5 ms·

I'm an author whose books are published by one of the publishers mentioned in the article, and I'm also a library patron who has checked out an absurd number of

by jawns 6y ago

I'm an author whose books are published by one of the publishers mentioned in the article, and I'm also a library patron who has checked out an absurd number of ebooks from my library since the pandemic started. The way ebooks are licensed to libraries does not seem like it is going to be sustainable. Yet copyright law lags here. My own opinion is that Controlled Digital Lending should become the norm, because it closely mirrors the way we already deal with lended print materials. I know the Author's Guild and most of the major publishers oppose CDL because they see it as a threat to their profits, but I feel more optimistic. We already know that the lending model for print works just fine, and I see it as no more than a threat than that. It may be the case that a hybrid model is possible, where libraries can either purchase an ebook at full price and practice CDL, or license it if that's more cost-effective. Chances are that licensing will still make sense for all but the most in-demand works.

jandrese 6y ago
It's lucky we have a public library system at all. If it wasn't grandfathered in and someone suggested it today there is no chance in hell that it would fly. Profit maximization is the only thing publishers care about, and public institutions aren't going to stand up for the public interest.
- esperent 6y ago
  On the other hand, book are simply not as important as they were when libraries were created. Now we have multiple free, high-quality sources of information that are far easier to access than libraries ever were, for example, Wikipedia or the many sites where people share their literary works for free. This is not an attempt to belittle books or libraries - both are still important resources. They are simply not the only show in town anymore, so if they weren't grandfathered in and someone tried to create libraries today, there would be obvious arguments against doing so, besides pure profit.
  - chmod775 6y ago
    (Some) libraries are to books what archive.org is to the internet. I also don't think you realize how lacking the the digitization and public availability of older publications and books in academia is. You can count yourself lucky if there's at least a barely legible and badly scanned PDF. Usually your only choice is hitting your universities' library. This is also true for a lot of general literature that is just old enough to still be copyrighted but already too old to still be sold anywhere. There are thousands upon thousands of such books which you will be hard pressed to find anywhere but in a library. An example I recently encountered would be most works by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon. Out of his 80 published works maybe 10-20 are still easily accessible and purchasable somewhere. Soon he would be a forgotten author, and stupidly long copyright terms would have played a role in that. Thank god we have libraries preserving at least some of our history.
    - calibas 6y ago
      Most of the local history here requires either talking to someone or looking in a physical book. I was surprised to realize how much isn't available online.
      - novok 6y ago
        Even books that might of been scanned by google books but are unavailable to look at?
        calibas 6y ago
        They're just not in Google Books and not available online period. Try finding a copy of "Castella, California : the last one hundred years 1900-2000". It's a real book, but if you're limited to the Internet you might not even realize it exists. Even better, try finding any version of Joaquin Miller's The Battle of Castle Crags.
    - ksaj 6y ago
      One thing I love about the libraries at least in Toronto, is that many of them have private collections, and some of them are entirely one subject or genre. I have a deep interest in magic and mentalism, and found a library here that has books on the subject that are so old they're not even in modern English (or German as is the case for some of the books they have). Luckily the illustrations are detailed and verbose. Also in Toronto we have the Reference Library which is a gold mine, and probably is even more archive.org-like than most libraries. I honed my Assembly Language skills there in the 90's, and did enormous amounts of research on Artificial Life and that sort of thing. They have some of the best stacks, so you have to use the CueCat or whatever they call it to summon up all the good stuff they dare not leave on the shelves. Nowadays a lot of material is available on the Internet. Yet most books are so very much better than a current blog or online "tutorial." Even the older books. So there is that. PS: I always buy the e-books that I like. Paper copies if they're available, since I prefer them. You can tell a great book by how dog-eared it gets over time. You don't get that metric with ebooks.
contravariant 6y ago
Licensing should make sense for all books, it just requires a reasonable per lend fee. It shouldn't really be in the publisher's interest to prevent libraries from lending more copies. They'd just be limiting their own customer base. That's the capitalist ideal though, there's plenty of reasons why it's not currently happening. Most publishers still seem to think they can continue pricing digital and physical books the same and turn the significant savings in printing costs into pure profit. And they might have some second thoughts about this whole 'lending books' thing. CDL is interesting here because it is in essence a threat that failing to provide a fair digital alternative will just lead to libraries digitizing the books for themselves, and in the worst case cooperate so you can lend a copy of the book provided any (statewide, countrywide, worldwide) library still has an unlent copy.
rahimnathwani 6y ago
"We already know that the lending model for print works just fine, and I see it as no more than a threat than that." The article addresses that. There's much less friction/effort to borrow and return a physical book, than there is to borrow and return a digital version of the same book. So, all other things being equal, the # sales displaced by one ebook under CDL is going to be higher than that of a physical book, assuming both have the same shelf life and there are no restrictions on lending except for one-at-a-time.
newswasboring 6y ago
> My own opinion is that Controlled Digital Lending should become the norm, because it closely mirrors the way we already deal with lended print materials. This seems like a band aid solution. Like hacking old code to run on a new machine, totally disregarding why we build the new machine in the first place. I personally don't know what should be a good model for digital lending but it can be different from how we do it with physical books. This kind of band aid thinking will just cause more legacy issues in the future and may also detract from really taking advantage of the new format. Actually can you explain why you think the licensing model will work for some books and not others? How will volume of demand impact this?
- jawns 6y ago
  For books that are in high demand, let's say you pay $25 to buy the book outright, but you can then lend it as many times as you want. Assuming it's always checked out for two weeks, that's 26 readers a year who benefit, at a cost of less than $1 per reader per year. But in a typical library, most books in the catalog are checked out infrequently. It might not make financial sense to purchase those books outright. But if a library can pay a licensing fee on a per-checkout basis, then it can expand its offerings.

