15 ms·

Can you imagine someone trying to start public libraries if they didn't already exist now? I think it's safe to say it would never ever happen, at least in the

Can you imagine someone trying to start public libraries if they didn't already exist now? I think it's safe to say it would never ever happen, at least in the US. Between lobbying and the general disdain for most things run by any type of government here, they'd never have a chance. Luckily we still have places that still purchase printed books (along with ebooks) and you can go borrow them any time and they never stop working.... just ignore the damage from fire, water, rips, loss, bed bugs... maybe they do actually stop working for other reasons now that I think about it :-)

dmix 7y ago
> Between lobbying and the general disdain for most things run by any type of government here, I’ve grown to distain the government because of how often it pushes strict bills like DMCA which are quickly out-of-date and ripe for abuse. It’s not just lobbying congress either, there have been some very strict cases coming out of prosecutors offices such as the case against MIT student David LaMacchia in 1994 who put files up on an encrypted BBS. Which resulted in congress passing a bill to fix a “loophole” where people uploading files on the internet without any commercial intent couldn’t be sent to jail. So the bill (predating DMCA by a couple of years) allowed up to 5yrs +$250k fines for online piracy, regardless of commercial intent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._LaMacchia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._LaMacchia Every subreddit or Youtube channel or whatever online community I’ve been a part of has had to deal with people abusing DMCA takedown notices and having things that clearly fall under fair use, or even the person’s own content, being taken down.
- klez 7y ago
  Ok, but if it wasn't for private interests pushing those laws, I really doubt a government would pass them. So saying that it's the government fault is true, but not the whole picture. You should feel disdain for both the government and the lobbies, if you have a problem with absurd copyright laws.
  - 0815test 7y ago
    The whole point of his comment is that the government is what's enabling that kind of lobbying. There's no such thing as a government that is free of private interests pushing for their preferred policies; the closest you can even get to that is strict constitutional limits, restricting what the government can do in the first place. (And even those seem to have failed quite badly in the case of copyright or patent protection, which were originally supposed to be "limited in time" and to promote knowledge and the useful arts - none of which is the case today!)
- tzs 7y ago
  > Every subreddit or Youtube channel or whatever online community I’ve been a part of has had to deal with people abusing DMCA takedown notices Are you sure you've seen DMCA abuse on YouTube? They have their own system for handling alleged copyright violation that has little to do with the DMCA takedown procedure, and almost all complaints I've seen about abuse on Google have been due to that system.
  - pixl97 7y ago
    Eh, Google's system is born out of a compromise because of the DMCA. Simply put most large publishers dropped their suits and do not file actual complaints with this compromise.
  - loup-vaillant 7y ago
    > They have their own system for handling alleged copyright violation that has little to do with the DMCA takedown procedure That system is such a scourge. No fair use, no distinction between different countrie's legislations, no appeal. If you make an educational video, no matter how much effort and skill you put in, if you use some musical excerpt or images or scene, it doesn't matter how short it is, or what you're using it for. Your video will be "claimed", and any add revenue you used to have will go to whoever owns the rights to the excerpt. And if you didn't enable ads, the claim will do it anyway. I wonder what happens when you use 2 excerpts from different major copyright holders…
    - predakanga 7y ago
      > I wonder what happens when you use 2 excerpts from different major copyright holders… That is a technique that's been used in the past, though I'm not sure if it's still effective. As far as I know, it was popularized by Jim Sterling who named it the "copyright deadlock"[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_copyright_issues#2015%E2%80%93present_fair_use_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_copyright_issues#2015%...
ultrarunner 7y ago
On the flip side, people all over my neighborhood have put considerable effort into building awesome tiny sharing libraries. Perhaps without the issue being "solved" we'd see even more and varied institutions formulate organically. So yes, I can imagine, but who knows whose imagination is closer to "alternative reality"?
