Soccer player causes e-book loan explosion

[CyGuy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The PLR is a form of compensation for authors for the fact that people can borrow their books from the library, rather than having to buy a copy themselves. It was introduced, in the UK, when changes to copyright law removed an author's right to refuse to have their book in the library system.

It's not a vast sum of money; an author receives about 6p (about US 10c) per loan, with a maximum payment to any one author of about £3000 in any given year (about $5000).

PLR payments go directly to the author; it's not paid to the publisher of the book.

I believe that most people would regard the PLR as a good thing. It exists in most western nations.

I certainly like the idea of leaving out the publisher but I still think this is fundamentally wrong overall. Why not just purchase the book outright and loan it to whoever wants to read it until it wears out and has to be repurchased? I just don't see any reason to pay a "fee" if the book is purchased outright, you should be free to do anything you want with it other than make copies. If people like the book they can purchase their own copy.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by CyGuy

I certainly like the idea of leaving out the publisher but I still think this is fundamentally wrong overall. Why not just purchase the book outright and loan it to whoever wants to read it until it wears out and has to be repurchased? I just don't see any reason to pay a "fee" if the book is purchased outright, you should be free to do anything you want with it other than make copies. If people like the book they can purchase their own copy.

The reason for it is that the library copy will probably be read by people who would otherwise have bought their own copy; the PLR payment is compensation for those lost sales.

It used to be the case the an author could refuse to allow their books to be in a library because of this, but the law changed, and authors could no longer "opt-out" of the the library system. PLR was introduced as compensation for this loss of choice.

[elcreative]

Originally Posted by SeaKing

In a lot Socialistic countries especially in the Nordic countries where they have long fed off the fatted calf of the North Sea Oil Reserves (which are now disappearing) they had a lot of these kind of laws to protect (i.e. fatten "artists"). Artists being authors, painters, etc.

The government would buy painters works at some "established - by the art community - price" and actually store these works in air conditioned warehouses. After a while these storage facilities got quite large and numerous.

There was an attempt in this country with the rise of the online used book trade (i.e. Amazon, B&N) to pay authors a fee (or a share) of the price of a used book when it was sold. This was knocked down pretty quickly. One example for not doing it, was the idea of paying Ford each time an old Ford was traded. In this country that is a ridiculous idea, but not so in the EU which is strongly influenced by the Nordic countries.

In America unfortunately, communities are shutting libraries, or curtailing their services and so no one will be willing to pay anyone for lending a book. Still in fairlness I see a limit of some kind as to how many times an eBook can be lent in a given period of time. This limit would be established by looking at the frequency of lending for Pbooks. Say a popular Pbook might be lent 30 times in a year on average (and usually in the first year and only then), then I would think that would be the guide for eBooks. After 30 times, the ebook would be locked down until the next year, and then the counter restarted.

Personally I own 5 old (sometimes very old) (I call them my babies) clunkers. A small helicopter, a small plane, a small fishing trawler, a medium sized houseboat, and a small travel trailer. I don't know how many times these items have been bought and sold.
One item I bought brand new. A truck.

Why the heck does he have so much rolling, floating, and flying stock you might ask.
I make money with the helicopter and plane. The houseboat I live in on a lake and river, and the trawler, I am converting to live in on the sea. The trailer I live in when I know I am going to be traveling to a job for a period of time and it is cheaper than renting. My truck also has a camper cover that I can put on it for that same reason.

The idea of paying the manufacturers each time these old items have been sold and bought is plain stupid.

Like to like - borrowing a book from a library is like renting not buying... at no point do you own the book unlike the trailer, plane etc comparison where you own them... I suppose you don't believe in people paying hire fees when they rent a car or a cabin because that's the corollary of your comparison... or is it just that a segment of the US (usually Republican I believe) labels anything for the general good with the label "Socialist" and managing to make it derogatory???

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The PLR is a form of compensation for authors for the fact that people can borrow their books from the library, rather than having to buy a copy themselves. It was introduced, in the UK, when changes to copyright law removed an author's right to refuse to have their book in the library system.

