on things I have paid for and should own is always a bad thing. DRM on something someone else has paid for and owns and is loaning to me free of charge is not even in the same league. It'd be nice not to have it, but if having it means we get a free service with lots of benefits and no disadvantages over the current system, I'd struggle to say that's a bad thing (albeit any kind of DRM raises a feeling of unease).

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[mcgrew]

If it's in the public domain you can download it free from many internet sources. No need to visit a library at all, unlesss you want the dead tree version.

Internet Archive
Gutengerg Project
lots of universities post PD books on the internet, as well as a lot of books that are still under copyright. I was assigned Only Yesterday in a history class I took in the late 1970s at SIU (I still have the book), and now It's on the internet as well. It's a good read, I reccomend it.

Plus, there are Creative Commons books out there as well.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[lxs]

The keyword is "invented." The well-known rules and even the existence of libraries are a direct result of the shortcomings of physical media. Both have become obsolete, but society needs time to adapt to that. And yes, this means that famous authors need to find an honest job, just like all the authors today that don't make the bestseller lists.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Bigbutt]

You don't have to have a Nook to lend or read an ebook. Just the nook reader app. A friend loaded me Daemon from his iPhone to my iPad.

[John]

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[delinear]

I suppose that depends if the digital copy counts as a sufficiently different work that it attaches its own copyright, and if it did, whether the person who transcribed it did it free of charge and offered their work up under a creative commons license or something. There's no reason a library couldn't digitise its own public domain works and give them out without restriction (although whether they'd do that is another matter - it's in their interest that you have short term loans that keep you coming back - if everyone who visited could download and walk away with several hundred books for free, they might lose a fair chunk of their losers and hence their funding).

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Jhon]

In this case, Sony wants what's best for the publisher and worst for the reader from each of the two technologies (paper books and e-books), which I think is neither fair nor is going to cause a lot of sales.

So, what would you suggest? The publisher sells one ebook to a library that can then GIVE away the book? And if one library has it, why should any other library buy it? Just copy the first sold copy and give THAT away.

There NEEDS to be a financial incentive for a publisher to publish books. And there NEEDS to be a financial incentive for an author to write a book. If you take away their ability to make money on their works, you will effectively kill the majority of new materials. No new novels, no new poems, no new articles, etc.

How can this not be seen by the "information wants to be free" crowd?

I have ZERO problem with loaning an ebook I have to someone and not having it available to me until it is "returned". I have ZERO problem with a library only being able to "loan" an ebook out in volumes that match their license until the book is 'returned'.

I *DO* believe we should be able to re-sell ebook copies just like paper copies, though.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[IndustrialComplex]

Giving them away results in greater book sales, odd as that sounds.

Book sales increase now because the book IS a better product when compared to ebooks. If ebooks became the better product (let's say an ereader was invented that out-performed physical books), the current situation would not exist.

The only reason it works now is because most people still prefer physical books. You would probably have seen a similar result for music if when MP3 players were still crap, you released a digital copy of every CD available for free. People would get a taste of the product, but still prefer the physical media.

When the physical media is inferior, those sales will dry up.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[IndustrialComplex]

The well-known rules and even the existence of libraries are a direct result of the shortcomings of physical media

And if that shortcoming did not exist? Would we have libraries?

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[smart_ass]

Disagree and disagree

With e-books, this is an artificial barrier that makes absolutely no sense except as life support for a dying publishing industry.

Or it is good for whomever created the work that you want to view. If I buy a copy of Microsofot Office (not that I would) it is also an artificial barrier that I dont get a milllion copies, why should a book be any different.

Another difference is that if I don't return a library book at the due date, the library doesn't send out stealth ninjas in the middle of the night to replace the book with a brick.

This is the FEATURE I like best. Most likely I have already read the book and have left it at the office or my kids have hidden it under a pile of stuffed animals in the corner as a test for me. Total additional cost to me $0.00

Now I will agree that they need more titles available this way, but once they do, you now have a 100% legitimate way to get many books 24/7 for free.

Sure if its popular you can find a torrent ... but wouldn't it feel better to do it legitimately?

Now if I lose the book ... this is better still ...

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony has devised a system of artificially restricting access to books, effectively a short-term, no end-user-cost license. This is different than libraries buying X copies of a book for loan, it's DRM for books.

It's only different because there is no physical book involved. What they're doing is buying X licenses of a book for loan, and they're only allowed to loan out each license one at a time. It's not at all unlike a lot of software licensing schemes that let you check out / borrow a license from a license server and then return it when you're done with it. I don't see what's wrong with this.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[IndustrialComplex]

If I forget to take my book back or renew it, and they can remotely disable it without imposing a late fee,

As currently implemented, that happens automatically. No late fees.

Additionally it opens up the possibility (and admittedly I don't know if they have any plans for this) of loaning library books over the air or via download on the internet, so I don't even need to go into my library - they could just fire me an email when the book's available, I click a link and get a file I can put on my device.

That is EXACTLY how it works now. My library has certain ebooks available. I can log into my computer, browse their collection, see what is checked out, what is available, place holds on checked out items, add items to my future reading list so they will automatically download once I finish my current book. I don't have to drive there if I don't want to.

And finally, no more hunting for hours for a book which the system tells me is on a shelf but which is actually nowhere to be seen when I have no idea if it's just been moved or stolen, etc (although I guess things like RFID will help with this with physical books, but with digital books it's a complete non-issue)

That's exactly how it works. The only limitation is that for some libraries the search function isn't that great, but you would run into that same problem at their physical location (Where the card catalog or digital search isn't that great either). But that's a fix with a simple software update. See my previous paragraph for how convenient the search is.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[IndustrialComplex]

Huh? You can check CDs and DVDs out at the public library here in Springfield. But I've never seen school/technical/reference books they'd let you check out at any library, and I've been going to libraries for over half a century.

It varies library to library (Springfield, VA? I go to the library in Alexandria).

Reference books they don't let you check out, but that's more of an issue that they are typically just supposed to be reference books that you look up one or two items and walk away.

eBooks could help resolve this, the main problem right now is that the whole licensing thing hasn't always been negotiated with the rights holder. It is more complicated than the simple "Buy this book, do what you want with it" since a lot of rights were licensed for physical copies before the internet was even thought of.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[IndustrialComplex]

Where have you been for the last few years? Libraries have been making free electronic book loans using systems based on Adobe Digital Editions for a considerable time.

Replace 'Sony's Technique' with DRM and the post makes a lot more sense. He is saying without DRM, people wouldn't be getting these things from libraries (Except for public domain works)

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[misexistentialist]

the only authors you'll see dedicating themselves to the art are cranks writing manifestos and dilettantes who are already well-off enough to do it as a hobby

Doesn't seem that different from the way things have always been

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[b0bby]

This is the only type of DRM I don't mind, though I have never & won't buy any files with it. The fact that Kindle doesn't support the epub that libraries use is the only reason I don't have one. I'm left trying to decide between the Sonys, the Nook, or an ipod Touch, and I haven't made up my mind. I love reading, I love ebooks, and I love the library. I can't see any other way right now for libraries to be able to offer me ebooks, so I'll accept it. And eventually, I hope that just as you can now buy music unencumbered, publishers will come to see that selling straight epub files is the future.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[WillAdams]

you wrote:

>hopefully authors will someday realize that ebooks allow them to cut out the middle man.

Believe me, we do not want authors self-publishing --- I've seen raw author manuscripts and graphics and save for a very, very talented few, they are not something one would want to read of their own free will.

Publishers add a great deal of value by:

  - filtering out texts not worth publishing
  - editing text for consistency / readability / style
  - paying for a nice book design which suits the material
  - processing graphics so as to be suitable for printing / viewing
  - arranging text, tables and graphics on a page so as to allow easy finding of them from the point of mention

Look around Lulu or Smashwords and see what doing w/o such results in.

William

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Cory Doctorow credits his free downloads of his books to his status as a best selling author."

And it works for him because unlike good authors, he has a marketing gimmick. His gimmick it to get the nerds that love FREE FREE FREE to buy his books. He holds sales where people can buy 4 or 5 of his books (the same book) for low prices, so that he can get his numbers up -- and asks that people donate the other books to libraries and otherwise.

I was going to write some things about his personality and his writing ability, but that's kinda beneath me...not really...but honestly, his sales would not be anywhere near as high as they were if people weren't buying multiple copies. I believe the YA section of my library keeps putting FOR THE WIN on the 'please take one of these' because no one checks out the 3 dozen they had donated to them.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

How can this not be seen by the "information wants to be free" crowd?

They're blinded by their sense of entitlement

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[misexistentialist]

There NEEDS to be a financial incentive for a publisher to publish books.

Not if books are no longer "published"

And there NEEDS to be a financial incentive for an author to write a book.

Seems to me the only only authors guaranteed money write crap. Does the world really need Sarah Palin's second book?

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

I *DO* believe we should be able to re-sell ebook copies just like paper copies, though.

From a publisher's perspective, the problem with reselling ebooks is that they're effectively as good as new. No one would buy from the publisher if an equally shiny new copy was available used for half the price. So it'll never happen.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Garwulf]

Um...you really don't know much about the book industry, do you?

"The main difference is that for physical books, the book can't be lent out to more than one person at a time. With e-books, this is an artificial barrier that makes absolutely no sense except as life support for a dying publishing industry."

Right - that argument makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. First off, the print book industry is in no danger from e-books - if you do an analysis of the sales figures you'll find that they act like different markets, and the print book market is quite healthy. But, even if that wasn't the case, particularly with large publishers, any time a library loans out a book, a small royalty is paid to the publisher, and the author. In short, the library is a revenue source.

So, in fact, it is not in the best interests of publishers to have a cap on how many people can take out a book at a time. In fact, it would be in the best interests of the publishing industry if these library e-books had no caps whatsoever.

And, frankly, speaking as an author, a publisher, and a grad student, having the cap makes no sense to me at all. If the benefit of an e-version of a book in a library is the ability for the book to always be available, making it artificially unavailable defeats the purpose of having an e-version in the first place.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Raenex]

With e-books, this is an artificial barrier

Copyright has always been about artificial barriers. The digital forms just make it that much more apparent.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[smellsofbikes]

unless you have a real solution for the business model, the only authors you'll see dedicating themselves to the art are cranks writing manifestos and dilettantes who are already well-off enough to do it as a hobby.

I really hate all those cranks and dilettantes like Shakespeare and Milton and Homer and Cervantes. They sure wrote crap.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

"publishing will will go from dying to dead."

So? You feel bad for buggy whip makers too?

For a dying industry, there should is a lot of publishing still. A lot of people write for free, just like some coders program to help out.

Do you or someone near you have a vested interest in the book industry? Be honest now.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

I see your points for rewarding the author, but why the middle man, the publisher??? What is his role, to "Press Any Key"??? And for that they are getting half the pizza? Common, be reasonable.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[geminidomino]

So basically you want to be allowed to steal the book. I think that's being an asshole to other people who also want to rent it, not something logical that should be allowed. You don't deserve that control at all.

Or maybe he might read more slowly and think a few bucks in late fees might be worth getting to FINISH the book?

So, applying your rather clearly biased reasoning, if one rips out the DRM, puts the stripped copy on his reader, then "returns" the DRM'ed e-book, that's a GOOD thing, since that means someone else can check it out without having to wait for one to finish reading "Sparkly Gay Vampire Sonata 6" over three weeks of bowel movements? Oh no, right... because the "correct" solution is for the library to buy another "copy" of the book.

Gimme a break.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[hedwards]

Indeed, the only reasonable alternative would be to have a site license type of thing. It is however still an asshole move on the part of the publisher, because I'm guessing that the library won't be allowed to sell spare copies when they're no longer in demand.

The local library will by large quantities of must have books so that they're available when the demand is great, later on to recoup a portion of the expense they sell them at a large book sale held periodically.

This move would almost certainly make that impossible. But OTOH it would likely make more sense to have it be more of a subscription basis.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[hedwards]

This type of situation is really the only situation in which DRM is useful. Basically if you're being given the copy on a time limited basis, DRM is necessary. The alternative is to be either all in or all out on it. With DRM you have the ability to rent digital media. Most of the trouble with DRM is when producers use it on media that they've sold you.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

In most libraries you can get an extension to get to keep the book longer, so you can finish reading it/completing your research/etc. I don't see why the same can't be applied to DRM based books, and I don't see how that makes me any biased; I don't benefit at all from anything Sony is doing here.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[betterunixthanunix]

authors need book sales to get paid

Most authors never see enough income from book sales to actually live on. They almost always have some other job.

That aside, who says that there are not other ways to pay authors? Why build up an entire technological system that monitors and restricts people, just because we assume that there is no other way to compensate authors for their work?

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

My local library has an online presence, and for some stuff there is no checkout limit.
For example, they have ~75 episodes of Cyberchase. The only bummer is that it's DRM'd WMV that's only accessible through
something called "Overdrive Media Console".

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[hedwards]

I wouldn't be surprised, this is a swipe at the second hand market. Most libraries stock up on large quantities of popular books to keep the wait manageable. When the demand drops they sell the extras to recoup a portion of the costs. So the book publishers basically get dinged multiple times. First they lose sales from the people who borrowed, then they lose from the second hand sale.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a couple problems with your argument. First, uploading the book to the web is hardly the end of the story, because how are you supposed to attract readers? The internet is a big place. There's still a place for middlemen in such a world, only they're not 'publishers' anymore; more like 'promoters'. Their job is to find ways of pushing your content needle to the top of the internet haystack so it actually gets noticed, unlike the other 99% of the content on the internet.

Second, you're presenting a false dichotomy (trichotomy?) between artificial scarcity, relying on hobbyists, and single rich patrons. But there are other possibilities--lots of other possibilities. In fact, a bunch of them are already in use in various forms. For an example, just look at webcomics. There are plenty of hobbyists out there, but there are also many who have found ways to take their infinitely reproducible content and leverage it into money, and there's no reason this can't be done with prose, too; take a look at the online story serial Tales of MU for an example. There's also commission writing, product (or person) sponsorship and placement, physical tie-in products, physical hardcopies, advertisements, and probably plenty more ways of generating revenue that haven't even been invented yet.

The world of books will certainly change under such a model, but writing is not going to disappear.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

the only authors you'll see dedicating themselves to the art are cranks writing manifestos and dilettantes who are already well-off enough to do it as a hobby

That would be terrible because then we wouldn't have great works like Don Quixote, Iliad, Divine Comedy, Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Paradise Lost, One Thousand and One Nights, etc...

Oh wait, actually, we would have all those because they were written before copyrights existed. I guess what you're really trying to protect isn't great literature, since we would have that anyways.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

it sounds like your a bad borrower then. While you might like to keep the book longer, it's your responsibility to go and renew the checkout. If you don't see the automatic "bricking" as a convenience versus going to the brick and mortar library and returning a physical book, then I guess you have never lent something to someone (e.g. a power tool) and had to hunt them down to get it back.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[theaveng]

Sony has devised a system of artificially restricting access to books, effectively a short-term, no end-user-cost license

It's the same thing as a library except you can't steal the book.

Precisely. Also it wasn't Sony that "devised" this system. Libraries devised the system hundreds of years ago when they said you can only keep your books for 14 days, and then you must return them. The fact "grub" opposes the E-book variant of this (you get a book 14 days and then it gets returned to the library) indicates to me that he's probably a thief. He thinks he should be able to download books for Free and keep them forever, thereby depriving the authors of compensation for their labor.

Maybe part of the Entitlement Generation? "I want what I want & not hav to pay. It hrts author incme? LOL. Frak themmmmmm"
.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest, current epub and pdf DRM is not exactly rocket science to bypass. From current evidence, Sony wants what is acceptable for the publisher and not particularly onerous for the reader. If you're looking to get control of your e-books, try ineptkey. I would not suggest circulating the resulting files for ethical reasons as well as the practical -- inspecting their contents before circulating would be wise, since your library ID may well be embedded in there somewhere.

If you buy wisely (ie. picking hardware that is under your control rather than being remotely updated, and uses standard file formats and DRM) and choose to use available software, you have as much control as you prefer to exert. If you prefer to avoid DRM entirely, pick publishers and books that don't use it. There are many, Baen being the obvious example.

Compare Sony's approach to Apple's penchant for updating iTunes every time a new version of Requiem comes out, in an string of attempts to invalidate available decryption software and render the user powerless to DRM-free their content. Sony have, for once, avoided getting personally involved with the development of in-house DRM software, and are not participating in the 'let's piss off the reader' arms race. They've just chosen an existing mechanism that is

a) multiplatform and multi-device (contrary to your one-reader-at-a-time rule, I can copy a store-brought ebook onto several devices registered to the same account),
b) good enough to remind the user that publicly circulating files is really rather naughty,
c) possible for a moderately dedicated person to strip.

Whilst Sony have been very bad citizens in the past (rootkits, etc.), the e-book platform is one place where they have so far got it more or less right. I can store the ebooks I have brought, after stripping DRM, and access them on a wide range of devices.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[adonoman]

It's exactly the opposite. The only way you used to be able to be published was to be picked up by a publisher. This generally involved knowing someone, being related to someone, being in the middle of some scandal, or just being famous. Now, any schmo with a computer can type up a manuscript in some digital format, send it off to a printer, and have their very low-run hard-cover book published in the range of $10/book on a 2000 book run (with the next run being cheaper), and half that if you print soft-cover. Or, you can just sell PDFs. Of course, either way you have to do your own PR/Marketing, but you can pretty cheaply hire a PR firm to help with that. Also, most local book stores have a section just for local authors, so it's often easy enough to get your book out there.

I have a friend who has just self-published his third book, and now runs a business showing others how to publish their own books, and he can't keep up with the number of people who want to publish. It seems there are plenty of people who can't even get a publishing house to look at their stuff (no unsolicited manuscripts), who are willing to invest a decent amount of money to get their own book published.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[theaveng]

And with zero scarcity driving the cost down to zero for all books, publishing will will go from dying to dead.

Precisely correct. ..... .....

Somebody else above you wrote:
Infinite supply is bad, so they artificially impose restrictions.

There is an infinite supply of Bits which represent these e-books, but there is not an infinite supply of authors. They still need to be compensated for their time and labor..... else they will quit being authors, go find factory jobs, and the output of new books will dwindle to nothing.

See? It's not an "artificial" restriction. We're talking about real people and real-world limits. You can't just enslave these people and make them write your entertainment free of charge. They must be compensated somehow, whether it's by you purchasing directly or the library purchasing the book & loaning it out (but with restrictions; like not being able to give it away to others). ..... .....

Another person wrote:
Ever since I was a victim of XCP there's no way I'll touch ANYTHING Sony makes.

By that reasoning, I would no longer be able to buy any product from any megacorp. Not Sony, not Nintendo, nor Microsoft, or even Apple. They have ALL harmed me at some point during the last 20 years. It's inevitable that a company will, from time to time, make a mistake and choosing to boycott them forever is an unrealistic response
.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[betterunixthanunix]

Why all the concern for publishers rather than concern for authors? Are you sure that publishing companies are the only possible way for authors to get paid for their work?

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Shompol]

So basically you want to be allowed to steal the book. I think that's being an asshole to other people who also want to rent it, not something logical that should be allowed. You don't deserve that control at all.

1. Yes, I do. We all do.
2. What about books written over 100 years ago, they are out of copyright now, right?
3. Why do we have to wait 100 years for it to happen? So the publisher's great-grand-children don't have to work for living?
4. What about kids from poor families? You are denying their right for intellectual development because they cannot afford to pay for electronic copy, that costs you nothing to create? What about middle-class kids? As far as I am concerned, they should be PAID to read books, not the other way around.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, just shut the fuck up. All you ever do is fucking whine.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[supersloshy]

And with zero scarcity driving the cost down to zero for all books, publishing will will go from dying to dead. This is not the RIAA here, authors need book sales to get paid. Rant all you want about free information, but unless you have a real solution for the business model, the only authors you'll see dedicating themselves to the art are cranks writing manifestos and dilettantes who are already well-off enough to do it as a hobby.

