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Originally Posted by pdurrant
I don't see it that way. As described I see publishers and authors losing out considerably through loss of sales to libraries, unless the usage fees increased a lot.
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More losses than when people just pirate the books? On a side note, I have always thought my library card came ridiculously cheap - which is why I always donated money during their 'we need more money to keep things running' drive. Ironically, moving to digital media and storage would reduce the need for physical space and librarians running around organising things, reducing overall cost.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
Libraries buy eBooks. Libraries loan the eBooks out to individuals for fixed periods of time. Libraries can only loan out as many copies as they have bought.
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Again, I don't think you can keep up this "discrete units of culture" thought. Electronic media is endlessly reproducible at zero additional cost. Usage count is what, um, counts - not unique copies, as they won't exist any longer. Or at least not exclusively.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
Indeed, I believe there are libraries operating such systems now, although horribly encumbered by DRM. What you're suggesting is more a collections agency than a library.
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Yes, DRMd (which is a fail), restricted number of formats (fail again), and not everything is available (fail 3x!). As for the collections agency comparison, maybe (although I don't see all that much difference with the way libraries operate now), but if the format in which data is kept changes (from paper to strings of 1s and 0s), it seems reasonable that the institutions that handle this data must change as well.