Publishers vs. Libraries: An E-Book Tug of War

[wizwor]

[QUOTE=jjmgreen;1913706]A private citizen may loan her/his legally purchased, printed copy
of a work to another person. That is acceptable.
QUOTE]
We've already established that libraries loan more than printed books. Can a private librarian loan books in the same manner as a government sanctioned librarian?

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by wizwor

Can a private librarian loan books in the same manner as a government sanctioned librarian?

You mean, can the Harvard library loan books in the same manner as the DuPont corporate library and the University of Massachusetts library and the Boston Public Library? Yes. Or did I miss something here?

Note that each above-mentioned institution spends large amounts of money buying books, and, especially, periodicals, which, if libraries did not buy them, might never get published.

How many billions of dollars did the world's libraries spend buying reading material last year? And how many billions did torrent sites spend?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by jjmgreen

A private citizen may loan her/his legally purchased, printed copy
of a work to another person. That is acceptable.

A torrent is very different - no loan is involved. A new copy
is given to the person receiving the torrent. Then the acceptability
is based on the legality of making a copy.

How do you propose that a library "loan" an ebook, instead of allowing a copy to be made? All the current methods involve making copies, with software locks to discourage the copy being functional after a limited time, and to prevent the library from allowing another copy until that time is up.

I would agree that it's reasonable for people to be able to loan out their purchases, but publishers have been incredibly reticent to do this with ebooks, even when the DRM software allows it. They very much want to enforce "1 purchase; 1 reader" rather than "1 purchase; 1 reader at a time" like pbooks do.

[wizwor]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

You mean, can the Harvard library loan books in the same manner as the DuPont corporate library and the University of Massachusetts library and the Boston Public Library? Yes. Or did I miss something here?

Note that each above-mentioned institution spends large amounts of money buying books, and, especially, periodicals, which, if libraries did not buy them, might never get published.

How many billions of dollars did the world's libraries spend buying reading material last year? And how many billions did torrent sites spend?

I wonder if Harvard and other NGOs are required to be licensed to share intellectual property. There are plenty of them.

For the sake of this discussion, let's just say unsanctioned library. I happen to own hundreds of very popular books, some very expensive text books, hundreds of DVDs, and hundreds of CDs. I have a dozen computers and a copier as well. Can I act in the same ways as a library? Can I charge membership fees to offset the costs of running the library? Can I make a profit?

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by wizwor

I wonder if Harvard and other NGOs are required to be licensed to share intellectual property. There are plenty of them.

For the sake of this discussion, let's just say unsanctioned library. I happen to own hundreds of very popular books, some very expensive text books, hundreds of DVDs, and hundreds of CDs. I have a dozen computers and a copier as well. Can I act in the same ways as a library? Can I charge membership fees to offset the costs of running the library? Can I make a profit?

The ALA has a ton of links that can answer many of your questions: http://www.ala.org/tools/libfactshee...aryfactsheet16

[CyGuy]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

...They very much want to enforce "1 purchase; 1 reader" rather than "1 purchase; 1 reader at a time" like pbooks do.

For me this is one of the most important issues. This idea of pay-per-read is a scam. The idea is to purchase one copy and make it available to as many people as possible in a legal manner. The one-reader-at-a-time is correct, the pay-per-read is not.

[MrsJoseph]

It's been interesting to watch Wizor learn about copyright but I have to put him on block now. His lack of knowledge is starting to hurt my eyes.