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Let's step back and take a look at the larger picture.
Overdrive is a for-profit company with a business model that depends on charging fees to libraries, who will give away content for free.
The money Overdrive makes has to come from somewhere. Obviously, it isn't coming from sale of the content to the end user. So where does it come from? Taxpayers.
Taxpayers are getting stingier, partly due to the recession and partly due to an ideological meme that's floating around. So where does Overdrive think the increased fees are going to come from? From libraries that are facing financial cutbacks?
Frankly, I think that Overdrive may have chosen an extremely poor business to get into: Providing a platform for giving away content subsidized by taxpayers who have already demonstrated their eagerness to throw all support of the arts away, from NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to the National Endowment for the Arts. Why would they expect taxpayers to want to pay to give away books?
I like being able to check out books for my Kobo, but really, why am I able to do this? Somebody has to pay for my books when it isn't me. Is it really reasonable to expect John Q. Public to want to do this?
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