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."

Comments

What does this statement mean?

[bogaboga]

...unlimited lending of e-books 'without friction is not a sustainable business model for us.'...

Keyword: "friction", in this context.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[marcosdumay]

That means the property of real books have that they degrade over time.

I guess publishers take their words by the same place they take their business models.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[symbolset]

Friction in this context is the level of effort a library patron has to go to to get the book. Zero friction is: as soon as it occurs to them they want the book, it magically appears in their hand. Which is pretty much would unlimited library ebook lending over the Internet would be like. Since it's so much easier to borrow the ebook for free than pay for it, it's not a viable marketplace for publishers to sell books in.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[Trepidity]

In the paper-book-lending context, I'd guess friction refers to things like the need to physically go to libraries to pick up and return books, the need to repurchase books every once in a while if they're damaged, etc. Basically anything that keeps lending from being instant and easy, which publishers are worried that ebook lending will be.

The main fight as I see it is over whether lending should have some sort of royalty model. Traditionally there was a very decoupled one: very popular books would probably sell more copies to libraries, so sales were in a sense proportional to demand, but per copy, there was no greater charge for a book that's lent out every week versus one that sits on the shelf all year. Publishers seem to want more of a royalty model for ebooks where libraries pay by lending-person-days or per X lend-outs or something of that sort. There are some ways of structuring that that would reduce costs for libraries for some kinds of books, mainly that it'd be cheaper to stock huge long-tail catalogues that rarely get borrowed, if it's pay-per-lending or pay-per-lending-day. I'm guessing the publishers might even allow that to happen, and are mainly hoping to capitalize on best-seller titles, which are where most of the profits lie, and where they're worried library lending will cut into sales.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[ExecutorElassus]

The term which applies was coined by the excellent David Wong (whose talents are wasted writing dick jokes for cracked.com), and is FArtS (ha ha! "farts!" get it): it stands for "Forced ARTificial Scarcity."
To be honest, there is a perfectly logical chain of events, enabled by technology which already exists, and is in wide use, which effectively eliminates printers, publishers, bookstores, all the shipping of books, and so on. If it costs nothing to make a digital copy and deliver it to my reader, why should I pay for one? The entire publishing industry hasn't figured out the answer to that question, but they're going to have to, fast. One way or another, the print media economy is going to come crashing down in the next few years, wiping out anything that hasn't adapted to the new model (whatever that is).
Publishers know this, and they're terrified. So, they are trying to impose (force) limits (scarcity) on the distribution and use of digital media where no scarcity exists (the artificial part). That's what this "friction" is: an effort by an industry whose days are numbered to prolong - even if for just a little while, and at great inconvenience to the rest of us - the economic model upon which they depend.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[youn]

It does not really make sense as an argument... you had as much friction to go buy the book as to go rent it. I am really worried that in the digital age, the first sale doctrine is being completely obliterated. Before, you bought a book, a record, anything... you could lend it, resell it, break it even copy it for your own use as you pleased... now, bit by bit (no pun intended)... you get less and less rights on the products you buy

Re:What does this statement mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're refering to the degradation of physical material. In library lending, books will hold up through a certain number of checkouts before they need to be repaired or replaced.

Publishing houses are attempting to apply this same limitation of physical books to e-books in an attemp to preserve their buisness model at the expense of the larger consumer market

Re:What does this statement mean?

[rrohbeck]

Zero friction is: as soon as it occurs to them they want the book, it magically appears in their hand.

Sounds like P2P to me.
This way of thinking worked soo well for the music industry.
The publishers will go the way of the Dodo if they don't recognize the change of the times. Amazon shows how it's done, as usual. Hey Harper-Collins, you could have significant ebook sales too (which would make up for reduced revenue per sale) - if you wanted.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[blue trane]

The economic problem is not the central problem of mankind.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[ExecutorElassus]

I agree, and had no intention of implying otherwise. This is a problem of market capitalism, which - as I am skeptical of the merits of that system - I am happy to see threatening one of its major and longest-lived exponents.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[Bieeanda]

Libraries typically have a limited number of copies as well. That's theoretically much less of a problem with e-books, even with DRM, if the library can have a non-limited number of e-copies in circulation at once.

The local city-wide library uses (or used-- I haven't buggered with it in a couple of years) some obnoxious Adobe program that basically loans out a license to a title for a limited period, and marks that license as 'checked out' on their back end until you check it back in or the loan expires. The documents are encrypted, of course, and can't be easily read without the license key.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[_KiTA_]

...unlimited lending of e-books 'without friction is not a sustainable business model for us.'...

Keyword: "friction", in this context.

They want income from libraries per each book loaned. Presumably this is supposed to be similar to how deadtree books decay and must be replaced by libraries. In reality it's just a money grab from the content middlemen, same as the RIAA, MPAA, etc etc.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[DarkOx]

Publishing used to add value. It was not possible for you or I to put a long manuscript into a portable useable format. Now we don't want that format. So sure it's not a viable market to sell books in, so what? Why are publishers entitled to a market? I have all sorts of goods and services I could offer except nobody wants them, should I complain?

Re:What does this statement mean?

[aurizon]

Publishers in the UK have long had the law that book in a library can not be repaired as they wear out from the toll of circulation and other wear and tear. This is seen in the fly-leaf inscription "You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer".

This prevents repair of worn books as well as re-purposing paperbacks into effectively hard cover books. The same law is in effect in many countries. In the USA the "First Sale" doctrine kills it

So wear and tear, driving back and forth, etc are collectively the "Friction" that creates an effective end of life of a book in the UK. In the USA, there is only the back and forth of borrowing as books can be rebound many times. With an e-book, friction is zero, it is a one click dollar free effort.
The publishers want to set the life of a book as 26 lendouts via e-mail, which on the face of it is reasonable. If a book costs $25.00 that is about $1 per lend. At $100 it is about $4 - a little higher. So a small library fee per lent out book would suffice to pay the publisher.

As it is, taxes pay for the library books, but the low friction of e-books means that there will be far more loans, because friction is near zero, thus taxes must go up to match the similar cost of a similar number of friction based books.

So we will come to an accommodation in between these extremes, since the e-book model costs so much less in paper, printing and freight and overhead profits that the publishers could set the life of a book a 100 lendout and still be ahead.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets give the publishers what they want and reinstate the original 14 year copyright.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[theshowmecanuck]

This comment is the first one about this article that I have read that makes any real sense to me. Mind you a skimmed over a bunch but still.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[nurb432]

I'm not paying to check out the paper book either. So what was your point again?

The library still has a finite number of 'copies' to loan, be them paper or digital so it isn't really 'unlimited' in that sense. I still have to wait in the same line regardless. And i get to keep it the same amount of time before i have to renew or let it go back into the pot for the next guy. The library still had to pay for the e-copies, so there really is no difference, to the publisher. To the library its a huge difference as there is zero labor and floor space involved.

if you want to talk 'degradation of books' and having to 're-buy' them over time, i can still easily check out copies of books that are 50 years ( or more ) old. ( even older is available, but often times its restricted to in house viewing only ) So that isn't a good argument ether.

Really, if the publishers would wake up and stop being a burden to progress like the *IAAs are, they would see its a null issue at worst. At best it might even help them with sales as more people will want an easy purchase route of the book from the library so they can read it anytime they want.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[DogDude]

why should I pay for one?

Because the publishers serve an important purpose, and DO add value to the proposition: editing and vetting. There's tons and tons and tons of independent, self-published "books" you can find on the Net today. Hundreds of thousands, maybe? Millions? Who knows? But, most of these will not be read or published because they're crap. Free crap is still crap.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[nurb432]

They don't get it now, but i can see them trying to milk us citizens if they can get away with it.

All it will do is breed discontent, just as we have for the music industry.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[0123456]

Even with 70% royalties, an ebook sold for $3.99 per copy will generate a pre tax income of $27,930 per ten thousand copies sold. Hardly a rich living. And this would have to be repeated every year for an author to have an income somewhat near that of a school teacher.

That's why you write more than one book a year, every year. Then ten thousand fans will allow you to live pretty well.

And note that someone who sold 10,000 paperbacks through a trade publisher would make more like $5,000 and they'd disappear from the book stores after a few months. Those self-published e-books will be available forever, and every new fan who finds your later books is likely to go back and look at some of the earlier ones.

Libraries could purchase ebooks and lend one out for each copy for a specific time.

Which is exactly what they currently do, and is a reasonable compromise. The publishers also want to force them to buy the book again after they've lent it out a few times, which is insane.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[stabiesoft]

Interesting the UK forbids repairs. I worked in a library in high school in the US and spent many an hour glueing paperbacks back together. Hardbacks were still fixable, but required more care with the glue. I'd say paperbacks would only last a few checkouts before repairs were needed. Hardbacks, the 26 number sounds reasonable, maybe slightly optimistic.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[fafaforza]

I don't think I'd have a problem with that, as long as they analyze the average time for a paperback and a hardcover to require replacement, and that analysis is done independently, and not by a publisher. They do have a point that electronic versions can be around for ever, decreasing their livelihood.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[symbolset]

So we will come to an accommodation in between these extremes, since the e-book model costs so much less in paper, printing and freight and overhead profits that the publishers could set the life of a book a 100 lendout and still be ahead.

Or maybe not...

Re:What does this statement mean?

[forkfail]

However, 26 lends is WAY below the lifespan of a well cared for, hardbound book.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[ppanon]

Heh, no kidding. I remember in the 70's going through the Vancouver Public Library's complete collection of Jules Verne, some though inter-branch loans. I think most had been printed in the 40s, and were in good enough shape. Some of them might still be there. Yeah, they might not be as popular as ones from King, Ludlum, or Grisham, but they were still getting loaned out from time to time. Even more obscure novels like Into the Niger Bend.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[ceoyoyo]

That's part of it. It also includes things like the hassle of going to the library to get a physical book, and having to take it back. Anything that makes it less convenient.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[DanielRavenNest]

They have failed to create scarcity. Any book of any popularity is already available as a free download by one method or another, and without crappy DRM, so it's a better product. They should take a page (pun intended) from the music industry. Live performances are scarce, and fans are willing to pay for them. Have authors go on tour and host private parties where you can chat and have a drink with them. Fans will pay for this. Author face time is scarce. Maybe go to a subscription model. You pay Amazon one price to access everything they have on the Kindle. They in turn pay the authors and publishers according to readership, which is their incentive to put out good stuff and not crap. It's worked for cable TV.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[spire3661]

This is a stupid and counter-productive attempt to mirror real world behavior. We should be going in the other direction by assuming that all books are now printed and bound with indestructible materials.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[PCM2]

That's why you write more than one book a year, every year. Then ten thousand fans will allow you to live pretty well.

Fiction publishers often don't want to publish more than one book per year by any given author, because the market won't sustain it. In some cases, readers will get "burnt out" on an author and won't want to read the same author again so soon, so they won't buy the second book. In other cases, readers seeking an author look for the latest book and so sales of the second book start to cannibalize sales of the first.

As for ongoing sales, sales of most books peak shortly after they are published and taper off precipitously thereafter. Books with the sales longevity you describe are relatively rare. Just because an e-book "exists forever" doesn't mean there will be any market for it. The market for a book has to be created and continuously nurtured, and that's what publishers know how to do.

Then there's the question of how many authors can write more than one book-length work that's worth reading in a single year. I bet there are few.

And then there's the question of how many Harry Potter fans would still be reading the series if there were twenty-three novels already? Probably most would have quit long before they reached the latest book -- in which case, sales of the latest book would amount to but a tiny fraction of the sales of the first one. Revenues of $27,930 per book might be sufficient if you were grinding out two more more per year, but what fraction of $27,930 would an author be willing to accept to keep grinding at that rate?

Re:What does this statement mean?

[Prof.PatPending]

Heck, I've seen paperbacks in our county library with a lot more than 26 stamps on their cards (this was a while ago...)

Re:What does this statement mean?

[Soluzar]

My instinct says far more than just a hundred for a good quality book. I'm well aware of how they can be repaired, not to mention that while they might get a bit tatty with wear they will still be readable.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[Hognoxious]

That means the property of real books have that they degrade over time.

And that only one person can have a particular item at a time.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[Bucc5062]

"Publishers know this, and they're terrified."

So, their pissed off. My work has been outsourced twice so when my current boss talks about looking into contractors for a project, I get terrified. WHyt, because my three horses, my small farm, and my middle class living could be gone just as quick. The income to debt ratio, the income to cost ratio is vastly different between me and your so called terrified publishers.

These guys would be pissed, because this type of model begins to take control of a market away from them, and put it in the hands of other people. Publishers, like Recording Execs are all about control, about shaping society whether it is through books, music, or video. The grand narcissist, the megalomaniac that needs control, for that is Power.

These fights are not about money, that is just a means to Power. The Power to make the next star which may shape how a society thinks and feels which means they can exert even more Power. Media Executives despise the internet for its open design, its ability to route around control. Wee they terrified they would be more conciliatory, more willing to adapt to change. What you hav is a group of people that are angry because they are losing control of Power. When anyone can publish, when anyone can promote then (in their eyes) it is total anarchy and that must be stopped.

Ultimately the existing model, based on pre-digital, pre-internet technology will morph into a new structure that will use political Power to maintain control. We can see this already with bills like SOPA in the US or EU governments influencing ISPs for access to content. Terrified, not even close. A pissed off xIAA and publishing consortium is what I see and those animals are the most dangerous of all.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[TheRaven64]

If it's well cared for, it probably isn't a library book.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[morgauxo]

Have you looked into e-lending? That's how it works. They are only licensed to let so many borrowers borrow at a time. The library can't just let unlimited users take a copy and go. I assume the DRM software doesn't allow it. It's like a book but more convenient and yes.. it doesn't wear out.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[morgauxo]

I don't know what kind of libraries other slashdoters go to but I used to check out books that were decades old and had been checked out many many times. I think that for all but the most popular few percent of books wear-out is not a significant difference between lending and e-lending. If e-lending gets a use limit to supposedly simulate the wearing out of a paper book it will most likely be worse than truly equalizing the two.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[fafaforza]

I wouldn't call it stupid. They can always go the route of making ebooks half the price, or trying other promotional things, so the first thing they do is try to emulate the physical book model. Because if they don't, they won't be able to get that option back.

So they are trying options that will not be available to them if they ignore them. It's rational. Can you imagine the stink in 10 years if they started requiring that ebooks to be replaced after 10 years of libraries not having to do so?

Re:What does this statement mean?

[cfulmer]

Here's their concern: if you sell an ebook to a library, they will rent that book out perpetually. There's no risk of somebody spilling coffee on it. The pages don't fall out. You never wonder why two pages are sticking together. You don't get the guy who borrows it and then returns 2 months late. The book spends far less time sitting reserved "on the shelf" waiting for the next guy to pick it up. The book is never retired. The next person in line essentially gets a brand new book to read, as if he had downloaded the copy new onto his Kindle.

Think about this from the publisher's point-of-view: a sale of a hard-copy book to a library may mean that, say, 3 people who would have bought the book new now won't. But, a sale of an unrestricted electronic copy to a library may mean that 7 people now won't. That dramatically changes their decisions about pricing and which books to publish. [Numbers pulled out of a hat -- I'm sure the industry has a great idea what the real ones are.]

Re:What does this statement mean?

[nurb432]

While i see what you are trying to say, i do have to disagree with the conclusions that it reduces sales. You still have to wait to get the book and you get the same amount of time per 'loan'. The # of potential readers do not increase due to it being electronic ( or decrease ). Unless we are talking different loan model here? I'm talking the model all libraries around me use. In their case the only real difference is that you read it on your reader, not a dead tree version. ( some even bring the dead tree version to you, and pick it up... )

True, i agree there is a risk of damage and required replacement over *decades* but that does not happen often enough to make a measurable impact in sales per title, and if they are relying on a business model that relies on 'accidents' they deserve to be removed from content ecosystem.

