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The Looming Library Lending Battle
smitty777 writes "The NY Times is running a piece on the tug of war between publishers and libraries for e-book lending. In one corner are the publishers, who claim that unlimited lending of e-books 'without friction is not a sustainable business model for us.' For example, Harper Collins claims in this corporate statement that unlimited lending would lead to a decrease in royalties for both the publisher and the writers. The NYT author further states that 'To keep their overall revenue from taking a hit from lost sales to individuals, publishers need to reintroduce more inconvenience for the borrower or raise the price for the library purchaser.' Their current solution is to limit the number of readings to 26 before a book license must be renewed. In the other corner are the libraries, who are happy that e-books are luring people back to libraries, bringing with them desperately needed additional funding. With e-book sales going extremely well this year and the introduction of more capable e-readers, this debate is likely to get worse before it gets better. The Guardian also has an interesting related piece on the pricing practices of the Big Six publishers."
Keyword: "friction", in this context.
what is next college libraries can't have textbooks that are being sold in the book store. Now e-books end being just as bad as the college book market.
Shouldn't changing dynamics of supply and demand dictate the market needs? It sounds like these companies are simply grasping at straws to hold onto the last vestige of their current position by artifically creating demand. It's bollocks, if you can't make a living as a writer then you probably shouldn't be..
"...publishers need to reintroduce more inconvenience for the borrower"... In other words don't read our books.
What is the value of something that can be replicated forever.. Perfectly. For what can be considered zero cost.
Is it zero as some believe?
Is it thousands of dollars as the media mafia believe?
Who's being greedy here... Everyone?
I'm sure the somewhere in the depths of SOPA, the "library problem" is being handled.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
I live in The Netherlands where politicians too try to bend our on-line behavior in compliance with the copyright law. Parliament hasn't discussed 3D printing in relation to patent infringement yet afaik so we have some (not so) interesting times ahead. Somehow the notion of how fundamentally the world has changed with digital tools and the internet hasn't gotten in the minds of many people yet.
The point isn't that creativity or originality has become something of a lower value than before or deserves less encouragement/defense, the point is that the legal fantasy of "intellectual property" simply doesn't work like it used to do. But we've gotten phenomenal new things of great value too with digitalism and internet.
No really, my binary copy is identical to your digital original and I've gotten my copy from the other side of the world in less time than it took you to equip it with DRM and it's no fucking magic. Yes really.
"I'm not much interested in interoperability. I want substitutability. I want to be able to throw your software out."
As this year marked the passing of this brilliant man who struggled with this question all his adult life, perhaps it would be best to read it in his own words.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I guess I've always wondered why we have book stores at all... since every book I've purchased over the last twenty years I had checked out from the local public library at least once. Since the proliferation of the interwebs, many people are accustomed to trying software or books for free before purchasing them. I see no reason, other than the personal greed of our corporate overlords, that Barnes & Noble et al should exist in 2012.
B&N won't let me try the book for free before making me pay. The prices they are charging for digital distribution are not based in the non-scarcity reality of digital media. Therefore, I suggest the digital book revolution will end before it ever truly gets started; if we serfs allow our corporate Lords to interfere with the decades old tradition of literature lending.
I can't really see going to the Library to get an ebook since you can just buy it online easily anyway. The point of the library used to be that the ordinary person in any given community didn't have access to very many books privately so the library made knowledge more accessible by keeping all kinds of books that anyone in the community might reasonably need: philosophy, encyclopedias, maps, science, etc etc. Building and stocking these libraries nationwide was a HUGE industry. Libraries in poor communities where people can't afford a kindle or nook or even just a laptop might still be operating as repositories for community information... but in the end the library will likely go the way of public wifi spots... its a great idea to give people access to information but if some gigantic corporation finds out that millions of people are getting something for nothing... well then it suddenly becomes a commodity that can be turned into a revenue stream. Cities are desperate to keep libraries open, so the big publishers and the New York Times have a captive audience. Librarians will pay because their readers demand it. Cities will pay because they want to keep libraries open. Maybe a wealthy philanthropist can do for E-Libraries what Andrew Carnegie did for physical libraries someday. The difference is that physical libraries had to buy millions of physical books over the course of decades whereas a e-libraries do not. They just buy the books people actually request.
if your life is such a big joke then why should I care?
For folks who want to read, and maybe even, learn? What is this world coming to?
Where's the Fahrenheit 451 Fire Department, when you need one?