Frankly, I don't care if the book industry is dying as-is, and you shouldn't either. What do you think happened when the printing press was invented? When the phonograph was invented? The camera? The video recorder/camcorder? And now, the Internet? It's all the same thing; "our outdated business is dying" and it's because something better is just around the corner. "People won't buy music/books/movies if you give it away for free", huh? Look at Jonathan Coulton, Binaerpilot, Renard, Lemon Demon (who made The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny), Brad Sucks*, Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, Randall Munroe**, Flattr, Jamendo***, etc. There's an infinite amount of ways to make money on something besides directly selling it. People will always be making art because it's human nature to do so; people will always give money for things because it's human nature to help out. If you absolutely need money to want to make something (besides production costs), then it's not art, and if the Internet helps get rid of that then good riddance.

* All five of which are successful indie artists that give away most of their music and don't care if people "pirate" it; I highly recommend checking them out by the way.

** These three are successful indie authors that I also recommend checking out; Randall, you might know, is the author of XKCD and the book sales from XKCD Vol. 0 helped to build a school in Laos.

*** These are websites that let people give away things for free, while still allowing artists/authors to make money.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[idontgno]

Freedom for me? YAAAAY! Freedom for you? Meh.

I mean, if you think DRM on stuff you bought and paid for is bad, why is DRM on stuff the Library bought and paid for good?

It'd be nice not to have it, but if having it means we get a free service with lots of benefits and no disadvantages over the current system,

That's dangerously close to "I got mine, screw the rest". As to the advantages, this is just the most advanced buggy whip ever invented in the era of the automobile. Infinitely-reproducible digital information doesn't need artificial scarcity.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[xigxag]

But, even if that wasn't the case, particularly with large publishers, any time a library loans out a book, a small royalty is paid to the publisher, and the author. In short, the library is a revenue source.

That's true in certain countries, but not in the USA or Japan. But even so, an author wants to maximize retail sales first before relying on so-called "Public Lending Rights" royalties, which are generally quite small.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

And why people do not think the SAME WAY when it is related to SOFTWARE?

Serious, I can't see the difference.

So, I replaced all "BOOK" occurrences in your text with "SOFTWARE", and I am unable to see ANY DIFFERENCE AT ALL.

So, I conclude, SOFTWARE MUST NOT BE FREE AT ALL. Finally.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[newDzerzhinsky]

So, what would you suggest? The publisher sells one ebook to a library that can then GIVE away the book? And if one library has it, why should any other library buy it? Just copy the first sold copy and give THAT away.

There NEEDS to be a financial incentive for a publisher to publish books. And there NEEDS to be a financial incentive for an author to write a book. If you take away their ability to make money on their works, you

will effectively kill the majority of new materials.

I'm not sure if it's the same elsewhere, but in the UK authors get paid every time a book is loaned out from a public library.

Given that this is the case, surely the authors would prefer to have the artificial restriction removed so that more people can borrow their book at the same time. There is no need for the publisher to incur the expense of printing a book to be sold to a library if it's only going to be loaned electronically, so why bother?

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Shompol]

• A college textbook - $180
• The same college textbook NEXT YEAR, with reordered chapter numbers - $190
• YEAR 3, ditto, chapter numbers randomized - $200
• Milking students without income multiple times for the same textbook - Priceless

...dreaming furiously for the publishing industry to kick the bucket....

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[geminidomino]

And most libraries will not allow you said extension on popular new releases like the real world series I mocked (it can't be hard to figure it out) when there
s 500 teenage girls and 250 creepy MIWSNLFs with a "hold" on it, so that doesn't apply.

And funny thing about bias, these days... you'd think someone would have to directly benefit from something to have a reason to push for it, but that's not true now that everything down to what brand of socks you wear is apparently an ideology to be defended with fire and sword.

Your instant leaping to protect the "IP" status quo and accusations against the poster you were responding to -- without any evidence -- is what earned you the accusation.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[k.a.f.]

There NEEDS to be a financial incentive for a publisher to publish books. And there NEEDS to be a financial incentive for an author to write a book. If you take away their ability to make money on their works, you will effectively kill the majority of new materials. No new novels, no new poems, no new articles, etc.

Wrong. There needs to be a financial incentive for authoring and publishing for a caste of professional writers and publishing specialists to be viable. It has not been established yet whether this, in turn, is in fact necessary for an adequate supply of literature to be available to society, or whether masterpieces will be produced anyway and their authors sustained by means other than per-printing fees (like Shakespeare's plays). Many, many outcomes are possible and most haven't even been tried yet; but insisting on a model based on a scarcity of physical objects that has become completely pointless, just because it's what you know and what you currently do, is as disingenuous as subsidizing buggy-whips.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[gmuslera]

There is no equivalence between stealing in the digital world vs stealing in the physical one. If i go to a library, and steal a book, you lose it, it becomes unavailable for everyone except me. What im doing in practice is reading something published without your permission.

Is ridiculous to verbatim copy things necessary from the physical world to the digital one as copying them in the other direction (imagine if your browser or your internet connection only limit you to connect to just one place at a time, and even takes from minutes to hours to go to another site, and just dont dare to try to access a site in another country).

The reasons that are there from the start are not valid anymore, but you copy them because, well, mean more profit. So add the cost of printing, storing, moving, exporting, stocking with the risk they become old/obsolete/get wet/whatever and the bunch of intermediaries that happens in the real world into a pack of bits that have none of those problems

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Chuckles08]

Agreed. Publishers just need to embrace a new business model that has them highlighting these types of services. For instance, they could provide a cool, online writing environment that helps authors visualize their work as it progresses. A whole host of digital services could be envisioned. Of course, other things like advertising, connections to retailers, etc. are also an important part of their contribution.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Agent0013]

It's the EXACT SAME "leash" you have with physical books. I hate DRM as much as the next slashdotter, but this is an attempt to have ebooks work identically to physical books.

It's not really exactly the same. With a physical book I can choose to keep it past the return date and pay a late fee. With the digital version I do not have that choice, the book returns itself and if somebody else checked it out before you were able to get it back, you would be out of luck. Hope you didn't have a big report due where you needed to get more information from that book within the next few hours!!

Maybe this example isn't such a big deal, but saying that it is identical to a physical book is just plain inaccurate.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wise words. Wish I had mod points.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Another difference is that if I don't return a library book at the due date, the library doesn't send out stealth ninjas in the middle of the night to replace the book with a brick. While I may have to pay a nominal fine if I return it late, I'm still in control of the book until I give up that control.

But it's NOT YOUR BOOK TO CONTROL! It's the property of the library, and in return for their lending it to you, you agree to return it by the end of the lending period. If you go past that date, you are breaking that agreement.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Jhon]

Why all the concern for publishers rather than concern for authors?

I don't think you read my post correctly. Please re-read. I show concern for both.

Are you sure that publishing companies are the only possible way for authors to get paid for their work?

Of course they aren't. But they are certainly better and SELLING and MARKETING a book than the average person. They also are pretty spot on with regards to edits.

You may not like "the middleman" as one AC put it in this thread, but they offer a service -- and usually at a level and is far above what the average person and provide. I don't NEED to by my food from the grocery store -- I could by it from the farmer direct -- or grow it myself and cut out ALL the middlemen. But I couldn't do it as either efficiently or economically (it would cost me more in time/fuel to collect my food from the farm -- or grow it myself (at which I would probably fail)).

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[garrobon]

Overdrive is going to be making Project Gutenberg titles available for checkout by users of libraries that subscribe to the Overdrive service. It's currently in beta and being tested at the Boston Public Library. There won't be any limit on the number of checkouts for Project Gutenberg titles. http://overdriveblogs.com/library/2010/08/10/project-gutenberg-ebooks-available-on-%E2%80%98virtual-branch%E2%80%99-websites/

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[mSparks43]

Hmmm,
That was my first reaction.
But I'm not sure I agree. mostly because it seems infinitely better than current library ebook schemes (which are awful). Libraries are all about providing quality information to people who can't otherwise afford it, they also can't go pirating books since they are too visible and exposed. So unless you can think can of a better way, problems aside, I'm all for it.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[sabt-pestnu]

And unlike the music industry there are currently no major laws with regard to publishing which force authors to support one company that has been granted a monopoly.

Could you describe which music industry monopoly-granting laws you speak of? Last I saw, the RIAA was not itself a publishing company, but rather an organization supported by a number of music publishing companies. When someone gets sued "by the RIAA", the names on the court documents are those of individual copyright holders.

Now, the individual companies almost always insist on contracts assigning such copyrights to themselves when talking with performing artists, but that's a different issue. You can still, to my knowledge, make music in your garage then try to sell it in the Apple music store or something.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

And most libraries will not allow you said extension on popular new releases like the real world series I mocked (it can't be hard to figure it out) when there
s 500 teenage girls and 250 creepy MIWSNLFs with a "hold" on it, so that doesn't apply.

So the library could just buy 10 copies and rent them all at once. Or maybe they could have licenses for X amount of rents, which means there would never be a waiting line in the first place. What's the problem? You have the opportunity here to respect the author's IP, and at the same time free yourself from some of the limitations of real books. I just don't think it should entitle libraries to free content they didn't pay for.

And funny thing about bias, these days... you'd think someone would have to directly benefit from something to have a reason to push for it,

I don't really need to benefit from something to voice my opinion about it. If anything, he's assuming that it's part of my ideology by accusing me needlessly of bias when I quite frankly do not give a shit about the issue at hand.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Jhon]

Wrong.

You're wrong.

It has not been established yet whether this, in turn, is in fact necessary for an adequate supply of literature to be available to society, or whether masterpieces will be produced anyway and their authors sustained by means other than per-printing fees (like Shakespeare's plays). Many, many outcomes are possible and most haven't even been tried yet; but insisting on a model based on a scarcity of physical objects that has become completely pointless, just because it's what you know and what you currently do, is as disingenuous as subsidizing buggy-whips.

I would strongly argue that it HAS been established -- and a successful model has NOT been found to replace it.

"...disingenuous as subsidizing buggy-whips". Interesting, but failed analogy. Buggy whips were no longer necessary/desired. It wasn't that they were replaced by "virtual buggy whips" which still required a ton of work creating and marketing and were desired by the public. Books/literature are *NOT* on the "obsolete" pile. The media on which they are presented has just changed.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Mr. Slippery]

It's the same thing as a library except you can't steal the book.

One cannot "steal" an downloaded e-book. One can only make unauthorized copies of it.

Copying is not theft.

When I borrow a book from my local wonderful public library, if I don't return it, they can't lend it to someone else. When I "borrow" an e-book from somewhere, if I don't surrender access to it...what happens? Nothing.

So, no, this is nothing at all like a library.

What this is, is an attempt to push us closer to a "pay-per-view" model of content. Read RMS's The Right to Read if you want to see the future that DRM pushers have in mind for us. (In fact, I'll plug RMS's whole book, Free Software, Free Society .)

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[lochnessie]

I'm a regular ebook borrower from the Boston Public Library(OverDrive), and I love it. I bought my Nook to take with me on my very frequent work travel, and the ability to borrow books from wherever I am (often a long way from a library or bookstore) is really great; if I place a hold on an unavailable book, the library emails me when it's my turn, and I can "check it out" immediately. In fact, I bought the nook specifically because it allows for easy side-loading of library (and other) books. Overall, I'm very happy with it - and by the way, you can use a swipe gesture on the LCD display to turn pages while reading, although I prefer the side buttons.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[TheCRAIGGERS]

I think you're going to have to re-evaluate what an "honest job" is here shortly. We are quickly approaching a time where nearly everything will be automated- robots will make and serve your fast-food. Order for goods placed online will be packed and shipped by robots. Farms as we know them will cease to exist to be replaced by mega-plantations that output way more food.

Eventually, entertainment will be one of the few jobs left to us.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[mcgrew]

And it works for him because unlike good authors, he has a marketing gimmick.

Bovine excrement. People will only buy crap if they don't know it's crap. Do you honestly believe someone will download an ebook, read it, think "god that guy SUCKS" and go buy the book?

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Infinitely-reproducible digital information doesn't need artificial scarcity.

I can't believe people actually say these things. More and more information is stored on digital media. Does it mean that all this information needs to be available for download? Well, how about we start with all your personal data, stored on digital media in your bank, local council and government?

Just because it's on digital media doesn't mean there shouldn't be any restrictions to copying it. "Artificial" is not a naughty word. Some people want to get paid for what they do. Don't want to pay them? Don't use their stuff. But don't declare that everything is yours just because it's on digital media. It isn't.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[geminidomino]

So the library could just buy 10 copies and rent them all at once. Or maybe they could have licenses for X amount of rents, which means there would never be a waiting line in the first place. What's the problem? You have the opportunity here to respect the author's IP, and at the same time free yourself from some of the limitations of real books. I just don't think it should entitle libraries to free content they didn't pay for.

And that's the point you're missing. They're NOT freeing anyone from the limitations of real books. They're artificially introducing the SAME stupid limitations. One copy could serve the library's entire client base simultaneously, since scarcity does not exist for digital media. But that wouldn't reflect well on the publisher's bottom line. THAT'S the problem. This garbage isn't good for the library, it's not good for the people who use the library. It's only good for the publisher.

No one is talking about "Free content they didn't pay for." We're talking about artificially forcing people to pay repeatedly for the SAME content. For no reason at all other than profit motive. They could easily keep the "expire" function (which is fine for library books) without limiting the number of copies that can be out at once. And there's no good reason for it.

I don't really need to benefit from something to voice my opinion about it. If anything, he's assuming that it's part of my ideology by accusing me needlessly of bias when I quite frankly do not give a shit about the issue at hand.

"He" is me, and has been the whole time, and that was in response to your inference that "not benefiting" from Sony's actions is somehow proof that there's no bias, but you selectively cut out the rest of the quote where I made the point that that's not the case.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget all the CEOs and semi-useless middle management that populate most of the publishing industry. If you freely allow bits to be copied, how are the authors going to get paid?

Gee I don't know, how do Lawrence Lessig and Cory Doctorow get paid?

They sure aren't the only authors giving away their stuff for free. There's several authors, one very famous sci fi author included (sorry I forget his name and my google-fu is weak this morning), that tell their fans where to pirate digital copies of their books.

Just because the digital copies are free doesn't mean you have to allow non-copyright holders or their agents to print and sell hard copies. Also, people buy hard copies, even of books that have free, digital copies.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[CharlyFoxtrot]

What ebooks need is a dramatic drop in price like what iTunes did to mp3's. Buy a book for a buck, who'd bother to pirate, why go to a library and who cares if you like it or not, just click and try. Of course it'll mostly end the mega profits of a handful but the majority of authors would come out about the same.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[mcgrew]

Springfield, IL (home of Alderman Simpson and Mister Burns)

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[scot4875]

Wait a minute. Earlier in this thread, you said:

Anyway I think this is a great idea. I want to READ a book not own it, unless it's something exceptionally good (like Asimov's Best Science Fiction of ____ anthologies). So free borrowing via a Sony or Nook device is a great plan.

And now you're calling someone else an entitled freeloader? Oh, I see -- he wants to keep them FOREVER, but you just want to read them once for free. Completely different.

The hypocrisy is strong with this one.

--Jeremy

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[spazdor]

And their business model would be so effective today, too.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[PCM2]

really hate all those cranks and dilettantes like Shakespeare and Milton and Homer and Cervantes. They sure wrote crap.

Shakespeare was a working actor, director, and playwright. He mainly wrote plays only to the extent that he needed plays to perform. For money. He wasn't reliant on the publishing model; the First Folio wasn't actually published until after he was dead.

Milton was a crank. He was a religious zealot writing polemic about his own rather fundamentalist view of Christianity. Doesn't mean it's not classic literature, but it doesn't support your sarcasm.

Tough to say how Homer made his money. For all I know, his poems made him so well-known that he became very, very rich. But nobody knows. It's likely, however, that Homer's poems were passed on through the oral tradition and only later committed to writing (once the alphabet was invented -- they're that old). So if Homer did make money off them, he did so through oral readings. If you think that model is going to work for today's Star Wars novels and the Twilight books, great.

Cervantes, though -- now here you fall flat. Cervantes was flat broke until he wrote the first part of Don Quixote. His earlier pastoral romances hadn't made any money, but Don Quixote did. And here's where his troubles began, because Don Quixote became so popular that some guy took it upon himself to write an unauthorized sequel. Bet Cervantes wished there were some copyright laws to protect him then, eh? When Cervantes wrote his own second part of Don Quixote, he satirizes the false sequel in a number of ways, including having Don Quixote meet one of its characters and forcing him to admit that he had never met the real Don Quixote before. Cervantes was never rich, but he did live his later life as a professional writer and internationally known "man of letters."

So maybe next time before you go rattling off a list of authors, you should actually hit the books and know a little bit whereof you speak.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Jhon]

Of course it'll mostly end the mega profits of a handful but the majority of authors would come out about the same.

I'm not so sure... There exists already the ability for an author to sell their book for a buck -- and several have. This model has failed to take off so far. It doesn't mean it WONT, but I'm very skeptical.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[mcgrew]

You would probably have seen a similar result for music if when MP3 players were still crap, you released a digital copy of every CD available for free.

That's where the RIAA screwed up royally; CDs are still superior to MP3s (though not FLAC or SHN). But their take on it was that they have radio, while indies only have file sharing, Facebook, and MySpace. The RIAA's war against P2P is really against their competetitors, the independant artists.

People still like buying things. Things they can share, give away, OWN, display on a shelf with pride. With an MP3 or an ebook, you own nothing. MP3 and ebook "sales" are for people with so little money thay have no room for things. If I was a dorm-bound penniless college student I'd be downloading MP3s anstead of buying CDs, too.

Note I buy indie CDs straight from the bands themselves. If I want an MP3 I'll rip it from the CD, and it will be DRM-free and ripped at whatever bitrate I want.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[xenapan]

Yet there are people like me who would probably buy a new copy for my personal library (if the book was that good). New because I would prefer a copy that hasn't been all over and is falling apart, dirty, possibly written in.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Just Some Guy]

This is not the RIAA here, authors need book sales to get paid. Rant all you want about free information, but unless you have a real solution for the business model, the only authors you'll see dedicating themselves to the art are cranks writing manifestos and dilettantes who are already well-off enough to do it as a hobby.

Cory Doctorow disagrees with you. As far as I know, he was not rich when he started making all his books free for the downloading.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[raylu]

The issue with DRM is not that it's useless, but that it's impossible to implement. Additionally, it can only hurt legitimate consumers who are willing to pay.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[raylu]

And the DRM will stop people from pirating it, just like with every other form of digitized data that has been DRM-ed, right?

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[commodore64_love]

>>>If you absolutely need money to want to make something (besides production costs), then it's not art

I notice you still accept a paycheck for the "art" you create every single week (random guess: technology hardware or software). Why is it that you think you should be paid for your labors, but not book writers? Hmmmm. Maybe we ought to stop paying you too. I'll just steal whatever you produce w/o paying you.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[commodore64_love]

And for every Cory Doctorow, there's about a million other authors (Stephen King, Tom Clancy, J. Michael Staczyski, and on and on) who disagree that they should have to give-away their work without compensation.

In fact Mr. King did experiment with that idea, providing a book free of charge on the net, with a request of $20 payment. He discovered it didn't work, and went back to traditional publishing methods. As Is His Right, per the supreme law of the land. (Authors shall receive an exclusive right to ownership of their books for a limited time. AKA copyright.) If you disagree with that law, then petition to have the Constitution amended and that law struck from it. However I bet you'll face a lot of opposition from the Creators who, no surprise, think they should be able to earn money for their time & labor.

Same as we do.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[commodore64_love]

I don't see any hypocrisy in the GP's post.

Last I checked borrowing books from the library is not theft. Why? Because even though the borrower paid nothing, the author was still paid for the book. He's received his wages. ----- On the other hand, taking the book off the net is copyright theft, as you are enjoying Stephen King's (or whoever's) latest work, and Mr. King can't pay his bills because you never paid him.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

...know a little bit whereof you speak.

And break the finest of /.'s longstanding traditions? I daresay you've gone mad, sir!

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

are any of them still writing?

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[PCM2]

And there are those who would argue that Doctorow's constant ranting on this one issue makes him a crank, and his willingness to pump out mediocre science fiction novels for free and see if anyone likes them makes him a dilettante.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Just Some Guy]

Who are you arguing with? I never said anything to the contrary of your claims.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[commodore64_love]

Similarly: One cannot "steal" from a slave. Copying is not theft, because the author is my personal slave, and he must do whatever I tell him to do. "Now get to work and write another Star Wars novel!" (crack) goes the whip.