Book retirement, well that would work the same, when no one is checking out the book it quietly goes away. Tho in the case of dead tree, it gets sold off yet again to land in someones home library that often couldn't afford ( or find, if its out of print, which is often ) a copy new.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[datavirtue]

We should just consider it a tax (on publishers) to help libraries and leave it at that. Libraries are underfunded right now and it shows--unless one has benefited from a private donor. After all, as a society we can morally dictate the compliance of publishers to distribute to libraries. They are not the authors, they merely distribute works by exploiting (define: exploit) authors. It is just like retail, if Wal-Mart ceased to exist tomorrow it wouldn't hurt anyone as a new retailer would spring up instantly; one with a sustainable business model that matches the current environment.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[datavirtue]

Yes, but you could provide digital copies for a dollar or two and stamp them with the person's name. That is enough friction. I have purchased Manning books ("in Action" series) and they allow you to download a nice PDF version that is stamped with your name--they have done this for years.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[John Hasler]

The purpose of copyright is to prevent the creation of a market. It is a state granted monopoly. That is the antithesis of market capitalism.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[cfulmer]

The model I'm talking about is where you go to the library website and download an e-book which expires from your computer/ipod/whatever in precisely two weeks and automatically "returns" to the library, which then emails the next person on the waiting list.

Clearly the number of potential readers has to increase if only because there are far fewer reasons for an e-book to be removed from circulation than a traditional book. It seems clear, also, that there should be less turnover time with e-books since downloading is more convenient, there's no need to request from a different branch, wait until the library is open, etc...

To me, the big First Sale problem isn't with libraries; it's with e-copies that I actually bought. I ought to be able to transfer my copy of a Kindle book to somebody else. That's where publishers are over-reaching.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[dryeo]

I understand the "You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer" was about books that have been considered destroyed. Rather then shipping books back to the publisher, the bookstore removes the covers from unwanted books and the book is considered destroyed.
Here in Canada where the books are often identical to the UK version libraries are allowed to tape or glue a book back together as long as the cover is the original.

Re:What does this statement mean?

[aurizon]

Yes, the first sale doctrine allows books to be repaired again and again.

You are wrong about the "you must not....." restriction. It is to ensure that paperbacks as well as hard covers are not repaired after wear and tear of circulation makes pages fall out. This means more full price sales to the libraries = more taxes. As you know, paperbacks are so called "perfect bound", which is simply glued at the spine and is the first type of binding to wear out, see here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookbinding
Paperbacks are cheaper than hard covers and in the the UK publishers have a love-hate relationship with libraries - they would prefer to force each person buy a book to read it, and they do not want paperback repaired again and again with cello glue on covers etc and rebinding extending their life.

The tear off of the front pages in magazines allows retailers to send back the front only for an unsold credit, and can be used for books as well, but books are usually remaindered http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remaindered_book
As noted, remaindered books are intact, but are usually striped or marked in some way to stop remainders coming back for full credit

what is next collgle libraries can't have textbook

[Joe_Dragon]

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.

Maybe this is a sign..

[ptx0]

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..

Re:Maybe this is a sign..

[malkavian]

Evolution is finely tuned, revolution is almost invariably bloody.
What's happened with Digital is that there's been a revolution. The old establishments are fighting hard to last long enough to evolve some new method of staying in business (and employing people) and continuing.
In the meantime, we have a fight with lawyers, as people try to hold on to the old ways (same as happened with the introduction of the printing press).
The simple press of reality will eventually force the matter, and digital will start to be what it should (i.e. very low cost, almost zero scarcity). What's good for society at large is a slow, planned migration to this, rather than a quick scorched earth approach.
That being said, I'm not saying "Suck it up", otherwise the extremely conservative may well get legislation in place that will effectively break progress for a long, long time.. We all have to keep fighting the abuses that are laid on by the corporations to obtain the freedoms that society needs to flourish. It's an eternal fight.
That's life though.. Without the struggle, there's no progress.

Re:Maybe this is a sign..

[Dunbal]

Evolution is usually pretty bloody as well. Not surviving because you weren't the fittest usually means you end up inside another creature's stomach.

Re:Maybe this is a sign..

[ptx0]

If I hadn't posted in this thread, you'd receive mod points from me.

I agree that we need to fight the establishment, since the people in charge almost invariably try to strip away rights to protect their own interests. If an eBook is being lent out, I think that the author deserves some sort of royalty at a fraction of the cost of the paperback/hardcove ( simply because the electronic copy costs the author a lot less capital to produce and distribute (near-$0))

I'm at a loss as to how I should generalize this though. Maybe if the author disagrees with the royalty agreements for their eBooks they can merely NOT release one; but it will be converted into one and pirated regardless. The alternative would be to self-publish on your own terms, negotiating royalties or handling payment on your own.

Libraries receive money through late fees; eBooks can't be returned late, can they?

Re:Maybe this is a sign..

[slippyblade]

Depends on the system used. My local library has a DRM in place where the E-book simply becomes unusable at the return time.

BTW: My wife works for the library. No, libraries do not make money on late fees. Late fees are simply a punitive penalty on the borrower to get them to bring stuff back on time. Libraries tend to get funded based on the number of "circulations" their items log. Everytime something is checked out or renewed counts as a "circulation". When an item is late, that item is not being re-circulated. The late fees imposed sometimes don't even cover the loss of income from the non-circulation if the item was popular.

Re:Maybe this is a sign..

[Xeno man]

Define slow? 1 year? 10 years? 100 years? Who's to say that were going to fast or to slow. As markets change, businesses will rise and business will fall. Who's to say that we need to drag our heels to keep certain entities around longer because its too fast or to rip the band-aid off quickly to get it over with so we can get on with the future.

A good example is the video rental market. To me anyway, when I was younger, my options on renting a video was to be lucky enough to find something that I might enjoy that wasn't already rented out from the corner store and to choose between 1 night rental or 2 night rental. Then out of nowhere a business called Blockbuster came out of nowhere that offered so much more. Week long rentals from the same price as a 2 night rental. Dozens of copies of the same popular movie that almost guarantees that a copy would be available all of the time. Basically it was much better than what used to be the only option.

Mom and Pop videos stores complained and shut down because they couldn't or wouldn't compete. The market had changed and Blockbuster took over a large portion of that market. But the market continued to change and what seems like a short while later, demand for video rental gave way to on demand streaming services and Blockbuster has shut down a majority of it's operations and we the consumers watched Blockbusters stores close with as little compassion as we did for the mom and pop stores.

Now was that too fast or to slow? No, it was perfect because it happened at the speed of the changing markets. Blockbuster could have changed but it didn't so it is dying. We don't need tax breaks or profit sharing to keep Blockbuster around for a little longer. We need to do nothing except as consumers, decide where to spend our money. If someone came along and embraced ebooks with a solid distribution system that made authors, customers and libraries happy as hell and put every single major publisher out of business tomorrow, then so be it. Either the market will support it or it will not. Swallow that bitter pill now and move forward instead of putting it off a few more years. The result is the same except the pain of change last so much longer.

Don't read

[Metricmouse]

"...publishers need to reintroduce more inconvenience for the borrower"... In other words don't read our books.

Re:Don't read

[Grave]

"'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."

Anyone who genuinely believes the above is going to reduce piracy/increase profits for the publisher is an idiot. The degree of inconvenience/expense a customer will endure in order to acquire a legal copy of a product is limited. In the digital age, you cannot shutdown piracy the way you could with purely physical products, and the book/music/movie/television industry needs to just stop trying. They are in competition with the pirates for market share, and not primarily in terms of cost. Of course there are some people who will always pirate a product because they are cheapskates, but there are far more people who would much rather have a legal means of obtaining a product that isn't laden with DRM, the inconvenience of going to a physically different location, or other restrictions.

The music industry was the first to get slapped with the wake-up call that DRM is anti-customer, and that digital distribution actually leads to bigger profits, despite low price points. The other entertainment industries would do well to take these lessons and run with them.

Re:Don't read

[fafaforza]

The one difference in DRM here is that most people have their purchases tied to one device and they're fine with it. They get an eReader to read books on the go, not on their computer. And as far as their mobile options, there are only a few, and for the most part, they are very similar, so users are fine with that.

This compares to music, where people don't want to be tied to only 3 devices that can play a track, or to have to be online and to authenticate play something, or not being able to copy a track onto a USB stick and play it on their car stereo. There are many more playback devices that remind people how limiting DRM in music is.

Re:Don't read

[Grave]

This is definitely true, so the "inconvenience factor" that most people will tolerate is a bit higher. Personally, I would want to be able to pull up the books on my PC as well as tablet/eReader, depending on what book it is (eg. technical manual vs. fiction).

Re:Don't read

[fafaforza]

With companies like Amazon, you already can do that. They have apps for Android, iOS, the PC, they have a tablet, so what you buy from them can be read on many portable and non-portable devices. The issue is that if Amazon goes out of business, or something else happens in 10 or 20 years, what will happen with your purchases. There was recently a story of one guy's account having been disabled and his $1k collection being inaccessible to him, with Amazon not giving him any sort of an answer or a fix. So your purchased (or rather licensed) books can disappear in an instant. But people aren't thinking about that, so I don't think there's enough problem with DRM in ebooks for people to raise too big of a stink.

Re:Don't read

[Blue Stone]

Their argument seems to be: if we make it difficult for you to lend our e-books, you will instead 'buy' them (license them).

They have apparently failed to anticipate the real alternative to lending, which is 'acquiring via unauthorised distribution'.

If you don't have the money to 'buy', you might lend. If lending is made deliberately difficult, that difficulty won't create the money needed to 'buy', but it might just just increase the desire for acquisition through unauthorised channels

Such a strategy is stupid, short-sighted and ham-fisted; its sole rationale is the preservation of the status quo.

Question...

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Question...

[viperidaenz]

Its what the author (copyright owner) says it is, until the works are in public domain. Not the publisher if they are not producing the copies any more.

The good thing I can see it ebooks lowering the cost for indie authors, cutting out the middle man.
The bad thing is publishers can nolonger afford to pay writers $1,000,000 for a best-seller so there are fewer financial insentives for people to write.

Re:Question...

[king neckbeard]

The only people the bad thing you mention would possibly dissuade are people that are already famous authors (and thus writing a book is still the most lucrative option available to them) or people who don't have a basic grasp of statistics and think they are going to be the next Stephen King or J.K. Rowling (and thus probably aren't competent writers anyway).

Re:Question...

[viperidaenz]

Those who are already famous can afford to take more risks and pay for more advertising.
Poor little John Doe aspiring writer can't sell his ideas/soul/first born to anyone who can afford to take on such risk if there is noone offering such things.

Re:Question...

[king neckbeard]

John Doe is the indie author you just said this was a boon for. The only thing he's missing out on is the potential to make a million dollars on his book. This potential is for all practical purposes non-existent.

Re:Question...

[viperidaenz]

No, Indie author I previously mentioned is the current indie author. With a rise in ebooks and a decline in paper books there is less of a difference between being independent and signing with a publisher - its pretty much just advertising budgets since publication and physical distribution are taken out of the mix

Poor little John Doe can't say "Hi Mr O'Reilly, I want to write a book on .... Can I have an advance please so I can do it full time and still feed my family?" If Mr O'Reilly doesn't exist anymore.

Re:Question...

[king neckbeard]

Then John Doe will be an indie author. Now, he may not get an advance, meaning it will take him a little longer to shift to full time, but once he has books written, he will make more money off of them, so the likelihood of him being able to remain a full time author is better.

Re:Question...

[BLKMGK]

Why do you say that's not possible? e-book authors are already racking up 500K in item sales although not on just one book yet that I know of. Now when you consider they often get more than $1 a sale yeah I can see a million bux being made. In fact I can see it being made more easily! Kripes look at say Angry Birds - think the guy who programmed that hasn't made a million? At least?

Re:Question...

[BradleyUffner]

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?

The value of something is whatever someone is willing to pay for it at the time. The person selling has virtually no influence on the value of something, they can generally only set the price, which is different from the value.

Re:Question...

[AnotherBlackHat]

There's an important difference between more books created, and more books available.

Why should I care how many books exist that cost more than I'm willing to spend?

Re:Question...

[viperidaenz]

Not you personally, but there must be other people willing to buy them or they wouldn't be created. Why do you want to deprive them of that?

It's being handled.

[kurt555gs]

I'm sure the somewhere in the depths of SOPA, the "library problem" is being handled.

Re:It's being handled.

[mapkinase]

I lived with limited borrowing in libraries with hardcopies, I can live with limited borrowing in libraries with e-copies.

Currently I can reserve a book, cancel it online at my county library and pick it up at any location. The waiting period for one of Songs of Ice and Ire was 200 people. Those are people like me - cheapskates who do not want to cough up any amount for a hardcopy.

If library had unlimited number of books, I assume few people would buy the book and all just go to the library and read it.

I think that the pricing where people should wait for a free book for a limited time is quite reasonable model.

I do not care about a model for movies, tv and music, but books are of a different category and while I won't care if Hollywood or BMG survives, I will care about surviving of publishers and ultimately, good writers.

Re:It's being handled.

[ExecutorElassus]

so find a different model for paying writers. The only part of the process now which costs money is the actual writing/editing of the text: once the final version is complete, every other step of the process - printing, distribution, promotion, storage, repair - either costs nothing for a digital copy, or doesn't even exist.
I see no reason why I should pay publishers to perpetuate a system based on artificial limits they've imposed to sustain their own profits.
But then, there are people on Second Life standing in line to use digital bowling alleys or whatever, so I guess some people are into that sort of thing.

Re:It's being handled.

[mapkinase]

First of all, what's wrong with the current model?

The whole idea of gradation of pricing is that you pay big for premium service - a sizzling hot new thriller on your reader the day of it's release and you don't pay for library the setback being that you have to wait and you will have your token for a book for a limited time.

You pay big for a movie on a huge screen in 3D, in a nice chair in a company of (mostly socially consious) cinephiles, you pay less for a permanent DVD copy after some time to watch on your more or less inferior home theater, you pay nothing for watching it on TV with ads (sans ads, if you TiVo'd it). And if you are not shy of things of grey, you watch it streaming from a semi-legal site at low resolution with unreliable service and sometimes ads that are not completely whacked by the recent NoScript or ABP update.

They should expand the library model to movies and the rest of the media. Movie is out, and if you want to see it free, get in line for a token from your local library, and, once you have it, to be able to stream it for free any time withing reasonable time limit (a week or two).

It's already done for media in hardcopy format. The selection is no good, but it is still a good alternative for stingy or poor people.

I have friends who enjoy a good quality of the form for a content, they buy expensive bluray players, huge screens, and they do not want to sweat while getting it, and they are ready to pay for that.

I have also friends, who do not care much about quality and are ready to sweat to go around the barriers that the system put to prevent them from obtaining the content for free. The sweat, they wait for their torrents for hours, they have to shop around for disk space for their collection, but they are not paying a dime for the content.

I understand that there is a significant portion of people who want content of good quality the day of release for no money or for a low flat price of monthly subscription.

Essentially, people want same product for less money, not there anything wrong with that. The thing is that though it might seem like working, content manufacturer trying to be smart to make an impression that it's happening, but in fact what happens is that they will try to compensate for the loss of income in some other way, for example, by doing more product placement in the movies.

What I am saying, let's make peace, let's be reasonable, let's compromise, and the library model (limited number of tokens, limited rental time) is one of the options of doing that.

Re:It's being handled.

[fafaforza]

I don't know that they want to kill libraries, as I'm sure libraries are big purchasers of books. They might simply be trying to find a balance where all parties can be rewarded for their efforts.

Re:It's being handled.

[fafaforza]

> so find a different model for paying writers

This sounds like a debate about budget cuts.

