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Amazon To Allow Book Lending On the Kindle

Posted by timothy on from the glad-this-isn't-how-physical-books-act dept.

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.

16 of 280 comments (clear)

  1. sometimes, you have to ask yourself... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    is technology really improving our lives?

    1. Re:sometimes, you have to ask yourself... by migla · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Didn't you hear? Previously you couldn't lend a book to someone and now, with technology you can!

      Seriously, the restrictions of 14 days and lending only once is so ridiculous that it should push people over to the side of sharers.

      How many books could one roundtrip of the sneakernet fit?

      --
      Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
    2. Re:sometimes, you have to ask yourself... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The kindle is a great piece of hardware, but why buy books from Amazon when you can instead buy DRM-free ebooks from more enlightened publishers like Baen? Then you can lend ebooks without worrying about any silly restrictions. (Really, two weeks? I'm a bit envious of those who have enough free time for reading to reliably finish books in only two weeks...)

      Of course, some day I may run out of science fiction/fantasy/space opera/etc. authors that I like on Baen; I guess then I may have to decide between the immoral option of actually buying DRMed ebooks from Amazon and the illegal option of buying paperback editions and then pirating the corresponding ebooks.

    3. Re:sometimes, you have to ask yourself... by brit74 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > "Seriously, the restrictions of 14 days and lending only once is so ridiculous that it should push people over to the side of sharers."

      To be fair, virtually anything a company does (short of policies that would result in their own bankruptcy) are easy excuses for "sharers". Example: "they charge money for books - that should push people over to the side of sharers." Presumably, the "solution" for them is to stop charging money for their products.

    4. Re:sometimes, you have to ask yourself... by mysidia · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      In this case, though, the restriction is too tight. There ought to be no specific time limit.

      The person who lent the book should have a 'return' button to push once they're done with it. They should be required to connect to the network every 7 days to verify the book is still lent out to them.

      When the person who lent the book selects the book they should have a 'request it back' button.

      Once it's requested back, the person who lent it out will get a text message sent by the person who lent it to them. They'll have 14 days to hit the 'return' button. 14 days after it's requested returned, the return is forced.

      The person who lent it should also have an ability to set a 'due back by date' when lending the title.

      Restriction against lending something again are absurd.

    5. Re:sometimes, you have to ask yourself... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You know, I've got a lot of technology around my house. I like it. Very much. I abhor the practices of current industry to try and monetize every thing I do. I love books. Reading them, enjoying a fine binding and appreciating quality paper, lending them even if they don't come back (no dig towards you). So gracious of those companies to allow me to lend my book. Once. Fuckers.

      Besides, what the hell are all the censorship minded folk going to do, burn a pile of their Kindles :)

      Man, pretty soon I'm going to be to old to be on my own lawn.....

    6. Re:sometimes, you have to ask yourself... by Mathinker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > Do you think one can do this?

      Legally? Who knows. Why don't you go and hire a $200/hr lawyer to do some research about it. BTW, even if he says "yes", that doesn't mean that Amazon's lawyers won't someday decide "no". In fact, my guess is that it's probably unlikely that the Kindle book distribution service will outlive a healthy teenager of today. The most likely scenario is that suddenly one day those books will just disappear.

      OTOH, you probably could probably just as easily put your Kindle on/under your scanner/camera and just scan your books, page by page. Or even, *gasp*, download the books illegally from a public WiFi connection (they're *books*, no one is going to notice the bandwidth if you download them one at a time), or if you're uncomfortable with that, ask a friend who knows how to do this to do it for you and send you the books by email.

      Don't you feel any indignation at all that copyright has been twisted so much you have to go into intellectual contortions to think about how you might be able to pass on your books to your children after you die? And some of the best methods to do this are illegal?

    7. Re:sometimes, you have to ask yourself... by bzipitidoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, the solution is to find another business model. Stop expecting that there is a future in charging repeatedly for mere copies of collections of info, which with current technology anyone is quite capable of reproducing at extremely low cost.