No I'm not stretching. Theft of another human being's labor, or the product of that labor (cotton, books), without compensating them is the very definition of slavery.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[PCM2]

That would be terrible because then we wouldn't have great works like Don Quixote, Iliad, Divine Comedy, Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Paradise Lost, One Thousand and One Nights, etc...

We'd have the Cave Paintings of Lascaux, too, but most of us would like to see the Arts progress beyond that. The most recent work you cite is Don Quixote (1605-1615) and as I've written elsewhere in this thread, Cervantes published his books for money, using pretty much the same system we use now.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[LanMan04]

So basically you want to be allowed to steal the book.

No, he wants to make a copy of the *content* of the book. Which has already been done for him by the e-format publishers. conveniently enough. No trees were harmed or middlemen involved in the dissemination of the contents!

The book is merely the carrier, the container format for the information within. And when you read a *real* book from the library, you're making a copy in your head anyway. Does the library try to take the knowledge back when you return the book?

One way or another, some day soon people need to realize that artificial scarcity of digital content is DOA. And if the concept of a library were conceived of today, it would be laughed into the mud in about 10 seconds as being anti-capitalist.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

its all about steps. You're not going to get them to drop DRM overnight. We're still trying with video. We succeeded with music (and there are still battles to be fought on that front as well). Sony isn't necessarily a bad guy here. I'd rather this setup as opposed to nothing at all. Once we get this, we can then fight for me.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[LanMan04]

There is NOTHING preventing free books from being released by authors now. There is effectively ZERO barriers to entry. You don't even need your own internet connection.
1. Write book at home on an old 286
2. Borrow someone's connection and upload it to the web.
3. DONE.
Your book is infinitely published.

Yeah, just like uploading your band's new song to YouTube (or, a more apt analogy, uploading it to your band's website that no one has ever heard of) makes you instantly successful.

Do you really think the publishing industry does nothing to promote the books it prints?

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[LanMan04]

There NEEDS to be a financial incentive for a publisher to publish books. And there NEEDS to be a financial incentive for an author to write a book.

Statement 1: True
Statement 2: False

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Just Some Guy]

And there are those who would argue that Doctorow's constant ranting on this one issue makes him a crank, and his willingness to pump out mediocre science fiction novels for free and see if anyone likes them makes him a dilettante.

Number 8 on the New York Times bestseller list and a Hugo nomination isn't too shabby for a mediocre dilettante.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of people that are willing to buy shit.

Look at the pop market out there. Hell, if you have to compare apples to apples, look at Dan Brown. He has made a career of writing one book and then madlibbing everything else that has come out since. And yet people buy the shit.

Mostly middle aged housewives that know nothing about history and really don't understand bad writing.

And I'd say Brown is an EXCELLENT writer compared to Doctorow.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM doesn't work. It's a fundamental problem.
So library DRM doesn't work either.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[arth1]

There is an infinite supply of Bits which represent these e-books, but there is not an infinite supply of authors. They still need to be compensated for their time and labor..... else they will quit being authors, go find factory jobs, and the output of new books will dwindle to nothing.

See? It's not an "artificial" restriction. We're talking about real people and real-world limits. You can't just enslave these people and make them write your entertainment free of charge. They must be compensated somehow, whether it's by you purchasing directly or the library purchasing the book & loaning it out (but with restrictions; like not being able to give it away to others). ..... .....

Or go back to the system of artists being employed by the state, and getting salaries, not percentages of sales based on an artificially created scarcity. If they stop writing for the public, the public stops paying them.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_phone_novel
http://mashable.com/2010/07/16/murakami-ipad-book/

the current System isn't all that great. Like the game (Mine craft) in the other thread some indie authors are willing to experiment

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I have to notify my university (Technische Universität Wien) that I'm not supposed to be getting free electronic books from them (without DRM). Maybe they'll stop doing so then?

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[arth1]

So, what would you suggest? The publisher sells one ebook to a library that can then GIVE away the book? And if one library has it, why should any other library buy it? Just copy the first sold copy and give THAT away.

No, that is just SSDW. The system doesn't work and a paradigm shift is needed.
Get rid of publishers and copyrights. Have the public (i.e. the state) employ all artists at minimum living wage, with bonuses for popularity making the average artist earn a decent salary.
If an artist thinks he's too big for this, let him sell his work through contracts like any other craftsman.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Jhon]

Statement 1: True
True.

Statement 2: False
Not True.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[korpenkraxar]

It may stop enough people to make it worthwhile, yes.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Jhon]

Have the public (i.e. the state) employ all artists at minimum living wage, with bonuses for popularity making the average artist earn a decent salary. If an artist thinks he's too big for this, let him sell his work through contracts like any other craftsman.

Why don't you become a patron? Cant afford to take care of an artist yourself? Then fuck you and your ideas on spending money that's not yours. The moment your "plan" come to effect, the vast majority of the population will become "artists" -- including me. I'll be damned if I'm going to work my arse off for this -- but I'll happily buy any particular piece of art that's within my budget and I fancy.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[IndustrialComplex]

Yeah, just like uploading your band's new song to YouTube (or, a more apt analogy, uploading it to your band's website that no one has ever heard of) makes you instantly successful.

Do you really think the publishing industry does nothing to promote the books it prints?

Success doesn't matter if your goal was simply to make your book available. For the purposes of barriers to entry into the market, there are essentially none. If you really want to get into the discussion of advertising costs and how that requires someone to finance you... that's really tangential to the discussion. You might not make as much money as you would like, but with an initial cost of $0 to enter the market, and the ability to distribute to millions for a few dollars more, it really can't be any more fair.

Let's face it, the only thing keeping anyone from publishing their work these days is their own motivation to do so.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[CarpetShark]

I'm against this with every fiber of my being and hope it dies.

Well said. First thing I thought reading this was "I don't any of Sony's undead books".

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[PCM2]

The point being, if everybody on Earth had a popular blog from which to tout his own work and get invited to talk to magazines, radio, and TV shows about how innovative his model was and how his ideas were going to change the future of publishing, I guess the model would work. But it doesn't scale.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[CarpetShark]

And with zero scarcity driving the cost down to zero for all books, publishing will will go from dying to dead.

Yeah, like how that whole blogging thing just died out in its infancy.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[smellsofbikes]

1. If the copyright mode failing means no more Twilight and Star Wars, I'm all for it.

2. I'm quite familiar with every one of those authors. I think it was unfortunate that Cervantes was so upset by an "unauthorized sequel" -- but, hey, it got him off his duff to write the authorized sequel. So we got *two* great books out of him. Compare to Edmond Rostand, who spent his whole life writing one (really excellent) play and some other also-rans. And while I'm at it -- how is writing an unauthorized sequel going to be solved by copyright? That's not copying, that's impersonation.

3. There probably wasn't a Homer -- The Odyssey and The Illiad were likely written by different people, and it's not even clear that what we have was anything like the originals. It's more likely they were community accretions of the works of many poets and playwrights, who were all, y'know, violating someone else's copyright.

People have *always* written stuff for fun. If we had no copyright, it wouldn't stop people writing stuff for fun, it'd just reduce the number of people doing it for money. I, personally, don't have a problem with that.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really think the publishing industry does nothing to promote the books it prints?

Unless they think you'll earn out your advance, they don't promote jack. You are better off posting on /. with your book title in your sig.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[CarpetShark]

It's the same thing as a library except you can't steal the book. So go ahead and shut down every library out there.

No, it's a re-implementation of a great ideal, in an age where that implementation is inadequate, and where the modern re-implementation holds back society rather than progressing it. Moreoever, the ideal behind the modern version is selfishness, rather than the great ideal of years past, which was sharing information.

The closest thing we have to libraries these days is the web itself, and P2P.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[PCM2]

1. If the copyright mode failing means no more Twilight and Star Wars, I'm all for it.

I hear you on that, believe me. But understand that a lot of people do like to read those books. So many, in fact, that each represents a very, very profitable industry. You seem to be arguing that, despite the fact that George Lucas and Stephenie Meyer have each launched a franchise that people are willing to spend lots and lots of money for, people should have the option not to spend that money and still receive the goods. Why? Where is the economic sense in that? In each case, we're not talking about an essential good -- it's not bread, or water, or even soap or toothpaste. It's just pure amusement, and that's something for which people are willing to part with their money. Where is the economic sense in annihilating that market? In fact, how could that even happen? If there was no market for either of these goods, both would disappear. And the result is that people would not be amused by them, and in their private moments, they might start wishing someone would come along to amuse them. They might even pay money for that, in fact.

how is writing an unauthorized sequel going to be solved by copyright? That's not copying, that's impersonation.

Derivative work. J.D. Saligner sued successfully to block publication of an unauthorized sequel to The Catcher in the Rye last year. Obviously, though, I am not a 17th century Spanish jurist.

People have *always* written stuff for fun. If we had no copyright, it wouldn't stop people writing stuff for fun, it'd just reduce the number of people doing it for money. I, personally, don't have a problem with that.

Cormac McCarthy does it for love, but he still needs money. He's been fortunate to have been given a number of literary grants that have allowed him to continue writing over the years, and more recently his books have sold fairly well. But he's the first to admit that he's been very fortunate. That model doesn't scale.

So, again, what's the alternative you propose?

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, what would you want?

There has to be some sort of return on producing books, are we going to rely on people doing it as a hobby, or go back to the old days where you need a patron?

You may laugh, but that brings up a good point. The trend in the USA over the last 30 years or so has been to reapportion the populace (sic) into impoverished, well-to-do, and obscenely rich, with the well-to-do increasingly eroding as markets die back (finance) and get offshored or automated. Obviously - and historically, the obscenely rich have been patrons for the arts and sciences.

Perhaps our modern-day "conservatives" were on to something, even if they're obviously not yet ready to admit our medieval forebears had it right all along.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Mr. Slippery]

Similarly: One cannot "steal" from a slave.

No, not similarly at all.

Copying is not theft, because the author is my personal slave...

Except that no one is enslaving any authors. Enslavement requires force -- if the "slave" is free to leave without threat of force, he or she is not a slave. No force is being applied at all if I (hypothetically) make a copy of a book. Force is only being applied if the author, or the government on behalf of the author, applies force to prevent me from making a copy. If anything, copyright is closer to slavery than is unauthorized copying, though it's a stupid and useless comparison in either case.

Copying is not theft because theft deprives someone of the use of the stolen thing; copying a book does not deprive anyone else of the use of that book.

Theft of another human being's labor, or the product of that labor (cotton, books), without compensating them is the very definition of slavery.

If you believe that using the product of another person's labor without compensating them is "theft" and "the very definition of slavery", then you must be against libraries in the first place -- or any other loan of a book. You must think the world that RMS outlines is a utopia, then. Indeed, you must think that everyone who's ever heard or read one of my poems, or heard one of my songs, owes me money. Hell, according to that reasoning you owe me money for reading this post -- it's a product of my labor, after all. You can pay me here.

Or, more likely, you haven't thought the issue through in any sensible way. Comparing making a copy to holding slaves is kind of a dead giveaway about that.

"It is good that authors of quality work are compensated" does not imply "the best way to see that authors of quality work are compensated is to use government force to create an artificial monopoly on the making of copies," nor does it imply "All persons viewing a work should be forced to pay a tithe to that work's creator."

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Roman Coder]

I don't know. If I was an editor working at a publisher, and authors could self-publish and cut out the middle-man, I'd quit the publisher, start my own business, that just caters to the self-publishing authors community, by offering my editing services for them. Let the authors handle the publishing/marketing crap.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Roman Coder]

Would kind of suck having to wait for someone to 'return' the book you want, so you can read it, when you know its not a physical object, but data that can be easily reproduced.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[commodore64_love]

>>>it doesn't scale

That's an excellent point. I had the privilege of meeting a man named Bill Gouldd. Not well educated (no college), but very charismatic and intelligent. He tried to get me and others involved in "network marketing" aka his pyramid sales company because he had earned millions, as had his close friends. What he did not realize at the time (mid-90s) but discovered later (mid-2000s) was that his success was not scalable. It did work for the average person.

Sounds like Cory Doctorow is yet another Bill Gouldd who sincerely believes what worked for him will work for all authors, but unlikely. As I mentioned above Stephen King tried the "give a book away online and ask for $20 payments" but it did not work for him (people took but did not pay), so he went back to the traditional method of requiring paying upfront to gain access to the book.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[commodore64_love]

>>>If you believe that using the product of another person's labor without compensating them is "theft" and "the very definition of slavery", then you must be against libraries in the first place

No. Libraries paid the author when they bought their hardcover copy.

And you make a good point that authors like Harlan Ellison are not slaves because they are free to quit the job (unlike actual slaves), but is that what we really want? All the authors to leave the profession and get jobs at a factory, because they no longer earn any money from their books (which everyone takes for free)? I hope not.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you have that backwards.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Mr. Slippery]

No. Libraries paid the author when they bought their hardcover copy.

So what? I'm still using the product of the author's labor without compensating them -- the fact the someone else threw a few bucks their ways doesn't change that.

is that what we really want? All the authors to leave the profession and get jobs at a factory, because they no longer earn any money from their books (which everyone takes for free)? I hope not.

As a budding author, I also hope not. (If I self-publish, my book will be available under a Creative Commons license; but I think the best way to get it out to as many people as possible is still the traditional publishing route, so I expect I'll be limited in what I can negotiate there.) But I repeat: wanting authors to be paid does not imply that the best way to accomplish this is to have the government create an artificial monopoly on the making of copies.

For years I've been advocating the songwriter model: I can sing a Bob Dylan tune in the shower, or at a party with friends, and not pay anything; but if I play it at the bar to bring in customers, or record a cover version and sell the CD, I owe Bob a cut of the money I make. While the implementation with BMI and ASCAP has problems, I think the basic idea is sound. Not a copy-right that restricts sharing, but a royalty-right on for-profit use.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[gedw99]

exactly and so the logical conclusion is the the problem in the monetary system.

digital things are virtual. It costs nothing to have a zillion copies.

But the author must make a living from writing.

The real issue then is WHY DO WE NEED PUBLISHERS ANYMORE....
They are reall the equivalent of Blockbuster or travel shops that used to sell airline tickets.

I wish that there was:
1. A web site that is syndicated with other web site for books.
2. Readers that were not drmed.

So do you think an author would then sell their digtial book without DRM ?
No, they might be a more lenient in regards to digitally loaning it to your friends.

So again it all comes back to the monetary system. It just does not make sense for things that are material based.
It does make sense for things that are time based such as labour.

Its a touch one as they say. Many contradictions of logic.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[thrawn_aj]

Barnes & Noble Nook also has a crippled lending scheme, the difference being that it's not library based, but allows people to lend books to others.

Did you even read any post before yours? The B&N nook has supported Adobe Digital Editions and Overdrive for a long time now (used in conjunction with tons of libraries around the US). This story about a pissant 50 libraries in the UK signals a severely ignorant submitter. "Breathes new life into library books" - my sainted arse. The lendme feature that you touched upon is crippled - no arguments there. However, the essential idea is probably the best that can be done as far as lending goes. You want two copies of a book simultaneously readable - farking pay for two copies. Paying the author one book's royalty doesn't entitle you to mass-produce the damn thing.

same artificial imitate-dead-trees limitation of one reader at a time ...

As much as I loathe DRM, I must take exception to this ridiculous concept. The one reader at a time has nothing to do with imitating dead tree books. It is a direct crossover from the software industry and its pay-per-license paradigm. Why is that so hard to understand? In a way, it's far superior to anything the software industry has managed to come up with. You can't lend software licenses can you?

life support for a dying publishing industry.

*sigh* never mind. This is weapons-grade funny.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[thrawn_aj]

Randall, you might know, is the author of XKCD and the book sales from XKCD Vol. 0 helped to build a school in Laos.

Oh wait ...

As far the T-shirts and mugs and all that trash, I hardly think selling kitschy garbage to eke out a living is more dignified than charging people for the actual creative stuff they produce. By the way, in case it needs to be made explicit, Munroe SOLD the freaking books, didn't give them away. And sold them at way above the actual manufacturing price (look it up at some point and you'll see that manufacturing costs are actually much lower than people think - most of the book costs have to do with promotion, advances, overhead and shit like that. Which means that self-published authors like webcomic artists are merely taking advantage of an established price point that is totally artificial for them). No free lunch - if those creative artists are going to make a living from their "art", they're going to violate your amusing ideas of art at some point.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[thrawn_aj]

Honestly, what would you want?

There has to be some sort of return on producing books, are we going to rely on people doing it as a hobby, or go back to the old days where you need a patron? (Hope there is some rich guy who likes your genre and hires an author?)

+1.

Considering that the world's stock of rich patrons would consist mostly of rich old farts, get ready for some of the most boring literature ever conceived by man.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[thrawn_aj]

I'm against this with every fiber of my being and hope it dies.

Good thing that hope is meaningless. Library ebooks have been around for a looooong time now, with the same paradigm. The only thing new is ... well, absolutely nothing. Well, maybe the fact that Sony has finally jumped on the bandwagon and breathed new life into a ... healthy and thriving library book market. *yawn* I've been borrowing DRM'd ebooks from the Cleveland Public Library for over 9 years now and reading it on one portable reader after another. Try not to have a knee-jerk reaction to DRM. DRM is fine for rentals (you're renting the property - the owners can do whatever the fuck they want to hobble it). DRM is NOT fine for sold content. Write that on the board 500 times :p.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[BasilBrush]

What about books written over 100 years ago, they are out of copyright now, right?

For books out of copyright the library can get non DRMed versions from Project Guttenberg or elsewhere and pass them on without any restrictions.

It's currently 70 years after the death of the author. I agree that that is far too long. Patents last for 20 years. That seems more reasonable. 20 years from first publication would be good for copyright.

What about kids from poor families? You are denying their right for intellectual development because they cannot afford to pay for electronic copy, that costs you nothing to create? What about middle-class kids? As far as I am concerned, they should be PAID to read books, not the other way around.

That's nonsense. There's plenty for kids to read. No shortage whatsoever. And it's not the duty of any author or publisher to provide them with more for free. They are entitled to have some period where they hold complete rights of reproduction over works that they created. The current copyright terms are far too long. But that doesn't mean there shouldn't be copyright of a more reasonable length.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

... life support for a dying *crap*-publishing industry.

Fixed that for you.

Another difference is that if I don't return a library book at the due date, the library doesn't send out stealth ninjas in the middle of the night to replace the book with a brick.

Actually, in soviet russia... err, no.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[commodore64_love]

>>>So what? I'm still using the product of the author's labor without compensating them -- the fact the someone else threw a few bucks their ways doesn't change that.

Except the authors give libraries permission to buy a single copy (marked up), and then share it with their local patrons. So no harm; no foul. Same with video rental stores, which movie companies gave permission to buy a single copy and then rent to their local neighbors.
.

>>>wanting authors to be paid does not imply that the best way to accomplish this is to have the government create an artificial monopoly on the making of copies.

Then you need to amend the Constitution to strike-out the copyright law, or convert it to copyleft(?) law, because that's exactly what the current Constitution gives government (and authors) the power to do. They have been granted a temporary monopoly over how many copies of Book A can be made.

I know nothing about performance copyright limits, so I will not comment on that.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[commodore64_love]

Ahhhh like how engineers and programmers work. Hourly rate. BUT even then you still have the company needing to protect those products from copying, otherwise the company will not make the money necessary to pay the engineers/programmers salaries.

Oh and I disagree with government hiring artists, because that's how pro-government propaganda is created. Or less heinous but just as annoying: Censorship of books/paintings the politicians don't like (example: paintings of nudes, or authors like Glenn Beck).

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[supersloshy]

>>>If you absolutely need money to want to make something (besides production costs), then it's not art

I notice you still accept a paycheck for the "art" you create every single week (random guess: technology hardware or software). Why is it that you think you should be paid for your labors, but not book writers? Hmmmm. Maybe we ought to stop paying you too. I'll just steal whatever you produce w/o paying you.

Copying is not theft! If I had a bicycle that I made with my bare hands and you somehow magically copied that bycicle, I wouldn't say you stole it, I'd be glad that we both have a bicycle. Or what if you modified your copy of my bicycle to make it cooler (in your opinion) and more people copied that. I wouldn't feel like people "stole" from me at all, I'd be happy for you.*

I said that if money's the #1 reason you're making something then it's not art. If you read my post at all you'll see that I'm not against earning money; I'm against it being a #1 priority. I've purchased indie music before because I like supporting them. The issue isn't accepting money, it's making money the entire reason it exists.

