My library has downloadable ebooks. Unfortunately, you have to have, in addition to your library card, an additional membership in the service that provides the download, which has to be activated from the library's IP address before you can download the book. About a third of my patrons using the service report that they can't get the books to download at home, even with their validated membership. If the download works, it is locked to the service's reader and "checked out" to a specific machine for a specific time period (though the ebook may stop opening before the "checkout period" expires, for no apparent reason).
Some members of our consortium are also experimenting with downloadable audiobooks. Some of these are locked to windows machines, requiring Windows Media Player for DRM. Those that can be downloaded to players are locked to a particular brand of hardware which the library leases and checks out to patrons.
We have to jump through so many hoops to even get these heavily locked materials for our patrons. It is almost as if...*gasp* the publishers think we are enabling piracy!!!!!
yah. The clerk at the town I work for was on the phone all morning with tech support for her auto-backup software. The verdict? The Symantec security suite has been interfering with her backups. She finally saw reason and said she will allow me to replace the suite with something else (once the subscription runs out, giving her months to change her mind).
The problem is this: to her, Symantec/Norton is synonymous with antivirus. Despite my assurances, she can't imagine that anything else will be better or will provide less problems.
Malicious or not, Symantec and McAfee have their hooks in the market, and are almost impossible to clean out.
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Some members of our consortium are also experimenting with downloadable audiobooks. Some of these are locked to windows machines, requiring Windows Media Player for DRM. Those that can be downloaded to players are locked to a particular brand of hardware which the library leases and checks out to patrons.
We have to jump through so many hoops to even get these heavily locked materials for our patrons. It is almost as if...*gasp* the publishers think we are enabling piracy!!!!!
yah. The clerk at the town I work for was on the phone all morning with tech support for her auto-backup software. The verdict? The Symantec security suite has been interfering with her backups. She finally saw reason and said she will allow me to replace the suite with something else (once the subscription runs out, giving her months to change her mind). The problem is this: to her, Symantec/Norton is synonymous with antivirus. Despite my assurances, she can't imagine that anything else will be better or will provide less problems. Malicious or not, Symantec and McAfee have their hooks in the market, and are almost impossible to clean out.