- adrianhon 7y ago
  Tiny Libraries are cool but they aren’t even a pale shadow of traditional public libraries that come with commitments to levels of service and access to people of all backgrounds and locations and incomes.
  - derefr 7y ago
    Sure, but in a community where there wasn't an actual public library, I do believe one would inevitably come into existence as the effort of the community, in the same way those tiny libraries do. "People have spare books; community centres exist; so why not put the spare books in the community centre?"
    - adrianhon 7y ago
      Very possibly, yes. The original modern libraries in the west were effectively subscription libraries, as in, they weren’t free to use, you had to pay to become a member. It was only later that they were run by the government. That said, there is a vast gulf between them and a little box people put outside their homes with some books inside. Further reading: The Library Book by Susan Orlean
    - jmiserez 7y ago
      But you'll be constrained to the old spare books of that particular community. Public libraries have a much broader selection, and they also buy new books. Also I'm not sure they'd actually come into existence everywhere, even if the internet is a poor substitute for a library it is cheaper and may be enough for many.
sp332 7y ago
It took the richest guy in the world funding them like crazy to start them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie#3,000_public_libraries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie#3,000_public_l... The one in Philadelphia cost the equivalent of $15,000,000 - and that didn't include the land, operation, or maintenance.
- inscionent 7y ago
  The one in Washington DC is now an Apple store.
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    Wow ... that's .. is that irony? I don't even know.
    - tomxor 7y ago
      It's straight up dystopian that's what it is.
  - matwood 7y ago
    The yearly ALA (American Library Association) conference was in the conference center across the street from that library last weekend. I wonder how many noticed the metaphor to what is happening to libraries in general?
    - blakesterz 7y ago
      Ha! Walked by it when I was there, I thought the same thing.
  - GlenTheMachine 7y ago
    To be fair, it’s not like DC doesn’t have public libraries. Also, the original DC Carnegie building sits on some of the most expensive real estate in the country.
CodeTheInternet 7y ago
My library has the option of "checking out" ebooks. They will "purchase" them and have a set "number of copies". I put all of these things in quotes as I'm not sure how its handled for essentially a digital file vs a physical paper book, or how the author/publisher/etc makes money in this deal.
- snazz 7y ago
  As I understand it, the number of copies is enforced using DRM (which isn’t the best, of course), but the books are free and there’s usually a pretty wide selection.
- sp332 7y ago
  Penguin Random House charges libraries $35, $45, or $55 for each "copy" and then expires them after two years. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/77904-penguin-random-house-changes-its-library-e-book-terms.html https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/l... Hachette also expires their e-books after 2 years. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/80486-hachette-book-group-changes-library-e-book-terms.html https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/l... See also the drama about "Controlled Digital Lending", where a library makes their own scan of a book and lends it out.
  - smsm42 7y ago
    That's plain naked rentseeking. I'd get them charging a nominal sum to prevent abuse (like "why I'd buy any books if I can just check out everything for free in the library" - virtually nobody ever says that but maybe they're afraid of it) but $55 is way over the cost of an average book, let alone ebook, and expiring them makes zero sense since popular book stops bringing substantial income quite soon so they literally lose nothing allowing the library to keep it.
  - vehementi 7y ago
    Wow that is repulsively scummy.
josephorjoe 7y ago
Project Gutenberg is really a modern day equivalent and is one of the better things created on the internet.
- TACIXAT 7y ago
  I prefer Library Genesis.
  - brewdad 7y ago
    PG has the advantage of being legal.
    - yorwba 7y ago
      Except in countries where copyright terms are longer than in the US: https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html
      - dheera 7y ago