Ironically, it looks like we might see this day, since distribution of physical printed material can't be limited and controlled . . . by whoever wants to control it, for whatever reason.
Printed books . . . they just cause trouble.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I have yet to meet a debate in which I did not favor the side of the Libraries, if there was one.
... doesn't like when things like lowering their income through radical technology effects them instead of workers. It's ok to look down on the poor and people who's jobs are offshored as not being 'efficient' or 'competitive' but when it happens to business models or "intellectual property" (read: Intellectual monopoly) - heaven forbid!
With the In one corner are the publishers, who claim that unlimited lending of e-books 'without friction is not a sustainable business model for us.'
WTF is "friction"? And what is this "unlimited" thing? I don't know how the Amazon deal works but the Overdrive model allows libraries to loan a specific number of copies of each title. There's nothing "unlimited" about that. I'm patron 19 of 22 waiting for one of 3 copies of a title on my list. And what's "friction"? Do they mean I no longer have to haul my fat ass to the library to get the book? I don't have to do that buy purchase their book in ebook form, either. Seems like a pretty level playing field to me. And the artificial scarcity created by the licensing model might push me towards purchasing since I can get it right now instead of a few months from now. Is that what they call "friction"? If so, again...covered.
Publishers, stop acting like you sell paper. You don't. You sell content. Act like it.
You can start here and read up on it. It's a rather abstract concept. Publishers need a market with friction because they live on the transaction costs people buying books. In a sense, publishers are the friction.
I don't like these guys but this is the correct assessment of the situation. Limitless free library ebooks are the death of them.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Society didnt show mercy to carriage industry when automobiles came out.
There is no reason why it should show mercy to publishing industry - carriage industry produced something even. publishing industry is just middlemen. and now, unnecessary.
And look how they threaten new technologies and those who use new technologies - 'without friction' they say. wow. imagine it with carriage industry - if this suing frenzy bullshit had been around back at the start of 20th century, we probably wouldnt be using cars as we are using them today.
i say fuck them. you should say so too. society's progress cannot be held hostage to the desires of a minority interest to protect its private profit.
Read radical news here
It's a tough time for libraries. First they had to deal with becoming homeless drop-in centers. Then they had to deal with becoming Internet cafes. Now they have to face being unable to lend books.
The future of libraries is in question. If you don't have to go there to borrow books, what are they for?
I'm a librarian (in Germany, though the issues here are basically the same), and I think the publishers do have a point. Two points, to be precise:
* A digital copy of a book can be borrowed by a library customer without them having to leave their home. No need to actually get to the library, hunt for the book and then having to get it back 4 weeks later. It's all happening online. That makes borrowing digital books from library a million times easier and more comfortable, and thus make libraries far more popular again.
* A digital copy of a book needs to be bought once, and then you'll own it for all eternity. That is, in theory, true for a physical copy of a book as well, but in practice a library has to constantly (re)buy books it already owns, whether the physical copy is starting to get old and worn or because books are being stolen/not returned, etc.
It is not unrealistic to assume that these two points combined might result in financial losses for the publishers, and a solution for this might have to be found. The suggested 26 uses per digital copy would mean that popular titles would have to be renewed roughly every 2 years (assuming a standard borrowing time of 4 weeks). Currently, the rule of thumb is that a (physical) book should be renewed once it is older than 5 years at the latest. Not all titles are borrowed out constantly, though, so it's entirely possible that the costs for the library would not rise even with the 26-uses-per-copy rule.
Could/ Would a library tweak their business model? ... localize the reading.
Their artificial limitations are mainly travel (having to return a book), and monopoly of distribution (free books).
With one limitation removed (anyone can distribute free books - if they are drm free) perhaps they can substitute another
This could be achieved in either of two ways.
1. Lend a restricted ebook reader that must be returned within normal library timeframe, loaded with the chosen content (restricted to that ebook reader).
2. Or make the library the location of reading. A unique environment combined with coffee, cake and a comfy seat.
Not that it's anywhere near a cure-all answer, but Amazon let's you try a sample chapter or two of every ebook they have. That's been enough for me to figure out if I want to buy it or not, and I often do buy it (even though I disagree w/ the DRM and immediately make my own backups).
We have a local clothier with the motto, "an informed consumer is our best customer." I think this applies to publishing.