*I'd like to credit Nina Paley for this awesome analogy.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[arth1]

You can't lend software licenses can you?

Sure you can. I have plenty of software where I can give you a copy, and you can install it, and it will work for a limited time for you.
Unlike these e-books, there's no artificial limitation aping physical objects by allowing only a single person a copy, or by disabling the original.

Then there's Steam, with "Guest passes", which lets you lend the software to others so they can play multiplayer with you. Another broken concept, by the way, because it too relies too much on the old "physical copy" paradigm, which is an anathema to raw digital data.

Again, the whole physical buy/sell based on scarcity model doesn't work for digital works. An model that does work is unlikely to allow for any of the physical model concepts like "per copy" or "sale". The creators have to be compensated in a different way than payment per copy.

An already tried model is for all works to be the property of the public, and for the public to hire the artists at a low pay, but with bonuses for popularity and extraordinary contributions.

Those who don't want to be part of this system should be (unlike in the Soviet Union, who otherwise had a fairly well working system for arts and culture) free to keep their work from the public, and only sell through contracts. With no protection given by the public either.
I.e. abolition of copyrights is an important first step.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, again, what's the alternative you propose?

Don't worry, the "invisible hand" of the market will take care of it just like it does everything else.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[arth1]

Oh and I disagree with government hiring artists, because that's how pro-government propaganda is created. Or less heinous but just as annoying: Censorship of books/paintings the politicians don't like (example: paintings of nudes, or authors like Glenn Beck).

It all boils down to qui custodiet custodien, doesn't it?

Socialism is a misguided belief that the goverment will always have your best interest at heart, and not exploit the individual for the benefit of the leaders. The great lie is that everybody has an equal say.
Capitalism is a misguided belief that corporations will always have your best interest at heart, and not exploit the individual for the benefit of the leaders. The great lie is that everybody has an equal opportunity.

The countries that have had a model with state paid artists have had various levels of success, but mostly better than one might fear. While the Soviet Union most definitely abused artists for propaganda, some of the finest art of last century also came from the Soviet Union, so I can't claim it was a failure. It's fairly certain that many of the great works of art produced in that era would never have come to light in a free market system -- the artists would likely have starved to death before producing anything.

The mid-century European countries is perhaps a better model -- artists were heavily state sponsored, but not state employed. Unfortunately, only some of the works were given to the public, and (most notably) authors received little support, and the public received nothing in return. Mostly because international treaties prevented their works from becoming public, unlike, say, a great performance or painting.

IMO, it's high time that we take up the pitchforks and attack old and outdated systems that fetter the digital age, like the Berne convention. Those who authored it had no idea of what the reality would be like in the 21st century, and trying to shoehorn digital arts into fitting this outdated model is not doing anyone any favours (except for the publishing houses and artists who aren't willing to adapt).

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Yeah one author doing it probably won't work, it's not an impulse buy unless there's some kind of large market à la iTunes and I don't specifically have to go looking. Then there's the appalling state of advertising for books, I mostly hear of worthwhile books only through word of mouth. The whole industry is so stale it's going to take more than a few renegades to breathe some fresh air into it.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[arth1]

Sounds like Cory Doctorow is yet another Bill Gouldd who sincerely believes what worked for him will work for all authors, but unlikely. As I mentioned above Stephen King tried the "give a book away online and ask for $20 payments" but it did not work for him (people took but did not pay), so he went back to the traditional method of requiring paying upfront to gain access to the book.

The error Stephen King did was he thought of e-books as regular books, and saw that N thousand people had downloaded a chapter, but only a small fraction of them had paid. So in his mind, the majority had taken the books without paying.
That's one way of seeing it, but if you do, I say you haven't understood how digital copying is inherently different from paper books. The amount of people who take the book without paying doesn't matter. It costs you nothing. It's how many people you get to pay that matters, not how many that don't.
If anything, those who didn't pay may become fans and pay in the future. Or like the books and tell someone else who is willing to contribute.

Another thing is that Stephen King asked for way too much. If you ask for more than the price of a hardcover (which it was, back then), you should give at least the same value. However, it's not the same value. And the cost to the publisher is near zero.
And worse, with a typical payout for a successful author being around 10% of the cover price, if he insists on thinking of e-books as books, he was really asking people to do the equivalent of paying $200 for a paper book.

Then, Stephen King made it way too hard to pay for the chapters, which didn't help either. The payment process wasn't easy and user friendly.

All combined, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that a lot of people opted to accept the "gift". And some of us even predicted that King would renege and end the book short, despite those who had paid, and I think deserved a complete novel, not one cut short.

But anyhow, with unlimited and free distribution, it's folly to count how many doesn't pay -- all that matters is how many do. If great writers like King and Ellison wants to live in the comfortable past and refuse to wrap their brilliant heads around a new economy that isn't based on supply and demand (because the supply is unlimited), that's their choice. But it's also my choice to not bother buying them anymore.

The authors I read (and buy!) in 2010 aren't the same as those I read and bought in 1990. Some of it is simply because authors change, and readers (that's me) change, but some of it is also because I have adapted my buying and reading habits, while quite a few authors haven't adapted their selling and writing habits, and sit around with their fingers plugging their ears, chanting "na-na-na-na-can't-hear-you", and hope that everything will return to how it once was.
It won't.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[WuphonsReach]

Book sales increase now because the book IS a better product when compared to ebooks.

Eh, if you toss the DRM issue out the window (all the ebooks that I own are zero-DRM from places like Baen), then it's much less of a clear-cut issue.

I've had an ebook reader for almost 3 years now (a Sony PRS-505). For leisure, cover-to-cover, reading without a lot of diagrams/pictures - I absolutely love it. All the books that I want to read in an easy to cart around reader which I only have to tether to the USB cable every few weeks to charge it back up. No bulky paper to carry around (or worse, move from flat to flat when I move house), no dealing with the pain and pleasure of trying to turn pages with one hand. And I can change the font size to match my current needs.

Given a choice between reading a paperback for leisure or the ebook, I'll take the ebook every time. Mostly because the Sony unit simply gets out of the way and lets me read.

I just wish that technical books were feasible on it. (Screen refresh is one issue, difficulty in random-access or searching is another. And I'm not yet sold on the newer readers.)

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Jhon]

I mostly hear of worthwhile books only through word of mouth

I wouldn't say mostly -- but word of mouth is fairly significant for me as well. I used to get most of my book ideas just walking down the isles at the local book shops (used and new). Far less so now. I still look for new material from authors I already like (and who are still alive).

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Dory Cocktorow

Oh dear.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's the point you're missing. They're NOT freeing anyone from the limitations of real books. They're artificially introducing the SAME stupid limitations. One copy could serve the library's entire client base simultaneously, since scarcity does not exist for digital media. But that wouldn't reflect well on the publisher's bottom line. THAT'S the problem. This garbage isn't good for the library, it's not good for the people who use the library. It's only good for the publisher.

No one is talking about "Free content they didn't pay for." We're talking about artificially forcing people to pay repeatedly for the SAME content. For no reason at all other than profit motive. They could easily keep the "expire" function (which is fine for library books) without limiting the number of copies that can be out at once. And there's no good reason for it.

Of course it's an artificial limitation, but a needed one. It DOES give you more freedom than books because you can rent multiple copies without actually having a physical book to rent out, that can be lost, damaged, out of date, etc. Being able to rent multiple books out without paying for it is exactly "Free content they didn't pay for". That's exactly it, no other thing. The proper way to do this is to have a license for each virtual book. Then you pay for the content, and you also get to rent it out as much as you want, the author gets his share, the publisher gets his share, and everything is fair. No useless limitations either, and no one who want to keep the book for 8 months because they can't read babby's first book fast enough.

Just because you don't want the people who write the book and the publisher to make any money doesn't mean it's a bad idea. They should still receive their share, and it's the same fucking thing as MP3s. More digital copies == more money. Not because producing costs more, but because you have to buy what you use!

"He" is me, and has been the whole time, and that was in response to your inference that "not benefiting" from Sony's actions is somehow proof that there's no bias,

Well since nothing is going to prove it, I'll just say it - I'm not biased. Disagreeing with you is not bias, so just forget about that whole idea from now on.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're talking about free books at no cost for everyone, which is a different idea (and a completely ridiculous one in this day and age since artists are already living badly enough in some cases). I agree that it would be best, but I live on Earth, not on your magical planet.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[geminidomino]

The proper way to do this is to have a license for each virtual book. Then you pay for the content, and you also get to rent it out as much as you want, the author gets his share, the publisher gets his share, and everything is fair.

I reject this premise, due to the fact that what the publisher considers "fair" (anyone who reads any part of the book, ever, owes them money) is at odds with any meaningful definition of "fair."

It's no more sane than the idea the Music Industry scumbags voiced a while back that someone whistling their favorite tune at work was a "performance" that demanded fees.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[thrawn_aj]

Sure you can. I have plenty of software where I can give you a copy, and you can install it, and it will work for a limited time for you. Unlike these e-books, there's no artificial limitation aping physical objects by allowing only a single person a copy, or by disabling the original.

Otherwise known as software demos. That has exactly nothing to do with lending licenses. I could get a "limited time" demo direct from the publisher without you lending [sic] it to me. The analogous thing would be book samples or previews. Again, no limitation (anyone can download them without restriction).

Then there's Steam, with "Guest passes", which lets you lend the software to others so they can play multiplayer with you. Another broken concept, by the way, because it too relies too much on the old "physical copy" paradigm, which is an anathema to raw digital data.

A marginally better analogy. But still, it's not really lending because these magical guest passes seem to appear randomly (I use Steam). It would be like the book fairy suddenly appearing in your house and touching a couple of books on your shelf and giving your permission to lend them out. I'm glad you realize that's a broken concept.

By the way, nothing you said counters my main point which was - the current ebook selling and lending schemes have nothing to do with physical object scarcity and everything to do with taking a page out of the software licensing handbook. You gave all those examples to counter what was essentially a "by the way" statement.

Again, the whole physical buy/sell based on scarcity model doesn't work for digital works.

It may be unfair (in your opinion). It may be detrimental to certain principles (that I suspect are not rooted in economic reality - but that's another discussion for another day. I won't insist upon that here). However, it is an incontestable fact that the model is working. The vast majority of people have accepted the model (as horrible as I personally find it) - as evidenced by the mass migration of ordinary non-technical folks towards E-ink based ebook readers (visit the B&N forum sometime and you'll be as amazed as I was about the demographics that have converted to the dark side :p). I suspect we might have a lot in common as to how we feel the world should work in this regard. Your mistake lies in ignoring what's really happening - your little ditty about the "dying publishing industry" is a clear indication of that.

I.e. abolition of copyrights is an important first step.

Sure, let's throw the baby out with the bathwater. That oughta be good for a few laughs :p.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

I reject this premise, due to the fact that what the publisher considers "fair" (anyone who reads any part of the book, ever, owes them money) is at odds with any meaningful definition of "fair."

So you don't want to pay because they don't deserve money. Then don't buy the book, and don't rent it either. Don't let normal people who don't mind paying for a service get in your way. Unless your argument changes depending on who's getting the money, which would seem pretty funny to me.

It's no more sane than the idea the Music Industry scumbags voiced a while back that someone whistling their favorite tune at work was a "performance" that demanded fees.

Your example is completely insane compared to the idea of fairly paying for books. It's literally ridiculous to argue like this.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[geminidomino]

So you don't want to pay because they don't deserve money

Are you deliberately being obtuse, or is your mind actually so stuck in false dichotomy that you can't conceive of any position other than your own and "Free! FREE! EVERYTHING should be FREE! Mwahahahaha!"

Just because I don't think they deserve *as much* money as *they say* they do, does not follow that I think they don't deserve ANY money.

I'll try this one more time... These are Digital LIBRARY books. Each one has a built-in expiration date. There is no reason other than greed for this pricing model, since no one is getting away with anything "free". The position you are supporting is like requiring a deli to buy five gumball machines because 5 people might want to chew gum at the same time. It's a money grab.

Your example is completely insane compared to the idea of fairly paying for books. It's literally ridiculous to argue like this.

My entire point is that we're not discussing the idea of paying FAIRLY for books. My example was specifically given as one that was insane. Read for context.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you deliberately being obtuse, or is your mind actually so stuck in false dichotomy that you can't conceive of any position other than your own and "Free! FREE! EVERYTHING should be FREE! Mwahahahaha!"

Neither. I just have a different option than you. Can't deal with that?

I'll try this one more time...

There's no point. I'm pretty sure I understand exactly what you're talking about, I'm not a fucking idiot or a 2 year old child.

Your analogy doesn't work because, if you weren't aware, a gumball machine requires gumballs to function. A better analogy would be requiring 5 gumballs in the machine in order for 5 people to chew at the same time, and that's exactly what I'm suggesting. Licenses for lending books. X cents per lending, or X dollars for a license to rent a single book (to 1 person at once), or X++ dollars for a license to lend a single book to more X people at once. It's pretty simple really. Are you sure you're not the obtuse one? I made this pretty clear multiple times. From what I understand, you want an infinite amount of people to be able to lend a single book. I disagree with this, because in a perfect world it would mean that one library could buy the book, and lend it to the entire world free of charge, and that seems very unfair to both the publisher and the author to me.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[geminidomino]

Your analogy doesn't work because, if you weren't aware, a gumball machine requires gumballs to function

Exactly. My analogy works fine, you only think it doesn't because you're equating each e0book with a gumball. They should be the DISPENSER. A Gumball machine that can create gumballs at needed from the phlogiston without limit. The publishers can charge more than a normal DRMed ebook for this "Mother license" so that the library can create a new, time-limited book at will, and not be gimping the tech or the users of the library.

THAT I would have absolutely no problem with, because that gets them their share AND it actually DOES free us from the limitations of physical books.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is useful DRM.

You just stated that something exists which doesn't exist. Congratulations, you reached a contradiction.

Or did you mean 'useful' for someone other than "We The People"?

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, so you agree with me by suggesting the same idea that I did many posts ago, yet I'm obtuse and don't understand what you're saying?

Not too sure what's wrong with you, but thanks for finally understanding my posts properly and agreeing with me. Now I got better things to do.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[geminidomino]

No. Everything you posted says that they need to pay for multiple copies because that's how physical books work, and that somehow "Frees us from the limitations of physical books." That's the opposite of what I said.

And the accusation of being obtuse was because you apparently respond to things that were never said to maintain the validity of your false dichotomy. It was giving you the benefit of the doubt. The alternative was that you're either a fanatic, or illiterate.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

So you've been agreeing with me the whole time then. All I've been saying is that you shouldn't be able to lend one copy of a digital book to infinite people for an infinite amount of time, because that isn't fair to both the author and the publisher. Instead, I suggested a licensing model, and suggesting many alternatives, one of which you've basically copied in your previous post (master license). I guess your reading skills were impaired by your aggressive tendency of finding dichotomies where they don't exist, finding ways of telling people they're biased even when they aren't, and trying to look smart by calling other people obtuse. Maybe you should spend more time reading instead of insulting. It'll benefit you too.

Sony?

[mcgrew]

Ever since I was a victim of XCP there's no way I'll touch ANYTHING Sony makes. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Honestly, guys, stop buying computer gear from a company who would root paying customers' computers and destroy legally installed software.

Re:Sony?

[Amouth]

I too refuse to buy from Sony - not only because of the root kit issue but then how they handled it and then what they ended up getting away with.

the ONLY time i buy something made by sony is if there is no other choice (ex, they have the only product that meets the need). I don't care if i have to pay 2x as much if there is another supplier that will meet the need i will buy theirs.

Re:Sony?

[Lemmy Caution]

Sony has annual revenues of around 80 billion dollars, over 150,000 employees and an order of magnitude more contractors and manufacturing partners. XCP sucked, but - Sony is the size of a nation. Do you boycott China because of the melamine-laced products?

For pure entertainment value, the internecine feuds of the various heads of the Sony hydra are pretty hard to beat.

Re:Sony?

[localman57]

I'll buy gear from any company that finds religion, and starts adhering to standards. Sony is now using SD cards in their video cameras, (and also memoryStick) using the MP4 format (better than .mov, at least I feel), is doing much better about using standard connectors for things, and is offers eBook readers with no wireless component, so you'll always be able to load them with eBooks without worring about big brother.

Yeah, they did the XCP thing. And ripped Linux off of the PS3. But if you want to send a message, you buy the products they make that conform to standards (assuming they're worth buying), and don't buy the ones that don't. That's the stuff that influences what they make. Just crossing a company off the list for something they did years ago isn't a way to affect change.

Re:Sony?

[delinear]

While I largely agree with the Sony sentiments - so long as there's no insistence that you use their device or their standards, I can still say they're doing something good here. It wouldn't convince me to buy their technology, but if I can buy someone else's e-reader and enjoy the benefits of Sony pushing for this then they might win back a couple of points of goodwill (they'd still have a hell of a long way to go to get me back as a customer, not that I'm on some kind of personal crusade, I just don't want to get stung by them so this works for me).

Re:Sony?

[Anonymous Coward]

Between rootkits, the rootkit denials, then issues with the tool created to remove rootkits, exploding laptop batteries, screwing over PS3 owners by removing PS2 compatibility AND OtherOS and constantly trying to force proprietary formats and DRM down our throats and that's without delving into all the other crap Sony BMG are behind in the "war on piracy", Sony really don't do themselves any favours around here. That's just the handful of issues off the top of my head, I'm sure there are lots I haven't listed, in fact I remember a site some time ago detailing all their public screw ups and customer screw overs and it was quite a list.

Re:Sony?

[delinear]

I agree if you're boycotting said company to make a point. However, as a consumer who has seen their customers get their fingers burned time and again, I feel safer not giving them my money until such time has passed without them repeating this behaviour that I feel I can trust them. In the case of both rootkits and Other OS these were instances of them hurting their legitimate customers after they've already given them their money. In the Other OS case, a long time after for some people who bought early. That plants the seed of doubt that, maybe they'll release a great bit of kit today, but what's to stop them crippling it remotely in the future? I'm not expecting them to change their behaviour through my not buying their products, I'm just protecting myself from their demonstrated modus operandi. If they do eventually start doing right by their customers I'll be happy to give them my money, I have owned very good Sony products in the distant past.

Re:Sony?

[IndustrialComplex]

the ONLY time i buy something made by sony is if there is no other choice (ex, they have the only product that meets the need). I don't care if i have to pay 2x as much if there is another supplier that will meet the need i will buy theirs.

I've rarely found that anything made by Sony goes beyond Want and becomes Need.

Re:Sony?

[IndustrialComplex]

Sony has annual revenues of around 80 billion dollars, over 150,000 employees and an order of magnitude more contractors and manufacturing partners. XCP sucked, but - Sony is the size of a nation. Do you boycott China because of the melamine-laced products?

Yes I do. Until China and its culture supports the standards I expect from a country or producer I do not buy their products. If they could say they were going to, and then put some (money) teeth behind that goal, I'd probably start buying from them again.

Sometimes it isn't easy to follow certain ideals. Just because something is hard, doesn't mean that it isn't worth doing.

Re:Sony?

[IndustrialComplex]

Yeah, they did the XCP thing. And ripped Linux off of the PS3. But if you want to send a message, you buy the products they make that conform to standards (assuming they're worth buying), and don't buy the ones that don't. That's the stuff that influences what they make. Just crossing a company off the list for something they did years ago isn't a way to affect change.

So I buy the stuff from them that meets my needs and conforms to standards... until it doesn't.

Sony's actions with regard to OtherOS makes this an impossible goal. They literally altered a product after the fact. You don't have the protection of buying a standard because most of the time, you aren't making decisions based on standards, but features. They altered the deal, and you just have to pray that they don't alter it any further.

You can't change their ways by buying their 'good' products if they can turn them into 'bad' products at will.

They have escaped your bounds for which a company can be controlled by purchasing their good products.

To paraphrase another movie quote: at this point, The only winning move is not to play.

Re:Sony?

[Anonymous Coward]

They killed HDDVD!....

Re:Sony?

[Amouth]

when you get into recording/production equipment - some times they are the only player on the block at that moment..

Re:Sony?

[Anonymous Coward]

Give it a rest already.

Re:Sony?