        Meh, as long as their servers aren't in those countries, they can't do anything except censor the website. And most countries with long copyright terms don't censor websites.
        cyphar 7y ago
        Project Gutenberg self-censored themselves to all German users in protest of the lawsuit.
        dheera 7y ago
        If they did not have servers in Germany couldn't they have just ignored the lawsuit? They can make it illegal for Germans to use the site if they wish, but they can't go meddling in foreign media content. If Saudi Arabia serves you a lawsuit because you have a picture of a woman's face on a webpage without hijab, would you fly there to go to court? I'd just trash their lawsuit and never go there. They can block my site if they want -- same goes for Germany.
tolmasky 7y ago
If we merely had the same copyright we had when the country first formed, this entire "your books turn off thing" would possibly be completely acceptable: a subset of works would be onerous and somewhat annoying for 28 years, after which you could literally do whatever you want with them. Key here is that this means that within your lifetime this would quite possibly be the case. This also means that a very large variety of still-somewhat-recent works would be public domain, and thus creating tools to read them would be profitable. Right now, a "public domain" Kindle would be for what, works that are over a hundred years old or something? Few people will ever encounter public domain works they want to read so it's as if everything fits the rent model. The crazy thing is that everything is more amenable to "sharing" today, it is merely legal structure that prevents it now. Arguably the true utility of a library is that it would be (or would have been) absurd to duplicate a physical book for every person that wants it, and then when no one was actively reading them they'd take up a crazy amount of space. This is still true today! This world should be strictly better than the past. But instead we have nostalgia for libraries, not due to any essential reason, but because we've created an artificial environment where it is more appealing to potentially wait for a copy of something to become available vs. instantly duplicating it.
- mullingitover 7y ago
  > If we merely had the same copyright we had when the country first formed, this entire "your books turn off thing" would possibly be completely acceptable: a subset of works would be onerous and somewhat annoying for 28 years, after which you could literally do whatever you want with them Also, the US didn't respect any other country's copyrights or patents so anything published outside the US would be free immediately.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - benj111 7y ago
    Yes, I believe Charles Dickens was the first to near simultaneously publish in both the UK and US. Cant imagine the US letting other countries get away with that now.
warp_factor 7y ago
For what it is worth I love my local libraries. I'm able to hold any book online so as soon as I hear about a book I place a hold on it. They have most books even new ones and if not I can request it for free through all libraries in North California. I stop by the library once a week and pick up all the holds of that week (typically 3-4). I love to have the physical medium around. I typically renew my loans 2 or 3 times and as such I keep the books close to 3 months. It allows me to fully read the ones I find interesting and just go over quickly the ones I don't care about. Once a month I bring back all the books I got. And all of this is completely free. I love my local libraries and cannot believe it took me that long to find out about this wonderful service. From now on I go out of my way to never buy a single book again and avoid all DRM and other nonsensical digital medias like that.
40acres 7y ago
Today libraries would be decried as socialist, when in fact they are a public good. The idea of a public good is malleable, so perhaps the way for left leaning policy makers to advance certain types of legislation is through re-branding as a public good.
JudgeWapner 7y ago
the only reason they exist now is because they're grandfathered in. We could have the exact same thing, just digitally, but due to copyright that will never happen. The state I'm from has its libraries funded by the county (not sure if that's true elsewhere in the US). the more people in a county, the greater property tax base, and thus the greater (potential) for public library funding. So theoretically there's no reason they can't cut or reduce their physical presence and publish their entire library online. Except instead of knowledge, it's now "content", and instead of readers, its now "consumers". Everything is a "market" that needs to be "captured" and libraries are a threat to this corporate model. From a purely informational standpoint, pages-bound-with-glue are just low-tech forms of hardware dongles.