It's not a vast sum of money; an author receives about 6p (about US 10c) per loan, with a maximum payment to any one author of about £3000 in any given year (about $5000).

PLR payments go directly to the author; it's not paid to the publisher of the book.

I believe that most people would regard the PLR as a good thing. It exists in most western nations.

In the US, the compensation authors get is that we will have a copyright system at all. No more books in libraries paid for once for the public good would equal zero need to burden government with copyright enforcement.

That is our social contract.

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by SeaKing

In a lot Socialistic countries especially in the Nordic countries where they have long fed off the fatted calf of the North Sea Oil Reserves (which are now disappearing) they had a lot of these kind of laws to protect (i.e. fatten "artists"). Artists being authors, painters, etc.

The only Nordic country with sizable oil income is Norway. Finland doesn't even have any North Sea coastline and Sweden's is very small. Don't let that deter you from spouting nonsense, though. I just wonder why each and every forum has to be afflicted with some Americans babbling about "Socialism".
BTW, if you had ever done business with Swedish companies you would know that despite their affable image Swedish business people are very tough and extremely profit driven, far more so than many corporate suits of US companies.

I can only understand this problem faced by Swedish libraries if they have not limited the number of a given book that can be loaned at a given time. This is obviously a design flaw that has to be changed (what would they do in case of a Harry Potter kind of blockbuster hitting the shelves?). $ 3 / download also seems to be a very high fee.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Like to like - borrowing a book from a library is like renting not buying... at no point do you own the book unlike the trailer, plane etc comparison where you own them... I suppose you don't believe in people paying hire fees when they rent a car or a cabin because that's the corollary of your comparison... or is it just that a segment of the US (usually Republican I believe) labels anything for the general good with the label "Socialist" and managing to make it derogatory???

I'm not even sure what the helicopter guy was trying to say. But helicopters and boats are not digital goods, which is what we are discussing here, and which can of course be infinitely traded. Although there really need only be one "copy" of a text, as long as it is accessible by everyone.

Originally Posted by Phogg

In the US, the compensation authors get is that we will have a copyright system at all. No more books in libraries paid for once for the public good would equal zero need to burden government with copyright enforcement.

That is our social contract.

I don't understand your thoughts either. But if you were saying that "libraries" and "creators" should work together to determine price of access for individual works, then I might agree with you, although that would definitely be a time consuming task. Although it could be shortened by having categories that "creators" could place their works into, 10 cents, 25 cents, 10 dollars etc...

Most of us pay for data consumption anyway, the idea of an idea encoded into a bit, we are essentially paying twice for the same thing, or we are being double dipped upon by these content commodifiers.

In the past we used to think that the property in question when talking about books was the book itself and not the text contained therein, now of course we know better, but there is still perhaps a bit more thinking to do on the subject.

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

I'm not even sure what the helicopter guy was trying to say.

I think he might be ranting against the droit de suite, where artists are indeed entitled to a royalty payment upon the resale of their works of art. It's fairly common in the EU. California has it, too, although it obviously only applies to works of fine art.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by CyGuy

I certainly like the idea of leaving out the publisher but I still think this is fundamentally wrong overall. Why not just purchase the book outright and loan it to whoever wants to read it until it wears out and has to be repurchased?

Because public libraries are supported by tax dollars. And in some countries, the notion is, if you want to use government monies to discourage some sales of books (certainly, lots of people read more library books than they buy), then the authors of those books should be compensated for the sales they missed.

Privately-funded libraries would be a different matter. But ones supported by tax dollars are supposed to be operated for the benefit of the public--and that includes "the authors whose books are being read without purchase."

I wish we had something like that in the US; it'd make authors more supportive of libraries, and they'd be able to use library data to claim their books are more popular that raw sales numbers might indicate. It'd make communities aware that their library-tax dollars are doing something specific and useful; not just "supporting the library," but "supporting Authors X and Y."

