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Amazon To Allow Book Lending On the Kindle
angry tapir writes "One of the oldest customs of book lovers and libraries — lending out favorite titles to friends and patrons — is finally getting recognized in the electronic age, at least in one electronic book reader: Amazon has announced that it plans to allow users of its Kindle book reader to 'lend' electronic books to other Kindle users, based on the publisher's discretion. A book can be lent only for up to 14 days. A single book can only be lent once, and the lender cannot read the book while it is loaned out." Kindle may be the best-known e-reader, but the similarly featured Barnes & Noble Nook has had this ability (complete with 14-day timeout) for several months, if not from its introduction.
is technology really improving our lives?
By 'lent once', does Amazon mean that you can lend a book to one other person at a time, or that you can lend it to one other person, once, for each purchase? If the latter, it's not exactly that useful; if the former, I look forward to the websites letting people legally trade ebooks with one another.
The lend once only is very onerous and I have never seen a good reason why. Can anyone tell me?
I lend my book(s) more than once, even to the same person.
I hate it when they try to force non-physical objects to behave like physical objects.
I guess next they will implement missing pages....
I can download ebooks and audio books from my county library, but they use DRM and can only lend out one copy at a time. Really turns me off to the whole medium. I can see letting Joe User only lend it once at a time, but having waiting lists for a digital edition at a library is just ridiculous... They may own 15 physical copies of a book, but have bizarre restrictions on the digital version.
This is what Amazon needs to do to make the Kindle a worthy replacement for physical books:
http://www.ghostwheel.com/merlin/Personal/notes/2009/03/05/open-letter-how-amazon-can-fix-kindle-drm/
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
It's well-known that venture capitalists are increasingly interested in diversifying beyond the web into "atom-based" startups, i.e. companies working on manufacturing physical items. This is a perfect opening. While the traditional e-book has served us well for years, some of its limitations become apparent when one wants to run a lending system. It can be implemented, but clearly in an onerous manner. That's why my new startup will propose to make physical e-books. They'll be just as readable and affordable as the traditional e-books you know and love, but with our new permaprint technology, the text will actually be physically imprinted onto thin surfaces; a stack of such surfaces will contain the contents of a book. Since each permaprint e-book will be imprinted on a separate stack of surfaces, which can be moved separately, lending will be as simple as lending the appropriate stack. As an added bonus, battery life is much improved.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Pathetic artificial restrictions in a feature only needed because it is on a platform with pathetic artificial restrictions itself. Go fuck yourselves.
Barnes and Noble's Nook e-reader has been able to do this since it was released last year.
In response to the comments about the 'lend once' model: the major issue is maintaining the profitability of the book business. One could imagine a future where all books are read electronically. Now, if all books were just copied from a library server, then what's the point of buying ebooks? While some people might find the 'non-copyable digital copy' to be kind of an onerous restriction on something that can be infinitely copyable, and react with disdain towards the "why restrict what we can do with books for their own profit?", I'd say that "profit" is really a spectrum between bankruptcy (and we don't want authors to go bankrupt) and 'getting rich' (which we might justly or unjustly have a problem with).
What is the solution? One possibility would be if society - as a whole (not just small segments of the population) - was very generous about donating to authors. This way, authors wouldn't be forced between: (1) having copy restrictions on their work and getting paid vs (2) having no restrictions on copying their work, but not getting adequately paid for their work / going bankrupt.
And, to anticipate all the "Doctorow" arguments: there's a variety of reasons he continues to make money. First, most people still want printed books (this is changing though), and authors get paid for those printed sales. Second, he's famous, in part because of his role as a political activist, being the guy who gets mentioned whenever free-books comes up (which means lots of free promotion), and member of one of the most popular websites - which he can tap for free promotion, and people want to support him to promote his activism. Third, people appreciate that they can get his work for free despite the fact that most everyone else doesn't allow that - which influences people towards donations. He's also hinted at times that he really doesn't make much money from books - which is why I see him writing magazine articles and turning up in other places. I'm convinced that if all books were allowed for free - thus, that was "the norm" rather than "the thing that *this* author does when everyone else doesn't do it" - that people would pretty quickly forget about donations, or would suffer from donation fatigue (I donated to author W, so I've done my good deed - no reason to donate to author X,Y,Z). I'm pretty sure no students would be donating to textbook publishers - and while they may or may not be overpaid, that doesn't mean they won't be drastically underpaid with a "free for everyone, please donate" model.