      The reality is that information is not a scarce resource. These dinosaurs are clinging hard to the recent past when information was tied to media that is a scarce resource and wasn't so easily copied. That has changed, big time. They hold back all kinds of progress, to the detriment of us all. Copying is not a sin, and no excuse need be made for it. The sins being committed and garbage excuses being made are the ones the content industries do to justify themselves. There is no justification for the arrogant idiocy known as DRM, particularly that sort which not only tries to exert more control than they have a right to, but which recklessly endangers others' information, as the Sony root kit did. Nor is there justification for their purchase of ever more ridiculous and unenforceable laws such as the various "3 strikes" provisions, their pursuit of ordinary citizens for "piracy" for purposes of terrorizing the public and not just recovering compensation for alleged harms suffered, and their furious attempts to contain DRM breakage by resorting to extremes such as overzealous arrests and jail time for people such as DVD Jon and Dmitry Sklyarov, who are not criminals. And they do all this no matter what that costs in damage to reputations including those beyond their own, in the chilling of scientific and technological advance, and in the showcasing of tools, techniques, and arguments other reactionary forces are only too eager to use for their own nefarious agendas, as seen in things such as those ACTA drafts that they tried to keep secret, and the routine abuse of the DMCA to keep information from the public.

      --
      Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
  2. Still not good enough. by ChrisKnight · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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/

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    -- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
    1. Re:Still not good enough. by ickleberry · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They need to get rid of DRM altogether. It worked for iTunes and many others

      DRM is stupid - i would not buy a closed device that implements such restrictions against me. When you buy a piece of hardware it should do what *you* want, not what the company that made it (and still controls it) wants it to do.

    2. Re:Still not good enough. by BlitzTech · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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?

      You can't have it both ways. Cheap, DRM-free music and e-books, or RIAA versions of both. All the arguments being made for physical media -> digital media are the same the RIAA uses. Pick one.

      Not posting as AC because I stand by what I believe. DRM sucks and needs to be removed, but publishers/artists/companies AND CONSUMERS need to understand that the two media are not the same and stop trying to make them such. In case someone gets the wrong idea from this post, I want the DRM-free versions and can't wait for companies like the RIAA to stop existing. I just think wanting to have it both ways makes you a hypocrite.

  3. Pathetic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Pathetic artificial restrictions in a feature only needed because it is on a platform with pathetic artificial restrictions itself. Go fuck yourselves.

  4. too little, too late by frovingslosh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  5. Re:Lent once at a time, or once ever? by alannon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If only there was some sort of brick & mortar equivalent of such a scheme to use as a point of comparison, but then, surely our society would never allow some sort of public book repository where a member of the public could borrow the book for a limited amount of time, as that would have destroyed the book publishing industry! Who would ever want to own their own copy of a book if they could just borrow it for free?!

  6. Re:Lent once at a time, or once ever? by drew30319 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If I were Amazon I would be doing more than this because the first-sale doctrine will eventually be held to include digital goods. The more that Amazon does now to treat ebooks like physical goods the longer that they'll be able to continue before they are explicitly required to do so. The fact that their current licensing scheme has lasted as long as it has surprises me; this has to be at the back of their minds.

    And FYI, libraries around the world (in countries including the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, Mexico) are already offering ebooks online. Check out http://search.overdrive.com/ListLibraries.aspx

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    JAGga.me ----> Producing video games addressing emotional health and wellness issues affecting teens.
  7. Re:Lent once at a time, or once ever? by icebraining · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The publishers don't have to give us ebooks. They can refuse to put out anything but paper books.

    Even if most won't, some will, and they'll make a killing - even if the margins are low, the company with the monopoly always makes a good buck. Then it'll eat the others' market, which will have to follow suit if they want even a small piece of the pie. It's simple market based economy.

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