3 ms·
First-sale doctrine doesn't give you a right to distribute multiple copies to other people, only the right to redistribute your copy. There's not much to adapt
by jcranmer 3y ago
First-sale doctrine doesn't give you a right to distribute multiple copies to other people, only the right to redistribute your copy. There's not much to adapt to the digital sphere: a digital sphere version would allow you to freely resell your copy, although to sell your copy, you would have to destroy your ability to use your existing copy.
Sure, it's possible someone can cheat the system. But that cheating is as illegal in that state of affairs as it is in the current state of affairs. And it's not like the current state of affairs has been all that effective in preventing such cheating!
- arp242 3y agoIf I sell you my physical book then that's easy: delete(arp242.books, "The Winds of Winter") and jcranmer.books.add("The Winds of Winter") both in one easy atomic operation done by me handing the book to you. Libraries basically work the same. "I promise to delete the copy from my drive, cross my heart, hope to die" is a lot more iffy. How do you verify that? How could you possibly even go after any cheater? Respectfully, I think you're being too dismissive and naïve about this because abuse will be rampant and widespread with zero recourse.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoA new type of Kindle could be created that is owned by libraries and would solve this.
- arp242 3y agoI'm not sure the practicalities of that will work out (they're pretty fragile and I can foresee a lot of breakage), but it's worth exploring. Also it doesn't completely solve this, because ideally I would be able to read ebooks on my laptop too. You can have special apps and DRM and all of that, but that come with their own downsides.
- jcranmer 3y agoMost people will interact with a digital library through use of some app, something like Steam. Reselling in this context is as simple as the app owner simply deleting the book from your list of books and adding it to my list of books, removing any local copies it knows about in the process (or simply reconciling it the next time the app is open). Is this a foolproof system? Hell no. It's not even that hard to cheat. But most users aren't terribly tech-literate in the first place. And also, most people tend to want to comply with the law. I quoted elsewhere Gabe's comment about piracy--it's primarily a service problem, and the evidence has generally shown that if you deliver the services that people want, the piracy rates plummet.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoHow does loaning books work?