[axel77]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

That being said, I think Project Gutenberg and the like definitely are a good start at developing a good online library. For books whose copyright has expired, there is no real need for such a library to loan books. Perhaps DRM could be used to allow books to be loaned, but ultimately, as has been discussed here and elsewhere, DRM really doesn't stop piracy and furthermore, there is no real incentive for Publishers to cooperate with Libraries.

Exactly, thats why I started yet another thread

1. Paper books are probably never going to die entirely. So certainly libraries may remain as lending sources for paper books.

Fully agree. At least for example the trashy holliday literature you take to the beach. Nothing can beat paper here. Aquapack or not, you can leave the paper book at the beach while going into the water, while nobody will think about stealing that louse book. And even if, you didn't lose much.

2. Perhaps users can get dedicated library readers. Such readers would allow a user to download a book to the reader and it would delete itself after a certain period of time or after one read (which ever came first). The key would be that it would not allow uploading of the book to a different medium.

I doubt this can work. Form experience I'd tell you the devices are all soon broken or treated very badly. Its the classic Tragedy of the Commons. And on the other hand I'm not willing to "buy" a device, on which the library has ultimate control over, and not I.

3. Perhaps copyright should return to its original roots. I think it is pretty clear that very few books remain very profitable for publishers to keep in print more than 10 years after their publication. Furthermore the few that are profitable actually serve as a disincentive for the production of more books (how many Salinger books have been published? The guy is able to live off of the royalties from Catcher in the Rye... even though there are reports that he has written many, many manuscripts). My dream is that copyrights would fall back to 10 years from first publication. Libraries might not be able to lend books that are still in copyright, but such books might be available for reading on computers in the library and once their copyright expires, will be made freely available via a standard online library. Of course such a policy will never likely be enacted... after all, the publishers would prefer to see 90% of what was written in the last 70 years remain out of print than let the 10% that remain profitable for decades fall out of copyright.

Possibly, but even to wait 10 years to get a book into the library to be lendable is IMHO a tradegy. There are enough fields (for example the scientific one) where you really want very contemporary literature. And currently we do not have to pay (muc) for that, if only lending. But I fear also with this copyright idea, this right may demish due to the digital age.