[dalai]

Originally Posted by Sregener

It isn't collusion when a gas station raises its prices 9 cents because it sees the guy across the street is charging 10 cents a gallon more for gas.

No, but how do you know this is the case here? A couple of months ago Apple and five major publishers were essentially found guilty of ebook price fixing. Is it such a great leap of faith to think that they may also have a common policy about libraries? Isn't it already quite obvious that they would like as much control as possible on the different distribution channels?

Originally Posted by Sregener

Copyright law grants an exclusive claim to a particular work of art. In this case, books. Now, we could change copyright law to remove that exclusive claim, but that's probably a different argument for a different day. Right now, if you want to buy a bestseller by a particular author, you have to pay the price set by his/her publisher. No other way to get that book.

True, but law could also demand fair and non-discriminatory pricing and licensing terms. I don't think anyone wants or needs more than that.

Originally Posted by Sregener

But competition doesn't have to come from a specific product, just like you can only get a Big Mac at McDonalds. Competition can come from others offering similar products. So if a large number of independent booksellers were to offer eBooks to libraries at very attractive rates, and the libraries made it a point to emphasize those works - both in print versions and eBooks - no one could say that library patrons were being denied the opportunity to read quality works at a reasonable cost. Just like you can get a hamburger without going near a McDonalds.

This is not the best analogy since a hamburger is hamburger and the only thing that changes is the brand name. Imagine a netflix-like service that only had movies from a few independent studios. Would it survive? Or to go back to books, imagine going to an online bookstore and getting "no results" for the first 30 books you searched for. How likely would it be that you would visit that site again?

Originally Posted by Sregener

I understand you don't like the fact that eBook prices are so high for libraries. I don't, either. But I dislike government monkeying with the free market every time somebody complains that the "market has failed" simply because product X costs too much. I think that in the long run, such intervention in the market will do far more harm than good. Socialism, for instance, "assumes the factory" and then declares that all the value is added by the worker. Works great for a while, but eventually the problem becomes, "Why aren't there any new factories?" Likewise, you're "assuming the book" and then wanting the price to be set below the value set by those who own it. Eventually, there may be few quality authors left to argue over. And it is my own interest in protecting the authors that makes me loathe to involve the government in this issue.

But the prices of ebooks for libraries are not so high because of the free market. Publishers artificially created two markets for their ebooks; consumers and libraries. And they did that by taking advantage of the fact that they can impose arbitrary licensing terms thus circumventing the "issue" of the first sale doctrine, which is what enabled libraries to operate in the first place. I don't believe that the free market can resolve this problem, which is also of major importance for consumers. At some point there have to be clear laws on what you can and cannot do with ebooks or conversely what an ebook license may or may not restrict.