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They were doing controlled digital lending (CDL) with a strict owned-to-loaned ratio. Then, during the emergency, they waived all waitlists and limits, allowin

They were doing controlled digital lending (CDL) with a strict owned-to-loaned ratio. Then, during the emergency, they waived all waitlists and limits, allowing an unlimited number of loans for a single owned copy. They no longer could claim that they were still engaged in CDL, so there was no legal justification to make all of those copies.

londons_explore 6y ago
I wonder if perhaps they are sitting on data showing that no individual page of any book was ever being viewed by more than one person at a time, and therefore they were still effectively just redistributing the physical book pages they already owned. If so, their legal basis looks much much stronger.
- recursivecaveat 6y ago
  There's definitely some open questions about how efficiently one should be allowed to 'multiplex' a piece of media between consumers, but I don't think anyone will get away with splitting the logical unit they were given/sold into pieces. Just checking whether a digital book is open at all probably has over a 50X efficiency gain versus physical lending. If you let the lender split it up there's no clear place to stop and the limits are absurd. You could buy a movie, split it into frames and service 1000s of simultaneous viewings with small offsets from each-other.
kbenson 6y ago
Doesn't the article say that's not what they did, instead lending out copies that were sitting at partner libraries that weren't being lended out because they were closed? If that's the case, we're they not still lending out with each digital copy corresponding to a digital copy?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- icebraining 6y ago
  The article is muddled, and I suspect that's on purpose, unfortunately. Lending out one digital copy for each physical is what they usually do. During the Emergency, they removed those limits (euphemistically called "suspending the waitlists").

londons_explore 6y ago

I wonder if perhaps they are sitting on data showing that no individual page of any book was ever being viewed by more than one person at a time, and therefore they were still effectively just redistributing the physical book pages they already owned. If so, their legal basis looks much much stronger.

recursivecaveat 6y ago
There's definitely some open questions about how efficiently one should be allowed to 'multiplex' a piece of media between consumers, but I don't think anyone will get away with splitting the logical unit they were given/sold into pieces. Just checking whether a digital book is open at all probably has over a 50X efficiency gain versus physical lending. If you let the lender split it up there's no clear place to stop and the limits are absurd. You could buy a movie, split it into frames and service 1000s of simultaneous viewings with small offsets from each-other.

kbenson 6y ago

Doesn't the article say that's not what they did, instead lending out copies that were sitting at partner libraries that weren't being lended out because they were closed? If that's the case, we're they not still lending out with each digital copy corresponding to a digital copy?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
icebraining 6y ago
The article is muddled, and I suspect that's on purpose, unfortunately. Lending out one digital copy for each physical is what they usually do. During the Emergency, they removed those limits (euphemistically called "suspending the waitlists").