We are witnessing a paradigm shift in the book publishing industry that rivals the previous one in music publishing. There are some hopeful signs. I think the market will produce more. Consider the changes in the Amazon Kindle service. It has grown rapidly such that now their two largest sellers are Kindle editions. Note that we can now view our content on multiple devices, view sample chapters before purchasing, and rent books. We do this after reading reviews. We see similar encouraging moves from O'Reilly such as providing DRM-free electronic copies of purchased content. Dealing with lending of resources by libraries is the next challenge. No publisher will ever release content if the public can get the content free from a small number of libraries. The parent is correct - that is not a sustainable business model. Safari Books Online is one possible model. It is still a bit pricey for my budget.
As customers, we need to vote with our purchases. Reward vendors who provide good content at fair prices with more purchases. Use the review system to say that we think content is over-priced. At the same time, we need to have realistic expectations. We are paying for infrastructure. Storage for electronic books is not free to the publisher but is likely much less expensive than warehousing paper products. Bandwidth to distribute them and all the infrastructure for secure payment is not free, but is likely less expensive than a distribution channel for paper. Editors, graphics designers, and those who convert the author's electronic input into the proper format for the final document creation software provide valuable services. So do those who market the electronic titles to the distributors. Nobody works for free. That said, we consumers want to share in the cost savings that come from the transition from paper to digital. I think the changes in the music industry suggest that we will have vendors that can thrive when they provide value to their customers. The key will be to find a subscription service that is affordable to the consumer and makes it worthwhile for the publishers to produce and distribute the content.
The Guardian article being referenced is probably Dan Gillmor's The great ebook price swindle. You can find a lot more about this by paying attention to the online writings of various authors, including Kristine Kathryn Rusch who write about the business of writing as well as being a (widely) published author.
fencepost
just a little off
Actually, ownership of data doesn't particularly. We created a metaphor and it worked well enough to encourage people to write books. The point being that until recently, copies actually existed in a fixed medium so it made sense that you could lend that medium, or resell it or do anything you like treating it and the data came with it.
It is possible to lock digital data to a single device (at least through the honour system) but when you do that you lose a lot of the benefits of a digital copy. We want those benefits. The ability to transfer to another device is essential. But when you do that, the metaphor no longer applies. We end up with a rather awkward metaphor for a metaphor. People suddenly notice that it makes no sense.
I have no idea what the solution is but trying to pretend digital copies are physical copies is not the answer.
When I read Stallman's "Right to Read" more than 10 years ago, I thought it was more evidence that he is a crank. Look at it now: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html. Why is he always so right?
Why not sell ebooks to the public with a licence that prohibits lending, and sell them to libraries with a licence that allows it, for a higher price or a percentage of each lending transaction?
The problem is...you're leaving out the whole issue of the authors.
I suppose they could write for free, but that'll make it kinda hard to eat. Will the farmers give them food for free too?
No?
Authors are in fact a tertiary consideration here.
Authors are not farmers and haven't really ever been despite what lies some publisher might have tried to tell you.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"B&N won't let me try the book for free before making me pay."
Wow, I must have a really progressive B&N in my city - I can sit in a chair all day and read any book as long as I want. Must suck to live where you live.
So why does your business model need to be sustained?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
They just need to make eBooks cheap enough to make it not worth a trip to the library to borrow a free eBook (I don't know if you actually do have to go to the library to borrow an eBook, but maybe you should, causing some friction to the process).
If a eBook costs $10, then it might be worth it for me to go to the library to check it out for free.
Lower the price to $3, and then it's not worth the trip for me. Lower it to $1 and I'll likely buy books just to try out an author, rather than staying with my normal safe choices of authors I know or recommendations.
I've bought a lot of content from Smashwords (usually paying between $0.99 and $4.99 for an eBook). I've bought very few eBooks from Amazon - it's hard to justify paying more for an eBook than it costs to have a paper book (often used, sometimes new) mailed to me.
They are being refreshingly honest about it being motivated by profit.
Whether they are just being truthful for a change or just feel so invincible they don't have to hide their true intentions though is another question entirely.
to force places to buy new books for stuff that does not need yearly or less updates. Now I can see map books, travel guides, law books, tax books, some tech books needing yearly updates. But collage some books don't even last a full year before a new book comes outs.
The whole problem is the concept of "the middleman". He's between the producer and the consumer, making sure everything works well. But when the system evolves to the point where the middleman isn't need anymore....