- "Don't cut my program"
- "But we are in the red, we have to cut something"
- "Well, find money somewhere else"
- "Alright, where?"
- "I don't know, but not by cutting programs I'm interested in"

You also shouldn't count costs for a specific book as separate from a company's overall business. A publisher releases many books. Most of them aren't hits and they lose money. Some are hits, and they help to absorb those losses, thereby allowing a publishers to try more writers in search of a hit, thereby supporting the industry. So who are you to tell them what profit on a certain book they should be making?

Re:It's being handled.

[houghi]

I do not care about a model for movies, tv and music, but books are of a different category

That is an emotional and not a rational observation.
Why does it matter if you write a book, but not if you write a movie script or a song? What about newspapers or magazines?
And blogs?
What if a writers does all of that or some of them?
Movies are turned into books. Books are turned into movies.

The important thing here is to understand that these are the rights of the copyright holder and that is seldom the writer. In a few exceptions will they make money, but most will loose money.

Re:It's being handled.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I think you may have misread the problem. Libraries already have "limited" numbers of e-books; their licenses already prohibit them from lending "copies" of e-books to more than a certain number of customers at a time. What the publishers want is a limit on the total number of times a library can lend a "copy" of an e-book. It's like selling a hardcopy book to a library and saying, "You can only lend this book n times, then you have to throw it away." Which is absurd, especially when n is such a small number: 26 in this case, far far smaller than the number of times a physical book can be lent before it starts to disintegrate.

Re:It's being handled.

[mapkinase]

You are right, I miss this moment, but it fits into the idea of continuing existing business model. E-books should be cheaper than hardcopies (minus the cost of physical production).

"You can only lend this book n times, then you have to throw it away." - it's absurd only if you think that the hardcopy books replacement affects only customer's quality of experience.

Existing hardcopy based model is implicitly lending of a material. Books, LPs, audiocassettes, play/read only certain number of times, which makes it not ownership, but lending. Essentially, almost all that we have is on lease. I leased my cars from Honda, whether I am buying or actually leasing. You cannot use most of the things you use forever, they worn out. This is because the qualities of most things are material. In hardcopy books, it's the quality of browsing the content by physically moving the pages and cracking up the book between pages.

Digital content is detached from the media completely. Your tablet might break because of your reading habits, but that does not affect pdf's on it. You replace the tablet at no benefit to the publishers of that pdf.

Welcome content that never wears out. Content producers become affected by that, they really get less profit from content because there is no need for replacement. Whether this loss is large or small, let the battle between libraries and publishers decide, but the loss is not zero, ergo, the total number of times library can lend a copy should be limited. Whether this limit is nominal or predatory should be decided legally between libraries and publishers.

There is no really holy war here.

Rights

[Caesar Tjalbo]

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.

Michael S. Hart

[symbolset]

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.

Information is time is money

[qualityassurancedept]

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.

Re:Information is time is money

[unrtst]

There's really no difference so long as they adhere to the "if we only have one digital 'copy', then only one person can have it checked out via overdrive at a time". In the past, they only bought the books people actually read anyway (no library has a library of congress size collection of books, and they even sell off their old books to make room quite often).

I'm always amazed that libraries have stayed around as long as they have; very thankful for that, but still amazed. If libraries didn't exist right now, and someone was trying to start some, I'd imagine publishers would be just as scared, even though it means a whole lot of book sales to the libraries, a handy distributed archive for free, and a bunch more potential readers (ex. people that might not have the cash on hand to buy a bunch of books now, but might later on, or even people that simply lack the physical space at home to store them).

Forget this being bad for publishers for a second... ebooks could be very very bad for libraries in general. As long as Overdrive has the copies, there's no need for the libraries themselves (there's still a need for the money to buy the ebooks, but that could get diverted from the libraries to overdrive or similar).

Personally, I think the requirement that ebooks only be checked out 26 (or whatever) times before they have to buy another copy is just ridiculous! I'll concede that restricting each copy to only be used by one person at a time is an understandable correlation to the current physical world, but even that is 100% arbitrarily imposed. Unless society allows things to become extremely draconian and Fahrenheit 451 -ish then, at some point, ebooks and mp3's are almost certainly going to be freely available to all (maybe after some tax to support the storage and bandwidth)... there's simply no technical reason to prevent that.

It's the printing press all over again, and the world will adapt (er... the world at large will drag the small minority that are part of the publishing industry along kicking and screaming the whole way). If I were in print, I'd be scared too - they're going to go the way of monks handwriting bibles eventually.

The real question is how the authors will get paid. If we did have a universal system that had all ebooks freely available, then I'd suspect all other ebook distribution would damn near stop (including giving your friend a copy of your ebook, since they could just go get it themselves for free). If that happens, then we'll have very solid stats on downloads per-title. That could be used to pay the authors. Number of music tracks owned per-person is certainly much higher now than it was in the days of LP's and tapes. Number of books owned is likely to go the same route. Thus, authors could be paid a very small amount per download of their book, and still make approximately what they make today.... we'd just have to get that money into that system somehow (tax?). This is probably a good 20years off still before it gets anywhere near that point... in the meantime, I expect a lot of fighting/kicking/screaming/drm/laws/etc from the industry.

What?! A library *lending* out books!? For Free?!

[PolygamousRanchKid]

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.

Libraries

[ChiRaven]

I have yet to meet a debate in which I did not favor the side of the Libraries, if there was one.

Re:Libraries

[0123456]

Do you make money as a writer? If you did, would you favor the publishers which would pay you or the libraries which will not?

Publishers pay writers?

A typical deal right now is that when someone buys an e-book the retailer takes 30%, the publisher takes 75% of the remaining 70%, the agent takes 15% of the remaining 25% of the 70%, and the writer gets whatever dregs are left over.

Most sensible writers would rather that publishers die so they get the rights to their stories back so they can sell them themselves and make more money.

Re:Libraries

[magarity]

Do you make money as a writer? If you did, would you favor the publishers which would pay you or the libraries which will not?

I recall an interview in which an author once said in an interview that he loved libraries; if every one of them in the country bought a copy of his book it would be a mad best seller since there are over 100K libraries and it takes sales of about 5K/week to make it on the bestseller lists. I assume since the libraries actually do purchase the e- versions of the books this is still true, so what is all the fuss about?

Re:Libraries

[ChiRaven]

Do you make money as a writer? If you did, would you favor the publishers which would pay you or the libraries which will not?

No, in fact, I don't. I can tell you, however, that one of the most successful American genre writers in recent years, Robert A. Heinlein, was an unabashed partisan of libraries, and even in his years of declining health accepted as many speaking invitations from the American Library Association and its affiliates as he possibly could. He wrote several times, I believe, of his reasons for his stance on this. He did not face the issue of ebooks ... that came after his time. But I doubt that it has invalidated any of his points in favor of libraries.

Business aristocracy...

[blahplusplus]

... 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!

WTF am I reading?

[jtownatpunk.net]

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.

Re:WTF am I reading?

[Sponge Bath]

Publishers, stop acting like you sell paper. You don't. You sell content. Act like it.

They license content. Selling implies the buyer ends up owning something. Apparently only corporate persons are allowed to own information and ideas, meat persons are only allowed to rent (ideally on a per use basis).

No, not really

[symbolset]

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.

Re:No, not really

[blue trane]

Give them a basic income so they can concentrate on doing things that contribute to the more rapid advancement of knowledge, instead of working to impose artificial scarcity.

Re:No, not really

[rsilvergun]

Bu.. Bu.. Socialism! Seriously, good luck with that. I'd love to have it, and maybe it would work in Europe, but Americans have a deeply ingrained notion that if you didn't 'work' for it, it's not yours (funny how that goes out the window when we're talking inheritance & trust funds, but double think's strong in this country...).

Re:No, not really

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I don't like these guys but this is the correct assessment of the situation. Limitless free library ebooks are the death of them.

Except "limitless" is not the issue at stake. Almost all library e-book lending works just like physical copies - the library can only "lend out" as many copies at any one time as the library purchased in the first place. What the publishers want is to impose restrictions that are even more onerous than the real world - deleting books after a certain (small) number of check-outs.

At best they can argue that physical books eventually wear out, but not in the same time frame these guys are trying force on ebook lending.

Re:No, not really

[_KiTA_]

Limitless free library ebooks are the death of them.

And good riddance.

Re:No, not really

[Baloroth]

Actually America already does precisely that in the universities for research. Historically, writers of philosophy, politics, and science have been funded that way across the world. A few literature writers as well (Tolkien and C.S. Lewis come to mind). I believe that is still pretty common. However, authors like J.K Rowling (who IMO don't contribute to the advancement of knowledge) can't succeed under such a system. Or would you propose that we should pay any writer who wants it no matter the actual contribution to society of their work? No, that system would never work because everyone wants to become the next billionaire runaway success writer. The writers themselves wouldn't agree to it: if they actually wanted to, that system is already in place (as I said: university professors do pretty much exactly that in many cases).

Re:No, not really

[Raenex]

Limitless free library ebooks are the death of them.

From the article: "E-lending is not without some friction. Software ensures that only one patron can read an e-book copy at a time, and people who see a long waiting list for a certain title may decide to buy it instead."

Re:No, not really

[Belial6]

They would have made the exact same argument if they were talking about the founding of public libraries. In 1930, how was there more 'friction' from the library than from the publisher. Answer, there wasn't. Media Barons just want to use the shift in book 'manufacturing' as an excuse to get rid of the libraries that they no doubt always thought were stealing from them.

Re:No, not really

[rsilvergun]

Not exactly. The idea with basic income is that you're guaranteed enough money to be comfortable (food, shelter, medical care). This frees you up to take risks (like writing for a living), because you're not risking starvation if you spend a few years writing full time. You see some of this in Canada, where socialized medicine has allowed several writers to work part time for enough to support themselves. In American you can't do that because part timers don't get medical benefits....

To contrast the Universities, you can't get funding unless you've got a proven track record; e.g. it's already your full time job (I'm aware there are exceptions, they are exceptions nonetheless). You can't generally transition from, say, full time accountant to full time writer that way. They won't give you the funding because, hey, you're an accountant, not a writer. Now, get a few successful books under your belt and you'll get grants, but we're not talking about the lucky few that manage to make it; we're talking about the thousands that didn't...

Re:No, not really

[ubrgeek]

> authors like J.K Rowling (who IMO don't contribute to the advancement of knowledge)

Right. Because there's nothing to be gained from getting kids to enjoy reading. It's not like they'll carry that forward later into life.

Re:No, not really

[FoolishOwl]

Professional writers are discovering that they can make far more money by self-publishing on the Internet than they can by working through a publisher, and by charging much less for their works, at that.

See A Newbie's Guide to Publishing.

Publishing companies add nothing of value to the process, and are simply parasitic.

Re:No, not really

[Anonymous Coward]

This is me... playing the worlds smallist violin... with a buggy whip.

Re:No, not really

[LordLimecat]

Serious counterpoint to your strawman:
We have limited resources: paper to print books, time to publish them, shipping to distribute them. For ebooks, its computer time to produce them, writer's time to create them.

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. Figure that out, and your idea can work. Its less of an issue with ebooks since fewer resources are needed, but theres still the issue of authors expecting to be paid and the folks who digitize their work expecting to be paid in line with the worth of their product.

Re:No, not really

[demonlapin]

Established, successful professional writers can make more through selling directly, because they don't need to pay for promotions. If Stephen King wants to appear on the Today show, he can pick up the phone and offer them an exclusive on his new book in return for five or ten minutes out of each hour of the program. Joe Unknown doesn't have that ability. He needs the services offered by a publisher: editors who understand not only clean prose, but what will sell; marketing teams that can put together a big push on a book; and salesmen that can make a store take a chance on an unknown writer.

Some middlemen are parasites, usually those who enjoy state protections (like liquor distributors in many states). Most of them exist because they serve a valuable function.

Re:No, not really

[uniquename72]

> authors like J.K Rowling (who IMO don't contribute to the advancement of knowledge)
Right. Because there's nothing to be gained from getting kids to enjoy reading. It's not like they'll carry that forward later into life.

That's an indirect contribution, which would be ineligible for government funds. Write a few grants and see how well such logic translates into funding (which is GP's point about the current system).

Re:No, not really

[0123456]

Joe Unknown doesn't have that ability. He needs the services offered by a publisher: editors who understand not only clean prose, but what will sell; marketing teams that can put together a big push on a book; and salesmen that can make a store take a chance on an unknown writer.

Uh, Amazon will 'take a chance' on anyone who can upload a book to them. Most books get no marketing beyond that required to get into book stores. Most publishers expect a book to be edited before they see it so they don't have to spend time doing so.

The average unknown writer will never sell a book to a big publisher. The average unknown writer who does sell a book will get an advance of a few thousand dollars and then be expected to do their own marketing. The average unknown writer who's capable of writing a book that would sell to a big publisher would do much better to just upload it to Amazon, Smashwords and other book retailers where they'll make most of the money rather than hand that money to the publisher instead.

In my experience, the only people who still think publishers are required are publishers and unpublished writers.

Re:No, not really

[symbolset]

In addition to providing this service the publishers act as gatekeepers - in a process that could take years and had little to do with improving the quality of published works, but saved to reduce the rate of releases (and hence, the publishers' exposure to risk). If Joe Unknown couldn't get them to publish his books, he was out of the game entirely and there was nothing he could do about it. Now many can and do just self-publish their work through an ePub distributor and can build enough of a following to sustain a nice livelihood without any gatekeeper.

In dead-tree books the cost and risk of self-publishing a minimum run of books was prohibitive and finding bookstores to carry it required more work than the profits to be gained therefrom.

Of course if your works don't delight the reader you're not going to get the following and will have no success. But at least whether or not you get your chance is within your control now.

Re:No, not really

[Shadow99_1]

Not all authors expect to get paid for their work... Just look at the incredibly large and complex web of fan fiction that has existed for nearly 2 decades online. None of those people truly expect to get paid for their work (though ads may pay for their hosting fees..... maybe...). While you may say it's all rubbish and those writer aren't any good, plenty of people enjoy them. A decade ago I wrote some fan fiction for a fairly unknown piece of fiction and even ten years later I still get a couple of people a year that send me a note about how they found my work and loved it. Heck technically fan fiction is illegal, for or not for profit... Yet it still thrives because people enjoy it.

That's not the only thing I've written myself, but most of my works have been free (I did try on demand publishing, but I never made money from that). The classic publisher model only allows about a dozen new writers a year, which in the age of easy publishing is the key problem. We simply don't need the classic gatekeepers that publishing has been. We may still need editors and even advertising, but I doubt they will look much like today...

Re:No, not really

[LordLimecat]

While you may say it's all rubbish and those writer aren't any good, plenty of people enjoy them. A decade ago I wrote some fan fiction for a fairly unknown piece of fiction and even ten years later I still get a couple of people a year that send me a note about how they found my work and loved it. Heck technically fan fiction is illegal, for or not for profit... Yet it still thrives because people enjoy it.

Fanfictions tend to be short, and dont take months or years to write. I wont disparage them, but a world in which our literature consisted solely in fanfiction type writings would be a world with a shallow literary heritage.

Re:No, not really

[Tom]

Not entirely.

I am in the process of publishing my first book (as an e-book, incidentally). I could self-publish through Amazon with ease. But I wouldn't mind someone taking care of all that busywork for me, and doing some marketing, and for his efforts take a cut.

It depends on what exactly the publisher is doing for you that matters.

Re:No, not really

[0123456]

Fanfictions tend to be short, and dont take months or years to write.

Plenty of popular novels were written in days or weeks. Michael Moorcock, for example, has written about how he could write a novel in a few days when he was younger; in some cases that showed, but some of the other books are considered classics of their genre.

Even if you can only manage to write for an hour a day, in two years you can write a novel that a professional writer could have written working eight hours a day for three months (if I remember correctly, three months is how long Iain Banks said he typically spends on a novel, and he's pretty successful).