- m463 7y ago
  There are a lot of things that wouldn't exist if they weren't grandfathered in. I think (relatively) inexpensive private planes wouldn't exist without grandfathered componements like say lycoming engines. And it's been said many times cars that people can drive wouldn't exist if they were invented today. And then there are guns.
  - c0vfefe 7y ago
    At the risk of sounding too conservative for HN, this 'grandfathering' is an invaluable means of insulating societal infrastructure from the tyranny of cultural value shift.
    - m463 7y ago
      I'm mulling over "cultural value shift". Maybe some of it is that. But a lot of traditional rights of the general public are too easily overcome by dedicated funded interests via lawmakers and regulators. Like or hate trump, but his "to make a new regulation, you first need to repeal two regulations" thing was pretty interesting. I think there need to be more checks and balances than simple grandfathering architected into things when rights are lost.
ftrsprvln 7y ago
I'm super, super grateful to our public libraries and the amazing resources they offer— coming from an immigrant farm-laboring family in a tiny (<1000 population) town, our equally tiny library introduced me to computers in the 8th grade (which later got me in trouble for, um, "exploring" our police and school district's networks) thanks in part to a grant they received by the Gates Foundation. I wouldn't have the career I do now, or honestly even been aware of it, if it were not in part due to it. My local library now is much, much more well endowed with resources from different media types and they're even getting a makerspace soon! I thankfully can afford my own books and toys to play with, but as a father of 2 young boys, I make sure we utilize the library often and even volunteer our time teaching the occasional workshop on new media/tech/design. I think they're woefully underutilized and I'd be worried that they'd start to go away.
zouhair 7y ago
The thing you can find a book that is hundreds of years old that is still readable, how long would data in a hard drive last in the wild?
- asdff 7y ago
  And who is to say you can even open the file? Not many ebooks are being written in plain text or pdf after all. Usually it's something clunky and proprietary with DRM.
CWuestefeld 7y ago
general disdain for most things run by any type of government here Why should that have anything to do with it? Government-run libraries are a much more recent development - the first libraries in America were set up by the churches, and later became private entities such as Ben Franklin's Library Company of Philadelphia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_libraries_in_North_America#First_libraries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_libraries_in_North_Amer...
lopmotr 7y ago
Just because it's good for some people or used to be worthwhile doesn't mean it's good overall that it exists. If you could buy a cheap license for time limited access to DRMd copy of any book, to me, that would be better than a library because it would be cheaper in principle, as long as copyright owners cooperated and it didn't suffer from monopolies and things, and far more books would be available to far more people without the physical constraints. My library does that but the range is quite small and I guess they're paid for by the local government instead of the readers, which doesn't seem right. Shouldn't private goods be paid for by the users and public goods paid for by government? It's good that information is freely available to the public, but we now have the internet for most of that, and physical books would always be more expensive than ebooks so the financial burden on individuals would have been higher long ago when public libraries started before even paperbacks existed.
Kinnard 7y ago
Idk, some hackerspaces are like public libraries. cf noisebridge which is open to the public at no charge and has a library: http://noisebridge.net http://noisebridge.net
bayareanative 7y ago
Yes, this. I'm surprised they're not labeled as scary "socialism" and replaced with public-private "partnerships" with commercial ads, membership fees and overpriced concessions. It seems the public commonwealth is being cannibalized for vampiric exploitation at every opportunity. You can't sit down anywhere, because it's been replaced with a sterile multi-use zoned commercial areas with a Code of Conduct* without buying something. Remember water fountains and public parks? Not anymore. *I ate at this food truck in Austin that was in a mixed-use commercial area that had a 12 term CoC. These places typically have control-freak power-trip mall (wannabe) cops.