Just face it, you'r not supposed to play the same old role and expect it to last forever.
My first thought was "Nice! Hey, if libraries won this one, I could see myself really using their services! Libraries have been drifting off my radar screen for a while." But then I thought: "Aw fuck, here come the copyright trolls, looks like they'll ruin this." And then I thought: "Alright, fuck those compromised artificial limits and pointless flaming hoops. Who needs it when we'll always have piracy?" I have a feeling that many normal people who look at this lame haggling will have a similar chain of thoughts. Libraries are a good thing, and piracy is the closest institution we have to what libraries should be. As long as we have it (and we always will), we'll get by just fine.
for some time now and some how that works will there also be a digital movie and tv show push as well from the Library as well?
So how much profit is there in printing digital copies? Publishers likes that part huh?
Sorry, both jobs involve work. The analogy is reasonable. As a software developer, I'm in the same boat as authors. If I can't get paid for my work, then I should go do something else - even if that "something else" involves mowing lawns. Whether or not my skills as a software developer are more useful to the world than my skills mowing lawns is secondary to the question of whether I can afford to make a living doing those jobs.
Reduce the friction. Get rid of it entirely. Then count the usage levels of any given work. (Yeah, yeah, I know That's not simple, but it would be a whole lot more straightforward than the current mess.) Then pay the artists / authors / coders / whatever based on how much their work is used or enjoyed.
Then the reduced friction would be in everyone's interest, both the users' and the creators'.
Of course, the publishers would still go fairly extinct. Is that a problem?
most Americans are perfectly willing to throw away everything for the sake of that non-existent potential :(... Witness our tax system.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"I'm sorry ma'am, but federal law requires that I incinerate this ebook!"
"But... WHY?"
"It's already been looked at 26 times."
?
Publishers have made their money by controlling the paper printing of books - then changing vast amounts of money a middle men. Now you hear them talking about "talent finding". Fuck them. Their entire reason for existing is vanishing - in an even worse way than record companies. We shouldn't be crippling libraries for them and we shouldn't be confusing their years of ripping off authors and the public with "literature" and "learning". We should just say "bye... get on your bike and find another job."
Not audio, but text files on CDs. Library already has had audio books for decades; previously on Tape, now on CDs. Using CDs would put it into the traditional role and require some physical interaction and wear.
Sue the publishers for not providing CD versions of books; or when they try to prevent a library from scanning a physical book to CD.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Then we'll build our own on the internets. Needless to say they won't pay any royalties.
I understand their concerns. They like to write, and they need money. They want to be paid for the work they did. It's just a shame that our capitalistic society essentially requires us to use artificial scarcity in order for some people to get paid.
It'll fall apart eventually. As technology progresses, society will need to find a new system (or fall apart).
The same is true for authors. Get a job as a writer, and get paid (once) for the words you produce for your employer.
The whole not getting paid bullshit is really about gambling. The publishers gamble that they can sell (multiple times) a piece of writing to many people, and make a profit that way. That's always been hit or miss, when it pays off they make millions, and when it doesn't they take a loss.
But it's no concern to you. Unless you're the gambling type and decide to work for them on a contingency basis - get paid in royalties if the publisher's gamble pays off, and not if it doesn't. If that's what you're after, then more power to you, but don't whine about customers stealing your work when it's really that you gambled and lost. You should have got paid in advance.
I just dont see the value of publishers in the electronic world. Since the cost of keeping an ebook 'on file' is so low, libraries can just collect books from authors directly.
If a library wants to avoid the dross, simply hire a service to review books and grade them. If the publishers were smart they would change their business model to reflect this.The library can then keep them in their colleciton based on those grades.
The authors can get a direct check from the librariy to keep the book in their collection for the # of years it is under copyright. If you really have to charge the client, charge them say 10 cents for book under copyright, with 1-2 cents going directly to the author. Without the middleman, the cost gets reduced by a couple of orders of magnitude,
The downside of course is that the publishing houses die. Oh well.
Authors should be the primary consideration, if we wish them to produce their works. Much like a farmer, were I to not get compensated for my labors, I would cease them, therefore I cannot blame an author for feeling the same way.
Even plants have a reason for growing edible fruits. It may be a bit abstruse but they do act for a cause.
You may feel you'll get enough on charity, or incidental work, but I think it would take a considerable chance to produce the same degree of results.
