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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."
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.]
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
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.