Re:No, not really

[Anonymous Coward]

Get paid a comfortable salary for no work and you just have to put out any old trash? Once that becomes popular who is going to be paying that comfortable salary? I can assure you that most people I know will gladly stop working for that, after all that is all Social Security Disability has become in this country and that bit alone is bankrupting the federal government.

Ahh, to be liberal and not have to deal with the reality of economics.

Re:No, not really

[BLKMGK]

Kids hell, I know a TON of adults that began reading again in earnest when Potter came out! You think those overnight lines were all for kids? :-)

Re:No, not really

[Baloroth]

And unfortunately the thousands that don't succeed generally don't because they produce little to nothing of worth. Some of them do and simply never get recognized, sure, but to pay every one who simply "wants to write" to do so with no guarantee that what they produce will be of value is a waste of money. Unless, of course, the government starts to regulate which jobs each individual can go into (which is historically how all such socialist systems have worked, by necessity), and then of course you have no freedom. A system where this is only true for a handful of people works, true, but only if you only allow a few individuals to partake. How do you decide who? Track record. And then you have something pretty close to the present system.

The problem with socialism is it just doesn't work on a widespread scale. I'm not entirely opposed to a few socialized services (like health care), but for productive work like writing I think it is a bad and counter-productive idea.

Re:No, not really

[artor3]

What we need is a new generation of publishers that do that actual value-added work: editing, formatting, paperwork... maybe marketing, though that could probably be handled by a dedicated marketing firm. In exchange, they take a smaller cut and no claim to the copyright, reflecting their reduced role in society. A start-up company doing exactly this could probably be disruptive enough in the market to force a change in the behavior of the traditional publishers, and I think it's only a matter of time before we see such companies popping up.

This is one of the rare cases where the free market might actually be able to work as advertised.

Re:No, not really

[Baloroth]

I've seen no indication that kids gain a love of reading anything besides more fluff books from the Harry Potter series. The distinct lack of well educated individuals in America seems to agree with that. A "love of reading" is all fine and dandy, but when it is a love of reading just Stephen King or (*shudder*) Stephanie Meyer, it doesn't carry forwards to very much. May even be counter-productive in some cases, since they grow so used to such simple works that they never move on. It's the literary equivalent of eating baby food your whole life (or, well, mac'n'cheese anyways: it's still tasty to adults, but it won't provide what you need to grow intellectually.) Now, if they read Isaac Asimov (or Mark Twain et al.) afterwards, that would be different. But they usually don't.

Re:No, not really

[AverageWindowsUser]

It's where you end up once you start down that route.

If I could get a 'living income' for just sitting around the house doing nothing, why would I do anything else? Who's going to do the work to generate that 'living income'?

Ben Bernanke.

Re:No, not really

[Shadow99_1]

My fanfiction a decade ago had over 52 chapters and when combined into a single file came to over 250 pages. That is easily in line with lots of novels and was done over the course of 6 months. Discounting one easy example on the basis of 'average length' is silly. Lots of writers do other stuff before becoming published authors and even more often still do something else after becoming published authors. Very few 'writers' can live on the income they make just from writing.

Re:No, not really

[AverageWindowsUser]

Limitless free library ebooks are the death of them.

And good riddance.

Cmon man, cut the libraries some slack. Aren't you going to miss their Windows XP internet computers with the timing software? Extra points if they use "Frozen State" and set your usage priveledges so low that you cannot even open the programs they've installed and chosen for you to use. Oh I think I'll use word 2003 and you get: "Sorry, you do not have the priveleges neccessary to access this feature."

Seriously. Windows XP and Word 2003. Are they kidding.

Brought to you by the Troy Public Library in Troy, NY. (Don't waste your time there)

Yes, good riddance, indeed. Unless you happen to get a kick out of how almost every inner city black man on library computers ends up watching some video with a overweight black womans behind shaking too-close in the camera on some unheard of youtube clone site.

Libraries are the new club-med for homeless people.

Re:No, not really

[magarity]

Limitless free library ebooks are the death of them.

From the article: "E-lending is not without some friction. Software ensures that only one patron can read an e-book copy at a time, and people who see a long waiting list for a certain title may decide to buy it instead."

Except that it doesn't; I've borrowed a book from my library to my Kindle and then just kept the wireless turned off. I got an email that my loan had expired and it showed up again on the library's website as available. Amazon's 'manage my Kindle' page showed it as revoked from my device. But my Kindle kept it and I finished reading it. Only when I turned on the wireless connection several days after the supposed loan expiration date did it get removed from the device.

Re:No, not really

[BLKMGK]

Is a 17% cut for you and a 52% cut for the publisher for eternity a good deal for you? Seriously? You ought to go read Konrath's blog - lots of it.... http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/

Re:No, not really

[BLKMGK]

Is a 17% cut for you and a 52% cut for the publisher for eternity a good deal for you? Seriously? You ought to go read Konrath's blog - lots of it.... http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ Oh and they get to control pricing forever too - and will use it to prop up sagging paper sales and slow ebook adoption....

Re:No, not really

[arkenian]

> authors like J.K Rowling (who IMO don't contribute to the advancement of knowledge) Right. Because there's nothing to be gained from getting kids to enjoy reading. It's not like they'll carry that forward later into life.

That's an indirect contribution, which would be ineligible for government funds. Write a few grants and see how well such logic translates into funding (which is GP's point about the current system).

I can't speak for the UK, but in the US they regularly hand out grants for programs to increase child interest in reading....

Re:No, not really

[rsilvergun]

Forgive me if this sounds rude, but if you'd missed the point by any wider margin you might have gone full circle and hit it :P (Stay with me on this, I'm going somewhere).

First off, you're not giving people money to write, you're giving them money to provide a base-line standard of living, which in turn gives them the opportunity to write (or go to law school, or invent cold fusion, or anyone of a million things better than working 60 hours a week at McDonald's). The point of basic income isn't to replace the rewards for a useful job. It's to ensure that the struggle for existence doesn't snuff out our best and brightest. You know, we sent physicists to the trenches in WWI, right?

And to paraphrase, The problem with Capitalism is it's broken. It can't deal with a society where there's only 10 or 20 hours of work a week to go around except for maybe a top 5% of creators. Most people, if you ask them, agree that we're not going to let that other 95% die in the gutter. So, to ask a serious question: what do you propose for a solution that ISN'T socialism? I've got a lot of right wing friends who, when confronted with this reality either come up with something crazy (like returning to an agrarian society ala the Amish) or end up with Socialism is everything but name (e.g., missing the point by so wide a margin they go full circle and hit it).

Re:No, not really

[Anonymous Coward]

Limitless free library ebooks are the death of them.

Limitless free library ebooks are the death of publishers, but not of authorship or of books.

Re:No, not really

[Raenex]

OK, that's a loophole, but you're limited to a device without wireless, and it's still the case that nobody can check the book out while you have it out. And if somebody really wants to get it, then they'll just pirate it from the Net. The publishers are being greedy and stupid.

Re:No, not really

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Except that it doesn't; I've borrowed a book from my library to my Kindle and then just kept the wireless turned off.

There is your friction right there - if you want to "keep" that book, you can't get any more books - you can't even go online with that device. That's like a $100 wasted so you can "keep" a $5 ebook. I don't think that's really much of a risk to the market.

Re:No, not really

[blue trane]

Says more about you than about the idea of a basic income. Create money for the budget, and hold challenges (which biz can hold too, like google bug bounties, netflix, etc.) to stimulate individuals to innovate. The DARPA autonomous car-driving challenge is an example, or the paper-shredding challenge. Let anyone enter: individuals, ad hoc groups of individuals organized through the internet, companies, universities, whoever. Take the best ideas and let biz do what it does best with them: incrementally innovate. This is the recipe to increase the pace of knowledge advancement and technological progress...

The economic problem is not the central problem of mankind. As long as we continue to innovate, we can create as much money as we like.

Re:No, not really

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he was talking about the publishers.

Re:No, not really

[Anonymous Coward]

These are the fatal flaws with hard-core socialism / communism: you have no reliable, accurate way to determine the best way to allocate resources.

And that differs from capitalism how? Have you looked at the world economy lately?

Re:No, not really

[BlueStrat]

The problem with Capitalism is it's broken.

Capitalism is the worst system ever invented. Except for every other system ever invented.

Capitalism is the only system ever created where wealth is a renewable resource for everyone as long as they are willing to work and/or come up with an idea, skill, or invention that's useful to someone else.

Where Socialism, Fascism, and Communism are systems that require people to act against their natural tendencies (working harder and going further than required in a system where everyone is rewarded and punished equally and where incentive and thinking out of the box are not survival traits), Capitalism instead leverages self-interest and the desire for people to better their lot to improve things for everyone and create wealth & prosperity where there previously was little or none.

Capitalism has raised more people from poverty than any other system ever created.

Capitalism has allowed more people to live in more relative freedom and at a higher standard of living than any other system ever invented.

Capitalism has allowed the US to provide more humanitarian assistance to those in need around the world than any other system or country in history.

For these reasons and many more, "Progressivism", Socialism, Communism, and Fascism are doomed to failure and to taking their rightful places on the junk heap of failed ideologies.

Strat

Re:No, not really

[PCM2]

(if I remember correctly, three months is how long Iain Banks said he typically spends on a novel, and he's pretty successful).

As far as I can tell, at least some of Banks's success can be attributed to the fact that he's quite prolific compared to most writers ... which leads me to conclude that most writers can't turn out a novel as quickly as he can.

Re:No, not really

[PCM2]

Except that it doesn't; I've borrowed a book from my library to my Kindle and then just kept the wireless turned off. I got an email that my loan had expired and it showed up again on the library's website as available. Amazon's 'manage my Kindle' page showed it as revoked from my device. But my Kindle kept it and I finished reading it. Only when I turned on the wireless connection several days after the supposed loan expiration date did it get removed from the device.

It's been a while since I've borrowed an e-book from the library, but I'm pretty sure that's not how it works on my Nook (which has had the library-lending capability longer than the Kindle). On the Nook, you must "side load" the e-book onto your device using Adobe Digital Editions software. When the lease expires, the book doesn't magically disappear from the device, but it tells you your lease has expired and you can't read it anymore.

Re:No, not really

[PCM2]

What we need is a new generation of publishers that do that actual value-added work: editing, formatting, paperwork... maybe marketing, though that could probably be handled by a dedicated marketing firm. In exchange, they take a smaller cut and no claim to the copyright

Actually, fiction writers don't usually sell the copyright to their works. I just grabbed a selection of four novels from my shelf -- some by well-known authors, but at least one was a debut novel -- and all four were copyright by their authors. What a fiction writer does, however, is sign a publishing contract that gives the publisher exclusive use of the work (and often they sign multiple contracts, granting different publishers rights in different regions of the world).

So when we take your copyright comment out of the equation, what we're left with is "publishers should take a smaller cut" ... but why, if they're still performing all of the value-added work they have always done? The work you describe is basically what publishers do. Why should they offer authors contracts that don't allow themselves to profit? You seem to be claiming that publishers take an exorbitant share of the profits of the works they publish, but can you prove that?

Re:No, not really

[q.kontinuum]

No, I don't thinks so. Majority of people want's to have at least a tiny bit more than their neighbors, and with a just enough unconditional base income (Yes, it's not supposed to be comfortable but "just enough") for everyone, there is still a high incentive to earn a bit more. This would decrease the wages the companies have to pay, since people only have to earn for their luxury instead of everything they need. And it might even create new sustainable business models to employ people who are currently unemployable.

The current problem is that (at least in Germany) as soon as you earn a bit on top, this bit is deducted from social welfare almost immediately, and with a low income you might not be eligible to several other benefits, so your net income might end up below the social welfare level. I could imagine that the problem with Social Security Disability would be similar?

Re:No, not really

[q.kontinuum]

Euhm, in case you haven't noticed : we don't have enough people to do what needs to be done.

So, why are there so many unemployed ín so many countries? I assume, because the people needed are the *qualified* people? And to get them it would be great to spare them wasting their time 40hours a week to earn their university education and instead let them focus on the education, I'd say.

And, as I've studied AI, might I add this little datapoint. It is trivial to prove that every learning algorithm in existence, given the circumstances you describe (ie. neither survival nor any kind of strong impulse coupled to performance) dies. It dies in the sense that it looses all abilities it has, until it can't do anything at all anymore.

And what happens with the learning algorithm, when it's not executed because the CPU is busy executing "tunenAndServeBurger" with 100% CPU time? No ones talking about removing the incentive. It might be reduced a bit, but I'd assume that most students are not studying for a future to earn just enough to live somehow, but to get rich and respected. This incentive will not change. On the other hand intelligent people are risk aware and susceptible to the Dunning Kruger effect, resulting in lots of potential engineers shying away from starting an education which might fail and ruin their whole existence.

For the rest of your post: AI is currently far, far away from resembling human learning. (You should know if you studied it.) Also there are non-monetary incentives for humans, like recognition and respect from peers, moral standards, etc. In total I'd say, get out of your lab/office/workplace and in touch with people once in a while.

Re:No, not really

[blue trane]

Think of the long tail made possible by the internet. It's about freedom, not economics. And calling "communism" the idea that everyone should be able to do what they want on a basic income is a strawman, because "do what you want" includes working for a biz as now. A basic income gives more choice, more freedom, which will result in an increased rate of innovation.

Re:No, not really

[Soluzar]

Did they read anything else other than Harry Potter?

Re:No, not really

[q.kontinuum]

It's where you end up once you start down that route.

Yes, I already feel quite Korean here in Germany...

If I could get a 'living income' for just sitting around the house doing nothing, why would I do anything else?

Because it's no fun to have no money to travel, no money to buy a better TV, better Computer, a nicer car etc.? Because it sucks living at a minimum when your neighbor earns bigger? Of course, if you are currently limiting your work to the minimum amount required to have enough to bite, essential medicines, and a roof above your head, you might have a point. But than you are way lazier than average people...

Re:No, not really

[unkiereamus]

> authors like J.K Rowling (who IMO don't contribute to the advancement of knowledge) Right. Because there's nothing to be gained from getting kids to enjoy reading. It's not like they'll carry that forward later into life.

That's an indirect contribution, which would be ineligible for government funds. Write a few grants and see how well such logic translates into funding (which is GP's point about the current system).

First off, I don't think that was the (G)GP's point, I think it was just blasting popular fiction authors...for the sake of this comment, though, I'm going to go ahead and grant the argument.

I, personally, read the Harry Potter books, they weren't the greatest thing ever, but they killed a week or so of my reading time in an enjoyable manner. Let's go a little further, though, I read about two chapters of the first twilight book, and threw my hands up in despair...even a little further, I refuse to participate in Facebook, I think it's a mindless waste of time that degrades every possible measure of intelligence. (It might show that I'm a bit of a misanthrope, here...)

However, having said that, until last week (I was a stop-gap contract employee from the get-go), I ran a learning center in Honduras which, amoung other things, had the goal of improving literacy amoung the local children. While I was working there, I did everything in my power to encourage the children to read those books, and to use face book...given my personal opinions, you might ask "why?", but that's simple, it has nothing to do with enhancing the enjoyment of reading, but rather with the promotion of literacy.

Like anything else, the only way to get good at reading is to do it. Anything that make children want to read it improves their literacy. In the same vein, I never could understand why anyone would object to children reading comic books...if they want to read, get out of the way and help them.

Now, I wasn't dependent on government grants to do my works, but rather was dependent on private donations (For everything from my salary to the money to pay the electric bill), which is arguably either a harder or easier way to raise money...largely, I think, depending on which way you've most recently tried to raise money.