Yes, there are certainly issues with the current system persisting into the future, but if we want the author's to continue, and in some cases, perhaps we do, it'll be important to come up with some kind of solution that still leaves them compensated.
I'm not committed to any particular form of it, but some of the specifics I would prefer to keep around.
Around 1980, I visited MIT's Dewey Library, which used some draconian measures to control certain financial publications, such as S&P stock evaluations. The material was handed to you from behind a special counter, and you weren't allowed to make copies. I think some books were chained to the counter.
I haven't gone back, so I don't know if this is still the case.
Here's the thing about gambling...we're allowed to make changes to the odds as we see fit. There's no magic Casino that dictates to us what form things must be done by, but a consensual affair which is determined by a combination of consent and coercion.
I feel no particular compulsion to let you pick the game. If you cannot accept the one I wish to play, well, hopefully it shall not come to blows without it being a matter of suitable gravity.
Libraries could just take the easy way out and not purchase ANY books (real OR imaginary) from publishers whose eBook library licensing terms they consider to be unreasonable. When people stop seeing real the publishers' real books at the library, the loss of free advertising will hurt more than the loss of revenue from sales of imaginary books. Libraries need to wise up and realize that they are the ONLY showrooms for publishers now that real book stores are going out of business left and right. In a couple of years, they will have the power to put individual publishers out of business.
And to everybody who said "eBooks won't fuck up the whole world of reading," a big hearty "I told you so."
What about if we actually had a public domain that offers libraries content that the public can consume. What about if copy protection laws lasted a reasonable length of time and didn't keep getting extended.
Ironically, my captcha is "cheapen"
I borrow my books from library.nu because they've generous lending terms.
Authors and editors are valuable, but publishers are basically parasites nowadays.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
So they can flag books that people take in to the bathroom and force them to pay for them.
The main problem is this is an entrenched, rich, power laden industry, and as such wields a BIG STICK, just like the MPAA and RIAA. No matter how dead, dying, or different an industry may become, the power in the seat will ALWAYS resist the change.
Silence is a state of mime.
libraries [...] are happy that e-books are luring people back to libraries
Why do you have to physically go to a library to borrow a digital book?
Well, that was how it was in the 80's when I went to collgle.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I would have never bought so many books as an adult if I hadn't read so many in the library as a kid (when buying a book was a major purchase).
Lending doesn't damage sales, because most people who lend books wouldn't buy them. Either they can't afford it, or they only need the book for a single reference, a paper or presentation or whatever.
But, it seems, just like the movie and the music industry before them, the publishers don't understand that you can't have the cake of technological progress, and eat it, too. There comes some bad with all the good. Or rather: Some good for others.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It's easy to see that in the future, many books will not have much physical print volume. So 26 copies means a few years and *poof*. In 20, 30, 50 years, much less 100 years, with closures and government changes, who will still have viable copies for the public domain? My suggestion - 15 - 25 lends per year, ad infinituum until book becomes public domain.
Imagine if the est $10,000 books from K-12 were available for free. You could then buy people 100$ laptops instead of spending 10,000$. Also you could educate people in third world countries with no teachers if you also threw on an automated education program on it. This is by no means trivial, but educating the world is highly desirable.
God spoke to me
I am fully aware of the argument of digital material should be shared indefinitely so why can't a library lend one copy to thousands of people? Everyone forgets that there needs to be incentive. If there's no financial incentive to writing and publishing books very few will be released. An author spends 3 to 12 months writing a book. For the publisher there is editing and formatting and without advertising most people wouldn't know some books exist. Publishing is a marginal business and most books loose money. Many may point to JK Rowlings but that's like pointing to a lottery winner and saying look everyone gets rich. It's much worse actually because there are thousands of lottery winners and only one JK Rowlings. A handful have gotten rich and the rest are lucky to make a living. Drastically reducing revenue will result in fewer books available. In an age that should allow anyone to release a book there could eventually be no financial benefit in doing so making it impossible for most to devote the time and money needed.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but libraries still purchase books. Possibly at a discount, but they still purchase them. This is the point of contention here. Everlasting electronic versions of books where they'd be replaced every so often in the pbook form.
Where's the Fahrenheit 451 Fire Department, when you need one?.
That title needs an updated version; what's the combustion temperature of my ebook reader's materials?
