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.

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.

[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.

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

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

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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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

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.

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?

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.