by jawns 6y ago

jandrese 6y ago

It's lucky we have a public library system at all. If it wasn't grandfathered in and someone suggested it today there is no chance in hell that it would fly. Profit maximization is the only thing publishers care about, and public institutions aren't going to stand up for the public interest.

esperent 6y ago
On the other hand, book are simply not as important as they were when libraries were created. Now we have multiple free, high-quality sources of information that are far easier to access than libraries ever were, for example, Wikipedia or the many sites where people share their literary works for free. This is not an attempt to belittle books or libraries - both are still important resources. They are simply not the only show in town anymore, so if they weren't grandfathered in and someone tried to create libraries today, there would be obvious arguments against doing so, besides pure profit.
- chmod775 6y ago
  (Some) libraries are to books what archive.org is to the internet. I also don't think you realize how lacking the the digitization and public availability of older publications and books in academia is. You can count yourself lucky if there's at least a barely legible and badly scanned PDF. Usually your only choice is hitting your universities' library. This is also true for a lot of general literature that is just old enough to still be copyrighted but already too old to still be sold anywhere. There are thousands upon thousands of such books which you will be hard pressed to find anywhere but in a library. An example I recently encountered would be most works by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon. Out of his 80 published works maybe 10-20 are still easily accessible and purchasable somewhere. Soon he would be a forgotten author, and stupidly long copyright terms would have played a role in that. Thank god we have libraries preserving at least some of our history.
  - calibas 6y ago
    Most of the local history here requires either talking to someone or looking in a physical book. I was surprised to realize how much isn't available online.
    - novok 6y ago
      Even books that might of been scanned by google books but are unavailable to look at?
      - calibas 6y ago
        They're just not in Google Books and not available online period. Try finding a copy of "Castella, California : the last one hundred years 1900-2000". It's a real book, but if you're limited to the Internet you might not even realize it exists. Even better, try finding any version of Joaquin Miller's The Battle of Castle Crags.
  - ksaj 6y ago
    One thing I love about the libraries at least in Toronto, is that many of them have private collections, and some of them are entirely one subject or genre. I have a deep interest in magic and mentalism, and found a library here that has books on the subject that are so old they're not even in modern English (or German as is the case for some of the books they have). Luckily the illustrations are detailed and verbose. Also in Toronto we have the Reference Library which is a gold mine, and probably is even more archive.org-like than most libraries. I honed my Assembly Language skills there in the 90's, and did enormous amounts of research on Artificial Life and that sort of thing. They have some of the best stacks, so you have to use the CueCat or whatever they call it to summon up all the good stuff they dare not leave on the shelves. Nowadays a lot of material is available on the Internet. Yet most books are so very much better than a current blog or online "tutorial." Even the older books. So there is that. PS: I always buy the e-books that I like. Paper copies if they're available, since I prefer them. You can tell a great book by how dog-eared it gets over time. You don't get that metric with ebooks.

contravariant 6y ago

Licensing should make sense for all books, it just requires a reasonable per lend fee. It shouldn't really be in the publisher's interest to prevent libraries from lending more copies. They'd just be limiting their own customer base. That's the capitalist ideal though, there's plenty of reasons why it's not currently happening. Most publishers still seem to think they can continue pricing digital and physical books the same and turn the significant savings in printing costs into pure profit. And they might have some second thoughts about this whole 'lending books' thing. CDL is interesting here because it is in essence a threat that failing to provide a fair digital alternative will just lead to libraries digitizing the books for themselves, and in the worst case cooperate so you can lend a copy of the book provided any (statewide, countrywide, worldwide) library still has an unlent copy.

rahimnathwani 6y ago

"We already know that the lending model for print works just fine, and I see it as no more than a threat than that." The article addresses that. There's much less friction/effort to borrow and return a physical book, than there is to borrow and return a digital version of the same book. So, all other things being equal, the # sales displaced by one ebook under CDL is going to be higher than that of a physical book, assuming both have the same shelf life and there are no restrictions on lending except for one-at-a-time.

newswasboring 6y ago

> My own opinion is that Controlled Digital Lending should become the norm, because it closely mirrors the way we already deal with lended print materials. This seems like a band aid solution. Like hacking old code to run on a new machine, totally disregarding why we build the new machine in the first place. I personally don't know what should be a good model for digital lending but it can be different from how we do it with physical books. This kind of band aid thinking will just cause more legacy issues in the future and may also detract from really taking advantage of the new format. Actually can you explain why you think the licensing model will work for some books and not others? How will volume of demand impact this?

jawns 6y ago
For books that are in high demand, let's say you pay $25 to buy the book outright, but you can then lend it as many times as you want. Assuming it's always checked out for two weeks, that's 26 readers a year who benefit, at a cost of less than $1 per reader per year. But in a typical library, most books in the catalog are checked out infrequently. It might not make financial sense to purchase those books outright. But if a library can pay a licensing fee on a per-checkout basis, then it can expand its offerings.