Oh, and lest you think that the value of this sort of thing is wholly involved in the children being the product of a fifth-rate education like they receive here, a fair percentage of the kids who I went to HS with in the states couldn't read without moving their lips...and an lamentably non-trivial percentage of them literally couldn't read anything past the 3rd grade level at all.

Someone who is literate is much more likely to, if not make a positive contribution to society, at least not make a negative contribution than someone who is illiterate.

Why would you ever oppose anything that improves literacy?

Re:No, not really

[AmiMoJo]

Almost no-one is a full time author before their first book is published, they do it on their own time or as part of their job. Since the internet now allows anyone to publish their book for free and even get it edited for free via crowd sourcing or a Wikipedia style system I think it would be very feasible to start paying popular authors just to keep on writing once proven. The only tricky part is defining a "book" as opposed to a "long web page/site".

I would also argue that while Harry Potter isn't exactly high art it does add to our culture. Even popular culture has value to us, in the sense that people enjoy it and it enriches their lives (a little bit). Aside from anything else those novels probably got quite a few kids to do some serious reading practice.

Re:No, not really

[AmiMoJo]

These are the fatal flaws with hard-core socialism / communism: you have no reliable, accurate way to determine the best way to allocate resources.

Socialism can determine resource allocation based on fair metrics: popularity, cost/benefit to society as a whole and to the individual, democratic polling and so on. Capitalism's flaw is that it can only determine the best way to allocate resources by looking at what makes the most profit, which can be at odds with what is best for society (e.g. Fox News ot The Daily Mail/Sun newspapers).

Capitalism only works when socialism lays down some pretty strict rules to skew the results. When we fail to do that the result is bullshit like the Murdoch empire and the global financial meltdown. Left to itself capitalism just lurches from boom to bust and back again.

Re:No, not really

[Hognoxious]

A peasant in Siberia knows whether he'd rather have a hat or new boots better than a bureaucrat in Moscow does.

Re:No, not really

[Hognoxious]

Funny how people think money that has already been taxed several times should be taxed yet again.

Money isn't taxed, transactions are.

Re:No, not really

[Hognoxious]

I'm interested to know what method you would use to prevent people claiming the dole and committing crime.

Re:No, not really

[Richard_at_work]

Sure Start in the UK is the current pro-reading program, where kids get free books.

Re:No, not really

[trout007]

You are confusing labor and leisure. There seems to be a lot of that these days. When you say people need a basic income it is unsustainable. You are saying everyone deserves to be able to force someone else to labor for them. After all that is what food, shelter, energy, and healthcare is. But if you accept your premise that anyone can use force to take the fruits of someone else's labor then you create a system where everyone is busy trying to steal instead of produce. That is unsustainable and is the reason the world economy is collapsing.

Re:No, not really

[fleeped]

Let them die. Sounds like they're parasites.

Re:No, not really

[Tom]

I couldn't care less about percentage values, because I can't buy food for percentages. If the sum total that ends up in my pocket is more this way, then it is a good deal for me. If it is less, then it is a bad deal for me. It really is that simple. Talk about cuts and percentages is just moral outrage.

Re:No, not really

[TuringTest]

systems that require people to act against their natural tendencies

How come that "work and/or come up with an idea, skill, or invention that's useful to someone else" and "incentive and thinking out of the box" are not acting against people natural tendencies?

Capitalism has allowed more people to live in more relative freedom and at a higher standard of living than any other system ever invented.

You mean like child labour and suburbs? The driving force that alleviated those (in some places, for some groups) was not capitalism alone but social welfare.

Face it, capitalism is not and never was a system that has been put into practice in a pure form, just like socialism nor communism have never been implemented in a way true to their ideals. Every ideology when is put into action gets shaped by a real-world mixture of influences.

Rejecting the parts of the economy that work to improve the well-being of a group (like you do when rejecting social policies) will only make that group worse off. The trick is in balancing the particular methods that work best in each particular situation regardless of what ideology originated them, not rejecting a whole class of economic methods only because you disagree with that ideology's founding fathers.

Re:No, not really

[vlm]

So, to ask a serious question: what do you propose for a solution that ISN'T socialism?

It requires intense social interaction and social cohesion (absolutely not multiculturalism compatible) but historically the solution in the early greco-roman world was utter social and political ostracism of those not participating in the gift economy. Key word is "early", decay set in toward the end. The roads from rome to modern france were not built by the nebulous concept of "rome" or even a roman govt dept, but were bought and paid for by none other than Julius Caesar. Fame in that era was not so much being good at kids ball games or being good and lip syncing and better at dancing, but by being the guy who built the city a nice bath house or fed the poor.

Also, politically, the poor tended to side with those who paid to feed them. It is exactly the same now, we just like to pretend it is not so. It is much more civilized to be honest about it.

The knee jerk response is this would never work in a "specialized advanced society" but I completely disagree. The best tech example I can think of is Shuttleworth/Ubuntu. Now multiply that by a hundred or thousand other projects, and we would be getting somewhere. Also if you're familiar with the role the ARRL plays WRT amateur radio, well funded charitable donation organizations like that also existed in ye olden days. Julius Caesar didn't really know very much about roads, other than who to hire to build some good ones. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, again, times about a hundred or thousand or so, is probably what we'd see a lot of. Also the analogy of temple/church vs the modern university is pretty apt, a nice endowment, lifetime chairs for the profs, its much more ancient of a funding concept than you'd superficially think.

Don't think this will work in a "divide and conquer" multicultural world, or in /. world where the only social interaction is in FPS video games. Or in a world where the predominant game theory strategy is "I don't care how much smaller the whole pie gets for everyone, all that matters is my individual slice gets larger". But, historically, it was possible and did work pretty darn well for centuries.

I know about this ancient world stuff because I have a 5 digit /. UID, I was there when it happened. More seriously, being reasonably well read is a result of a good (free) classical education, although I haven't read stuff like Plutarch's Lives in a couple decades I believe my post is overall a reasonable summary of how we did it in ye olden days. Or at least its the best spin they could put on it in the olden days back when they wrote about it.

Re:No, not really

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

How does your suggestion even begin to provide an answer ?

The economic problem is not the central problem of mankind.

True, but that's because of capitalism. Take capitalism away, and it will become the problem again in short order.

Re:No, not really

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

And to paraphrase, The problem with Capitalism is it's broken. It can't deal with a society where there's only 10 or 20 hours of work a week to go around except for maybe a top 5% of creators. Most people, if you ask them, agree that we're not going to let that other 95% die in the gutter. So, to ask a serious question: what do you propose for a solution that ISN'T socialism?

That's pretty obvious, isn't it ? Lower the minimum wage and employment taxes, so people can be hired to provide more services.

Socialism, incidentally, always depended on forced labour. It does today, in Europe ("you flunk X interviews, and you're on your own" type of deals). And in countries like the Soviet union ... well, I'm pretty sure your local dvd rental place has at least one movie demonstrating how it worked.

Do you really think forced labour is superior to the current situation ? Do you see another alternative that can make socialism work perhaps (feel free to include a few lines on why neither "very slightly socialist" Europe nor any other socialist government has ever seen fit to use that idea) ?

Re:No, not really

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

And what happens with the learning algorithm, when it's not executed because the CPU is busy executing "tunenAndServeBurger" with 100% CPU time?

It learns how to server burgers really well, and any skill even tangentially related to that. Like social skills for example, cooperation, ...

No ones talking about removing the incentive. It might be reduced a bit, but I'd assume that most students are not studying for a future to earn just enough to live somehow, but to get rich and respected.

That impulse is not strong enough. You know your body actually teaches your brain to make your heart beat while you're in the womb. Want to know how it does that ? It's the same mechanism that makes you breathe, except 1000x stronger. Try to hold your breath for 1 minute. That's the signal your brain is punished with for neglecting heart control for 0.1 seconds. And then you know, it is never going to neglect that control channel for 0.2 seconds. Every such signal has the same structure. The punishment for going over it a little bit is an injection of adrenalin, which will disable > 50% of your brain function entirely (if it lasts, it will be permanently disabled btw, which is why you must avoid malnutricion in children at all costs), then a pain signal will start, increasing exponentially, making sure that the more time passes, the more your brain is focused on the immediate problem. If it goes over a certain limit, it will shut down the brain almost entirely in hopes that relaxing every muscle for a few seconds will solve the problem.

So that's (one of the many) signals that nature felt was absolutely necessary, and the absolute minimum intensity it thought necessary (since these signals are very distracting, you can bet nature aims to minimize them). As we all know, nature experimented about a billion years to determine this procedure. Don't be too quick with "I know better".

Clearly for abstract concepts you can get away with a very, very slow starting signal. But in the end, frankly, it must hurt, and it must hurt badly, or it won't work. Pain is the basic, and when push comes to shove, the only "you're doing something wrong" signal in our brain. If you want a human brain to think something is wrong, it must believe that that action will (eventually) lead to pain. Otherwise, the best you can get is that it thinks it would be socially undesirable. As we all know, a significant portion of people just doesn't care about that.

This incentive will not change.

True, the incentive that drives the already-rich small-business-owners will not change. At first. Their job will become harder though, as they will not find any help. How big a percentage of the population are they ?

Furthermore, even they will succumb to doing nothing. Well, *they* may not do this themselves, but their children will copy part of their values from the rest of society (just like today), so this incentive structure is pretty much guaranteeing those children will be less driven. So how many generations will this tiny part of society hold out being productive ? 2 ? 3 ? I'd be completely amazed by the 2 figure.

On the other hand intelligent people are risk aware and susceptible to the Dunning Kruger effect, resulting in lots of potential engineers shying away from starting an education which might fail and ruin their whole existence.

Since there won't be any teachers, or decent documentation, I wouldn't worry about it.

Re:No, not really

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Since I was forced to study latin in high school ... I kind of do remember what they said about the number of poor, and the conditions they lived in. Let's just not go there.

We don't want that.

Re:No, not really

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

While "NONE" is way too strong, you do have a point. > 99% of them don't do anything.

Re:No, not really

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Can we at least agree that having only novels written in "days or weeks" would be a great loss to society ? Sure there's a few diamonds in the pile of shit, but ... not many.

Re:No, not really

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Sadly that probably means it's a fucking hard problem. You know, maybe guys like these have a point.

Re:No, not really

[BlueStrat]

Face it, capitalism is not and never was a system that has been put into practice in a pure form, just like socialism nor communism have never been implemented in a way true to their ideals.

Capitalism even in the "impure" form in which it was practiced in the US up to approximately 60 years ago still far outstripped any other system ever invented for improving conditions for the poorest in society, which is something Socialism and Communism have never come close to equaling in the many, many attempts at making those systems work throughout history. Socialism and Communism only work well in small tight-knit groups, and a lot of very dark history shows clearly that they do not scale well.

Rejecting the parts of the economy that work to improve the well-being of a group (like you do when rejecting social policies) will only make that group worse off.

Government social policies are not "parts of the economy" by definition. Neither has it been established that government social programs actually help the people it's meant to help over the long run. Since the inception of government entitlements and the war on poverty from the time of FDR and then Johnson to the present day, the ranks of the poor in the US have steadily increased. It can be argued that just the opposite occurs, with the Native Americans who reside on Reservations being a case study in the failure of government run "social programs" and the dysfunction inflicted on a group of people by being made dependent on government for their basic needs.

Strat

Re:No, not really

[gbjbaanb]

not really. we have plenty of paper and press time to print books, shipping is far more plentiful than you realise.

For ebooks, the analogies are bandwidth (=shipping), and cpu time (=press capacity). So while you may think that ebooks are totally free of any constraints, they're not. Similarly, paper books are not so expensive that it makes any practical difference.

The only thing that does matter here is the cost of paper and the storage requirements. These only affect the quantity of books, so a virtual library will contain everything whereas a physical library will only contain a subset of all work. (but that's not so bad as you end up with an inter-library lending system).

Apart from the capitalist system of payment for popularity, other works can be paid for in alternative means - eg universities funding research which are published in book form. Vested interests publishing their 'propaganda'. In both cases, the success of the end book is meaningless. That it exists for others to read is the end-goal, as the author is paid for the initial work, not the success of the book.

Re:No, not really

[gbjbaanb]

I doubt anyone's made any study of this, but children's books have been around for a long time and adults have gone on from them to more 'serious' work.

for example, Dr Seuss's works have been about for a long time, lots of children have read them, yet you're not seriously arguing that adults of today cannot read anything that doesn't rhyme in simple stanzas.

There has to be a complex ecosystem of books, suitable for everyone's level of reading ability. That means everything from the Gruffalo to Harry Potter to Philip Pullman to CS Lewis to Isaac Asimov to Tolkien. Some kids will start with at the bottom and never progress further - but they probably wouldn't have progressed anyway, what with today's education system not pushing them sufficiently. But there are others who will read on, and though you could say they would have done so without the Harry Potters, they certainly couldn't if the books they want to read didn't exist. Hence, you need the Potters (and all the others) to be there for them.

Don't be too snobbish about the quality of literary works. I'd say the readability of CS Lewis and Potter to be about the same. Sure the concepts contained in there are different, but many 10 year olds wouldn't grasp them anyway.

Re:No, not really

[morgauxo]

Any agrarian society WILL go extinct if it doesn't progress to something else. All it takes is a little climate change. Even without pollution it does happen naturally eventually.

Re:No, not really

[gbjbaanb]

not quite. Capitalism would have destroyed the entire economic system in the last few years. Fortunately, the governments and their taxpayer funds were there to bail out the banks and prop the whole thing up.

Capitalism is just as flawed as the rest of the systems. To point out one above the others is an ignorant choice. However, the others are flawed too.

The world is a complex place, to try and choose one system to rule is too simplistic to really work. What you need is to take from all of them, mix it up a bit and try to tweak it as you go to ensure smooth working of the system.

So unfettered capitalism would have the peasant workers killed for being unproductive while a few super-rich got richer and richer and more and more inbred and stupid. You'd end up with a truly stagnant society where the talented poor could do nothing to fix the problems and the decadent rich cannot conceive of change.

So you have capitalism for the majority, but then ensure its regulated so the poor do not starve (socialism!), the rich do not take over the world (communism!) and everyone has to abide by rules that are enforced by others (facism!)

After all, you say "capitalism has allowed the US to provide more humanitarian assistance"... a) that has no place in a capitalist system - charity is a socialist concept (unless you're subsidising a market so they can purchase more of your stuff, but that hardly applies to dictatorial African states.. unless they're buying arms of course... hmm), b) the US is technically poorer that most places, the only reason you're not the recipient of humanitarian aid is because you've received it in the form of debt (so it doesn't count as aid). if you had any chance of paying off the national debt, then maybe you'd have a point. Chances are, China is going to be paying your way for you for some time.

Re:No, not really

[morgauxo]

I agree with everything you just wrote. AND I agree with the guy who wrote that Capitalism is broken when there is no longer enough work to go around.

Every attempt so far to motivate people to produce other than Capitalism has failed. Most have ended up in tyranny. But... We don't need everybody working full time to produce what we NEED anymore. We don't even need that kind of labor to produce what we need plus a comfortable extra! Growing food and making things is too easy now with technology.

I am not advocating turning back on the technology. Individuals in an agrarian society are doomed to early deaths w/o modern medicine. The society itself is doomed too as all it takes is a few years of drought, or maybe a plague or a flood and it is gone.

We need a society that can keep people working but not as many hours. Capitalism keeps people producing by keeping them competing with one another. In a 'part time' (by todays standards) society people will just push themselves back to 'full time' in order to compete. Then there are no longer enough jobs to go around.

Re:No, not really

[morgauxo]

Why is this modded down? Just because somebody disagrees?

Re:No, not really

[LuYu]

It gets even more absurd when you consider that this whole discussion really is not about "lending e-books" but rather lending e-book readers . These publishers are placing these limits even though the libraries have a limited number of devices they are handing out (far fewer than the books they carry).