[mcgrew]

China is a country, not a company. Plus, I've never been China's victim, I have been Sony's victim. I don't kid myself that not buying their stuff hurts them, I don't buy their stuff because I don't want THEM hurting ME yet again. XCP trashed my computer, and it took hours and a couple hundred bucks to get it right. After an experience like that, how could I ever trust them? Who knows what kinds of nasty shit they'll hide in their book reader? For all I know, it'll wifi into my netbook and do the same kind of damage XCP did.

Re:Sony?

[mcgrew]

They altered the deal, and you just have to pray that they don't alter it any further.

Heh, that's an almost direct Darth Vader quote from SW EP IV. Comparing Sony to Darth Vader is a very apt analogy. I used to like Sony decades ago when they sold quality gear at reasonable prices (Walkman, etc) and didn't screw their customers over, but they've gone over to the dark side.

Re:Sony?

[mcgrew]

Fuck you, Howard. Do the world a favor and commit suicide.

Re:Sony?

[xenapan]

Better check the tags on all the items you own for made in china, assembled in china etc. then? It's gonna be a while till they stop supplying a good bulk of US goods.

Oh and BTW, most of our national debt is also owed to China. Assuming you are paying your taxes, a portion (I hope) will go to repaying that debt. So I don't know how you are going to get past that. (Not pay taxes?)

My point is, a good chunk of the US economy is based off of trade and debt to China. I don't think its possible for your money to NOT flow the China. You might need to move to a less industrialized country for that to happen.

Re:Sony?

[Lemmy Caution]

I really don't blame you for your attitude. I doubt I will ever get a VAIO or other Sony PC. But that hasn't kept me from getting a Playstation or PSP or such, or getting a Sony-licensed game, and the Reader is, for me, the best on the market. I would have been furious if I had been hit by the XCP debacle, though. And many Sony divisions seem to be dedicated to sabotaging the usefulness of a lot of its products. An amazingly Byzantine company: Fellini meets "The Corporation."

Re:Sony?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you. Yield what has been taken from us.

Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

Our Library has had this for at least a year

A limited # of digital copies?

[iONiUM]

I think there's some problem going on in the world of business while we transition from physical things to digital copies. I mean, I think it's great this library is offering digital copies to read for free, don't get me wrong, but why is there an artificial limitation on the number? Is this because if it was infinite nobody would need to buy a book anymore?

I just find it really strange that we goto such lengths to treat something that is, basically, a free resource (copying digital bits) as something that is finite (an actual book).

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[bsDaemon]

The cost of the book goes to cover paying author royalties, the editors, the type setters, etc. Just because you don't have a "press" anymore doesn't mean you don't still have pre-press. This seems "good enough" for now. Digital copies of books, movies and music are already cheaper than the physical ones, and most commercially-produced content isn't going to be free-as-in-beer, because they can't operate like that. What's good for software doesn't necessarily work for other things.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[bieber]

Unfortunately, we live in a nation where everyone has been conditioned to believe that effectively-endless copyright protection is some kind of inalienable personal right, not a balance to be struck between society and authors for the greater good of society as a whole. So when ridiculous crap like self-deleting downloads come along, people don't think "Why am I letting these people seize control of my own computing devices away from me so that they can protect their artificial monopoly?", but rather "Oh, how nice of them to offer for free what we should be paying arbitrarily determined sums of money for...

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[lxs]

It's technology crashing into social adaptibility cf. red flag laws

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[cdrguru]

Is this because if it was infinite nobody would need to buy a book anymore?

The library does not have the right to freely distribute books. It buys a limited number of copies and has the right to lend these out for a limited period of time. Period. Distributing unlimited digital (or physical) copies would essentially be usurping the author and copyright owner's rights to control distribution.

If anyone, anywhere (yes, I specifically am including truely-free.org) distributes digital copies of books in an unrestricted manner they are pretty much making a decision for the author and copyright owner. Some publishers, like TOR, hold the copyright and distribute some books for free. I believe the author has no veto of this as part of the publishing agreement. Fine - they signed up for this when they got the publishing deal. However, for someone like a library or a guy named Bruce to take it upon themselves to decide to distribute materials for free in an unrestricted fashion is clearly theft. They are taking something (rights) that do not belong to them.

You can argue all you want about how nothing material has been taken - except folks seem awfully concerned about rights now and then and I'd say taking right away is certainly theft. It is theft when governments do it, and it is theft when individuals do it.

You can argue all you want about how those rights should not exist and that is a reasonable discussion to have. Arguing that taking rights away isn't theft is not a reasonable discussion as can be seen when most other rights are taken away in one way or another.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, actually... it takes a lot of resources to make a physical book. Which is why I understand paying say $7.99 for a physical copy. That appears (all those paperbacks all over) to pay the author, the publisher, the printer, ink-maker, paper-maker, cover-artist, etc., everyone---everyone makes a profit or they wouldn't be doing it.

In the digital world, you pretty much only need to compensate the author---the rest of the costs become jokingly low (and if they're not, you're doing something wrong). So how come electronic books don't sell for 1/1000th's of the physical book price?

Now, imagine if a digital copy of *any* book cost $0.25. It would be more hassle to plug-in your device than to just buy a new copy per device. It would mean *way* more sales---there are plenty of books I'd like to look though, but don't wanna pay a few dollars for---that's why I still go to physical book stores. You don't think the authors can make a living of 0.25/book download?

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[TheCRAIGGERS]

It's not so strange when one considers that the entire western economy is based off of supply and demand. Infinite supply is bad, so they artificially impose restrictions.

Hopefully we will figure out a new economy some day instead of trying to shoehorn the future into the old ways.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2010/02/anatomy-of-a-60-dollar-video-game.html

In a 60$ video game purchase 4$ goes to the manufacture and sitribution of the physical goods.

This has been replace with an essentially free ressource.

Maybe, going digital, we can also cut out the retailer for another 15$ and the return inventory for another 7$.

Leaves you with 35$ for platform and game development and marketing. This is a hard core of cost that needs to come from somewhere.

With books it's similar the physical production and distribution is a fraction of the cost. Eliminating that cost does not change anything else.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[mehrotra.akash]

Isnt it more comparable to a multi user licence for a software product than "a free resource (copying digital bits)"

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[Amouth]

Is this because if it was infinite nobody would need to buy a book anymore?

Correct - why buy it if i can get it for free legally and just as easily?

If there is no incentive to buy a book then what will be the incentive to the people who would write a book?

Sure you will still get true great works - and works from people who write for passion. But there are a lot of books that exist that a lot of people read that do not fall under that area. Without the incentive of making money (either extra or a living) these works would not otherwise exist.

And i'm not talking just about paperback novels but technical works, reference manuals, the stuff a lot of people use on a daily basis.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[Derkec]

I'm with you that endless copyright is bad.

But we can probably agree that copyright for some period is reasonable. Right?

So, in order to protect our computing devices, do we simply never load copyrighted material on them, or do we compromise and say, "If it's on loan, I'll let it delete itself after some time period to enforce the loan?" That's a compromise I think is pretty reasonable. If my library books would return themselves automatically and I didn't have to remember to take them back or face penalties, I'd be in favor of that as well. Personally, I'm often willing to sacrifice some control for some convenience.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[TheCRAIGGERS]

I'm guessing the authors already make a living off less than that.

But to answer your question, they sell it for the same cost out of plain greed. Consumers have already been conditioned to shelling out $8 US for a paperback book (nevermind the insane cost of a hardcover) so why shouldn't they expect consumers will keep right on doing it when in electronic form?

My great worry is that all the extra profit is going straight to the top, instead of the authors for which I feel it rightfully belongs. Hopefully when ebooks become more popular, authors will realize they no longer need publishers for all the things they used to handle for them- the intricate printing process, shipping it and negotiating space on store shelves, marketing, etc. When this happens (and I feel it's already begun) I believe we will see cheaper books by authors who are paid more in line with what they deserve.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[countSudoku()]

Agreed! Plus, something the DRM friendly jokesters from a few threads above don't realize when they lay down their "oh, it's good for everyone with the DRM and the restrictions" logic is that this is a play by Sony to get their eBook readers into peoples hands and gain traction on Kindle/iPad/etc. It's nothing more. Save me your "it's just like the library" bullshit, people. It's about Sony making money and feeding you more DRMed content, even when it's freely available elsewhere without restrictions, other than physical. Let's all play the DRM game and say it's good for everyone when it's only good for one party. Sony sucks balls. Their products show this in the many restrictions and their lack of respect for their own customers. Fuck Sony.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[natehoy]

Is this because if it was infinite nobody would need to buy a book anymore?

Yes.

This is the perfect example of "dilution of value" that is the heart of the argument against allowing piracy.

An author wrote that book, and expects a certain amount of money in return for that work. The individual copy you got might have cost the author nothing, and you might make the valid argument that you, yourself, would never have purchased the book therefore you are costing the author nothing, but there are a certain number of people who would have purchased the book (earning the author a royalty) who would not purchase the book if it were available for free.

If we want authors to continue writing books, we need to protect a reasonable copyright to reward them for doing so.

Note I said "reasonable", which leads to the other major issue - current multi-generational copyright is anything but "reasonable".

Copyrights should be placed for a certain number of years, not to exceed about 20-30, as originally intended. That gives the author sufficient time to profit from their work. I would also be in favor of strong DRM measures and enforcement laws with real penalties if copyright were set to a reasonable period of time. But, there's a caveat there.

Once that copyright expires, there has to be a provision in the law that makes it legal to circumvent any copy protection the author or publisher has originally placed on the work, or publishers need to file the decryption keys with their copyright application if appropriate, or file an unencrypted version with the copyright office that would automatically be released when the copyright expires.

We also need to have authors legally asserting copyright, not just able to put a (C) on something and call it good. If you want protection provided by law enforcement, you need to file an unencrypted copy of your work with a copyright office so the enforcement body knows what they are looking for, and the clock starts on that protection the instant you file it and have it approved. When your protection runs out, the copyright office should publish the unencrypted work.

Oh, and you'll also need to pay an application fee to pay for the system, because my current tax dollars for law enforcement are intended for protection of real goods and real people, not the protection of your profit margin.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[LWATCDR]

The cost of duplication is practically free but that isn't new.
The printing press reduced the cost of duplicating a book as well.

The entire idea of copyright laws is to provide an incentive to publish and create works that can be duplicated easily.

In many ways it works like venture capital or a start up company.
An author invests their time which could be working or or doing a different activity creating a work. He has no guaranty that he will make any money off the effort. Most authors do not get rich or even make a living from writing books. He then has the promise of law that he can set a price for his work and sell it.
The same applies to the publisher.
We then get to buy the book for a small percentage of the cost of producing the book. AKA the amount of time the author spend writing, the editors spent editing it, and the typesetters spent laying it out.
The reason why we can pay so little is because the actual duplication of the book is cheap. The publisher and the author can sell lots of copies so they spread out the cost over every person.

Yes duplication is cheap and frankly the digital age is just the next step. It probably costs less than $2 to print and bind a paper back. It costs less than $1 to press and record or a CD.
Copyright laws allow authors and publishers to have a hope of recovering their investment and maybe making a profit.
In other words the part you say now is almost free was also pretty cheap before. But the actual cost to produce a book has not gone down. It has in fact gone up. It was all manual labor and pretty much still is.
What you are confusing is the cost of duplication with the cost of creation.

Now the problem IMHO still is that publishers are charging too much for digital copies. A publisher had to invest a lot upfront in printing a book. They ran a good amount of risk and incurred a good amount of cost in printing thousands of books that may not sell, warehousing them, and shipping them to stores.
The Stores used to also need to make a profit off each book sold to keep the lights on and pay the rent. They still do but an estore will be a lot cheaper than a chain of books stores.
All those costs and risks are now gone.
Also their is no reason for any book to now go out of print.
There are no digital print runs.
The same thing goes with movies and video.
For the most part they are now 100% profit after you take out the royalties.

I do not think that I should have to pay $5 for an electronic copy of a book that is years old and 99 cents a song is also pretty high.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost of the book should go to cover paying author royalties, the editors, the type setters, etc., but doesn't.

FTFY.

Until I bought a Kindle a few weeks ago I believed the same thing you did; now that I am actually buying ebooks I have been gobsmacked by just how much worse the editing, typesetting, etc. are when compared with the print editions of the same books. Let's take as an example the classic novel Dune ... At $13.99 for the ebook of a novel first published in 1965, you'd expect that high price to produce a masterfully edited, typset, etc. ebook.

And you'd be horribly, horribly wrong: http://www.thebookcritics.net/dune-40th-anniversary-edition/ makes it quite clear that absolutely nothing of that high $13.99 price was spent for pre-press work. Similar reviews by other people caused me to download the free sample instead of buying sight-unseen and what I saw in the sample is as badly done as the reviews said.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[TapeCutter]

"Is this because if it was infinite nobody would need to buy a book anymore?"

Yes. Personally I don't think it's in the public interest to allow libraries to kill off publishers anymore than it is to allow publishers to kill off libraries. They are two sides of a symbiotic relationship that has served society well for a very long time.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having worked in publishing, current ebook prices do not reflect the reduction in cost to produce the book. I'm sure some could argue the lack of a substantial discount in price is due to the convenience of the format, but note that the convenience is an inherent part of the format and not a result of anything in the production process. Besides, per unit prices for physical books go down as the number of books are printed, but the publisher is limited by minimum print runs dictated by the printer and by the cost of the available space to warehouse the books. Now if you look at ebooks, your storage cost is practically nothing (you only need one copy on the order of MBs in a world of terrabyte storage) and not only can you "print" on demand but you're not limited by print runs. So the publisher can charge the minimum unit price to cover the cost of production (editing, typesetting, etc.) plus whatever percentage they want to take as profit. Of course this minimum unit price is based on the estimate on the projected sales to break even. If the publisher gets that wrong, they could find themselves on the wrong side of profitability.

Of course all of that still hinges on your belief that individual copies of a digital work can and should be treated the same as a physical copy, something I don't believe, because it's a logical fallacy made evident by the fact it takes a government to enact laws to create artificial scarcity in order to create a market.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[natehoy]

I think the physical book costs less than you think it does, and represents a far lower portion of the cost than you are assuming.

If an author gets a 10% royalty, that means they are being paid 10% of the list cover price of each book. For a hardcover, that can be upwards of 2 bucks a copy, and for a paperback that's still about 80 cents. That already means the publisher can "only" reduce the price of the book by 90% to make zero profit. But the publishing house probably paid the author an advance, taking a risk that the book would succeed (and not all of them do). They put work into editing the book, laying it out for various bookreader software, marketing it, doing cover art, and supporting a distribution infrastructure. There's probably twice as much that goes into all that than the original authorship, so let's call that 20% based on current margins.

So now the books cost $6 (hardcover) and $3 (softcover) to make, giving the author and publisher a reasonable chance at profit.

Then you have the distributor, who wants a cut. For electronic copies, that might just be a couple of bucks, but now you're up to $9 new releases and $6 older works.

Lower the cost to $0.25 as you suggest, and the publisher would have to sell 30 times as many copies just to reach their current profit margin, assuming absolutely zero incremental cost in distribution, which is unrealistic, so you're probably looking at 50 times as many or more. I'm not sure those kinds of numbers would be reasonable at all. I might buy more books instead of borrowing library copies if they were a quarter each (and songs, too, for that matter), but 30 times as many? 50? I'm not so sure.

Granted, for a quarter a copy, I'd be willing to tolerate some pretty draconian DRM, and if someone wanted to "borrow" my copy I'd just tell them to buy their own or buy one for them. So there's a certain economics at work at the 25-50 cent price point that you won't get even at the $1 or current $10 price points. But I'm not convinced it would counter the lack of margin on each sale.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[rantomaniac]

Without the incentive of making money (either extra or a living) these works would not otherwise exist.

Except selling copies is not the only way of making money off art and literature. Commissions have worked fine before the advent of copyright (technical works in particular could be commissioned by universities or enterprises.) Selling scarce goods bundled with intellectual works is already being employed by artists.
The only thing standing in the way of creators making money without charging for digital copies is the sense of entitlement that they (and their children) should be paid for every copy ever made.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[LWATCDR]

I keep hearing people talk about artificial scarcity.
What we are actually dealing with is an artificial abundance caused by digital copying.
People keep talking about how the cost to produce a book, movie, TV Show, or song is now practically nothing.

That is a false statement.
The cost to produce those things has been decreased they are still far from zero.
Let's take a book for example.
It may take an author six months too write a book.
It may take an editor three weeks to edit it.
It may take a typesetter/layout artist a day to lay it out and check the proofs.

That is all labor and costs money.
Now the author often gets no pay for his labor. He is making an investment that he will get paid.
The publisher invests his money in the editing laying out of the book for production as well as advertising.
Most books do not make a profit.

The way the system works is that we pay a small amount for book, movie, TV Show, and more Music compared to what it cost to make because the cost of duplication means that the cost can be spread over a large number of people.

Digital copying provided the illusion that the cost to produce these things is zero.
It is not. The cost to duplicate them is very close to zero. That is the problem
The end result should be that the cost per person should come down but it shouldn't become zero. If ti becomes zero then production will stop.
There are two problems.
The current producers want the decreased cost of duplication to mean increased profits for them. They see this as windfall.
Consumers are ignoring the cost of production and only seeing the cost of duplication and want it for free.

The problem really isn't one of economics but one of greed. Actually two problems of greed.
The greed of the media companies that want an even larger profit margin.
and
The greed of consumers that want the media but want it for free.

If we could just solve human greed then we wouldn't have this problem.
The consumers would be willing to pay a fair price and the produces would be happy with a fair profit.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[delinear]

You're assuming that if the price dropped to near zero, the sales would grow inline with that, and if that were true then you'd be correct. The sad fact though is that even in the realm of physical books, a lot of books go unsold and end up pulped. These are books which have already been paid for, typeset, printed, distributed - bookshops could sell them for next to nothing and it would be better than the alternative where they need to get shipped again and then destroyed, but the issue is they just don't sell.

Outside the first few months of a books life, you have to be one of the established elite of authors for your books to shift in any numbers. For most authors you will make pocket change after the first run of hard and then paperbacks, and if you're writing to a minority or niche market the issue is further compounded.

Now we can distribute the books at virtually zero cost, but the initial costs in producing the book are still there and the big issue is that even if you reduce the cost to virtually nothing, you're unlikely to see many more sales. There will be a few edge cases but largely the people who read a lot are already at or near capacity, the people who read little won't be swayed unless the price drops massively, but to do that you kill your profit on the core market who would have bought at the higher price and you probably don't bring in enough eyeballs to make up anywhere near the difference.

For an author's perspective on some of this stuff, I find Charles Stross' blog quite useful (he's obviously ultimately interested in what's best for the author, but as a sci-fi writer and a massive geek he understands more about this new line of distribution than most, a lot of what he says about the drop in quality if you do away with editors and publishers, and the long tail issues when it comes to books really ring true).

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[wiredog]

Is this because if it was infinite nobody would need to buy a book anymore?

Yes. Exactly.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[Buelldozer]

Digital copies of books are cheaper than physical ones? The truth of that is declining every day.

Here, look at this:

http://www.amazon.com/Changes-Novel-Dresden-Files-ebook/dp/B0030DHPAW/ref=pd_sim_kinc_7?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2

The kindle edition is $12.99, price set by publisher.
The paperback edition is $9.99, price set by publisher.

That's right the publisher, in this case Penguin, has decided that the digital version should be MORE expensive than the the dead tree version. This is becoming more common as time goes on. I put the blame for this squarely on Apple and the iPad. If you don't know why then go look it up.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[farble1670]

why is there an artificial limitation on the number?

simple: because not having such a limitation would reduce demand for paid copies. it's the same reason that libraries don't make hundreds of hard copies of in-demand books. if a library had infinite copies of books, it's essentially a free bookstore. even if there was a time limitation, i could just re-new indefinitely because it's not like there's someone is queue for the thing right?

would you ever buy another book if you knew you could get it for free from the library and use it as long as you want? now add in that it's as easy as logging into a website and selecting the book you want.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[wygit]

The company that manages the library book-lending DRM has nothing to with Sony, and had been around for 6 years before the first Sony Reader came out. ... not sure what you mean by "even when it's freely available elsewhere without restrictions, other than physical." but I guess it goes along with the semantic content of the rest of your rant.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[farble1670]

this is a play by Sony to get their eBook readers into peoples hands and gain traction on Kindle/iPad/etc

wait, you mean sony is a business? they are trying to make money? this might come as a surprise, but that is all any business ever does. you can't fault them for that.

being able to check out an ebook from a local library, for free, from the comfort of your home is a good thing for consumers. it might not be exactly perfect. you might want infinite copies. you might want infinite rental periods. you might want no DRM. but i can't see how authors and publishers and authors would accept anything less than what is offered, and to be honest the suggested model sounds pretty darn fair to them.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[Amouth]

So if i write a book - and you buy one physical copy from me - you should be able to rewrite that book digitally and give it to the world?

