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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."
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.
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.
I don't respond to AC's.
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.
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.
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).