From what I read, none of the articles mentioned just having the library load the file onto your preferred device. So, obviously, they are speaking in general terms to confound the issue again.

There is friction: Libraries can only afford to have so many e-book readers on loan at any given time. In addition to that, they have to pay for all the books they loan on those few devices -- no matter how many times they lend them. Plus, for the publishers, they have to purchase books at least twice (one physical and one electronic). So, libraries are spending more, and the publishers are using this to once again bamboozle the public into seeing them as the victim.

Re:No, not really

[TuringTest]

Capitalism even in the "impure" form

You mean, the impure form that includes social policies?

Socialism and Communism only work well in small tight-knit groups, and a lot of very dark history shows clearly that they do not scale well.

European social democracies beg to differ. Social programs in Europe have work fairly well to their intended purpose in the last 160 years; much better than the previous system of guilds and feuds, but also better than the Laissez-faire that substituted them. Of course we know that some capitalist principles must be obeyed to generate wealth, the same way we know that some welfare systems must be in place to get that wealth away from the few hands where it naturally tends to concentrate.

Government social policies are not "parts of the economy" by definition.

Only by that weird definition of yours that ignores the major budget by the major economic agents which are governments, even "capitalistic" ones. My definition of economy includes the whole study of the production&distribution chain where humans are involved, and government is definitely run by humans. If you begin with distorted, biased definitions it's no wonder that you get distorted conclusions.

Re:No, not really

[ResidentSourcerer]

"We don't have enough people to do what needs to be done"

Right. I'm a farmer. I've got 5 months a year that I can't do much so this fall I went looking for work.

I have no credentials, save for a degree in physics. but I do have experience with most power tools, have built buildings, changed well pumps, done home renos (my own) I'm smart. I learn fast. I also have 20 years unix sysadmin experience.

My criteria for employment was twice minimum wage. Less than that isn't worth the commute.

Of the 40 or 50 positions I applied for, I got two replies. One wanted me to work for free as a house framer, with the potential for a pay cheque after a couple months. The other redirected to another online questionaire (filter)

Certainly for temporary work, there seem to be enough people, at least in winter in Alberta.

Re:No, not really

[datavirtue]

They are not limitless. How do conversations between seemingly smart people on slashdot peel off on fact free tangents like this? No, I'm not new here.

Re:No, not really

[datavirtue]

"Social Security Disability has become in this country and that bit alone is bankrupting the federal government."

Not that I agree with runaway entitlements, but that statement is only true in a moral sense. As it pertains to physical resources it is not causing any finacial hardship to the government. The government is doing just fine.

Re:No, not really

[Thing 1]

Michael Moorcock, for example, has written about how he could write a novel in a few days when he was younger; in some cases that showed [...]

Very interesting to read about! I read those Elric books, and I recall a character who had I believe a fake hand. In one of those books, the fake hand switched places in one passage! Later it switched back. I remember my teenage brain thinking "this breaks my suspension of disbelief". Glad to hear that there's a reason for it (although the editor should have done his job thoroughly...).

Re:No, not really

[dgatwood]

Its less of an issue with ebooks since fewer resources are needed...

Actually, I would argue that to do it right, more resources are needed. You have fewer physical resources like paper, and the cost of fixing mistakes is lower, so in the absence of other factors, the quality will tend to decline just as it has with digital downloads in the software world—publishers know that they can just release a bug fix later, and so they do. This means that publishers won't spend the resources to do it right.

The only way for authors who care about quality to combat this is to hire editors or spend their own time doing the editing themselves. This means that instead of a small pool of resources at the publisher, there are now hundreds of pools of resources required to do the same work that would previously have been done by the publisher.

This problem is compounded on every other front—cover design, book design, and so on. Worse, because the perceived cost of entry is so much lower, you end up with a lot more authors producing content. They all use templates, so their books all look the same. To differentiate yourself from the pack, you have to do more work. And again, you don't have a publisher providing a shared pool of resources, so you have to pay the much higher costs of hiring independent contractors to do the work (who charge more than salaried employees because their pay depends on whether they have work to do).

Thus, eBook publishing tends to require much greater resources than traditional publishing—so much so that hundreds of unscrupulous businesses have sprung up to take advantage of authors by providing these services at extortionate rates. The only real way to fix this is for somebody like Amazon or Barnes & Noble to create a legitimate author services division, at which point, you're basically back to the traditional publishing model, only in a more a la carte fashion.

Re:No, not really

[Xyrus]

Capitalism is the noose we gladly hang ourselves with in the hope that we can get off before we pass out and kill ourselves.

Re:No, not really

[SchMoops]

Plenty of popular novels were written in days or weeks. Michael Moorcock, for example

I take it he's a writer of romance novels?

Re:No, not really

[BLKMGK]

I don't know, I'm sure some of them did. Even if they didn't the chances are their reading skills were improved by the time they finished the series! I swear the books just kept getting fatter and fatter! Some people I know have read them 4-5 times each too. :-)

Re:No, not really

[dgatwood]

Same thing we do now—make them CEOs.

Re:No, not really

[BLKMGK]

Then do the math for yourself. Konrath has done the math using real numbers, showing his real sales, and talked pretty frankly about how he's done much much better by bypassing publishers. If you cannot understand that publishers taking MORE money from each sale is going to cost you money then you're in real trouble....

Re:No, not really

[Mashiki]

Hell the chinese and soviets murdered theirs for being free thinkers and scientists until they figured out they might need them, not much of a difference. Well actually there is, in WWI it was a pure manpower vs technological gap issue. There wasn't much of an option to be picky. In WWII there was less of a manpower vs technological gap issue. The people who experienced WWI from the trenches actually saw the effects around them. There's a reason why WWII is called the million round war.

Capitalism isn't broken when it's dealing with people who only work 10-20 hours a week. It sees that as a weak link in a chain, or an individual/group/section that's inefficient at the task. Even the "top 5%" don't get your cushy 10 or 20 hours of work a week, and most don't ever see until they're very close to retiring away from their work. Capitalism works best when an individual is paid for value for their work, it works worst when artificial values are placed on work.

Your idea is nice, but doesn't work well in reality. If you want an example of where you end up. You just need to look at France, that's the end example which has taken your ideal to heart.

Re:No, not really

[adri]

.. but the bureaucrat is better equipped to see the bigger picture. There may not be enough boots to go around, but hats may be needed at some point in the future, so why waste production capacity now.

The fact that they don't is orthogonal to this.

Re:No, not really

[misexistentialist]

The majority of people simply don't develop much intellectually, but after all those pages of Harry Potter they should at least be able to read fluently, which shouldn't be overlooked!

Re:No, not really

[dgatwood]

I think you vastly misunderstand capitalism. Capitalism has never meant copying someone else's work precisely and passing it off as your own. Sure, there have always been a small number of unscrupulous artisans who did this, but the vast majority of artisans have always chosen to differentiate their products in some way. This is true without regard to intellectual property issues.

The reason for this is straightforward. If you are making an exact copy of something, it is a race to the bottom because the only thing left to compete over is price. If you try to make the product better in some way, then you can compete over features, over design, or even over something as minor as branding (the artist's name recognition, for example).

For the most part, in regular capitalism, you aren't going to buy an identical product from somebody else. Even though there are few patents involved, a Benge trumpet plays somewhat differently than a Bach, which plays radically differently than a Conn. Yet they're all trumpets, and they could easily have made perfect copies of each others' instruments had they decided to do so. Instead, each manufacturer offers a similar product with different features, behavior, and so on.

It's the same way in works of authorship. The only people who try to pass other people's designs off as their own are people who lack the creativity to do something new, and supporting such leaches is not a particularly useful thing for an economic system to do. It's irrelevant whether you can buy a Harry Potter book from someone else. The only interesting question is whether there are other books on the market about teenage wizards. The Harry Potter series competes on quality against those other books.

Re:No, not really

[LordLimecat]

You mean like how we STILL have a GDP that is triple China's, despite them having quadruple the population? (Comparing per-capita GDP is REALLY telling).

If you want an economic system that creates a utopia, youre gonna need to replace the human race. If you want an economic system that deals withe the realities of the world we live in, thats moderated capitalism.

Re:No, not really

[LordLimecat]

Which is why China's economy is doing so much better than ours.

Oh wait.
(TLDR: US is #7 in the world, China is #90-something.)

Re:No, not really

[Thing 1]

Friended for this post (I like callbacks; they demonstrate a matter of intelligence). Stating this because Slashdot doesn't let you know when or why someone friended you.

Re:No, not really

[ubrgeek]

> that doesn't rhyme in simple stanzas.

Don't tell that to Tony Danza.

Re:No, not really

[BlueStrat]

Capitalism would have destroyed the entire economic system in the last few years.

What we've had to an ever increasing degree over the few decades, accelerated over the last dozen or so years, is "Crony Capitalism" where those within government choose winners and losers in the economy through regulations, taxes, government grants/loans, and legislation to favor those politically "connected" and/or those who "pay to play" whether monetarily or through other means. That's the problem with a government that regulates nearly everything; there will always be those who will find a way to exert influence or control over that government power in order to prevent competition and better their own interests.

This has been a growing problem in the US over the past 80 years or more as government has grown in sheer size, power, scope, and reach. History clearly shows that the more power and control there is to corrupt in government, the more likely it is to occur, and the more damage corruption inflicts on society.

The only way to keep corruption and "Crony Capitalism" in check is to limit the size, scope, power, and reach of the central national government, and delegate as much of the business of the domestic governing of the citizens as possible/practical to those authorities as close and "local" as possible, i.e. State City, County, and other local government bodies.

So unfettered capitalism would have the peasant workers killed for being unproductive while a few super-rich got richer and richer and more and more inbred and stupid.

That's Anarchy, not Capitalism. Capitalism only works under relatively fair and evenly-enforced Rule of Law. It's precisely because the current US government gives little more than lip-service to the Rule of Law that the US is suffering under Crony Capitalism.

After all, you say "capitalism has allowed the US to provide more humanitarian assistance"... a) that has no place in a capitalist system - charity is a socialist concept...

For having "no place in a capitalist system", Capitalism has still and yet provided far more humanitarian assistance both domestically and around the world, including even to those who are not friends, than Socialism or Communism has. The plain facts debunk your claim.

the US is technically poorer that most places, the only reason you're not the recipient of humanitarian aid is because you've received it in the form of debt (so it doesn't count as aid). if you had any chance of paying off the national debt, then maybe you'd have a point. Chances are, China is going to be paying your way for you for some time.

Now, here we have some common ground. I deplore what US Progressive members of both political parties have done in putting the country into such dire economic straights in pursuit of their own Progressive ideology, power, and wealth.

Realistically, the US has only one hope of avoiding economic collapse: Allow the private sector to create enough wealth by drastically reducing the government's size and spending, slashing taxes, drastically reducing entitlement spending, drastically reducing regulatory burdens, reforming the Federal Reserve system, and in other ways once again free the mightiest wealth and prosperity generating economic juggernaut the planet has ever known...US citizens pursuing their own enlightened self-interest in a fair but moderately-regulated & taxed Capitalist economy.

Strat

Re:No, not really

[Tom]

I can do basic math, thank you.

If I can get more sales using a publisher - through marketing, more reach, whatever reason - and sales times my cut is more this way then the other, then it is a good deal for me. If self-publishing makes my sales times my cut larger, than that is the better deal.

Really, it isn't so hard. What works for Konrath may or may not work for others. It's a good read, and something to keep in mind, but you still have to decide for yourself which way is best for you.

Re:No, not really

[bickle]

Limitless free library ebooks are the death of them.

Sounds perfect. Another self-resolving problem.

Re:No, not really

[BLKMGK]

Well for starters they WON'T market you. Unless you're the likes of Stephen King they barely market anyone from what I can see. Talk to other authors, most of them end up driving all over the place doing book signings - on their own dime - and building their own websites\mailing lists. Publisher's idea of marketing seems to be that of getting a book facing vs a spine showing on the shelf. It won't stay on a shelf long either and after awhile they will refuse to print it - or give you the rights back.

The nice thing about ebooks is they never go out of print, Amazon will cheerfully have them available for darned near forever and there are about 3 other electronic book markets too! Yes this holds true for the big publisher selling electronically too but I can tell you that when I see a book published 5+ years ago selling electronically for $15 I pass (and have!). That just stinks of greed and considering who's setting the price and taking the lion's share of the money I know who it is that's greedy...

If Publishers sell ebooks they price them too high and give you zero control over it, expect to see prices as high or higher than hardcover. A lower price will sell more copies and you'd be getting a higher cut of the sales price too as pointed out above. Wouldn't you rather have that control? At those prices piracy comes into play and what's really bad is that the books are SO small pirates don't just pirate one book they pirate entire collections, often for not much more disk space than a few MP3 and you know how well the RIAA fight has been going. I haven't bought a single ebook since the new "agency model" hit, I can assure you of that!

I can tell you what I don't see - authors who have tried Amazon publishing talking about how it didn't work and how traditional publishers were better. Instead all I see is authors who have been screwed over by the big guys relieved to have found a better way. If you've found any author screaming about how Amazon didn't help them and a big publisher somehow did better I'd be really interested in reading about it! I really truly see only one advantage to going with a big publisher - the desire to see printed copies sold. That medium is better for some books but not for the majority IMO and ebook sales are only growing, what is happening to printed sales?

BTW, what exactly does "more reach" mean anyway? Between B&N, Amazon, and the smaller book markets online I think you can cover things pretty well. Do you really think a big time publisher will do better - for you?

And fuck publishers.

[unity100]

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.

Re:And fuck publishers.

[brit74]

> "Society didnt show mercy to carriage industry when automobiles came out."

Can I make a suggestion that we stop using the horse and carriage versus the car analogy? It doesn't make sense. As long as you want books to read, you need people to write them. This involves work. The comparison to the "horse and buggy" is flawed because when people buy cars, they stopped needing horses and buggys, which puts them out of business. The creation of books for you to read still requires the labor of authors to write those books, which means you're essentially arguing that you've found a way to not pay the authors but you still want authors to come around and do the work.

Re:And fuck publishers.

[0123456]

The creation of books for you to read still requires the labor of authors to write those books, which means you're essentially arguing that you've found a way to not pay the authors but you still want authors to come around and do the work.

So you're saying that we should close all the libraries?

Back in the real world, if you go to a writers' forum these days it's full of people asking how they can get their books on Amazon for free so that more people will read them. Most of them can't get into libraries because libraries only buy books from big publishers.

Re:And fuck publishers.

[Belial6]

Yes. A better analogy would be comparing candles vs. the electric light. The cost of producing a candle's worth of light is so small as to be basically free. It isn't totally free, but it takes me less than one second to earn enough to pay for what a months worth of work could buy in candles 200 years ago. There are still candle makers. They just needed to find a different way to sell their wares than by trying to be the sellers of functional light.

Re:And fuck publishers.

[Anonymous Coward]

> "Society didnt show mercy to carriage industry when automobiles came out."

Can I make a suggestion that we stop using the horse and carriage versus the car analogy? It doesn't make sense. As long as you want books to read, you need people to write them. This involves work. The comparison to the "horse and buggy" is flawed because when people buy cars, they stopped needing horses and buggys, which puts them out of business. The creation of books for you to read still requires the labor of authors to write those books, which means you're essentially arguing that you've found a way to not pay the authors but you still want authors to come around and do the work.

And your parent poster said:

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.

Lookup what "middlemen" means. Publishers do not write books. (i.e. your entire post is a strawman)

Old Model: Author -> Publisher -> Shop -> Customer
New Model: Author -> Shop -> Customer
Less overhead means more profit for the person who actually wrote the thing, the only problems are filtering out lame writers shifts to the store/customers from the publisher, authors have to pay for their own editors and the store isn't going to give you an advance loan.

Re:And fuck publishers.