If i write something - who says the world should see it - what if i only want 100 people to have it?

and people did buy books - they have for a very long time - before the printing press people made livings copying books to sell - after the press they got cheaper - now ditialy they are essentially next to nothing to copy - so we are down to the actual value of the works.

do i like DRM - no.. do i agree with people who would make copies of ebooks and give them away when they have no right to do that - no... do we need to find a happy medium? yes.

i like this idea - as it presents another way of compromising, and eventually reaching that happy medium.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with you on this one. Basically, it boils down to what kind of market we want to employ. The market you apparently promote would be a free market, where consumers determine the value of a product. The market SONY is trying to enforce is a controlled market, and it is their intention to be the controllers. I'm basically OK with either of the two economic forms, but if we are going to embrace a managed market in the media niche, it is fucking well going to be managed by the government, not the SONY army.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[rantomaniac]

So if i write a book - and you buy one physical copy from me - you should be able to rewrite that book digitally and give it to the world?

In my scenario, sure, I just don't see why, since digital copies would be available anyway. (At least if you were a smart author who wanted to reach a wide audience.)

If i write something - who says the world should see it - what if i only want 100 people to have it?

Either you trust those 100 people, or you don't give them access to your infinite resource. Regardless, artificially restricting your audience is not a good business model.

i like this idea - as it presents another way of compromising, and eventually reaching that happy medium.

I'd be fine with DRM as long as it wasn't running on hardware I own, which conflicts with the fact that I also want to have access to content I bought or downloaded, from the very same hardware.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is a masterly summary of the situation. Well written.

P.S. I'm only an Anonymous Coward 'cos I'm reading this on my phone (HTC Desire) and it's too much like hard work to register away from my PC.)

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[cpt kangarooski]

Libraries do have a right to freely distribute copies of books, which they own. There's no copyright-based law regulating the length of lending periods, AFAIK. If they bought an unlimited number of copies (which would be a good trick) they could lend them all out. Most libraries impose due dates merely as a convenience to their other patrons, not because they must.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[Just Some Guy]

You make a very compelling argument against the existence of Free Software, and yet here I am writing this on a FOSS operating system running a FOSS desktop and a FOSS browser that connects to the Internet via a chain of FOSS routers.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[Nemyst]

Not all things can be FOSS. The author still needs to eat. All the FOSS is being built off a handful of possible situations: 1) hobbyists 2) companies selling services based on FOSS 3) donations. The problem is that 2 can't be applied to books, 3 only works for a very small proportion of authors (if at all) and you probably wouldn't want to read 1 anyways.

I like FOSS, I dislike the money-grabbing schemes that DRM usually implies, but you need to think about the authors, too. They're already getting shafted by the publishers, yet most authors are dependent on their editors to do the work. This isn't a situation that can be just as easily resolved as to say "all books should be free, screw the authors!"

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[Zalbik]

You make a very compelling argument against the existence of Free Software, and yet here I am writing this on a FOSS operating system running a FOSS desktop and a FOSS browser that connects to the Internet via a chain of FOSS routers.

No. He makes a compelling argument against the proliferation of Free Software. He's not saying nobody will do this for free, just that people are more likely to do it for money.

It's also a false analogy in that many people can write a single piece of software, so the total labour invested by each "author" can be significantly reduced. There are no really popular models to allow many people to write a book.

You'll also notice that the really "not fun" parts of software development are where FOSS really falls down (documentation, marketing, packaging). This is ok in as the vast majority of FOSS is aimed at technical people. The similar parts of book publishing (editing, typesetting & layout, marketing) are essential to producing a palatable book.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[LWATCDR]

Not really.
People do release books under creative commons.
People will choose to write FOSS including myself.

But even under the FOSS model people want to get paid.
They may bet paid by offering services like adding features to the software or supporting the software.

The other model is the I need it. I needed a feature in a program. I can write code so I added it and contributed the code back.

The final one is the guy that likes to do it as a hobby.
Which is fine also and does happen with authors as well.

But even then their are still huge gaps in the FOSS world.
The big one for me is the lack of a good 3d cad solution.
There isn't a 3d FOSS cad solution as good as SolidWorks or ProE.
Heck there isn't even one as good as TurboCad.

The thing is that no one should be FORCED to release their code under the GPL.
No one should their work without their permission.
If you don't like it do as you are doing and don't use it.
It is as simple as that.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[martin-boundary]

Sounds like a classic case of OCR. All OCR engines have failure rates which, even if they are say 99.9% per word, still imply abysmal numbers of errors on a book length document. That's why people are still needed to read and correct the output.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[Anonymous Coward]

It may take an author six months too write a book.

Investment by the author.

It may take an editor three weeks to edit it.

Author pays the editor. If the editor charges a rate that works out to more per word than the author gets per book, get a new editor.

It may take a typesetter/layout artist a day to lay it out and check the proofs.

Welcome to the future, I get to decide the font and point size of books I read.

Most books do not make a profit.

Because the publishing industry is bloated. If authors didn't have to support the the publishing industry's profit margins, they could live off of smaller sales or sell books for less.

An author will get probably get .40-.80 on a paperback that retails for $8. Make an investment in your book of the same size as a publisher's advance and you'll get as much or more than you would with a publisher.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[Anonymous Coward]

...but why is there an artificial limitation on the number?

It's not an artificial limitation. Libraries pay for virtual instances of books just as they pay for physical instances of books. Several marketing models have been tried. One model had the library pay each time a book was checked out, allowing any number of people to read the book simultaneously. It failed miserably. While using the same pricing model for virtual and physical goods appears to be illogical, in fact the same market forces are at work here and the results are, likewise, the same. Granted, the manufacturing costs and distribution costs differ and those things will come to equilibrium with the market, but those are not the major costs.

If a virtual instance of a book were just a set of random bits, that would allow you to treat it as a free resource. Those bits, however are not random. The selection of those bits and their ordering (as letters, words and paragraphs) required talent, effort and time. To deny that is to deny the art within the work. You could take that legendary infinite number of monkeys with their infinite number of typewriters and create all of Shakespeare, the Library of Congress.. whatever you like. They will, of course also create an infinite amount of random trash. And to separate the small amount of art from the vast amount of trash you will need an infinite number of readers. And even if you could outsource the reading, you will be feeding those monkeys an infinite number of bananas. And missing your deadlines.

Re:A limited # of digital copies?

[LWATCDR]

"Welcome to the future, I get to decide the font and point size of books I read."

People still expect a book to be well laid out. Even if you can adjust the font and point size. T

I suggest you try this.
Get read a few chapters of a book a real book.
Then read the same amount of text with no layout work done.
You will see a real difference even if you will not admit it.
Honestly it usually takes more than a day to do the layout and check proofs.

I guess you didn't read the entire post.
"An author will get probably get .40-.80 on a paperback that retails for $8. Make an investment in your book of the same size as a publisher's advance and you'll get as much or more than you would with a publisher."

Well yea that is why I said.
"The end result should be that the cost per person should come down but it shouldn't become zero. If it becomes zero then production will stop."
So after all your complaining and whining you are saying that I am right.

Whats odd?

[bsDaemon]

I know that it doesn't really "cost" anything to make digital reproductions of digital goods, which is probably the point the summary was hinting at with the "odd thing" bit, however this seems like a fairly decent compromise to get a new media format worked into the traditional model of how libraries function. It'll get more content out, expose more people to the library system, and probably help gain new acceptance for the technology. In a few years, the model will probably evolve -- most librarians I've known were all about anything to help get people reading, and would be towards the head of the pack in pushing for new ways to make it happen.

Re:Whats odd?

[jedidiah]

It also accustoms people to the idea that digital data is something that is under the thumb of corporate overlords.

They can make it disappear whenever it suits them and that's alright with everyone...

Re:Whats odd?

[bsDaemon]

That's a problem with digital content in general, like Wikipedia. Any jackass can edit it to say anything they want any time they want, and depending on who else is paying attention, they might get away with it. I'm not particularly into ebooks, but if staring closely at a back lit screen for hours and hours is what it takes to get kids to pay attention to Pride and Prejudice sans the zombies, then it'll have to do.

Face it -- we don't live in a post-scarcity Star Trek world. We don't live in the Spanish Republic with the Anarchists (CNT) running the phone system. Some things you have to pay for, so you may as well just suck it up.

Re:Whats odd?

[L4t3r4lu5]

So you're fine with promoting yet another model of artificial scarcity to promote sales of media which can be duplicated and distributed for next to no cost whatsoever?

Let me guess, next will be loaned digital music from the library. I actually wouldn't mind that, apart from two points:

1. I don't have the original copy of the work. There are an infinite number of copies available, the artificial limit just needs to be removed.
2. The media is on my device, and without that artificial scarcity they would be free to distribute copies to the point that the charge of lending a copy against the percentage reimbursement for the original material becomes 0.

This is the old way of distributing media, when scarcity was because there was physically no more of the media made. Now, it is easy to duplicate and share. It's something they need to get their head around and adapt to, not butcher and lock down just to keep their coffers full.

Re:Whats odd?

[Amouth]

Pride and Prejudice sans the zombies

I haven't read it personally but several people i know said it was better with the zombies as it filled in some of the gaps, after reading it once i can't bring my self to do it again even if it is possibly better.

Re:Whats odd?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it doesn't bother me much when it is spelled out that I am 'renting'/'borrowing'. It is when they have 'sold' me the item and take it back that I get angry.

Hence I don't mind Netflix's streaming service and how it doesn't let me save local copies.

Re:Whats odd?

[wygit]

So do you have a solution to an author actually getting paid for their work, or a musician, or a filmmaker?

Or are they all just supposed to produce their works just for the joy of it?

I'm really asking here... I'm curious as to what your solution is, once 'they get their heads around and adapt to" this new way of distributing media.

Re:Whats odd?

[wiredog]

. There are an infinite number of copies available, the artificial limit just needs to be removed.

At which point the people working full time to produce the music or books, the actual writers and musicians, have to quit writing and playing full time, and go out and get Real Jobs. Thus replacing the artificial scarcity with a real scarcity.

Re:Whats odd?

[Anonymous Coward]

this seems like a fairly decent compromise

How is DRM that can delete your book a compromise and not a total capitulation? I don't see how the concept of compromise is applicable to DRM, either you control your device or the company does. Where is the middle ground?

Re:Whats odd?

[bsDaemon]

I'm actually a fan of Jane Austen, the Brontës, and other similar writers, but I mostly took a break from studying computers in college and got a degree in literature and history instead, before reviving my perl coding unix nerd skills to find employment. I might give whack at the zombies version, but I think it might bother me in much the same way I hated the insinuations that Beowulf did it with Grendel's mom in the most recent Beowulf movie.

Re:Whats odd?

[Amouth]

Beowulf did it with Grendel's mom in the most recent Beowulf movie.

It's things like this that keep me from watching movies..

If someone takes the time to rewrite a rather large book - there seems to be more thought (at least more effort) than what goes into movies..

Re:Whats odd?

[bsDaemon]

The dragon that fights Beowulf for the chalice? Yeah, apparently that's Beowulf's son with Grendal's mom. Then they set it up so that Wiglaf, who takes over for Beowulf, is next in line to get with her. I understand the (rapidly fading) appeal of Angelina Jolie, but that was just offensive. It was like someone took a dump on the canon of English literature. My sister and I almost left the theatre, but since we only paid $2 a piece to see the midnight showing at the Byrd in Richmond, stayed.

The worst part was, on the way out, this one homie as talking to his other homies saying, "aw, dawg, you know deyz gunna make a sequel to dat one, dawg!"... seriously, what passes for education these days is truly awful.

Re:Whats odd?

[L4t3r4lu5]

Why should I have to come up with an idea of how to make musicians money? I don't owe them a living. Still, it's an interesting proposal. How about:

Make great, original music
Tour
Sell merchandise
Become more popular
Sell more merchandise
Tour more
Sell more merchandise
Become more popular
Ad infinitum

If they're not popular, they'll flop and get a job as an accountant, maybe making songs in their spare time.

And finally, regarding your second point, yes. Yes they absolutely should produce music just for the joy of it. They say exactly that in interviews with pop culture magazines, sounding all deep and inspirational. If it's a lie, then they should be called up on it. "I make music so you idiots will pay me millions and I can retire at 30 with a Bentley and a house in Sand Banks. Suckers" doesn't sound too appealing. Are you suggesting that's why they do it?

You want to see a man making music because he loves making music? Go watch Anvil. That is a musician I can admire.

About bloody time?

[Anonymous Coward]

"'About-bloody-time", what?

This system is whacked out stupid. Try again.

LCD

[DogDude]

I see the move to e-books in libraries as a bad thing. If anything, it's the antithesis of what a library is for. Libraries exist so that everybody, no matter how poor or disenfranchised can both educate and entertain themselves (LCD = "lowest common denominator"). Anybody can read a book. Only the wealthy can afford e-book readers and the subsequent fees. If libraries move to having titles on ebooks instead of having hard copies, that immediately eliminates people who cannot or won't buy those silly, overpriced book readers.

Not only is it disenfranchising, but it's putting control of information even more in the hands of just a few big corporations. Who trusts Sony with their books? I certainly don't. What happens if Sony discontinues their service? What happens if Sony goes under? What happens if a suit at Sony decides that it's no longer in their best interests to continue this program? A book is simple, and nobody, short of a thief or vandal, can take those away from people or libraries.

I'll keep checking out physical books from my library, and I'll continue to pres my library to acquire more physical books, instead of Sony licenses.

Re:LCD

[Lemmy Caution]

I see the move to eBooks as providing a better hedge against the loss of a book than the physical possession of the book is. That "short of a thief or vandal" (or simply losing a book) is a much bigger drain on resources than you're letting on.

Libraries also have problems with space. The San Francisco library actually had to shrink its collection when it moved to its new facility, and other libraries are facing similar problems, especially for periodical collections.

Libraries have been subscribing to electronic databases of articles for ages, too. The risk of ProQuest's ABI/Inform going under is probably a bit higher than Sony disappearing, yet it seems to be working for libraries.

An e-Reader can be acquired for about $100, as well - hardly the stuff of "only the wealthy." Sony is providing e-Readers to the libraries, as well. Granted, they too can be lost/vandalized.

Re:LCD

[Again]

I see the move to e-books in libraries as a bad thing. If anything, it's the antithesis of what a library is for. Libraries exist so that everybody, no matter how poor or disenfranchised can both educate and entertain themselves (LCD = "lowest common denominator"). Anybody can read a book. Only the wealthy can afford e-book readers and the subsequent fees. If libraries move to having titles on ebooks instead of having hard copies, that immediately eliminates people who cannot or won't buy those silly, overpriced book readers.

You talk of the LCD as the poorest person who is unable to afford an ebook reader. Well consider the LCD who is bed-ridden or for some reason unable to visit the public library. This type of model allows them to now also make use of the library.

Re:LCD

[wygit]

"Only the wealthy can afford e-book readers and the subsequent fees."
      1) Only the wealthy can afford computers to PUT ebooks on their ebook readers
      2) The price of a reader is dropping to around the price of 5 hardbacks, if you buy hardbacks, which I don't. Maybe the price of 15-20 paperbacks?
      3) What fees? I've had my Sony Reader for a couple of years now, and I've never paid a fee. Everything on my computer that I transfer to the Reader is either from Gutenberg, Baen Books (some free, some just cheap) Fictionwise, a few direct-from-the-author books, or the library. The only DRM books I have are from the library.
      4) Sony has no control whatsoever over my books. Except for whatever books I might buy from the Sony store, which I haven't, they don't even KNOW what books I have. I download books to my computer and transfer a copy to my Reader. Books are backed up with everything else on my computer.
      5) As others have pointed out, the library books use DRM to basically, 'auto check-back' the book. After the 3 weeks or whatever, you can't open the book any more and someone else can check it out. I'm cool with that; I believe in authors getting paid.

Your whole second paragraph seems to be based on the "Amazon deleted the Orwell books off the Kindles" story, which is why I don't have a Kindle. But it requires the vendor to have a way to communicate with the reader, which Amazon has and Sony doesn't.

And lastly, yes, this is old news. Overdrive has been around for awhile.

Re:LCD

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever considered that the majority of the people actually going to libraries are educated, and not workshy slops living on benefits?

Re:LCD

[supercrisp]

Wouldn't the LCD already be excluded? I mean those who are illiterate. I'd point out that the illiterate are from communities that haven't invested in--due to inability or disinterest--in mediocre/good public schools. So libraries are already near-useless for those people because of a cost issue.

Re:LCD

[Jeremy Erwin]

Libraries also have problems with space. The San Francisco library actually had to shrink its collection when it moved to its new facility, and other libraries are facing similar problems, especially for periodical collections.

No, It didn't have to shrink its collection. It made that choice.

Re:LCD

[Anonymous Coward]

You are creating a false dichotomy. Libraries can carry both physical and digital media. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Physical books degrade over time through normal use, they take up physical space (limits how many books a library can stock), but don't require a special reader for most patrons. Additionally, the patron has to go to the library to check out and return physical books. On the plus side, this means a physical book can be returned before the borrowing period is over. Digital books are digital and bits don't degrade over time. You can store multiple e-books on the same reader at the same time without adding additional weight. The same digital media can be used in readers which display the words or readers which speak the words. Digital books do require a special reader. There is no way for the library to know when you have removed an e-book from a reader, so DRM is used to disable the book at the end of the borrowing period, and the book appears as "on loan" for the entire period. I think this system is a fair compromise when it comes to libraries.

Re:LCD

[michael_cain]

I sympathize with your perspective, but once the cost of hardware comes down some more (OLPC's XO-3 is targeting $75, and could be stripped down even more for an ebook-only device), and the publishers and authors figure out that there's an optimal pricing strategy, the libraries are going to be in trouble no matter what.

The "right" pricing scheme, based on what has worked for other types of content, has three tiers: initial release at $10-25, depending on the author and some other factors, mass market release at $4-8 a few months later, and when sales fall far enough, library replacement at $1-2. If you want the ebook version of the new Stephen King novel the day it comes out, you pay a hardcover price for it. Not because it's hardcover, but because it's new content. If you are willing to wait a few months, you pay the paperback price. And if you want to read last year's release, it costs a buck or two. A secondary reason for making the long term price that low is that it undercuts piracy.

By the time you get to the last step, most of the money should be going to the author. The publishers should cover their costs — and they do have costs, for editing and publicity and such, even for ebooks — on the first releases. If you're the author, which do you prefer: 10,000 loans from the libraries or 10,000 sales at a buck, most of it going to you? A prolific author probably earns a significant revenue stream just on those long-tail sales. At a dollar, lots of people are going to prefer the ease of buying a copy rather than making a physical trip to the library, or waiting in queue to access the library's copy of the ebook.

If I'm the publishers, one of my goals is to put the libraries and used-book stores out of business.

Re:LCD

[delinear]

A "move to e-books" suggests a "move away from physical books". I didn't see where that was suggested at all. A library widening its offering to include both physical and electronic books actually means it's becoming more inclusive, not less so (especially if it enables people who wouldn't otherwise be able to use the service to do so, either by remote distribution, or removing the need to be able to get books back by a certain deadline). Okay they might buy a few less copies of each book in order to fund a few digital license instead, but on the other hand maybe digital copies will actually put more money back into the system, since they don't get damaged and need replacing over time like physical copies, and it's impossible to steal them. Ultimately if nobody reads the digital edition of a book a library will order more physical copies, and vice versa, it's not in their interests to have people not reading their books.

Re:LCD

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah.. out of space = out of date. But that isn't a problem at all. Plenty of choices to fix space issues! Bags of holding on shelves. Sci-fi? Thats in the interdimensional wing, 2nd floor.

Re:LCD

[s122604]

Right, and in 20 years E-readers will be so large and expensive, only the 5 richest kings in Europe will be able to afford them..