So, there's your solution to a "free digital media" society: convince society that they should donate so that creators don't feel like they have to restrict their work in order to pay their bills.
Cute, but one of the ways to deal with piracy is to remove the idea of "the copy". In other words every reader gets a very personalized original. Technology will make this easier.
I've lent several books to friends and relatives.
Most of them had the books for months or years, returned something that didn't look at all like the book I gave them, or didn't return them at all.
So, this new "feature" is not at all like lending books!
If I own the book I should be able to lend it for as long as I like, or lend it several times, or even give my copy away. They have the DRM technology in place to prevent theft of multiple copies, but they refuse to let the user do as he wishes with his own property (In spite of Amazon's own insistence of the rights of first ownership when they were aggressively into selling used books before the days of the Kindel and its DRM). As far as I'm concerned, if there is abusive DRM like this that diminishes the rights of the owner then I don't really own it, so I'll refuse to buy into the technology until they clean up their act.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
True. Paper books don't provide convenient means and permission to make temporary partial copies. You have to loan out the whole book. Just as you have always been able to loan out your Kindle.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I'm assuming that's your blog, and your point there is ridiculous. Stop trying to map physical objects to digital versions. That's what the RIAA is trying to do and most /.ers (as well as most people informed on the subject) think it's unreasonable to expect a digital medium to have the same restrictions the physical medium does. Treat each medium separately, and instead of pointing out advantages one has over the other and pushing for those to be mapped into each domain, KEEP THEM SEPARATE. It's an e-book. It's digital, can be copied for zero cost, etc. etc. Don't whine about not being able to share it with a friend. Yes, that's an advantage of the physical book. But it isn't a physical book, it's an e-book. So why try to create a system to match physical books?
Wonderful since we're keeping things separate does that apply to the economic laws too?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
If all books were copied from a library server:
Purchasing ebooks would be extremely expensive
Ridiculous copyright infringement damages might be logically justifiable
There would be a profitable business model for subscription libraries
Public library servers would probably carry mostly public domain, or old copyright books.
Bookstores might offer library services with their wifi.
@guyminuslife, publishers have to opt-in to the lending feature, not all titles will be "lendable"
I can see being able to lend it to one person at a time - that's analogous to what we have with the physical goods now. But only being able to lend it one time - bullshit. Why shouldn't I be able to lend MY book to how ever many people that I want, as many times as I want - so long as it's one at a time? Answer: There's no good reason.
Why just 14 days? What if the person I lend it to is a slow reader? Who is the publisher to say that I can only lend it once, and only for a specific number of days? Screw them.
Why ONLY if the Publisher agrees? They don't have that ability with physical goods - so screw them again.
This is why I'm 100% against Digital Restriction Management. It's a bunch of draconian crap that gives too many rights to the publisher, and takes too many away from the buyer.
And yes, I'm not a licensee - I'm a BUYER. I own it, I'll do what I damn well please with it thank you very much.
When Publishers reduce their pricing enough so that it's not worth it for me to pirate the thing, or when the pirated version doesn't give me more rights and abilities and less hassle than the commercially-available version, then guess what I'll do?
Until then - I'll crack it, and get it from where it's least expensive... Eventually they'll get the message. If they don't - then they can go right out of business like the schmucks at the **AA's. And we can get back to business with the actual authors and creators of these masterpieces...
Lent only once? And only for 14 days?! Whoever come up with this moronic idea obviously never read books himself.
Fuck off, Amazon. I am going to delete the just-downloaded Kindle app on my iPhone even before I ever launched it. Thanks for saving my time and money, the Kindle platform is useless to me.
Never lend a book. Only give or do not give
re: publishers have to opt-in to the lending feature, not all titles will be "lendable"
Translation: this is NOT a feature for users, this is a marketing tool for product placement.
If lending doesn't fit into the strategy needed to get the product sold, it won't be enabled.
If the book's sales are lousy, they might turn on lending... once a book has a chance of becoming popular, or being a bestseller, and lending is more of a liability, they turn lending off.......
Fuck this shit!
That is all.
Why do I need the publisher's permission to lend an electronic book? If I buy an actual book I can do whatever I want with it. Why are electronic books different?