"publishers need to reintroduce more inconvenience for the borrower"????? Whoever thought of doing that ought to be executed
The analogy is unreasonable. We're most likely not going to go back to subsistence farming as a society. We've established a system of exchange to trade some units of useful work with another, and despite some inefficiencies of exchange and issues at scale, it works. It is not a responsibility of the system of exchange to protect members against change in value of a unit of work nor what constitutes a unit of work.
While we would like to offer safety nets as a responsible society, but one should be careful that those safety nets work for society as a whole (reeducation of workers, or even sufficient education to even allow for the possibility of retraining) and not merely for individuals (subsidizing of marginalized industries in the face of competition or new advances).
In this case, it is indeed going to change how authors function. With no authority to appeal for an advance to cover their work, they will have to find another source of money. I'm not saying we should go with the current voluntary model as exemplified by the NIN and Louis C.K. experiments, but we should find another way (which, if I knew exactly what it was, I'd be there first). The value of a society with easily available information outweighs the value of having a revenue stream for the traditional publishing industry, in my opinion. Not being a member of the publishing industry, of course, makes this much easier for someone like me, as much as it was for people who were not blacksmiths at the end of the 19th century, or horse trainers in the early part of the 20th. Naturally, I may one day rue this conclusion, but I tend to prefer the larger picture, even at my own expense.
I will say this though. I am of the opinion that, in the last century, we had a significant movement of artistic talent to mass-market entertainment. We've traded Beethoven for Beiber because we've introduced a new set of technologies, such as movies, television, personal music playback. On the other hand, we've opened up a hugely accessible medium in the process, the Internet, to allow people who once would not have had the opportunity to even consider giving artistic endeavor a try. We cannot see all ends.
First of all, they are looking at this all wrong. What value do libraries add? They reduce the cost of books by sharing them among a group of people. In the digital age, libraries are unnecessary. Libraries are an unreasonable source of friction. I should be able to just download the book for free and read it with the standard tools that come on the device (the Android Market, for example.)
All you need to implement this is to release advertising sponsored books for free via the Android Market or the Amazon App store or whatever they are calling it. Now, pirating the book has a slightly higher friction than just downloading it from the official source. How many people bother to pirate Angry Birds on Android, when the advertising supported Angry Birds is free? Not many.
Please point to the libraries that have increased funding because people are borrowing e-books. When libraries implement new services, they cut existing services. The overall trend has been massive budget cuts across the board. There aren't a lot of exceptions and they usually happen when the library board or library district has the ability to pursue a funding increase without much opportunity of intervention from citizens or other more powerful parts of government. As you'd expect, that's not the case most of the time. When publishers jack up prices, it is equivalent to shrinking library budgets. Right now, library costs are escalating and budgets are declining. Politicians looking for money usually consider libraries easy targets.
There is NO reason whatsoever that libraries need publishers for ebooks. There must be some association of librarians that are capable of weeding out the wheat of ebooks from the chaff and there is certainly no lack of authors.
Perhaps we will even start getting books in categories that the publishers are neglecting by choice like Hard Science fiction, Steampunk or Cyberpunk. I am sure that you have a category or two that you'd like to see more books in too.
Once the publishers figure out that libraries are only buying and lending independently produced ebooks and are buying fewer dead tree editions they will change their minds (and demands) in short order.
Hell, if done right ebook sales could be turned into a cash cow for that Librarians Association, if not for the libraries themselves.
I support the publishing arms of the AMS, ASL, LMS, SMF, etc., i.e. societies for professional mathematicians. I'd imagine some professional societies are wasteful and stupid, but by-and-large professional societies prioritize helping their speciality, so they're probably fine unless they've been lured into a contract with a bad publisher like Elsevier.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
And in the third corner are the consumers, who just want to read the damn books and just go to the next Torrent site, don't care about copyright anymore because the greedy cooperations have made a farce out of copyright. We just download a 200MBytes Torrent with about 100 e-books and don't give a crap.
You know how to increase competition and profits? Just limit the copyright term back to the good old 7 years (+7 years extension). That would finally open the market, break up the monopolies we have now, and bring the entertainment industry much more profits overall.
I really can't understand how your American people are good with it that you grand one company an unlimited monopol-right to a good. Aren't you all for pro-markets, pro-competition and anti-regulation of markets?
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Libraries typically have a limited number of copies as well. That's theoretically much less of a problem with e-books...
Well to be fair the library should be limiting the number of copies to the number which they purchased. If you buy 5 copies of a book you cannot lend it to 10 people at the same time. However if the complaint from the publishers is now that either (a) it is too easy to check out books or that (b) the books do not degrade over time then that's just tough. Yes it might cut into their revenue stream but that's the price for improving technology.