Re:LCD

[farble1670]

Only the wealthy can afford e-book readers and the subsequent fees

you can read an ebook on any computer also. in 20 years, how many people won't have some type of computing device in their homes?

Not only is it disenfranchising, but it's putting control of information even more in the hands of just a few big corporations. Who trusts Sony with their books?

the books are loaned in EPUB format, which is standard and is not owned or controlled by sony. correct me if i wrong, but i though sony's involvement was that they were making readers compatible with the DRM'd EPUB ebooks being made available from the library. do they control the distribution of the ebooks in some way?

Re:LCD

[IronChef]

...silly, overpriced book readers.

When these gadgets were over $300 and had screens with poor contrast I would have agreed with you. But today you can get an e-ink reader with a pretty nice screen for about $150. I have seen sales on the outgoing generation of Sony readers for about $120, and those too are good units... and you don't even need to install ANY Sony software to use them for reading material that you source yourself.

For a gadget that can store hundreds of books, accepts open formats like epub, and is pretty pleasant to read on even in full sunlight, I don't think $150 is overpriced at all. It's not for everyone, but don't dismiss all of these products as worthless and overpriced.

Re:LCD

[cocotoni]

What happens if Sony goes under?

I believe that the sight of Sony going down would be worth the paltry sum of a couple of e-books.

Re:LCD

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget the bedridden people, what about the people in space? How are they supposed to visit a library. This will be great for all people who are stuck in space! There are hardly any poor people around anyway.

Re:LCD

[Quirkz]

I see the move to e-books in libraries as a bad thing. If anything, it's the antithesis of what a library is for. Libraries exist so that everybody, no matter how poor or disenfranchised can both educate and entertain themselves (LCD = "lowest common denominator").

It's a half-hour round trip to my small-town library, which has kinda lousy hours. While I see your point about books being accessible for the masses being an important thing, it would also be a tremendous convenience for me to be able to get books at home instantaneously instead of having to drive that trip twice (pick up and return). Case in point: I bought a Nook three months ago, but because I have to physically get myself to the library to sign up for the program to borrow books, I STILL haven't made it down there to take advantage of this system.

Also note that ereader prices are dropping quickly and should be affordable enough for most people soon, and that libraries usually have free computers and could easily include ereader software for even the poorest people to be able to see these books. Not a perfect answer, but not an impassible barrier, either.

Re:LCD

[Anonymous Coward]

You make an interesting point, which reminds me of something else to consider when using e-books: at the end of the it's useful life at the library, books, CDs and other physical media are sold by libraries to customers as an additional revenue stream. How does a library "sell" a non-physical item like an e-book title? After all, the libraries are buying not just the content but a license as well. If there is no easy way to permanently transfer the content and it's associated license, then the library is denied another source of revenue that physical content provides them. This becomes even more problematic when I, for example, buy e-content from the library and decide to sell it at a later date.

Should e-content, like e-books, be available in physical media as movies and music currently are? What are the other alternatives to solve this problem?

Re:LCD

[Just Some Guy]

Only the wealthy can afford e-book readers and the subsequent fees.

I bought a Nook this summer for $150. Since then, B&N have given me 112 free classic books - not the Google Books versions, but nicely typeset and edited copies - and about another dozen current novels. There is no maintenance or rental cost to keep those copies forever, and I can mount my Nook as a USB hard drive to copy off the files for backup (or to upload my own PDFs, or ebooks I've obtained from other vendors).

And if $150 / 125 per book is too expensive, consider that I could have installed the iPhone or iPad or Android or desktop versions of the Nook software and still have gotten the same books for free. Given the huge amount of free content available for ebook readers, we're already to the point that they're significantly cheaper than their printed equivalents, even if there's a non-zero initial hardware cost.

Re:LCD

[Jeremy Erwin]

From the wikipedia:

At over 376,000 square feet (34,900 m2) and with six floors above ground and one below, the new library is more than twice as big as the building it replaced.

Re:LCD

[Anonymous Coward]

Please do not abuse the TLA's.

LCD already means something.

Re:LCD

[Grumbleduke]

The obvious solution to this would be for libraries to stop giving out library cards and start giving out eBook Readers. Give it a couple of years and one would imagine that you could get a very basic eBook Reader for about £50. Obviously you'd want to make it optional, and possibly giving it to those who couldn't afford one otherwise - I'm thinking pensioners etc. (who maybe have trouble reading the small print in books/turning pages anyway) and that sort of thing...

Of course, the stuff would legally be required to be covered in DRM ... It seems to me that this move has happened in the UK because of Section 43 of the Digital Economy Act 2010, which changed the definition of a "book" in the Public Lending Right Act 1979 to include

a work, other than an audio-book, recorded in electronic form and consisting mainly of (or of any combination of) written or spoken words or still pictures (an “e-book”).

Unfortunately, it also amends the definition of "lent out" to being for a "limited time", so that's your DRM requirement, and it specifies that lending "does not include being communicated by means of electronic transmission to a place other than library premises" - so no renting eBooks directly from your library website either.

Still, Sony DRM aside, it is nice to see some potentially-good things coming from the DEA...

Re:LCD

[ResidentSourcerer]

A library with an intelligent acquisitions policy will get both paper and electronic forms of the book. ebook versions allow fast loaning for surges in popularity.

Right now when a popular pot boiler comes out, out library buys 10-30 copies, then a year later sells them for a buck each. Far better to buy 1 copy, and tell patrons, "use the ebook, or go on the wait list.

The expense of ebook readers is temporary. Look at what has happened to low end MP3 players.

  My suspicion is that at some point ebook, netbook and phone will merge. The resulting form factor will likely be larger than the present iphone, but smaller than the present netbook. I can also see niche markets for larger readers/displays.

(Would it not be cool if you could buy an iPad that had an iphone shaped slot in it? All the smarts were on the iphone, and the ipad was just a display terminal. ONE telephone account/data account. When you are on the road, you just have the iphone. Maybe the ipad is in your briefcase.
When you are on the plane, you ahve the bigger screen to work with.)

Re:LCD

[Anonymous Coward]

Libraries purchase items that circulate. Librariesare funded (under best conditions) according to those circulation figures. Items that circulate include books, CDs (which require equipment to be used) DVDs (which also require equipment). Every item that circulates, whether physical or virtual checkout, adds to the circulation figures and keeps the library running.

eBooks and audiobooks, which require equipment (although "only" a PC or Mac). eBooks and audiobooks can be "checked out" at any hour of the day or night from one's own home. They are accessible by people who cannot get to a library due to physical issues, time issues, or transportation issues.

Believe me. eBooks are not the antithesis of what a library is for. Or better yet, ask a librarian.

Late Fees?

[Nevynxxx]

But how will the libraries get by with no more funding from late fees?

Re:Late Fees?

[Anonymous Coward]

what do the late fees cover? lost or stolen books.

This technology has been around for a while

[brian0918]

I've used OverDrive's eBook/audio/video checkout services at local libraries here for a couple years now, and they all work that way. You add items to a basket, check out, and then you have access to them for a fixed period. During that period, nobody else can access them. It makes sense given how the library got the items in the first place - through licensed sale from the publisher.

Re:This technology has been around for a while

[slyrat]

Sony has also had this for ages. It has been usable for at least 2 years now. The ease of doing it with their readers is at least a portion of why I got one rather than the competition.

Sony has little to do with it.

[LoneHighway]

Sony needs to breathe new life into their own products. Overdrive Media Console is already available for many devices and many US libraries are already loaning ebooks and audiobooks this way. http://www.overdrive.com/software/omc/

Re:Sony has little to do with it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony needs to breathe new life into their own products.

SONY needs to fucking die. They don't belong in an open market.

New life?

[Nesman64]

So, is Sony the new Dr. Frankenstein? I didn't realize that books had died.
Can we call these books Dr. Sony's Monster?

Scheme already running in Hamburg

[gondel]

I am not sure if this is really news. We have had a scheme like this in Hamburg for much more than a year. http://www.bibliothek-digital.de/hamburg You take a book or newspaper out and it is unavailable to others, exactly as described in the article. You cannot return an article early, even if you are finished with it. Perhaps the main difference is that in Hamburg, the selection of books is very weak, but the selection of newspapers and weeklies is better.

Re:Scheme already running in Hamburg

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not new... I work in a library in rural central Pennsylvania and we've had a similar system setup for years. It started with audio books but we recently started adding ebooks to the collection as well.

I like it.

[Carik]

Sounds good to me. I've got no objection to paying authors -- or their editors! -- for their work, and I think it's reasonable that libraries should have to pay for books just as they always have. I would hope that the price would drop if printing wasn't involved, but the author still has to make a living somehow. And the DRM makes sense to me in this case... it leaves you with a system exactly like the old one, which works fine.

On any personally owned ebook or music, of course, I'll avoid DRM, but on a library book it's no more restrictive than their current policies.

Re:I like it.

[skunkiller3]

I used to work for a book manufacturer, and I can tell you that the cost of producing a physical book is next to nothing. I think the manufacturer charged the publisher something like 5-12 cents per book for the finished product. So, don't expect a drastic price drop in the move away from physical books..

Re:I like it.

[Carik]

Good to know... especially since at the book store I worked at, the periodic price increases were blamed on the increasing cost of paper and shipping! (Something like a dollar a book, on average, over six months... and we paid the same for shipping as we always did, so we assumed it was the cost of paper.)

New Life Into Library Books ??

[damn_registrars]

I'm not sure I agree with the claim that it would

breathe new life into library books

Currently most libraries have most of their inventory in printed books, which really aren't helped by this. The printed books do not magically become ebooks for people to check out through this reader. Sure, libraries can buy more ebooks to loan out, but that doesn't do much for the existing inventory. For that matter, many library systems are currently facing budgetary shortfalls, and now Sony is asking them to spend more money.

And on top of that, it sounds that this system actually discourages (or at least, de-incentivizes) patrons from visiting the library, which doesn't help the books much either.

After all...

[Anonymous Coward]

The greatness of our civilization was built upon artificially restricting access to knowledge, art, culture, and entertainment. Heaven forbid that fifty people be able to check out a book at the same time, without tax dollars being funneled to the middlemen and creators.

At some point in time will we ever say that it's not just about the money?

Re:After all...

[Lemmy Caution]

What do you do for a living? Chances are, to most of us, you are a "middleman" yourself. A cost. A sponge. That you may need to feed yourself or your family doing something that is of value to someone does not diminish that fact; most of us won't recognize that value.

I want to rent books

[nick357]

I would be likely to buy an eReader (Nook/Kindle,etc) if they offered a rental service. $1/day or $5/week (per book) or something like that. I don't see any point in actually buying eBooks - but I would like to rent them.

I think thats the model that will make these things take off.

Re:I want to rent books

[wygit]

You do realize that the point of this article is that the libraries will lend you ebooks for FREE?

Re:I want to rent books

[nick357]

Of course. I think thats great. I often borrow from the library now. At other times I purchase books. The problem with borrowing from the library is that they don't have an unlimited selection. If I want book A, and its on loan, with a 10 person waiting list then I have to wait... Or I could log into the Sony store and rent it right now. So, sure - free when that makes sense, but available for rent when that makes sense.

I don't like the idea of buying digital books for many reasons: 1) I can't pass them on after reading them, 2) its easy to loose your entire library by misplacing one reader, 3) the price difference between a printed book and a digital book seems small (or even non-existent), etc.

Re:I want to rent books

[wygit]

A agree about the dislike for buying digital books, but...
2) I keep my library on my computer, not my reader, and I back up my computer. I use calibre to manage my library.
3) In most cases, you're right. I've seen a lot of cases where the ebook price-matched the hardback even after the paperback was out for a third the cost.
There are ebook sellers out there that do sell non-DRM and low price ebooks. Baen for one...
and of course with non-DRM books, you've also taken care of issue. #1.

I think any book that's been out of print for 10 years should be available legally for free, electronic distribution.

Not odd at all

[elrous0]

It's not odd at all that the library would be required to treat these as physical books. It was probably the only way to get the publishers on board. Otherwise, why would anyone ever buy a book if an unlimited number of people could check it out for free whenever they wanted to?

If libraries can, why can't I?

[Albanach]

One 'benefit' of DRM is that it should make lending or even reselling trivial. Frankly I don't mind if there's even a small admin charge to cover the DRM costs.

I bought my first book on my iPad. Told a friend about it and they said "oh, I'd love to borrow that when you're finished'. Immediately it is clear that I have rented the book and I have to say sorry. The user experience is crap. Users are losing a right they have held for centuries.

Barnes and Noble have made a pathetic attempt by allowing one time 14 day sharing. Really it's just an advertising tool for the Nook.

Re:If libraries can, why can't I?

[supersloshy]

I bought my first book on my iPad. Told a friend about it and they said "oh, I'd love to borrow that when you're finished'. Immediately it is clear that I have rented the book and I have to say sorry. The user experience is crap. Users are losing a right they have held for centuries.

This reminds me of a 3-part video that's exactly what you said but in video form, including the creator of Potter Puppet Pals and the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny as the "Mac":
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Re:If libraries can, why can't I?

[Quirkz]

Barnes and Noble have made a pathetic attempt by allowing one time 14 day sharing. Really it's just an advertising tool for the Nook.

While I agree that it's a pretty crummy system, I can also look at my own habits and realize it doesn't matter that much. I hardly ever loan any books to anyone, the books I do loan out almost never go to more than one person, and most of the books I loan never make it back to me. So while it could be improved, their system does cover most of my needs, and actually improves things by guaranteeing I'll get the book back eventually.

Still rather see something like a 3-month limit and, say, 3 loans, and I'd be happier, but hey.

Re:If libraries can, why can't I?

[raylu]

One 'benefit' of DRM is that it should make lending or even reselling trivial. Frankly I don't mind if there's even a small admin charge to cover the DRM costs.

Except the part where the DRM is fundamentally flawed, won't ever work, and only hurts legitimate consumers. "Benefit" indeed.

Re:If libraries can, why can't I?

[Anonymous Coward]

One 'benefit' of DRM is that it should make lending or even reselling trivial.

Unless, y'know, the DRM provider goes tits-up or simply decides to stop running the DRM servers. Then you've paid for a bunch of useless bits.

And if you think for a MOMENT that lending and reselling will be free if this gets rolling, you may want to stop huffing paint.

Jesus would be so confused by the economy

[RabbitWho]

Okay Jesus what we're gonna do is we're gonna keep these loaves and fishes in this little box.
- But my child, there is no need, there is an infinite number of them.
yes but Jesus Christ we don't want them decreasing in value, people won't appreciate your creative energy.

Re:Jesus would be so confused by the economy

[RabbitWho]

Oh and god forbid bread-makers should go out of business!

This is what I don't understand, I spend most of the money I have on things like books and educational equipment if it's not on rent or food. If we had access to infinite food would we throw it away so a small portion of people could still make profits on selling it? Surely it would be better for them and everyone else to have free food instead? If we had access to an unlimited amount of land would we still make people buy it and rent it? Why? So the person who benefits from that can have more land? Wouldn't it make sense to let the tenants and the landlords have the infinite land for free?

And here we go! We have this exact situation with information and we're trying to limit it! what on earth is going on! People have been dreaming about this for centuries and we're charging for things FOR NO REASON.

One of the greatest modern Irish writers, John Mc Gahren, died of old age shortly before this whole e-book craze. He survived on a special state grant for artists and writers. The money from his book sales actually wasn't enough to support him. He had some bestselling books! These are the people whose incomes we are trying to think? Don't you think an infinite free library would have been worth more to him than the amount of money he earned selling those books? You think he wrote to make money!? You think that people will stop writing when they're not getting paid!? There is more writing being published and more published writers now than ever before in the history of the world.

We haven't got unlimited space or unlimited energy or unlimited food yet. These are the things we should pay for. I don't mind reading a blog that has an ad for things like this on the side, which I will buy with money I earn doing concrete things. But unlimited access to books and information wouldn't cost anyone a penny beyond the costs of electricity and bandwidth. It would make each and every one of us with access to a hundred dollar computer and the internet; writers, cleaners, artists, waitresses, CEOs - each and every one of us the richest people in the history of the world.

Re:Jesus would be so confused by the economy

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, Jesus gave the loaves and fishes away freely.

Re:Jesus would be so confused by the economy

[BaronHethorSamedi]

OK, I'll jump in on this (largely off-topic) post.

First, the DRM schemes on the library copies are an artificial restriction on the quantity of an otherwise infinitely reproducible digital artifact. I know a lot of folks around here deplore such restrictions, but please remember that it's an artificial restriction on something you are not paying for, as a condition to access something that would not otherwise be available to you. It doesn't strike me as all that unreasonable--you're getting your ebook on the same terms you'd get any other library book. Libraries have to acquire them, I assume, on terms similar to those that govern acquisition of physical copies. I will stress again that this is a library service--it's free. Even hardcore copyleftists should have a hard time getting upset about this.

Second, throwing Jesus into the mix is a cute trick, which underlines a lot of the moral problems with the arguments leveled against copyright. The Jesus story involved providing food for hungry people. My New Testament is a little rusty, but I don't recall Jesus having anything to say about digital books, mp3s, or movies, all of which are luxuries, not necessities. (Jesus may have had a thing or two to say about luxuries, but that's another story.) If you're dealing in necessities, arguments against artificial restrictions on supply make a lot of sense, since obviously people die if they don't get enough to eat. If you're dealing in luxuries, those same arguments lose a lot of their moral coherence, since it's a bit harder to argue that you have some underlying, morally compelling need for, say, a Dean Koontz novel or a video game.

In sum, if you are bothered by some artificial restriction on your consumption of a luxury item, the way to deal with that is quite simple--don't consume. You'll be none the worse off for it.

Re:Jesus would be so confused by the economy

[RabbitWho]

Don't read? Don't educate myself? Don't study?

I think we have different idea about what a luxury is. If you think it's a sin to have a fulfilling life that's your problem.
Who benefits from us having to spend money on books? Not the customer and not the author, because as i said even a successful author is very unlikely to make as much money from books as he spends on books.
Who gets the highest portion of the profit? The publishers. Why? Because they distribute it. All of us are capable of distributing books now.
It's a money pit. Money = human energy and time.

Re:Jesus would be so confused by the economy

[BaronHethorSamedi]

Don't read? Don't educate myself? Don't study?

I don't believe I ever said you shouldn't. I said if you dislike the conditions being placed on your consumption, you shouldn't consume, particularly where those conditions are given the force of law. However, at this particular point in history, there is more information available for free, unrestricted consumption than there has ever been. (Libraries are just one example. I love gutenberg.org, which is another.) Have at it, and be fulfilled.

I think we have different idea about what a luxury is.

Possibly.

If you think it's a sin to have a fulfilling life that's your problem.

Again, not sure where this is coming from. I suggested restraint in consuming things you don't need when you don't like the asking price, nothing more. Blanket arguments against artificial restrictions on distribution ("IP is imaginary property! DRM is bad!") are often asserted by people who don't like the conditions of consumption, then circumvent them to consume anyway. (Please note that I do not mean to suggest that you are such a person.) I think it makes more sense, if you're really interested in protesting the condition (as opposed to just getting something you want without paying for it), to simply decline to consume.

As to fulfillment, see above.

Who benefits from us having to spend money on books? Not the customer and not the author, because as i said even a successful author is very unlikely to make as much money from books as he spends on books.

I am fully in agreement that writing is extremely low on the scale of relative potential profitability. I don't agree that the author receives no benefit from my purchasing a book from a major publishing house, although you're very correct to point out that the publisher is going to get the lion's share of my purchase money.

All of us are capable of distributing books now.

This is both a great boon to potential authors, and a great problem. If I'm writing a novel, I no longer need a major publisher to get it out to the reading public. If I self-publish, all profits go to me. However, because anyone can take my book and redistribute it, restriction-free, my actual profits may be zero. I've gone from a meager return on the time investment that went into the novel (with the publishing house) to potentially none at all (because my self-published novel is now on bittorrent). Some form of artificial restriction on technological consumption seems reasonable to me, because while some people will pay an author for his work even if they don't have to, I'm cynical enough to think that there aren't enough of those people to keep a talented author afloat long enough to make a name for herself. Even people who do some degree of self-publishing these days are usually quick to snap up book deals with major publishing houses when the opportunity presents itself, because publishers still offer marketing possibilities that aren't available to individuals.