This clearly violates my rights under the first-sale doctrine:
No additional copies? This requirement is satisfied by the following digital restriction:
Under this doctrine, I have a legal right to control the change of ownership of any electronic books I have purchased. In other words, my legally purchased copy may lawfully be sold, lent, traded, or given away at my discretion, not the publishers.
Publishers who prohibit the lending of electronic books should be named, shamed and avoided. Why give financial support to publishers trying to abrogate our first-sale doctrine rights?
Do radioactive cats have 18 half lives?
So the Amazon takes away most of your freedoms and then it's a major victory when they give a tiny bit of them back?
Clearly with this particular technology, non-free eBook readers, it is not. Publishers and distributors shouldn't be allowed to determine how long you can lend a book to someone, which books you can lend, nor should they have the power to track your book lending or cut off your book lending. Only you should decide these things for yourself. If Amazon can (in the words of the all-too-supportive /. headline which looks more like an ad) "plan to allow users of its Kindle book reader to 'lend' electronic books to other Kindle users" then clearly Amazon will have the power to do all of these things to any Swindle user. Comparing this book reader with some other non-free eBook reader like Barnes & Noble's is besides the point—choosing between proprietors is not freedom. You should declare your freedom to decide these things for yourself and use only a free software eBook reader and books you can fully read and share without DRM, or select no eBook reader at all and continue reading paper books.
Digital Citizen
they'd allow people to run digital libraries to lend out ebooks.. for free OR a fee, and automated via a web api or reader app.
So really they're going to allow the possibility of publishers to allow lending.
Because *I* want to have a say in how the next technological regime for literature will be structured, I download and copy books.
Tenemus pyrobolos atqui jacimus cognitiones.
Amazon has announced that it plans to allow users of its Kindle book reader to 'lend' electronic books to other Kindle users, based on the publisher's discretion.
I think the above is a succinct summary of the problem. It shouldn't be up to Amazon or the publishers to "allow" it in the first place.
Forced Artificial Scarcity.
It's atrocious, and it's all enforced by DRM.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Asimov did this long ago, while panning "The Double Helix" at the same time. And now for some meta-humor, I post a link to a DRMed eBook edition of that short story.
http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook3062.htm.
(Hint: don't buy it in that format. Find a used copy of "Opus 100" instead. After that you might feel morally justified in downloading it. Or not --- a chacun son gout.)
Thomas Jefferson: ""Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property." "
"There's a little part of me that likes this. I can't tell you how many times I've lent stuff to people only to have it never come back - even after asking for it back."
Improvements in technology aren't going to help you fix your ability to judge who you can trust to lend your possessions to, or who you choose as friends.
Or perhaps more to the point, maybe one day technologies might be able to support these decision making processes but they are such valuable life skills that they are worth you learning, regardless of what technologies are available.
If I pay actual money for something I expect to possess it unconditionally. This news only makes me keener not to pay for DRM-restricted media.
I usually pass my books on to charity shops after I've read them. I guess they'll lose out in the ebook age. I've never understood why some people hang on to every work of fiction they've ever read. I read an article recently (sorry no cite) of someone who uses the ebook for preference but also buys a hard copy for their bookshelves. Does not compute.
21 comments at threshold 4 and not one person has noticed that the ability to lend a book is determined by the publishers?
Yep, that's right. The restrictions on 14 days and only once per book pales into insignificance if the publishers flip the "do not allow lending" button when they upload the content to Amazon.
I would not be surprised if a very small amount of Amazon's portfolio have lending enabled.
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There is a major difference between owning a physical book and owning a digital COPY. Yes libraries exist but to those who can afford it, a library of your own, with your favorite books is something nice. Something that finishes a house. To sit in your library however modest and read, that is a delight that you just don't have with a digital copy.
It is why libraries didn't destroy book publishing. But when the act of owning a physical book is gone, when the difference between owning a digital copy (as far as they can even be truly owned) and renting or borrowing one is gone, then why spend extra money?
