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.

Comments

Lent once at a time, or once ever?

[Ndkchk]

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.

Re:Lent once at a time, or once ever?

[guyminuslife]

I look forward to the websites letting people legally trade ebooks with one another

This is what will kill this plan; or rather, what will convince publishers to never, ever, ever allow ebook lending. It would be possible to set up a site, or a protocol for lending books, where you share the unused books you have licensed in a big pool with a bunch of other people; members who share will simply check out books from the pool. Then, it's fishes and loaves: if you have 2 copies of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", and 100 people who want to read it, they can all read from those two copies, 2 at a time. That would call for a queue, but a less popular book might not. And even if you don't want to wait in queue, if you purchase a copy, then there will be 3 books in the total pool....and eventually there will be more copies than there are interested readers at any given time, and no one will have to buy the book.

People complain about first-sale doctrine with digital goods, and I understand, but the fact of the matter is that the potential for a streamlined secondary market for digital content is a much larger liability than it is for physical goods. Even having to make the trip to GameStop to sell your copy of Prince of Persia is prohibitive compared to being able to purchase a game, immediately license it out to people on the cloud, and then license a different copy whenever you feel like playing it.

Re:Lent once at a time, or once ever?

[drew30319]

Our corporate overlords will never allow it. Even judges are only as good as the corporations pay for.

Fortunately the Constitution has something to say about copyrights. Check out this Congressionally-mandated report about the feared impact of DMCA on the first sale doctrine.

DMCA Section 104 Report

A plausible argument can be made that section 1201 may have a negative effect on the operation of the first sale doctrine in the context of works tethered to a particular device. In the case of tethered works, even if the work is on removable media, the content cannot be accessed on any device other than the one on which it was originally made. This process effectively prevents disposition of the work. However, the practice of tethering a copy of a work to a particular hardware device does not appear to be widespread at this time, at least outside the context of electronic books. Should this practice become widespread, it could have serious consequences for the operation of the first sale doctrine, although the ultimate effect on consumers is unclear. (emphasis mine)

And here's an interesting law review article about the most significant obstacle to applying first sale to digital rights "digital exhaustion." Digital Exhaustion: UCLA Law Review, Vol. 58

Amazon (and publishers) are much better off if they can keep Congress from either creating legislation or the Courts from creating precedent about the first sale doctrine as it applies to digital media; one or the other is going to happen if they don't treat digital media more like traditional media.
And that's why Amazon is begrudgingly offering this "lending" feature.

Re:sometimes, you have to ask yourself...

[Enry]

In some ways, yes. I really like my Kindle. Mostly because it allows me to carry a good portion of my library in my bag. I have about 4 books on it that I'm currently reading along with one that I'm currently reading to my daughter.

I've bought almost all the books (some were PD, so didn't cost anything) and are books I may not have bought otherwise since they were impulse buys from the store. I'm looking at you "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo".

Do I still buy physical books? Sure. Do I miss lending? Sorta. Books I lend out rarely return. My copies of "Snow Crash" and "World War Z" are somewhere on the East Coast of the US, but I can't get much more specific than that.

What I would love to see for the Kindle and iTMS is a family account, where my wife and I can each have a Kindle managed separately under our own accounts, yet share books between us without having to repurchase the book. She has her preferences, I have mine, and neither one of us wants our suggestion list 'spoiled' by the other, though there are times we like the same book and would each like to read it.

Re:Still not good enough.

[socsoc]

That's a pretty great idea. I usually don't read books again after my initial read, so the ability to gift, trade or sell them appeals to me.

Hmmm...

[mordejai]

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!

this-isn't-how-paper-books-act

[John Hasler]

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.

Re:sometimes, you have to ask yourself...

[shutdown -p now]

Sure it does. I own a Kindle DX, and, insofar as reading convenience goes, it's awesome. But I don't use their store except for newspaper subscriptions. For books, I go to a book store which sells me legal books in Kindle-supported format (.mobi) with no DRM for 1.5-2x less than a paper book.

Re:sometimes, you have to ask yourself...

[mysidia]

So, just to follow up on something a lot of people complained about when it happened, you're totally cool with Amazon having the ability to delete a book off your device without your explicit authorization?

Service provider control of their device is a totally different matter.

Just about any eBook maker that provides an online store would be capable of doing this -- providing a hook in their software to allow the store to perform a content delete. If not in the current version, they could easily roll the ability in a mandatory upgrade version if they wanted.

Similarly, Microsoft could delete any program off your computer, or tamper with your Firefox config in a windows update, if they wanted.

I am totally cool with them having the technical ability as long as they don't actually use the ability, except in a case where it can only benefit me.

For example, I would be happy to have a feature to delete all my books remotely and move them to a new device, if, for example, someone stole my portable ebook reader.

Re:sometimes, you have to ask yourself...

[cmiller173]

What happens if the "you" is a corporation or other legal entity that is not a real person with a real lifespan? What if the owner of the Kindle and the Amazon account is "The Ira Howard Foundation" for example?