dmix 7y ago

> Between lobbying and the general disdain for most things run by any type of government here, I’ve grown to distain the government because of how often it pushes strict bills like DMCA which are quickly out-of-date and ripe for abuse. It’s not just lobbying congress either, there have been some very strict cases coming out of prosecutors offices such as the case against MIT student David LaMacchia in 1994 who put files up on an encrypted BBS. Which resulted in congress passing a bill to fix a “loophole” where people uploading files on the internet without any commercial intent couldn’t be sent to jail. So the bill (predating DMCA by a couple of years) allowed up to 5yrs +$250k fines for online piracy, regardless of commercial intent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._LaMacchia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._LaMacchia Every subreddit or Youtube channel or whatever online community I’ve been a part of has had to deal with people abusing DMCA takedown notices and having things that clearly fall under fair use, or even the person’s own content, being taken down.

klez 7y ago
Ok, but if it wasn't for private interests pushing those laws, I really doubt a government would pass them. So saying that it's the government fault is true, but not the whole picture. You should feel disdain for both the government and the lobbies, if you have a problem with absurd copyright laws.
- 0815test 7y ago
  The whole point of his comment is that the government is what's enabling that kind of lobbying. There's no such thing as a government that is free of private interests pushing for their preferred policies; the closest you can even get to that is strict constitutional limits, restricting what the government can do in the first place. (And even those seem to have failed quite badly in the case of copyright or patent protection, which were originally supposed to be "limited in time" and to promote knowledge and the useful arts - none of which is the case today!)
tzs 7y ago
> Every subreddit or Youtube channel or whatever online community I’ve been a part of has had to deal with people abusing DMCA takedown notices Are you sure you've seen DMCA abuse on YouTube? They have their own system for handling alleged copyright violation that has little to do with the DMCA takedown procedure, and almost all complaints I've seen about abuse on Google have been due to that system.
- pixl97 7y ago
  Eh, Google's system is born out of a compromise because of the DMCA. Simply put most large publishers dropped their suits and do not file actual complaints with this compromise.
- loup-vaillant 7y ago
  > They have their own system for handling alleged copyright violation that has little to do with the DMCA takedown procedure That system is such a scourge. No fair use, no distinction between different countrie's legislations, no appeal. If you make an educational video, no matter how much effort and skill you put in, if you use some musical excerpt or images or scene, it doesn't matter how short it is, or what you're using it for. Your video will be "claimed", and any add revenue you used to have will go to whoever owns the rights to the excerpt. And if you didn't enable ads, the claim will do it anyway. I wonder what happens when you use 2 excerpts from different major copyright holders…
  - predakanga 7y ago
    > I wonder what happens when you use 2 excerpts from different major copyright holders… That is a technique that's been used in the past, though I'm not sure if it's still effective. As far as I know, it was popularized by Jim Sterling who named it the "copyright deadlock"[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_copyright_issues#2015%E2%80%93present_fair_use_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_copyright_issues#2015%...

ultrarunner 7y ago

On the flip side, people all over my neighborhood have put considerable effort into building awesome tiny sharing libraries. Perhaps without the issue being "solved" we'd see even more and varied institutions formulate organically. So yes, I can imagine, but who knows whose imagination is closer to "alternative reality"?

adrianhon 7y ago
Tiny Libraries are cool but they aren’t even a pale shadow of traditional public libraries that come with commitments to levels of service and access to people of all backgrounds and locations and incomes.
- derefr 7y ago
  Sure, but in a community where there wasn't an actual public library, I do believe one would inevitably come into existence as the effort of the community, in the same way those tiny libraries do. "People have spare books; community centres exist; so why not put the spare books in the community centre?"
  - adrianhon 7y ago
    Very possibly, yes. The original modern libraries in the west were effectively subscription libraries, as in, they weren’t free to use, you had to pay to become a member. It was only later that they were run by the government. That said, there is a vast gulf between them and a little box people put outside their homes with some books inside. Further reading: The Library Book by Susan Orlean
  - jmiserez 7y ago
    But you'll be constrained to the old spare books of that particular community. Public libraries have a much broader selection, and they also buy new books. Also I'm not sure they'd actually come into existence everywhere, even if the internet is a poor substitute for a library it is cheaper and may be enough for many.

sp332 7y ago

It took the richest guy in the world funding them like crazy to start them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie#3,000_public_libraries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie#3,000_public_l... The one in Philadelphia cost the equivalent of $15,000,000 - and that didn't include the land, operation, or maintenance.

inscionent 7y ago
The one in Washington DC is now an Apple store.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  Wow ... that's .. is that irony? I don't even know.
  - tomxor 7y ago
    It's straight up dystopian that's what it is.
- matwood 7y ago
  The yearly ALA (American Library Association) conference was in the conference center across the street from that library last weekend. I wonder how many noticed the metaphor to what is happening to libraries in general?
  - blakesterz 7y ago
    Ha! Walked by it when I was there, I thought the same thing.
- GlenTheMachine 7y ago
  To be fair, it’s not like DC doesn’t have public libraries. Also, the original DC Carnegie building sits on some of the most expensive real estate in the country.

CodeTheInternet 7y ago

My library has the option of "checking out" ebooks. They will "purchase" them and have a set "number of copies". I put all of these things in quotes as I'm not sure how its handled for essentially a digital file vs a physical paper book, or how the author/publisher/etc makes money in this deal.

