Quote:
Originally Posted by Laridae
What if public sentiment turned so strongly against the "selfish and greedy" publishers that the public demanded libraries to ignore the publisher's restrictions and make ebooks widely available as a public service? Unlikely in the US, perhaps, but feasible in jurisdictions with a more socialistic bent? This thing could go political!
(Think: "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore")
|
Places with a more socialistic bent vary widely, but in the ones I'm familiar with tend to favor publishers and (especially) retailers over the consumer by a wide margin (i.e., with prohibitions against discounting from the list price). And, at least where I lived in Germany, libraries were much less a part of people's lives than they usually are in the US.)
So I don't think that any sort of library compulsion is likely in these countries.