If the publishers were smart they would start to use this technology for themselves. For example take a risk on new authors and release an ebook into the library system to gauge how popular it will be. This eliminates the cost of a print run and greatly reduces the marketing costs although the editing etc. costs are still remain. Trying to make your potential customers' lives less convenient by enacting/relying on legal restrictions does not work - just ask the recording industry.
You have made the classic blunder confusing value with price.
That's an indirect contribution, which would be ineligible for government funds.
JK Rowling received £8,000 from the Scottish Arts Council to tide her over financially until she could complete the second Harry Potter book.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
My sister calls herself the "Fat Witch With A Gun". Besides being heavily into books, one of her missions in life is to convince other women to learn how to use guns and to carry them around should the need to use one in self defense ever arise.
Should she ever hear you teasing your cute girlfriend about her love handles, the best that you can hope for is that you'll be turned into a newt then released into a cold yet refreshing Idaho mountain stream. Your only alternative would be puzzling over how to put your brain back together after you found it spattered all over the wall.
Don't Piss Her Off.
I sent my sister, my mother and my mother's twin sister this email just now. My sister is heavily into computing but Mom and Aunt Peggy are quite computationally challenged. However all three of them as well as myself regard libraries as one of the most valuable public services any government or school could ever hope to provide.
If you feel as I do that the word needs to be gotten out about what follows, please forward this email to anyone you might feel would be interested in or would benefit from it.
Something came up on one of the web sites I like to hang out on that is of vital importance to anyone that cares in any way about the continued existence of public libraries.
The Looming Library Lending Battle
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/12/25/2117232/the-looming-library-lending-battle
Publishers vs. Libraries: an eBook Tug-of-War
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/business/for-libraries-and-publishers-an-e-book-tug-of-war.html?_r=2
Book publishers have NEVER thought highly of public libraries, but it is only recently that they've gotten the idea of getting every public library in the land completely shut down. This isn't the first I've heard of that effort, but is the most serious threat to libraries that has come up since the publishing industry started working to put a stop to the free lending of books.
When a library purchases or is given a book printed on paper - what computer geeks call a "dead tree book" - it has the perfectly legal right to lend that book out as many times as readers want to check it out. If we could come up with books that never wore out, in principle every library book could be repeatedly lent out until The End of Time.
However I am sure you have heard that with the widespread availability of reference information, entertainment and reading material available on the Internet, traditional printed book libraries have suffered. When I was in school and was assigned to write a research paper, I would perform all that research from "dead tree books" in a library.
Today's students do the vast majority of their scholastic research on the Internet, at websites such as Wikipedia, without ever setting foot in a library. That has resulted in the loss of public support for libraries, as well as fewer people ever visiting one. Because libraries, like most government services, argue for the continuation of their funding by keeping records of the public's use of their services, public funding to libraries has been cut back drastically. Branches are being closed everywhere, with those that do remain open having to cut back on hours, staff and the purchase of new books.
However, just in the last couple of years libraries have found new relevance by - among other ways - lending out what are called "eBooks" or Electronic Books.
They aren't books in the traditional sense, but they are electronic documents just like the documents you save on the Desktop of your iMac. One always requires some kind of electronic computing device to actually read them.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Looks like the link missed the summary, maybe it was referring to this?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/dec/23/ebook-price-swindle-publishing
"Absent the capitalist system of letting the market decide which products are desirable, how do you determine which ebooks deserve to succeed? How do you determine how much to reimburse the author? These are the fatal flaws with hard-core socialism / communism: you have no reliable, accurate way to determine the best way to allocate resources."
J. K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter while she was on the dole.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3666215/From-the-dole-to-Hollywood.html
How do you explain the success of "free software" or the success of the Debian project that is coordinated through emails and chat messages instead of dollars? What often determines what succeeds and is maintained is by what people think is useful (not who has money to pay for it).
Why do people need to be "reimbursed"? People can be motivated by the work itself:
"RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
It turns out creativity often suffers if it is remunerated.
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm
Further, why do we have to keep innovating like crazy if we never get to rest after all that innovation is done? Haven't we made life easy enough that we can get back to spending time with family, friends, hobbies, contemplating nature or the infinite, being a good citizen, and so on?