snazz 7y ago
As I understand it, the number of copies is enforced using DRM (which isn’t the best, of course), but the books are free and there’s usually a pretty wide selection.
sp332 7y ago
Penguin Random House charges libraries $35, $45, or $55 for each "copy" and then expires them after two years. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/77904-penguin-random-house-changes-its-library-e-book-terms.html https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/l... Hachette also expires their e-books after 2 years. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/80486-hachette-book-group-changes-library-e-book-terms.html https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/l... See also the drama about "Controlled Digital Lending", where a library makes their own scan of a book and lends it out.
- smsm42 7y ago
  That's plain naked rentseeking. I'd get them charging a nominal sum to prevent abuse (like "why I'd buy any books if I can just check out everything for free in the library" - virtually nobody ever says that but maybe they're afraid of it) but $55 is way over the cost of an average book, let alone ebook, and expiring them makes zero sense since popular book stops bringing substantial income quite soon so they literally lose nothing allowing the library to keep it.
- vehementi 7y ago
  Wow that is repulsively scummy.

josephorjoe 7y ago

Project Gutenberg is really a modern day equivalent and is one of the better things created on the internet.

TACIXAT 7y ago
I prefer Library Genesis.
- brewdad 7y ago
  PG has the advantage of being legal.
  - yorwba 7y ago
    Except in countries where copyright terms are longer than in the US: https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html
    - dheera 7y ago
      Meh, as long as their servers aren't in those countries, they can't do anything except censor the website. And most countries with long copyright terms don't censor websites.
      - cyphar 7y ago
        Project Gutenberg self-censored themselves to all German users in protest of the lawsuit.
        dheera 7y ago
        If they did not have servers in Germany couldn't they have just ignored the lawsuit? They can make it illegal for Germans to use the site if they wish, but they can't go meddling in foreign media content. If Saudi Arabia serves you a lawsuit because you have a picture of a woman's face on a webpage without hijab, would you fly there to go to court? I'd just trash their lawsuit and never go there. They can block my site if they want -- same goes for Germany.

tolmasky 7y ago

If we merely had the same copyright we had when the country first formed, this entire "your books turn off thing" would possibly be completely acceptable: a subset of works would be onerous and somewhat annoying for 28 years, after which you could literally do whatever you want with them. Key here is that this means that within your lifetime this would quite possibly be the case. This also means that a very large variety of still-somewhat-recent works would be public domain, and thus creating tools to read them would be profitable. Right now, a "public domain" Kindle would be for what, works that are over a hundred years old or something? Few people will ever encounter public domain works they want to read so it's as if everything fits the rent model. The crazy thing is that everything is more amenable to "sharing" today, it is merely legal structure that prevents it now. Arguably the true utility of a library is that it would be (or would have been) absurd to duplicate a physical book for every person that wants it, and then when no one was actively reading them they'd take up a crazy amount of space. This is still true today! This world should be strictly better than the past. But instead we have nostalgia for libraries, not due to any essential reason, but because we've created an artificial environment where it is more appealing to potentially wait for a copy of something to become available vs. instantly duplicating it.

mullingitover 7y ago
> If we merely had the same copyright we had when the country first formed, this entire "your books turn off thing" would possibly be completely acceptable: a subset of works would be onerous and somewhat annoying for 28 years, after which you could literally do whatever you want with them Also, the US didn't respect any other country's copyrights or patents so anything published outside the US would be free immediately.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- benj111 7y ago
  Yes, I believe Charles Dickens was the first to near simultaneously publish in both the UK and US. Cant imagine the US letting other countries get away with that now.

warp_factor 7y ago

For what it is worth I love my local libraries. I'm able to hold any book online so as soon as I hear about a book I place a hold on it. They have most books even new ones and if not I can request it for free through all libraries in North California. I stop by the library once a week and pick up all the holds of that week (typically 3-4). I love to have the physical medium around. I typically renew my loans 2 or 3 times and as such I keep the books close to 3 months. It allows me to fully read the ones I find interesting and just go over quickly the ones I don't care about. Once a month I bring back all the books I got. And all of this is completely free. I love my local libraries and cannot believe it took me that long to find out about this wonderful service. From now on I go out of my way to never buy a single book again and avoid all DRM and other nonsensical digital medias like that.

40acres 7y ago

Today libraries would be decried as socialist, when in fact they are a public good. The idea of a public good is malleable, so perhaps the way for left leaning policy makers to advance certain types of legislation is through re-branding as a public good.