[fafaforza]

So what's the problem then? This is the panacea that everyone's been waiting for: the ease of self publishing, zero barriers to entry. Creating an eBook is dead simple. There are even open source programs to do it.

A publisher trying to reevaluate their business dealings with a library vis a vis the new format of their product has nothing to do with self publishing.

Re:And fuck publishers.

[fafaforza]

So with the publisher getting cut out, and people self publishing, why are people still concerned with that publishers are trying to do where you're bypassing them altogether. Does it matter, when you go straight to the shop?

Re:And fuck publishers.

[AK Marc]

Transport was still desired, and content is still desired, but "transport" is not a car, and neither is "content" a book. Forcing a particular means of transport is no different than forcing a particular means of delivering content. I find the analogy very accurate.

The creation of books for you to read still requires the labor of authors to write those books, which means you're essentially arguing that you've found a way to not pay the authors but you still want authors to come around and do the work.

If the laborer works at the buggy factory, then yes, they are losing their job. Again, the analogy is apt, despite your assertions to the contrary. Someone needs to make the transport, and if you aren't going to pay the buggy maker for your car, how will you get a car made?

The function of libraries

[Animats]

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?

Re:The function of libraries

[Anonymous Coward]

The future of libraries is in question. If you don't have to go there to borrow books, what are they for?

One of the libraries near me is turning into a hacker space. Just got a 3d printer, working on setting up an old room in the basement for use on projects.

Re:The function of libraries

[Kjella]

The future of libraries is in question. If you don't have to go there to borrow books, what are they for?

I think the most important thing that the benefit of having a library disappears with ebooks, there's no reuse of books. What books are available only depend on the computer, not what is in the shelves or who other have been borrowing it. So you really should take one step back and see why do we have libraries, and if those people could be served some other way. For example, we could say that it's because the underprivileged should have access to books, okay. Perhaps we then instead of funding libraries should give these people some ecredits to use at ebook stores, like a gift card only good for ebooks. If you want to read fine, if not well the credits were there just like the library was. Maybe some ereader/eplayer booths for those who don't have their own and maybe some people you can ask for help, but otherwise it's use your own device. Instead of the academic library, the educational institution will just enroll you in a student database and you get student access to journals, without going to the school library. In all honesty, I don't really see much need for having to gather it all in one physical location anymore.

Re:The function of libraries

[the eric conspiracy]

Libraries are all about maintaining collections and providing a catalog that allows you to find things in addition to allowing their customers to borrow books.

A hodgepodge of internet crap is not equivalent to a library.

Re:The function of libraries

[PCM2]

The future of libraries is in question. If you don't have to go there to borrow books, what are they for?

My local library feels like a combination daycare and video store. I see more people checking out DVDs than books, and it's impossible to study or work there; hardly anyone even bothers to lower their voice.

Part of the problem, I believe, is the overall atmosphere of anti-intellectualism in the United States. If a library is a place for academics and intellectuals and librarians are stuffy old women who care only for books and know nothing about the real world, then libraries instantly leap to the top of the list of things Republicans want to cut funding for. They have to seem like a place for "regular people" -- so Naruto manga and DVDs of Fast Five it is.

Re:The function of libraries

[PCM2]

Why do you think libraries have a problem with being welcoming public spaces for homeless patrons, or providing Internet services for those to whom it's otherwise unavailable? Christ on a crutch, they're providing valuable public services to underserved populace, we should be increasing the budgets and giving them fucking medals.

You obviously haven't been to the San Francisco main branch library. Homeless people don't just go there to access the Internet, they go there to shower using the men's room sink. Librarians can no longer just be concerned with finding reference materials; now they have to concern themselves with asking mentally ill people not to watch porn on Internet terminals in plain view of other patrons. I once saw someone charge a library security guard swinging a hypodermic needle, shouting to keep away from him because he was HIV+. Certainly our society should provide services for those who have slipped through the cracks, so to speak, but the library is not the place for it.

Re:The function of libraries

[AK Marc]

I used to go to the library for the video production facilities (good enough for local news and Wayne's World style shows). No idea if they are still there, they weren't technically open to the public, so I'm not sure how one would get access. I got initial access as a student in a local community college.

Re:The function of libraries

[ShakaUVM]

>>A hodgepodge of internet crap is not equivalent to a library.

I really wish more people would realize that.

Only a tiny fraction of humanity's knowledge is available or accessible on the internet. I'm tired of people who can't find some reference on Wikipedia and then resoundingly claim that said fact can't be true.

Re:The function of libraries

[uninformedLuddite]

Why do they shower in the main library's men's room sink?

Re:The function of libraries

[Keen Anthony]

I sadly agree. I don't use libraries anymore because I just buy physical books. Now that I'm running out of space and can consume ebooks comfortably, I am wondering whether I am limited to only my library for borrowing. I notice that I must be a NY tax payer in order to use the NY Public Library, even for ebooks. I'd like to know if there's a library that has the wealth of content that Chicago, NYC, or other major libraries have that is open to people who aren't local residents. I feel sorry for people who depend on a bad local library.

Re:The function of libraries

[PCM2]

Because there's running water there and free soap, and the library doesn't block the door just because you look poor. You can't blame them, really, but the library is not the place for it.

Re:The function of libraries

[uninformedLuddite]

There are no facilities provided for the homeless in San Francisco? They are actually forced to use a sink in the library or remain dirty?

Re:The function of libraries

[PCM2]

There are no facilities provided for the homeless in San Francisco? They are actually forced to use a sink in the library or remain dirty?

Now I think maybe you've never visited San Francisco at all. There are a lot of homeless on the streets of San Francisco. A lot. If you ever come here, even for a day, you will see them. Many of them have varying levels of mental illness. In fact, legend has it that when the Ronald Reagan administration cut funding for mental health facilities in the 80s, a lot of hospitals back East shipped their most at-risk patients out here, because at least in San Francisco they would have a chance of surviving the winter on the street. Of course lots more have substance abuse problems (and don't you think you might, too, if you were living on the street?).

Thus, while there are plenty of facilities, they are often sorely overburdened. There might not always be a bed for anyone on any given night; so for some homeless people, they spend some nights in the shelter and others on the street, in any given week. Shelters can be dangerous, too, which makes some people hesitant to use them (or specific ones). People's personal effects are sometimes stolen, and sometimes there's violence. You don't really know who you're spending the night with. Then again, some people drift out of the system because they can't or won't comply with substance abuse treatment programs, or because they're mentally ill.

Homelessness is an intractable problem. There isn't enough funding for outreach programs nationwide. Charitable organizations can only do so much. And at the end of the day, it is a humanitarian concern -- which is why they're not going to post armed guards on a library men's room. Some things are just going to be the way they are, until we address the root causes of the problem.

I can kinda see both point of views..

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I can kinda see both point of views..

[king neckbeard]

The publishers might make less money. Cry me a river. Carrying limitations of physical goods to the digital world is pure idiocy.

Also, your given standard assumes that nobody returns a book early. Most libraries I've used only allow you to check out a certain number of books at once, so an avid reader could return many of those books well before the due date. I have no idea how the breakdown of such readers is, but it seems like the kind of thing where something like the 80-20 rule applies (80% of checkouts are by 20% of patrons).

Re:I can kinda see both point of views..

[stephanruby]

One additional point that hasn't been mentioned yet is that the price of an ebook usually has lower printing, inventory, and distribution costs than an actual physical book, a fact which is not usually reflected in its price. And sometimes, the ebook version can be the only copy available if the book is out of print in the real world.

And there is also the possibility that some ebooks help drive the sales of their physical counterparts sometimes. Now, I'm not saying that this happens all the time, but in the case of very high quality books, having the electronic version of it is often not enough, and having a good electronic version can often drive one to track down a copy of the real physical book in question.

Re:I can kinda see both point of views..

[future assassin]

This would be like car manufacturers bitching about rental companies maintaining their own fleet for too long because the regular maintenance keeps the cars from falling apart too fast and keep the rental companies from buying new ones more often.

Re:I can kinda see both point of views..

[zAPPzAPP]

But aren't those physical limitation the original reason for a library to exist?
If you can copy a book unlimited times with no cost whatsoever, then why would you need a place that stores a bunch of them for lending purposes?
You aren't really lending it anyway, you just copy it one more time. It will still be available to every other visitor, no matter how what.

The only reason you would do this is the low cost access to books for everyone. But in this case, it stands alone, there are no other reasons attached to it, like with physical books. It really eliminates the reason for a library to exist.

Re:I can kinda see both point of views..

[Dunbal]

It is not unrealistic to assume that these two points combined might result in financial losses for the publishers

Which is why, in the information age, everyone should self-publish. The cost of doing so is absolutely trivial. Librarian's jobs stop being about collecting books and more about classifying freely available online information. Because keyword searching is absolutely useless and can easily be spammed or otherwise fooled, and search engines are liable to organize based on their profit and not on usefulness/accuracy of information.

Re:I can kinda see both point of views..

[Rich0]

The publishers might make less money. Cry me a river.

So, I could care less about the publisher making money per-se. What I do care about is the ability of the author and editors to make money, since they add the value to the book in the first place. There is also value added from some publishing jobs even in the electronic world (formatting, hosting, etc), though it is relatively little.

We do need to reign in what we're spending on non-value-added functions (like being an executive at a big publishing house), and getting rid of the middle-men. On the other hand, we also need to create some incentive for people to write books - if they sell one copy for $20 and everybody else downloads a copy of it, then nobody will be able to make a career out of writing. Considering that you can fit every book ever written on a $150 hard drive, there has to be some kind of balance. SOPA obviously isn't it, but neither is a total free for all.

Re:I can kinda see both point of views..

[Belial6]

Their points are moot.

* Libraries were not allowed and even encouraged because the were inconvenient. In fact, the opposite is true. Libraries have tried to make access to books a easy and 'frictionless' as possible.

* Libraries were not allowed and even encouraged because the books wear out. In fact the opposite is true. Libraries have tried to keep books in as good of condition as they could.

We are currently faced with making a cultural decision. Are libraries like slavery or absolute monarchies? An idea that we now consider evil, and attribute to the "bad old days", or do we consider libraries to be a good thing?

Re:I can kinda see both point of views..

[fafaforza]

So you'd need a team of what, a dozen, alright one hundred, people to do the classification? Wouldn't that mean that all libraries in the US would no longer have a reason to exist? Data would be classified, and you could download 300kb self published books from anywhere.

Re:I can kinda see both point of views..

[magarity]

* 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.

Realistically, how many old, worn out books are still in high demand by library patrons? At some point it's unlikely to even be available new from the publisher anyway. So the digital copy at the library is available after the publisher is no longer interested in providing a print copy anyway and they think this is a problem, why? How many public libraries are there in all of Germany versus how many copies are sold to individuals? I bet if every library bought a digital copy or two then those books would be considered best sellers. I think the publishers complain too much over phantoms of their own imaginations.

Re:I can kinda see both point of views..

[ceoyoyo]

It's more like car manufacturers bitching because rental companies somehow discovered how to make their cars last forever with no maintenance required at all, and also how to instantly deliver a car to a customer's location, and get it back again, for free. If renting a car were that easy (and extremely cheap), who'd buy one?

Re:I can kinda see both point of views..

[PCM2]

This would be like car manufacturers bitching about rental companies maintaining their own fleet for too long because the regular maintenance keeps the cars from falling apart too fast and keep the rental companies from buying new ones more often.

Wait... don't they do that?

I'm serious, because from what I can tell, rental car fleets cycle pretty often.

Re:I can kinda see both point of views..

[dgatwood]

Agreed. Besides, most libraries I know replace books when they are worn out, and not before. A paperback best-selling fiction book might only go for a few years because it is being checked out frequently and isn't well-made to begin with. A typical hardcover book in a smaller university library is still on the shelves thirty years later, with the original binding, after a hundred or more checkouts. A two year or twenty-odd checkout limit seems somewhat absurd to me. That's at least an order of magnitude too low.

Take the lending out of library?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could/ Would a library tweak their business model?
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 ... localize the reading.
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.

Re:Take the lending out of library?

[symbolset]

Libraries are pretty good about adapting to changes in technology. Some of them already mirror or "lend" vast repositories of ebooks that are public domain or permissively licensed. As this body of work grows it will become an ever-larger share of their assets.

Re:Take the lending out of library?

[zippthorne]

Barnes and Noble already does #2, albeit with a 1 hour limit per day, you can read any book in their ebook catalog. I'm sure they do it to drive sales of the Nook, but I doubt there are a significant number of people actually using it. It's just not that convenient.

Re:Turn libraries into publishers and resellers to

[unrtst]

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).

Choice and information is good...

[jrminter]

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.

Re:Choice and information is good...

[dgatwood]

I am not aware of any legitimate publishers that "take full copyright control of the work from the author". Non-on-demand paper book publishers license a work from the author exclusively within a particular market for a particular period of time in exchange for paying the up-front costs of printing a run of books. Legitimate eBook publishers do not do this because they don't have that cost, and they usually pass the other costs on to the author directly.

The only authors who give up copyright on their works are those who ghost write books for other people, or those who write books published as works of corporate authorship (e.g. the folks who write the books on developer.apple.com) without author credits. Oh, and news writers.

Re:Choice and information is good...

[gmhowell]

We have a local clothier with the motto, "an informed consumer is our best customer."

Not any longer.

Guardian article(s)

[Fencepost]

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.

Re:Guardian article(s)

[smitty777]

Thanks Fencepost - that was indeed the one I was trying to post. The Slashdot submission form was being quite evil, and submitted the article before I had the chance to link it up correctly. Also the reason for some of the cut and past errors.

Cheers

Lending just doesn't make sense

[91degrees]

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.

Richard Stallman is psychic

[Strange Attractor]

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?

Re:Richard Stallman is psychic

[brit74]

Nope, Richard Stallman is paranoid and still wrong. I shake my head at his wrongheadedness ever time I see that link come up on Slashdot.

Re:Richard Stallman is psychic

[jerquiaga]

Um, Richard Stallman is a crazy person. I'm all for free and open source software, and I use a fair bit of it, but I also understand that there are people out there that might want to make money from their hard work. What's brilliant is that you have a choice: you can either find free and open source software, or you can choose to pay those people. Either way, the scenario Stallman paints in that asinine "Right to Read" piece will not happen. People need to stop listening to crazy people like him.

Re:Richard Stallman is psychic

[ceoyoyo]

Stallman makes a LOT of predictions. Some of them are right.

Monkeys do pretty well predicting the stock market too.

Why not a separate licence?

[Hentes]

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?

Re:Why not a separate licence?

[king neckbeard]

Because the no-lending license won't hold up due to the first sale doctrine.

Re:What?! A library *lending* out books!? For Free

[jedidiah]

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.

"...not a sustainable business model for us"

[John Hasler]

So why does your business model need to be sustained?

Re:"...not a sustainable business model for us"

[fafaforza]

Because they want to sustain it? Because that's how they make a living?

Re:"...not a sustainable business model for us"

[ceoyoyo]

What they're saying is, they're not going to sell ebooks books to libraries with no restrictions because there's no way they can make money off it. That leaves only a couple options:

1) The publishers get their restrictions, the public gets their lent popular ebooks
2) They don't, and libraries can only carry ebooks of indy authors. A golden age ensues (yeah right, look how well that one worked out for music)

Publishers are missing the advantage of eBooks

[hawguy]

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.

Re:Publishers are missing the advantage of eBooks

[bill_mcgonigle]

No mod points, but you win the industry-wide debate.

Re:Publishers are missing the advantage of eBooks

[ceoyoyo]

"to make it not worth a trip to the library to borrow a free eBook"

Uh, yeah, that's what they're saying. You DON'T have to go to the library to borrow an eBook, and they're saying that they can't make ebooks cheap enough to compete with "click a button on your couch and get it for free." They kind of have a point. Having people have to physically go to the library to borrow an ebook would probably make publishers very happy.