There is a risk here. Of course, with the internet we also got free vanity publishing (like this post) and getting your written word out is far cheaper. Maybe the industry will change or evolve. But it will never be the same.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This is a stupid idea. "Lending" digital text makes about as much sense as buying digital music.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
I haven't read the millions of comments before mine, but this announcement feels like a test drive to me. Kindle knows it needs to keep going against the Nook and that the Nook has had the ability to lend books since its inception. I feel its just Amazon seeing how much books are actually lent out between users and how it affects their numbers (increase in Kindle sales? decrease in book sales due to book lending?). My guess is after a while they might increase the lending period and frequency if things look good. I'm glad they are listening to their users and watching their competitors! I figured from the inception of Kindle that its Amazon's REAL bread and butter product and they definitely want to get this thing going. Color e-Ink next!
I think this is a great move by amazon. A lot of people were upset with not being able to share books with friends this feature allows that to happen. The feature is very true to life if you lend a book to a friend you would want the book back and you would not be able to read the book since your friend had the book in his possession. I think features like this a long with great wireless support is going to kill paperbacks in years to come.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
Thanks Amazon, I promise to be good.
Can I stay up past 10 too? Please, please, please.
It is simply normal, social behavior to lend your friends books, music, or whatever. In addition, this lending can drive viral acceptance, adoption and even purchase of the music, book, etc. Restrictions (e.g., DRM) that go against normal human behavior, also inhibiting viral, social awareness of books and music is just bad business. Bravo to Amazon for figuring this out.
I don't understand why this is so complicated for the businesspeople who are trying to develop eBooks to grasp. The strength of eBooks, are (primarily): The lack of size and weight restrictions on the library a person can take with them, and (for all practical purposes) instantaneous content delivery. That's it. Everything else about the experience is completely sub-par to dead-tree editions. Instead on simply capitalizing on those strengths, they expound the weaknesses by adding on these ridiculous usability restrictions. Really? The *last* thing I want to worry about if I have a book I want to share with somebody is whether or not I've shared it before, or who is "share-worthy" or... being the receiver, that there is now a ticking time-bomb attached to when I have to read this book. Seriously? Libraries lend books for longer than that; and I have books as both a lender and lendee that have been out for over 2 YEARS! What is going to happen is the lendee is going to tell the lender, "Oh, don't send it to me yet, I won't have time until after the holidays." ---Great, that throws the burden back on me, the lender, to get back with them in order to lend them a book that I've already read! What's far more likely is eBooks just won't get lent, full stop. Things they should have focused on were the things that the technology makes possible, for example let me as the owner "pull back" my eBook from a lendee. Instead, they've just made more aggravation for me. Now, I didn't major in business, but I'm pretty sure there's a class called Don't_Annoy_Your_Customers_101 that's required for graduation. It's ironic but, everything Kindle has done has made the old paper editions look just that much more attractive. So, I'll keep buying them too.
As I understand it, you can get ePub books from the library, but not AZW formatted. It seems to me that would give ePub ebook makers a competitive advantage.
Maybe Amazon wants to make AZW format available to libraries, while not supporting ePub?
IMO: kindles should support ePub. Stop the "tower of babble."
It's funny. Books are even easier to pirate than music, movies and games. Book publishers have had decades to observe what happened when the DRM crowd got greedy and evil instead of humble and sweet and they are poised to make enough blunders to drive would-be pirates to say "Oh, it's like this? Then fuck all of you!" and give them excuses to pirate books wholesale.
Trust people's gratitude! When I read a good book, I am grateful, I feel [i]love[/i] for the authors, I [b]want[/b] to give them my money, [i]and[/i] buy them drinks, [i]and[/i] lavish them with praise, [i]and[/i] proselytize for them. Hell, I will give them my blood to keep them alive and read more of what they write!
Publishers: What you need to do is make me, make US believe, [i]really[/i] believe that you take good care of your authors, that you are fair to them and that the vast, vast majority of the money we pay is going to them, not you. We don't care that much about you. I care a little bit about the editors that help shape a book but that's about it.
If you don't do this, people will just feel entitled to pirate your books by the hundreds. It's SO easy and a thousand award-winning books can be downloaded in hours and last anyone a decade. The honest ones among us will just send 10 bucks to the author for all the books he/she ever wrote. It'll probably be more money than they'd get in royalties. And those of us who won't pirate them can read some of the million free books google has put online.
This is coming from a 1st gen kindle owner who has bought dozens of DRMed books and magazine subscriptions. Now, I want my ePub format support, I want my DRM-free files, I want my resale rights. I'm asking nicely, aren't I? Oh, and give authors at least 80% of the price of the book.
Looking forward to buying from you again!