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Yes, it is different. It differs in efficiency. Not an irrelevant difference. A public library is funded and maintained by the same community that uses it.

• dublinben 11y ago
  Do you think that peer to peer filesharing communities are not also funded and maintained by the community that uses it? I contend that this is exactly the case. There must also be an original legitimate customer of the work being shared, so the publisher is still getting paid. The difference does only lie in efficiency. In a world of ever-increasing efficiency, why do we shackle libraries to 20th Century levels of service?
  • krapp 11y ago
    Libraries legitimately own every copy they distribute. If they lend 10 copies of a book, 10 copies were paid for. They don't pay for one then Xerox 9 more. File sharing exists explicitly to deny publishers payment for anything they distribute. 10,000 copies results in no compensation beyond the original.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • librvf 11y ago
    We're not using the same definition of community. A community that shares a public library is a community that shares a very broad range of common customs, traditions, values, and interests. They are literal neighbors. They have a shared interest in the success of the community along multiple economic, social, and cultural dimensions. "Knowledge for the common good" is a value, but pursuit of that value conflicts with other things the community also values. Resolution of all those conflicts provides natural checks and balances. The only common interest of the "file sharing community" is sharing files, and any political or technical issues that happen to be directly related to sharing files. The virtual community can grow and expand infinitely based on only that one dimension. There are no natural checks and balances the way there would be for a real community. Instead of resolving conflicts, anyone who doesn't share that one primary value is not part of the community.
• mkozlows 11y ago
  The more interesting point, really, is where on the efficiency spectrum it makes sense to place our institutions. I mean, we all want libraries to continue to exist in the ebook era, right. But the old-style "library buys a single copy, and lends it to one person at a time" model, which made sense for physical books because it was a natural constraint, for ebooks is weirdly inefficient from the borrower's side and seems weirdly non-remunerative from the copyright-holder's side. Publishers have started pushing toward pay-per-use licensing for libraries, which makes more sense for both copyright-holders (who get paid more for more popular works) and lenders (who aren't held to an artificial scarcity of a "single copy"). That makes sense as far as it goes. But again, efficiency comes into play: If I know that my library has effectively unlimited selection (because this pay-per-use licensing makes it efficient for it to "carry" all the books licensed under this scheme) and the library is easy to use to check out books from, then there's no reason for me to buy books instead of check them out, because the hassle inherent in the old physical world is gone. And from the publisher's side, every library book loaned is basically a lost sale, so they're going to want near-retail licensing prices. And that's where the linked essay is relevant: The current state of affairs is that we live in a strong copyright regime where the publisher's desires trump everyone else's desires. If they won't license a book to libraries for less than $10 a lend, then the library either has to pay that (which few libraries have the budget for) or not carry the book. And if you think public libraries are good, then that's a bad situation. Which tends to point toward a situation in which copyright is no longer the best way to balance our goals of allowing broad access to culture while also recompensing authors, and to think about other ways to meet those goals.
  • rhino369 11y ago
    That is where the "weirdly inefficient from the borrower's side" part comes in. It's a form of price discrimination. People who can't afford to pay full price, pay by their inconvenience instead. I think we found a good equilibrium--library buys a copy and only lends it out one at a time. We know that works. Why change it.
• threatofrain 11y ago
  Libraries are only legitimate customers because they have massive public goodwill, and it is probably difficult to assault their position. It doesn't sound good to have librarians and educators rallying against you. It's probably better to suffer their existence for now. But surely many publishers view libraries as affronts to intellectual property, as libraries buy both software and books and charge their users almost nothing, relying instead on minimal fees, taxes, and donations. Unless libraries are paying royalties or something like that, they have basically appropriated the works of authors and publishers by brute political and social muscle. The fact that it's difficult to combat the goodwill credit score of libraries just means that businesses and authors assuage themselves with your magnitude argument: "Well, it's not that much profit or control loss. Communities will never learn how to scale their resources, especially in high-population areas where consensus is often difficult in government." Also, libraries may fuel arguments for the public, forming a slippery slope by which the public continues to take from the private sphere for communal benefit. If libraries didn't exist, it would be a lot harder to appeal to the public via, "This website is just like a public library! It is an institution of community learning and knowledge for all." I think the symbolic threat of libraries means that any attempt to establish a culture of digital libraries should be severely challenged.