I just don't see any reason to pay a "fee" if the book is purchased outright, you should be free to do anything you want with it other than make copies. If people like the book they can purchase their own copy.

"You" can do pretty much anything you want with a book you bought. (Copyright, these days, covers a lot more than just copies, and the definition of "derivative works" has gotten ridiculous in some areas. Still, though, you can definitely loan it out all you want.) Government-funded entities are bound by more rules.

None of that, of course, applies to ebooks; those, the library generally doesn't have the option to "purchase." They only get to license them, under whatever terms the publisher chooses to set.

[SeaKing]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Like to like - borrowing a book from a library is like renting not buying... at no point do you own the book unlike the trailer, plane etc comparison where you own them... I suppose you don't believe in people paying hire fees when they rent a car or a cabin because that's the corollary of your comparison... or is it just that a segment of the US (usually Republican I believe) labels anything for the general good with the label "Socialist" and managing to make it derogatory???

First off, your statement about renting a car, etc. in no way references anything I said. Read it again please. I was talking about the number of times those items, plane, boat, etc had been sold over the years and where there was no transfer of funds except from the new owner to the old owner. The manufacturer or designer of the equipment were totally out of the transaction.

If you wish to say I am "anti-socialist," I will agree with you. Actually I an an independent that hates all the parties because they are essentially the same and all are beholden to the big money interests.

[SeaKing]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

The only Nordic country with sizable oil income is Norway. Finland doesn't even have any North Sea coastline and Sweden's is very small. Don't let that deter you from spouting nonsense, though. I just wonder why each and every forum has to be afflicted with some Americans babbling about "Socialism".
BTW, if you had ever done business with Swedish companies you would know that despite their affable image Swedish business people are very tough and extremely profit driven, far more so than many corporate suits of US companies.

I can only understand this problem faced by Swedish libraries if they have not limited the number of a given book that can be loaned at a given time. This is obviously a design flaw that has to be changed (what would they do in case of a Harry Potter kind of blockbuster hitting the shelves?). $ 3 / download also seems to be a very high fee.

Yes I am an admitted anti-socialist. You got me there!
Yes I made a mistake about Sweden. I get the Nordic countries mixed up sometimes. Sweden has very little oil revenue.
The $3 dollar lending fee is in my opinion a glaring fallacy of a socialist government. I am kind of glad they do that. It easily proves my main point. And I think my other examples were correct.

I am very happy to see the action Sweden took regarding the decision by the manufacturer (Swatch?) to stop making internal watch workings for other manufacturers so they could concentrate on their own business. Sweden allowed that change in policy. (I like watches.)

[SeaKing]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

I think he might be ranting against the droit de suite, where artists are indeed entitled to a royalty payment upon the resale of their works of art. It's fairly common in the EU. California has it, too, although it obviously only applies to works of fine art.

I am certainly "ranting" (and then some) against it, and I am flabbergasted to learn that California has something similar. Then again, California is the most (looking for a non expletive word) "messed up" State in the whole US of A.

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by SeaKing

I am very happy to see the action Sweden took regarding the decision by the manufacturer (Swatch?) to stop making internal watch workings for other manufacturers so they could concentrate on their own business. Sweden allowed that change in policy. (I like watches.)

I suppose you are talking about Switzerland now. Slightly different place.

[SeaKing]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

I suppose you are talking about Switzerland now. Slightly different place.

You are probably correct. I have admitted my deficiency on Nordic states. Kind of a blind spot for me, socialistic and communist governments. I will try to check that though because as I said I have an interest in watches.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by SeaKing

You are probably correct. I have admitted my deficiency on Nordic states. Kind of a blind spot for me, socialistic and communist governments. I will try to check that though because as I said I have an interest in watches.

You were talking about Swatch from Switzerland --- actually they were allowed to seriously reduce the number of movements they have to deliver to competitors (I think by 20% next year and much more down the road).

[WT Sharpe]

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