Re:Publishers are missing the advantage of eBooks

[Jason Levine]

We've borrowed eBooks for our Kindle from our library. Here's the process:

1) Log into your library's website.
2) Find the book you want to borrow.
3) Click Borrow and get sent to Amazon's site where it is added into your Kindle account.
4) Your Kindle syncs up and your book is available.

The entire process takes under 5 minutes (depending on how long you spend searching) and you don't need to leave your house. When the book expires, it simply vanishes from your account. (Though bookmarks, notes, the page you were on, etc. are saved and will reappear if you borrow it again or if you purchase it.)

I'm not sure if other eBook lenders are the same, but I'd guess that they are. You can borrow books without ever setting foot in a library which is enormously convenient. (Especially in the winter months.) Of course, we like visiting the library. My boys get excited to go there and pick out books and DVDs to borrow. The eBook rental is a nice side-feature, but isn't the main reason we like the library.

interesting

[shentino]

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.

seems like the collage book market but useing DRM

[Joe_Dragon]

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 problem...

[Nrrqshrr]

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.

Re:The problem...

[ceoyoyo]

Go ahead, remove the middle man. Now you have libraries that have to deal with a zillion authors (which is probably not doable for them), and the authors STILL can't get paid because borrowing ebooks is extremely easy and basically free.

At least we'll always have piracy.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Library have been Lending DVD's

[Joe_Dragon]

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?

Re:What?! A library *lending* out books!? For Free

[brit74]

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.

Census usage, pay the authors

[quixote9]

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?

Re:Census usage, pay the authors

[quixote9]

Oh, and get the money to pay the creators from a small fee, 0.1%?, on paper, drives, sdcards, anything used to store and use the works in question.

Re:Census usage, pay the authors

[LordLimecat]

Problem: is the amount to be paid to authors a static amount? If so, what makes you think all authors are going to agree to those terms?

Re:Census usage, pay the authors

[ceoyoyo]

Raise taxes to fund it all... oops. Death of that idea. At least in the US.

Re:Census usage, pay the authors

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

The suggestion is to use an essentially communist system, so :

Problem: is the amount to be paid to authors a static amount? If so, what makes you think all authors are going to agree to those terms?

The government has guns.

Re:Census usage, pay the authors

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Except that you lose the ability to have price differentiation in different products. So you will have plenty $1 romance and fantasy novels, and zero books that actually cost something to produce, and have a less-than-universal readership.

So say goodbye to any technically good computer science (or any science, for that matter) books.

Re:Census usage, pay the authors

[LordLimecat]

Im sure the government's coercion will result in a wonderful cornucopia of literature.

Re:Census usage, pay the authors

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

That's what people don't realize. There's literature written for 2 reasons :
a) for money, which means that whatever is written must serve the reader in some measure
b) for propaganda. Whether we're talking advertising, ideological or just plain old state propaganda

Any kind of patronage system (and all proposals other than customer pays are necessarily a form of patronage) eliminates category a. I think socialists know this perfectly well, after all it will directly result in some form of bureaucrats deciding what is acceptable and what is not. And they know they will win that game. "Census usage" sounds good but since doing that is impractical, shortcuts will have to be used by bureaucrats deciding payments ... and any shortcut can be gamed.

That everybody else essentially loses the right to read what they want ... well, that's just icing on the cake. Pushing their ideology over everyone else's has always been how "progressives" operate, with immediate rabid attacks on anything they perceive to be less than 100% compliant. Since the Obama election it has sadly become perfectly acceptable to attack people personally and financially for their political opinions. And while I hate SOPA as much as the next person, and Godaddy indeed sucks, I don't think attacking companies for their political opinions is acceptable at all.

Only trouble is...

[rsilvergun]

most Americans are perfectly willing to throw away everything for the sake of that non-existent potential :(... Witness our tax system.

Re:Only trouble is...

[king neckbeard]

And most Americans aren't good authors. I suspect the overwhelming majority of those that think they are going to be the next Stephen King write utter garbage.

Re:Only trouble is...

[gmhowell]

And most Americans aren't good authors. I suspect the overwhelming majority of those that think they are going to be the next Stephen King write utter garbage.

Isn't that a requirement to meet that goal?

(I keed, I keed. I have every hardcover he's done since IT with the exception of the Gunslinger series. And haven't yet picked up his most recent.)

Re:What?! A library *lending* out books!? For Free

[Dr. Spork]

"I'm sorry ma'am, but federal law requires that I incinerate this ebook!"

"But... WHY?"

"It's already been looked at 26 times."

?

Books on CDs

[bussdriver]

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.

If the publishers won't let libraries function...

[Rix]

Then we'll build our own on the internets. Needless to say they won't pay any royalties.

Re:What?! A library *lending* out books!? For Free

[martin-boundary]

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.

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.

The value of publishers

[Sprouticus]

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.

Re:The value of publishers

[ceoyoyo]

"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."

Yeah right. Every little library is going to cut deals directly with every author, including negotiating and sending them all cheques.

"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."

Good idea. They could call those services something like, oh, "publishers!"

Publishers manage production, advertising, negotiation and distribution. Without publishers to do all the collecting and packaging you end up with only a few big booksellers (like Amazon) and only a few bit libraries.

Re:What?! A library *lending* out books!? For Free

[ortholattice]

Ironically, it looks like we might see this day, since distribution of physical printed material can't be limited and controlled . . .

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.

Biting hand that feeds you, 2.0

[tillerman35]

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."

Re:Biting hand that feeds you, 2.0

[fafaforza]

> the loss of free advertising will hurt more than the loss of revenue from sales of imaginary books

I'm not so sure. All the libraries around me are open for just a few hours per day, and close before most people can get off work. I don't think too many people go there any more. They had to resort to lending out movies because of diminishing patronage.

gigapedia

[Weezul]

I borrow my books from library.nu because they've generous lending terms.

Authors and editors are valuable, but publishers are basically parasites nowadays.

Re:gigapedia

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the sentiment but remember in many cases publishers pay for the editors. Unless a new business model where editors and authors share in royalties, skip publishers, and go straight into electronic distributors arises there will be a need for someone to pay editors.

Re:gigapedia

[forkfail]

Freelance authors need freelance editors, methinks.

Re:gigapedia

[hedwards]

How do you separate the publishers that provide value from the ones that don't? The big boys tend to provide very little value to the authors and world at large, but small and mid size publishing houses provide things like editorial support and access to targeted placements in whatever their specialty area is.

Re:gigapedia

[Runaway1956]

"Unless a new business model"

Uhhh, I think that's what millions of us have been calling for in the entertainment industries. The world has changed, technology has advanced, and we're still paying for our entertainment according to some medieval scheme which supported hordes of typesetters, editors, and marketing droids. Today, half or more of an editor's job is done automagically with spell checkers, online thesuarus, and other simple tools of the trade. Typesetters? Get real - publishers haven't paid for real life typesetters in a long time. Marketing droids? I question whether they ever were necessary, but they are most certainly UNnecessary today.

Your idea of editors and authors sharing royalties sounds reasonable. How about, author takes 60%, editor takes 30%, and the remaining ten percent is divvied up between the publishing house, marketing droids, and whoever/whatever else is actually necessary? With a scheme like that, a title could sell for about ten cents, and make a profit for everyone involved. Call it 50 cents, and almost no one could bitch.

If dead tree copies are deemed to be necessary, then the author and the editor can sign a separate agreement with the publisher, in which those two individuals retain all their rights. The publisher is simply a separate contractor, providing a service - that of printing x number of copies, @ n.yy dollars per copy.

As for the idea of higher prices for libraries - I could probably live with that. Charge libraries a dollar for those fifty cent books. Hell, I'll buy my books in the name of the library, and pay the dollar, then "return" the files to the library! Everyone's a winner then!

Re:gigapedia

[morgauxo]

Why?

How about authors and editors just negotiate their own deals as they please on a per-book basis?

Re:gigapedia

[morgauxo]

I think you just did separate them.

Re:gigapedia

[BrokenHalo]

How do you separate the publishers that provide value from the ones that don't?

That is a very good question. There have been many instances over the last 30 or so years when I have had occasion to wonder whether the quality of the literature is typically measured in inverse proportion to quality of binding and paper etc. Excellent quality literature is routinely marketed on crap materials.

Given that with e-books, hard production costs (printing, binding, warehousing and distribution) are nearly non-existent, the inescapable conclusion we must reach is that most publishers are just plain fucking greedy.

Re:gigapedia

[mcgrew]

Today, half or more of an editor's job is done automagically with spell checkers...

Ewe stall knead prof radars. Spill chuckers flail at homophones. Thus sentence passes a spell check.

...online thesuarus

How is an online thesaurus in any way superior to a dead tree thesaurus?

As for the idea of higher prices for libraries - I could probably live with that.

Why? I don't have to pay to check out paper books, or CDs or DVDs from the city library. I'm not paying to check out digital music and movies, how are digital books any different?

This is just greed at work, and it sickens me.

Re:gigapedia

[datavirtue]

Freelance editors should appear. I think they already exist as there are plenty of freelance writers offering services on the Internet.

Re:gigapedia

[datavirtue]

No one mentions on-demand publishers.

http://www.lulu.com/publish/

https://www1.lightningsource.com/default.aspx

Re:gigapedia

[dgatwood]

The first one is somewhat overpriced. They just do the book layout work for you and then send it to LS for publication, but they charge you several times as much per copy for the printed books. Amazon's CreateSpace is usually a much better deal.

The second one expects you to deliver PDF content ready for press. Folks with a strong technical background and a few thousand dollars in software can pull that off. Most writers can't.

Re:gigapedia

[dgatwood]

Given that with e-books, hard production costs (printing, binding, warehousing and distribution) are nearly non-existent, the inescapable conclusion we must reach is that most publishers are just plain fucking greedy.

Not at all. You're making several mistakes in that assessment:

• You are assuming that the publishers are not also selling physical books. You have to assume that every purchase of an eBook is effectively taking away a sale of a physical book. Because eBook sales cannibalize print sales, the initial setup costs for printing take a bigger and bigger cut of publisher profits. This must be accounted for somehow, and the easiest way to do so is to take a chunk of the eBook sales to make up for it. The only alternative is to raise the cost of physical books, but that would tend to lead to a death spiral.
• The manufacturing costs may be smaller, but your production costs (in publishing, "production" refers to everything that happens before a document goes to press) increase to eat some of those savings. It takes a fair amount of effort to format a book for printing. If you're trying to format a book as an eBook, you get to do it several times. If you're good, you can probably get it down to three—an EPUB version for iPad and all the Adobe Digital Editions readers, a Kindle version, and a PDF version. If you're not so good, you'll end up with the Nook EPUB, the iOS EPUB, the old-style Kindle MOBI, the new-style KF8, and the PDF. So your production costs go way up. The effect this has on the total cost of book publishing depends largely on how many copies that cost is divided across.
• You're assuming comparable levels of sales per title. With the decreased up-front cost, the barrier to entry is much lower. This means that there will inevitably be more books on the market. Thus, each book makes less money. As a publisher, there are two ways to charge for services: charge it all up front or charge less up front and take a cut of each copy. The fewer copies, the more the publisher must take per unit. Therefore, unless the publisher charges you 10-15 grand for editing, cover design, book block design, etc., you would expect their per-unit fee to be higher for eBooks than printed books, not lower, because they cannot expect to make up the difference in volume.

For people who are sufficiently technically inclined, you can do all the work yourself and avoid much of this, but remember that those extra dollars you earn by formatting the eBook yourself were the direct result of work you put in.

they why they have band muffins and coffice

[Joe_Dragon]

So they can flag books that people take in to the bathroom and force them to pay for them.

I have tried...

[wbr1]

I recently trued to 'e-borrow' a recent book from the library. First, it is a newer best seller (A Dance With Dragons). I checked itout physically, but as a best seller it was only a 7day checkout with no renewal. This was not enought time for me, so I decided (for the first time) to checkout an e-book. I have now been on a waiting list for two weeks, as the local group of livraries cannot lend but so many e-copies at a time. And still don't have the book. I don't know what more difficulty I could have. If I were going to purchase the book (or e-book) because of the difficulty in obtaining it another way I would have done so by now. The only further dificulty they could possibly put on the system (to me), is to not let the library get the book at all, and if the publisher did that, I would be inclined to never purchase any book again and instead get pirated e-copies.

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.

Re:I have tried...

[magarity]

I recently trued to 'e-borrow' a recent book from the library. First, it is a newer best seller (A Dance With Dragons). I checked itout physically, but as a best seller it was only a 7day checkout with no renewal. This was not enought time for me, so I decided (for the first time) to checkout an e-book. I have now been on a waiting list for two weeks

The thing about checking out e-books is that there's no way to return it early so it's pretty easy to calculate how long you have to wait for your turn. This is about the only thing that makes it annoying for hot topics, otherwise I really like getting them from the library.

Re:I have tried...

[PCM2]

The thing about checking out e-books is that there's no way to return it early so it's pretty easy to calculate how long you have to wait for your turn.

There is a way with Adobe Digital Editions (which is how you borrow books from the library for pretty much everything except a Kindle). When you push the "Return this Book" button, it reappears in the library's inventory almost instantly. The problem is that nobody knows this feature exists, yet alone how to use it, and they also have no incentive to use it: There are no late fees for keeping an e-book too long, and eventually it will just be "returned" to the library automatically (though possibly only many days after they actually finished reading it).

Re:I have tried...

[Whorhay]

This is exactly the problem my wife has run in to with checking out ebooks from the local library. I'm frankly amazed they have a system that doesn't allow for returning a book early. They are already expiring the book after a predetermined amount of time why isn't there a way to trigger it early?

Re:what is next collgle libraries can't have textb

[gatkinso]

Well, that was how it was in the 80's when I went to collgle.

another business model that rejects progress

[Tom]

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.

book burning

[harvey the nerd]

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.

I just wish educational books were free

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

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.

Re:I just wish educational books were free

[dgatwood]

More to the point, it would cost the public schools in the U.S. a lot less to hire writers directly to author the books and get rid of the middlemen. I'm actually surprised this hasn't happened already. Publishers truly provide almost no value in the area of educational publishing; there are only going to be a handful of books that meet the criteria for a particular grade level in a particular subject, so it's not like they have to provide a significant advertising budget, nor do they need to get reviews, list the title through Ingram, convince wholesalers and retailers to carry the title, etc.

It's a captive market with a captive set of authors, and no real need for pre-printing truckloads of books before taking orders. In short, they don't add value, but do add overhead. The availability of digital distribution just adds further reason to cut out the middlemen; it made sense long ago.

The fundemental problem with the free model

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:What?! A library *lending* out books!? For Free

[fafaforza]

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.

Re:What?! A library *lending* out books!? For Free

[magarity]

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?

It's OK we really don't NEED them anymore.

[geekprime]

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.

Re:It's OK we really don't NEED them anymore.

[ceoyoyo]

How is a libraries association that does collective bargaining with authors any different from a publisher, except that it doesn't also handle distribution to bookstores?

profesional solicites

[Weezul]

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.

And in the thrid corner

[devent]

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?

Wrong

[fuzznutz]

You have made the classic blunder confusing value with price.

JK Rowling received Government Funds...

[Shakrai]

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.

Mom was a librarian; my sister is one now

[MichaelCrawford]

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.

Re:What?! A library *lending* out books!? For Free

[zippthorne]

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....

26 times to disintegrate?

[oneiros27]

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)).

Re:Moving to a post-scarcity society

[LordLimecat]

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

I look and realize that RedHat (and its clones) are far, far, far more popular than Debian, and that perhaps thats telling?

Re:What?! A library *lending* out books!? For Free

[cpt kangarooski]

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.

Sorry, I just couldn't let this slide

[rsilvergun]

"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...

Re:What?! A library *lending* out books!? For Free

[zippthorne]

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....