HarperCollins Puts 26 Loan Cap on Ebook Circulations

[silasgreenback]

Originally Posted by Natasha Dupoin

Lol. They are doing it only for profit. An eBook should not have an expiry date.

Since HarperCollins seems to be on a quest to destroy whatever good name they had, it only seems reasonable that they should institute a 26 loan "book load" for paper books.

[doreenjoy]

I just checked out a Harper Collins book from the Philadelphia Free Library. I was number 42 on the waiting list.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Public libraries aren't free. Tax dollars support them.

Yes, that is true today but it was not true originally. Regardless, when people refer to a library being free, they mean that there is no charge to borrow a book, not that it costs nothing for the library to exist.

Carnegie introduced the free library system, meaning that any member of the community could borrow a book from the library without paying any money. Prior to that, the standard library was a "profit-making" enterprise in that you had to buy a membership and pay a borrower's fee. The library was not considered a community-wide asset; rather, it was for the well-to-do classes only.

[Barty]

Originally Posted by rhadin

Yes, that is true today but it was not true originally. Regardless, when people refer to a library being free, they mean that there is no charge to borrow a book, not that it costs nothing for the library to exist.

Carnegie introduced the free library system, meaning that any member of the community could borrow a book from the library without paying any money. Prior to that, the standard library was a "profit-making" enterprise in that you had to buy a membership and pay a borrower's fee. The library was not considered a community-wide asset; rather, it was for the well-to-do classes only.

Obviously a socialist. Glad he's is dead.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Barty

Obviously a socialist. Glad he's is dead.

[Yolina]

There's a good article in The Guardian today entitled "Ebooks: durability is a feature, not a bug. HarperCollins' attempt to ensure ebooks in libraries can only be loaned out 26 times is indefensible"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...llins-26-times

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Yolina

There's a good article in The Guardian today entitled "Ebooks: durability is a feature, not a bug. HarperCollins' attempt to ensure ebooks in libraries can only be loaned out 26 times is indefensible"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...llins-26-times

[SleepyBob]

Originally Posted by Natasha Dupoin

Lol. They are doing it only for profit. An eBook should not have an expiry date.

So, are you also opposed to the idea of ebook rentals, then? That's really what this comes down to.

If the owners of Avatar can rent me a 24 hour license to download and watch their movie, shouldn't HC be able to rent me a license to read an ebook, if that's the business model they want to use? HC has switched from a purchase model to a multiple-use rental model for libraries. [/devils advocate]

[queentess]

Some good points from the article:

Now, in point of fact, many ordinary trade books circulate far more than 26 times before they're ready for the discard pile. If a group of untrained school kids working as part-time pages can keep a copy of the Toronto Star in readable shape for 30 days' worth of several-times-per-day usage, then it's certainly the case that the skilled gluepot ninjas working behind the counter at your local library can easily keep a book patched up and running around the course for a lot more than 26 circuits.

(c'mon, "gluepot ninja" is a great mental image)

But this is the wrong thing to argue about. Whether a HarperCollins book has the circulatory vigour to cope with 26 checkouts or 200, it's bizarre to argue that this finite durability is a feature that we should carefully import into new media. It would be like assuming the contractual obligation to attack the microfilm with nail-scissors every time someone looked up an old article, to simulate the damage that might have been done by our careless patrons to the newsprint that had once borne it.

And that is a great analogy that never would have occurred to me.