Re:Jesus would be so confused by the economy

[cbhacking]

Completely false parallel. You're equating the cost of duplication with the cost of an item. It's not. The cost of an item is the cost of duplication PLUS the cost of amortizing the initial investment PLUS the cost of the marketing that made you aware of the item PLUS the the profit margin that gives people an incentive to produce things.

Electronic copies reduce the duplication cost to effectively zero (bandwidth isn't *quite* free) and makes the marketing both cheaper and less important (word of mouth is easier in the electronic world).

It has absolutely no impact on the initial investment; the time to write a book and the time to edit it, plus the expenses involved in being able to do these things, are exactly the same. Authors and editors need to have reason to expect a return on their investment. There's also the little bit left to do in publishing (which may be done by the author or editor, but still isn't 100% free in most cases - everything from cover art to web hosting has a cost) as another investment that one needs to anticipate recouping.

The profit margin one is the thing that people seem to have the most trouble grasping. Even if there was absolutely no cost in production, duplication, or distribution (publishing), or if those costs were completely paid by some third party, people still would deserve compensation for exercising their creative capabilities in a way that you can benefit from. Authors are people too; they like to take vacations, raise kids, live in a nice home, buy gifts for friends and loved ones, and so forth. Do you really think that just because once something has been created means it can be duplicated infinitely means that the creator is not entitled to the income that a producer of a finite commodity enjoys?

Re:Jesus would be so confused by the economy

[martin-boundary]

I know a lot of folks around here deplore such restrictions, but please remember that it's an artificial restriction on something you are not paying for, as a condition to access something that would not otherwise be available to you.

But you're wrong, it would be available to you. The world is full of authors who are willing to give away their work without compensation, eg academic works, religious works, topical news and press releases. The writing for pay model is actually a small part of the full spectrum of writing that's going on every day. If DRM was impossible and nobody paid for documents any more in the future, then we'd still have substantially the same choice available as we have now, although if the only thing you like to read are Stephen King novels, then you'd probably be out of luck.

Re:Jesus would be so confused by the economy

[Lemmy Caution]

Remember, Jesus (or his followers) bought all the loaves and fishes that were available: he could (if one believes all the Son of God/miracle-making stuff) had fed the crowd with nothing, but he didn't. He made "copies" only when the supply had dropped down to zero, thus not putting anyone out of business.

Lucky enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

For fuck sakes.

Fuck you, slashdot.

Excellent way to lower carbon footprint

[WillAdams]

I crunched the numbers on this a while ago ( http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=619831&postcount=11 ).

Given that each hardcover book releases ~8.85 pounds of CO_2 ( http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/emeraldcity/2008/06/paper-vs-paperl.html )

And a Sony ebook reader (I used the weight of my old Sony PRS-505, 9 ozs.) requires ~16 pounds of CO_2 to manufacture (CO_2 footprint for energy: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html role in manufacturing: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49730 and ratio of 12 to 1 for energy usage to weight: http://www.epa.gov/oms/climate/420f05001.htm )

Reading 3 books on an ebook reader (which otherwise would have been purchased as printed books) puts one ahead (of course in a library situation this is ameliorated by the sharing out of the book among many readers).

That said, I mostly read public domain classics which I get from sites like www.mobileread.com

William

"New Life"?

[Arancaytar]

It's more like using more ridiculous DRM shit trying to force technology to conform to the worst traits of the brick-and-mortar library.

What is the POINT of having a waiting list for an electronic book? Is the value of the imaginary property magically diminished because people can read it concurrently?

Concurrent licensing makes at least a (very) marginal kind of sense with software, which is expected to be in use almost constantly. With books that are read once and then returned, you're just inconveniencing your customers because you can.

Re:"New Life"?

[pandrijeczko]

I agree. This is just a clever marketing ploy to find a way of getting DRM accepted by Joe Public "through the back door".

Re:"New Life"?

[farble1670]

What is the POINT of having a waiting list for an electronic book? Is the value of the imaginary property magically diminished because people can read it concurrently?

yes, it's called supply and demand. every heard of it? if you flush the system with unlimited, free copies of a book, who's going to buy it? moreover, as it's done online now, even distance from the library wouldn't be a factor.

the reasons for actually purchasing a book, as opposed to checking it out from the library are,

1. i get to keep the book forever
2. i don't have to wait to read it (if there's a waiting list at the library)

if there are unlimited copies available immediately, i no longer have a reason to purchase a book, ever again. even if i can only "keep" the book for 14 days, the fact that there is no scarcity means i can just re-check out the book indefinitely. actually, as there are unlimited copies, there's really no reason to have a time limit at all. now your library is a free bookstore. neat.

This is Odd?

[kenh]

"The odd thing about this is it works in a very similar way to the good old bricks-and-mortar library. While a title is out on loan, it's unavailable to others to borrow (unless the library has purchased multiple copies); it only becomes available again once the loan period expires and the book removes itself from your reader."

How is that odd? Do you fail to reallize that paying for one copy of a book only entitles the librar to loan out one copy at a time? This is 100% consistent with the way libraries loan out books, audio books, music CDs, video tapes, DVDs and any other material they have. If the ebooks were copyright-free (not the same as DRM-free), then they could loan as many copies as they like, but if the works are copyright-protected then that limits the sharing...

Bad Breath

[PPH]

Some of those library books smell awfully musty.

I have a simple solution to this

[hellfire]

Reduce the copyright limits back to more reasonable levels. What I mean by reasonable levels are levels where the user makes money within a shorter period of time and then it's allowed to go into the public domain where anyone can copy it. Something like a period of 20 years or so, with an option for a single extension.

Media and content should benefit the public at large. The copyright laws as they are set up now to perpetually give money to publishers for publishing and holding onto books and then simply raking in royalties for over a century, even after the author dies. The current system rewards big time names and big time publishers to sit on their laurels and not produce new content but simply milk their huge libraries is the only reason for technology like this. A library could serve a great purpose as a repository for books, a place to access the web for free, and a place to serve up free digital books if only we would remove these artificial restrictions that copyright has put on us.

AudioBooks also

[ISoldat53]

The same system loans audiobooks for free also.

The odd thing?

[jridley]

That's how all of the library loan systems I've used work. They can only have the number of files that they purchased out at once. Otherwise they could buy one copy and lend it to a million people at once. One service could buy one copy of everything and loan it to everyone for practically no cost.

Audiobook downloads work the same way.

How the heck else could it work, if authors are to ever get paid anything?

Re:The odd thing?

[hockpatooie]

Using DRM to create artificial scarcity for digital media can never be more than a stopgap solution.

As for the question "How will authors get paid" -- have you considered that just maybe the world might be a better place if *fewer* people were able to make a living by writing?

If you produce something that's not a good or service that tangibly contributes to human welfare, it should be harder to earn money from it. This is already the case to some extent.

I'm not saying that writing and arts and other intangibles cannot contribute to human welfare--on the contrary, they can do so in ways that ordinary goods and services cannot. What I AM saying is that 90%+ of books and CDs are steaming piles of manure written to make a buck and contribute absolutely nothing. Maybe artificial scarcity of media has made it too easy to get paid for producing something of zero worth.

If someone has a strong enough passion for writing/creating, they will create no matter what. Some of those will be recognized and compensated in their lifetimes, and others will not. Of course, it's not "fair". But is it less fair than the way the big publishers, who rely absolutely on scarcity, treat content creators now?

I still feel the quality of discourse in society would greatly improve if the only people who were writers were people who were at least willing to be poor for it.

So Sony Linked To Libraries Using OverDrive?

[Harnish]

My local library has had this ability for about a year now (most libraries in North America have it). All the libraries in Sony's list are simply using OverDrive like my local library. Breaking News: Sony creates page with links! More at 11.

wait, he was a publisher, too...

[Thud457]

Ben Franklin must be spinning in his grave.

Works in Linux - but still flawed

[Tryfen]

http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/2010/08/ebook-libraries-and-drm/
I wrote about this a few weeks ago.

It works in Linux if you can get Adobe Digital Editions to run under WINE.

But the whole concept of "borrowing" a digital file is nonsense.

The system for borrowing music is run on Overdrive Media Console. Linux unfriendly - but works on Android.... Go figure.

Old-ish news, and not just Sony.

[BaronHethorSamedi]

My own humble county library (Utah, U.S.A.) has had this program for a while now.

It loans e-books in a variety of formats (ePub, Mobipocket), and also has software to loan audiobooks in downloadable formats. I use a B&N nook for the ePub books (the nook's compatibility with the library was actually what sold me on it over the Kindle), and a Zune for the audiobooks (just about any mp3 player will do the trick). So it's not entirely Sony's creation.

Re:Old-ish news, and not just Sony.

[farble1670]

the nook's compatibility with the library was actually what sold me on it over the Kindle

the kindle supports .mobi.

I'm for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lock them into a deal like this -- and show users how many people are waiting for that book they've got. When you can return a book *instantly*, I think it's going to be able to get around significantly faster than the print method.

Particularly because you can read the book you've borrowed *wherever you are* because it's on your phone. Waiting in line? Oh, whip out your phone and read some more. Bored? Whip out your phone and read some more. Can't sleep? Whip out your phone and read some more. Let them keep the same restrictions, artificial though they be. --because at some point I think we'll still end up with twice the usage per book instance.

Or...

[Jaysyn]

Or how about fuck Sony & their DRM schemes.

I hope this dies on the DRM.

[Anonymous Coward]

In a world were all information is free is there a need for libraries? What are libraries but repositories for paper-based DRM. Ways to get information out to those who couldn't afford the cost of information.

Its a trap

[seeker_1us]

In 20 years, what guarantee that all these libraries will still be able to access their E-books?

Not to mention all the @#$% that Sony has pulled over the last ten years. I will not trust that company again.

if authors are to ever get paid

[wiredog]

The "information wants to be free" crowd keeps forgetting that minor little point...

Re:if authors are to ever get paid

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

They don't forget that the author needs food and rent money, they don't care. The author is to write the book and pray that people donate enough money to live on, as far as they are concerned. Or possibly get a job that does not involve digital goods.

Re:if authors are to ever get paid

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. They run out of the typical excuses--book writers can't tour! They're not good at one-person plays either--really! The hardcore pirate bay types will have problems writing in a thread about books--thus they stick to music and "touring".

This is an ideal situation for regulation

[Anonymous Coward]

This might actually be one thing worth regulating. Maybe we should pressure the government/relevant standards body to define a national book transmission format. If it were XML based it could have a tag with binary data that actually represents the book/media. The real value is in the other meta data that could be stored. For example, a history of past readers, publishing information like company and year, ISBN or other book code, where it was purchased from, ebook owner,expiration date if borrowing, any other information that might be useful. Tie this in with a national central repository and you might have something here. Heck, If the costs of eReaders could be brought down enough I could see them becoming the new "library card". Of course people could buy there own just as people would want to buy there own books. Local library's would be probably be reduced to archives and instead of having a library with lots of branches through out an area it would probably become something located down town. It would also be the natural place to go to get a public eReader.

Ok, so what is presented about isn't perfect but the idea is there and can be refined. They say the government is always behind the tech curve but I wonder if that's because we (the tech community) are being loud enough about what needs to be done before it becomes a real issue. Either way, what used to require widely different ways of transmission (CD/Book/DVD/Etc) now could all be handled with one delivery medium. Yes there is a difference between music and books but how we share them doesn't have to be different. Absent artificial constraints couldn't these be treated the same?

Can I donate my ebook?

[autophile]

...because that's what I can do with my physical books, and we want parity, right? Right?

Simple Model

[Rubinstien]

I always appreciated the Borland "Use this Software Like a Book" license. Make as many copies as needed, put it on as many computers as necessary, but use it like a book, in one place by one person at any point in time. It was a simple model and they built good stuff I did not mind paying for.

Off-topic, but fun: My best Borland experience was getting a short-term project to enhance some existing software written in Pascal around the "Borland Editor Toolkit". This product was basically an implementation of the text editor under the Borland IDE's (DOS), essentially a WordStar clone, written in Pascal with (some) source. Being an honest guy, I contacted Borland to see if I could still buy a copy, even though it had been out of production for several years. I did not feel right not having a legitimate copy of it, even though the owner of the software had supplied me with his "backup" copies. I eventually was put in touch with a VP at Borland who actually knew what I was talking about, and while he was on the phone he walked to some storage location and rummaged around and found a copy, still in shrinkwrap. He FedEx'd it to me for free. :-)

This works on a Nook, too

[NotPeteMcCabe]

I bought a Nook in July and one of the features that sold me on it (aside from the drop to $150) was the ability to borrow ebooks from the library. Not all books are available in ebook format, but many are.

Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

This is so wrong on so many levels. Restricting access to an unlimited resource..... It's just cruel... why.... share knowledge... progresss... whhassahhh psbkljs aarrggg.!#0909`````@#$(@*&()@&

Don't give Sony credit for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies like Overdrive (http://www.overdrive.com/) and NetLibrary (http://www.netlibrary.com/) have been successfully offering this exact service to libraries for years. The ebooks work on numerous devices (http://www.overdrive.com/resources/drc/). This certainly isn't something Sony should be given credit for.

Hear hear!

[professorguy]

they can turn them into 'bad' products at will

Yes! Very well said.

What is amazing to me is we've all seen products get retroactively destroyed and yet people are still willing to exchange paper books for electronic ones. Doesn't anyone else see the obvious future where books can be 'burned' remotely and without leaving a single copy in existence?

Historically, books have not been prized because they have good contrast on the pages or they feel good in the hand (arguments I've heard for paper). They have been prized because they COULD NOT BE CONTROLLED. And now we're lining up to eliminate that prized feature.

Pure 19th century Horses**t

[Simonetta]

Why is Sony so obsessed with the outmoded past? They are trying to compress 21st-century technology into 19th-century education and publishing systems. Pathetic.

  What Sony should be doing is to find a way to put the entire NYC, San Francisco, or London public library collection of books into a hand-held device, and then sell that device.

    You can buy now, a multi-terabyte hard drive, for about $100? Or you will be able to in a year or two. Have you any idea how many zipped-text books will fit in a tera-byte?
A million? Could you fit a million books into a bank of flash memory chips that could make up half the physical space of tablet-sized e-book reader?

    Why is Sony thinking in metaphors of 'number of copies of a book' that a library has to physically lend to its readers? Why aren't they thinking in terms of how many millions of books that they can fit in a hand-held device?

    Libraries were an important development in the era where words were distributed on bound stacks of printed paper. In the present era, where you can have 100000 books stored in the 16-gigabyte flash drive that you can balance on your finger, the concept of a library being limited to the number of paper-based books they have stored away is absurd.

  Sony! ...if you are going to thrive in the 21st century, stop thinking in terms of the 19th century!

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

[professorguy]

will we ever say that it's not just about the money?

Remember what Kurt Vonnegut said should be engraved on humanity's tombstone:

"We could have saved the Earth, but we were too damn cheap."

"Over a century" That's so 2010....

[professorguy]

holding onto books and then simply raking in royalties for over a century

Yes! But hold onto your seats folks, because no copyrighted work which generated even a single dollar in the previous 12 months WILL EVER GO OUT OF COPYRIGHT AGAIN.

Overdue, but Fine

[FurtiveGlancer]

I oppose any library system that won't allow me the freedom to keep a book past the due date. Sadly, that's my sole form of passive civil disobedience!

You are now my favorite slashdotter

[professorguy]

the world might be a better place if *fewer* people were able to make a living by writing

Hear, hear! I agree with your reasoning. And let's face it, the towering cynicism represented by a new boy band or vampire romance novel is frightening (and I consider myself somewhat cynical).

Rent

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm renting this comment to Slashdot. Only one person is allowed to read it at a time.

What's next?

[Dieppe]

"While a title is out on loan, it's unavailable to others to borrow (unless the library has purchased multiple copies); it only becomes available again once the loan period expires and the book removes itself from your reader."

What's next? YouTube that won't let you play a video with a copyrighted song until the last person stops playing it? Get rid of Brick-and-Mortar thinking already!

How to anonymously and safely post eBooks online ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in a country where a lot of books are either not available for eReaders or only available in locked down formats that are hard to use, even if you buy them legitimately.

I have a Sony PRS-505 eReader, and over the past week or so, I've bought a number of books from the US Amazon store, removed the DRM and used Calibre to transfer them to a format that my reader can read. For the most part, this has been LRF but I've done a couple into ePub.

All of the books that I have bought are not available where I live in a format that I can read, but they are available in paper (hardback or paperback). I know that I've violated copyright by buying these from the US when the publishers only want me to buy them in paper format in my own country, but I can live with the guilt.

To save other people the hassle of hacking their own books, I'd like to make these available somewhere. There aren't a lot, only 5 or 6, but I read quite a bit, so there will be more over time. Each book is around 1MB in size.

Can anyone advise a safe and anonymous way to post this kind of content online without paying for the privilege ? I don't really want to use usenet as my provider doesn't carry binary groups anymore and I can't find a free postable server. Bittorrent seems rife with danger from the number of people that the media come after for this kind of thing.

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

And before anyone lectures me, I know what I'm doing is wrong. But I've been running around with a fist full of money trying to give it to the publishers and they've just been telling me that they don't want it. At least I've paid for these books, even if downstream readers don't. I wouldn't be doing this if I could just buy the books locally in a format that my reader can read.

Money flow in the publishing biz?

[ResidentSourcerer]

I would be interested in seeing how the cost breaks down on a popular book.

From what I've read about the publishing business, there is an awful lot of time and energy used in moving dead tree stuff around. Right now I expect that 40% is paper, printing and transport.

Yes the publishing/editing is a significant effort and therefore cost. But my understanding is that an author gets less than 10% of the cover price of a paperback, the retailer gets about 40% and the publisher about 50% out of which he has to pay for shipping, printing and so on.

Now with internet, the price of publicity is way down. I know that with Jim Baen's books his editor team is good enough that just having the Baen logo is a good enough reason to borrow the book at the library.

Fiction publishing is is a competition for beer money. I will spend X dollars on books a year, more or less. If the books are cheaper (chapter's sales,) I don't spend less, I buy more books.

An electronic format is virtually free to distribute. If a publisher like Baen offered subscriptions for, say $20/month, that included every new book they produced, or allowed me to order from their backlog at $1/book, then they would get ALL of my beer money instead of having to share it with the book store. Sure there would be a few lemons in the basket, but so what. The net effect is a win-win. Baen gets more of my beer money. I get more books per buck.

Publishers could make somewhat more money by having tiered releases. "First Day Release" costs a buck more. If you are connected to social networks, you can start chatting about the latest release from some author ahead of hte crowd. If you are more parsimonious, you wait a month for it to be on the general release list 2 weeks later. (This may be a way to reduce their servers being swamped too.)

This assumes that people respect the IP. And from what I've read about in the Indie music scene, people don't begrudge the creator his pound of flesh, they rebel at having to give the publisher a pound so the creator gets a bite.

As to the self publishing trade, and the dreck it produces. I expect that with time, this business will evolve the way the indie music scene has too. There will be specialist free lance copy editors, continuity checkers and proof readers that for a fee will go over your work.

***

As to reference books. I dearly wish I could subscribe to Dirr's "Woody Plants & Ornamentals." as a database instead of as a book. That way I would be up to date, instead of having to shell out a hundred bucks every two years for the current edition. Probably be a lot more searchable.

and if books died???

[seekertom]

Not a good thing to think of books going away like 78 rpm records or 8mm home movies. I read at least a book a month, but many I buy used or at discount. I read fiction, stuff like King, things in paperbacks. On a kindle-type device? never. I read in bed, in my car while parked, on the can. The book is easy to carry around, easy to read, stop, read more. I read them and pass them on. Couldn't do that with the electronics books. We need to keep books alive in their present format, but that doesn't preclude adding additional formats to the printed word. This change should not be stifled. Just remember, change needs acceptance, and there are cycles to that change. At some point, someone will say, 'ok, we tried that, it sux, now take it away'. Change is self-policing. But with books, humanity needs to retain them in their present format. Anyone who has vinyl and tries to find a turntable, or has 8-trax and needs to buy a player will tell you, technology dies, and the information on media along with it, but I tell you, a book on the shelf, no matter how dusty and dog-eared, is always available for reading. Mind you, this has little to do with the publishing industry as it is today. They are only the means to having books to read. If that industry went away in its present format, another industry would replace it, because what is essential is The Book, not who makes the money putting it in my hands.