Most work just exists to preserve (through "guarding") the work system itself; see:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://www.whywork.org/
What are you going to propose to do when robots and AIs can do much of the work? How are you going to earn a living?
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
(Posting AC as I have 15 mod points in the discussion, including modding your post up because it does raise an important point. :-)
Why are you saying you can't get paid as a software developer? You clearly can: get a job as a programmer, and your employer will pay you (once) for what you write for them during working hours, within about two weeks of the
work being done.
The same is true for authors. Get a job as a writer, and get paid (once) for the words you produce for your employer.
In this model of yours, how does his employer get paid?
If you're imagining that they're going to sell something other than the software that the software developer writes, then you're imagining a world where we all use Google Docs (or similar), rather than have control and privacy over our own word processing.
If you're imagining a novel author's employer using the books to sell something other than books, then let's hear it. Nothing I can imagine results in books I'd want to read....
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
It depends on the format (hardback or paperback), and how well the patrons take care of the books.
*You* might be able to loan out a book 26 times, and get it back in good condition, but unfortunately for libraries, there's a decent chance of books being lost, damaged, etc, and that number doesn't seem that far out of line.
(disclaimer -- I volunteer at the local Friends of the Library, managing the book sale, so I see a lot of weeded & damaged books ... and moldy donations ... please don't give them to us when they're already moldy; even musty means it's likely to fall apart after a couple more readings (but we can still sell those)).
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
You have a good point, but most software isn't written to be sold. Most of it is written for use solely within the same company that employs the developers. Their employer gets paid by selling something completely different..
- T
I think that's very nearly right. But really, works should be the primary consideration, not authors; authors are just part of the messy business of getting works. Just as it would be ideal to have Star Trek style food replicators instead of getting food from farmers, it would be ideal to have the (true) contents of Borges' library instead of getting works from authors.
But since this isn't going to happen, we must face the reality of authors seriously. Copyright law should maximize the number of works created and published, while also minimizing the scope and duration of restrictions on the public.
If compensating authors is necessary to get them to create some works (it is known that it is not necessary to get them to create all works -- there are other motives beside money attributable to copyrights), then that's fine, but it must be an appropriate level of compensation. It shouldn't be too high, lest authors create one work and then retire. It shouldn't be too low, lest they create nothing at all. And it shouldn't be guaranteed, lest there be no incentive to create popular works. That's really part of the genius of copyright, IMO -- it acts like a lens, concentrating some (but not all) of the money to be had from a work, but having little effect on just how much money there is in sum. Unpopular works can still be flops, instead of authors being guaranteed a living for having created trash.
You may feel you'll get enough on charity, or incidental work, but I think it would take a considerable chance to produce the same degree of results.
Well, it really depends on the field. Fine artists have little need for copyrights. If you're in the market for a Picasso, you're probably not going to settle for a mass-produced poster of the same work, no matter how well it reproduces the image. And architects tend to either be commissioned to do one-off designs, or are designing cookie-cutter suburbs and industrial buildings which likely would be created regardless. (And are of little enough importance that we might well be better off not having architectural copyrights if that's the worst thing that happens) OTOH, they are probably pretty important for movies. In any event, we should under no circumstances forget that copyright is only one incentive for creating works, and that there are others, which at times, may be much more important.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I'd like to give a try in the US. What we have is more like socialism for the rich. The government is takes money from the poor to enrich the wealthy. The great bastions of "capitalism", the Republicans, think that no policy is acceptable unless it takes even more from the poor or gives even more to the wealthy. I see very few "capitalists" that aren't looking for a way to get the government to stifle competition.
Capitalism is great. It has been corrupted in the US. It's corruption is a serious threat to the future of the US. It doesn't help the rest of the world either.
"Also, politically, the poor tended to side with those who paid to feed them."
Sadly, Not even close. It really doesn't take much to turn the poor against themselves. Just a little racism & homophobia. Mix in a poor education system and a populace that's bad at math and indoctrinated to treat capitalism as God and socialism as the devil, and you're all set. Witness the signs about keeping the gov't out of Medicare (real) and the tea party rallies where people 'march' on their Medicare provided scooters...
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Yes, I believe I mentioned a company which employs programmers and makes its money from something other than selling software. The downside was implied to be obvious - with the particular product mentioned, the users aren't in control of their own data, because they're not the customers, they're the product
Now, what kind business employs novel writers but doesn't sell novels....
Can you be Even More Awesome?!