JudgeWapner 7y ago

the only reason they exist now is because they're grandfathered in. We could have the exact same thing, just digitally, but due to copyright that will never happen. The state I'm from has its libraries funded by the county (not sure if that's true elsewhere in the US). the more people in a county, the greater property tax base, and thus the greater (potential) for public library funding. So theoretically there's no reason they can't cut or reduce their physical presence and publish their entire library online. Except instead of knowledge, it's now "content", and instead of readers, its now "consumers". Everything is a "market" that needs to be "captured" and libraries are a threat to this corporate model. From a purely informational standpoint, pages-bound-with-glue are just low-tech forms of hardware dongles.

m463 7y ago
There are a lot of things that wouldn't exist if they weren't grandfathered in. I think (relatively) inexpensive private planes wouldn't exist without grandfathered componements like say lycoming engines. And it's been said many times cars that people can drive wouldn't exist if they were invented today. And then there are guns.
- c0vfefe 7y ago
  At the risk of sounding too conservative for HN, this 'grandfathering' is an invaluable means of insulating societal infrastructure from the tyranny of cultural value shift.
  - m463 7y ago
    I'm mulling over "cultural value shift". Maybe some of it is that. But a lot of traditional rights of the general public are too easily overcome by dedicated funded interests via lawmakers and regulators. Like or hate trump, but his "to make a new regulation, you first need to repeal two regulations" thing was pretty interesting. I think there need to be more checks and balances than simple grandfathering architected into things when rights are lost.

ftrsprvln 7y ago

I'm super, super grateful to our public libraries and the amazing resources they offer— coming from an immigrant farm-laboring family in a tiny (<1000 population) town, our equally tiny library introduced me to computers in the 8th grade (which later got me in trouble for, um, "exploring" our police and school district's networks) thanks in part to a grant they received by the Gates Foundation. I wouldn't have the career I do now, or honestly even been aware of it, if it were not in part due to it. My local library now is much, much more well endowed with resources from different media types and they're even getting a makerspace soon! I thankfully can afford my own books and toys to play with, but as a father of 2 young boys, I make sure we utilize the library often and even volunteer our time teaching the occasional workshop on new media/tech/design. I think they're woefully underutilized and I'd be worried that they'd start to go away.

zouhair 7y ago

The thing you can find a book that is hundreds of years old that is still readable, how long would data in a hard drive last in the wild?

asdff 7y ago
And who is to say you can even open the file? Not many ebooks are being written in plain text or pdf after all. Usually it's something clunky and proprietary with DRM.

CWuestefeld 7y ago

general disdain for most things run by any type of government here Why should that have anything to do with it? Government-run libraries are a much more recent development - the first libraries in America were set up by the churches, and later became private entities such as Ben Franklin's Library Company of Philadelphia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_libraries_in_North_America#First_libraries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_libraries_in_North_Amer...

lopmotr 7y ago

Just because it's good for some people or used to be worthwhile doesn't mean it's good overall that it exists. If you could buy a cheap license for time limited access to DRMd copy of any book, to me, that would be better than a library because it would be cheaper in principle, as long as copyright owners cooperated and it didn't suffer from monopolies and things, and far more books would be available to far more people without the physical constraints. My library does that but the range is quite small and I guess they're paid for by the local government instead of the readers, which doesn't seem right. Shouldn't private goods be paid for by the users and public goods paid for by government? It's good that information is freely available to the public, but we now have the internet for most of that, and physical books would always be more expensive than ebooks so the financial burden on individuals would have been higher long ago when public libraries started before even paperbacks existed.

Kinnard 7y ago

Idk, some hackerspaces are like public libraries. cf noisebridge which is open to the public at no charge and has a library: http://noisebridge.net http://noisebridge.net

bayareanative 7y ago

Yes, this. I'm surprised they're not labeled as scary "socialism" and replaced with public-private "partnerships" with commercial ads, membership fees and overpriced concessions. It seems the public commonwealth is being cannibalized for vampiric exploitation at every opportunity. You can't sit down anywhere, because it's been replaced with a sterile multi-use zoned commercial areas with a Code of Conduct* without buying something. Remember water fountains and public parks? Not anymore. *I ate at this food truck in Austin that was in a mixed-use commercial area that had a 12 term CoC. These places typically have control-freak power-trip mall (wannabe) cops.