Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The answer is self-evident. The library is paying more because they are buying more rights. When you buy an ebook, you are buying it for personal use only; the library is buying a multi-user licence.
It's no different to buying a single-user licence or a multi-user licence for a piece of software. Do you think that that's wrong, too?
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With all due respect Harry, if libraries are going to lending the one "copy" of the ebook they bought to many customers the publishers may reasonably demand that they pay for more than one "copy". But if said "copy" is only lend to one person at a time, then they can't be demanding multi user license fees, because at any one point, one person is using/reading the book.
I don't think your software analogy is apt, since you pay for multi-user licence for software if more than one user are
concurrently using them. You don't pay multi user software licenses if you set the software on one computer and have other people use it too. I am not going to pay for a multi user license for my copy of excel if my computer is used by myself, my wife and my kid. It's installed on one computer and I can lend to however I see fit to use whatever I have on it.
Otherwise, next thing you know, we 'll have some software company sending us seize and desist emails, because apparently they figured out that instead of myself using their software it was actually my cat stepping on the keyboard, hence another user.