Quote:
Originally Posted by zerospinboson
But you cannot go from "will cost roughly the same" to "is justified," for the age-old Humean reason, and because book salesmen, just like ordinary people (I will for the moment ignore the question whether people who do not consider themselves ordinary have such a right), do not have a "right to constant revenues".
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It's been a long time since I read anything by David Hume, but didn't he think you can't derive morals, including judgments of fairness, from facts? And an eBook costing a library $106 is a fact, just as surely as anything I wrote. Also, wasn't Hume an advocate of economic freedom? Please come up with a quote to correct me on how Hume regarded prices, if correction I need. But remember that Hume was anti-mercantilism. I suspect Hume would have thought that Canadian libraries spending tax dollars, even just a few, to pressure foreign businesses into lowering prices, is a poor use of government resources.
Googling this exact phrase from your post:
"right to constant revenues"
brings just one result -- this thread.
And I don't recall anyone expressing the idea in different words.
From the Fair Pricing for Libraries website:
http://www.fairpricingforlibraries.org/
Quote:
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In some cases, major multinational publishers charge libraries 3–5 times more for ebooks than they charge consumers.
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Here's what Canada's libraries can do.
If they can afford the prices charged by the major multinational publishers, they can pay it.
If they can't afford the prices charged by the major multinational publishers for eBooks, then buy the multinational titles in paper, and concentrate on
Canadian-owned publishers for the eBook collection. This, of course, assumes that Canadian-owned publishers really charge libraries less for eBooks.