Loaning E-Books

[Deskisamess]

Originally Posted by John F

I would loan a file. I would ask the person to delete it when they were done.

To me, it is the same as taking a pbook off my bookcase and loaning it to someone.

But it's not. You can loan a file, and still have the file on your device. When you loan a physical book, you don't still have it. Not to mention the ease of making multiple copies of a file.

[DNSB]

I don't feel that loaning ebooks should be done. Unless you are deleting the file from your storage system after sending a copy to your 'good buddy', it is not equivalent to loaning a paper book where you can't access the book after loaning it to that 'good buddy' until/if they return that copy.

OTOH, I no longer loan paper books. I had too many 'loans' over the years that either did not get returned (one person read one of my books and then donated it to a local charity—evidently, they thought I had given the book to them) or they came back in a condition that suggested the back of a pickup truck had been used for storage.

On yet another hand, I do share my calibre library with my wife though our tastes in reading are rather different. I think there are two authors whom we both read. That may or may not be completely legitimate given that any property acquired after our marriage is considered to belong equally to both of us as family property. The only case I am aware of in this jurisdiction that was related to licenses, the court ruled that both spouses had an equal interest in software licenses acquired during their marriage.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

But it's not. You can loan a file, and still have the file on your device. When you loan a physical book, you don't still have it. ...

That is a difference I don't care a about. I'm not going to read the book while it is on loan. Looks the same as a pbook loan to me.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by John F

That is a difference I don't care a about. I'm not going to read the book while it is on loan. Looks the same as a pbook loan to me.

How is a pbook loan relevant? It's always bizarre to me how the ethos supports whatever is most useful to the user, i.e., ebooks are not the same as pbooks and are cheaper to produce and sell, so their price should be cheaper, but otoh, ebooks are the same as pbooks when it comes to ownership and lending.

And suppose the person you lend it to makes a copy and passes it on in turn? Or makes a copy and uploads it? Is that the same as a pbook loan?

Again, share, don't share, I don't care. But I wish people wouldn't jump through hoops to justify doing whatever they were going to do anyway. Own it.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by issybird

No one needs digital books.

I know what you mean and it's generally true, though some schools only use digital texts and iPads now, but it's all paid for.

There are maybe 10,000 to 50,000 very readable public domain ebooks for those that want to give free copies, or get free copies, out of just Project Gutenberg's 70,000 ebooks. Other legitimate sources exist, depending on your country.

More than most people read in a lifetime.

Also in many countries you only need an iOS or Android app to borrow from the local Library. Our library is free to residents.

But the modern Human Era is about 12,000 years (first trace of villages) with writing at least for about 5,500 years. Digital format books are only about 50 years old and the paper ones are still available. Because they are physical good, they can be given to a charity shop and sold as low as 25c. But you can't make a copy of of a copyright paper book and loan it (which is now affordable technology), only loan the original.
Support the poor authors, let people buy their own copyright books if they want contemporary fiction or text books.

[JSWolf]

I share with my wife and mother-in-law. I know for sure that the copies they read are not going to be given to anybody else.

[Quoth]

Out of copyright:
Epic of Gilgamesh. Almost like high Fantasy. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11000 Possibly 4,000 years old.

A True History. Practically SF. About 1800 years old.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45858

If your friend wants newer stuff it's cheap in the supermarket. Joffe Books on Amazon has a "free" ebook every Friday. Don't "loan" it, send a link.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I share with my wife and mother-in-law. I know for sure that the copies they read are not going to be given to anybody else.

I suppose it's a mitigating circumstance if your mother-in-law lives with you.
Also if you are managing their ereaders.
A greyer area than a friend at the gym/pub/work when the person is living with you. As issybird suggests, it's a pointless argument. No-one is going to convince anyone.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I suppose it's a mitigating circumstance if your mother-in-law lives with you.
Also if you are managing their ereaders.
A greyer area than a friend at the gym/pub/work when the person is living with you. As issybird suggests, it's a pointless argument. No-one is going to convince anyone.

My mother-in-law does not live with us. But she does live near. Besides, she doesn't know how to pull eBooks off of her Reader to give to anyone else.

When my mother was alive, I used to share with her.

[John F]

Originally Posted by issybird

How is a pbook loan relevant? It's always bizarre to me how the ethos supports whatever is most useful to the user, i.e., ebooks are not the same as pbooks and are cheaper to produce and sell, so their price should be cheaper, but otoh, ebooks are the same as pbooks when it comes to ownership and lending.

And suppose the person you lend it to makes a copy and passes it on in turn? Or makes a copy and uploads it? Is that the same as a pbook loan?

Again, share, don't share, I don't care. But I wish people wouldn't jump through hoops to justify doing whatever they were going to do anyway. Own it.

Seems like a strange post. You seem to come up with all these reasons that seems very unlikely to my situation/sphere.

What do you want posters to do, just say yes or no?

To me, a loan is when you give someone temporary use of something, and you give up the use of that thing while it is on loan. I'm not going to use the ebook while it is loaned. So I don't have a problem with me loaning a book.

I keep saying "I", "me", ... I'm trying to comment on me, and not other people.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

It is my opinion that the amount of moral ebook loaning** going on in the real world does not come close to justifying the number of threads created on MR for the express purpose of helping people feel a little better about their casual piracy.

Maybe my searching skills are lacking, but I couldn't find another thread on this topic, which is why I created this one. I have never attempted to loan an e-book to anybody, and I was curious as to whether MR users would approve or disapprove of doing so. As Quoth pointed out, e-books are a new invention, and we're still trying to figure out what the parameters are for handling them correctly.

[cfrizz]

I stopped loaning out paper books when I 1. didn't get them back. 2. got the book back all messed up!

No one has ever asked me to lend them an ebook, but if they did, I probably would do so. If I pay for it, it is mine to do as I wish. I don't really care about what the publishers want, which is to make as much money as possible. They put DRM in place to keep the buyers of their books from putting their purchases on whatever devices they want. They expect you to buy a new book for each device....screw them. Morality doesn't exists for the publishers, why should it exist for the purchasers?!

[Quoth]

Not that new. Digital format files on a desktop personally owned computer predate the IBM PC. About 1976, four years after Project Gutenberg. Before that it was terminals on a server , or a corporate minicomputer.

We've had about 45 to 50 years to figure it out.

Ebooks were on PDAs before phones, in the mid 1990s, nearly 30 years ago. That's why Amazon bought the world leader of ebook file selling, Mobipocket, in 2005.
The not actually ever called epub1 was on a 1998 dedicated ereader.

The legal position of transfer of copyright digital files is clarified decades ago:
1) You can't give or sell or loan copies if it works standalone.
2) You can pass on the files if they need a per person hardware dongle, because you pass on the dongle and your copy doesn't work. This is like loaning the physical ereader.
3) In certain circumstances you can pass on a copy if there is verification your original is destroyed.
4) In some cases the vendor allows free copying and downloads without limit (now the case with MS) , but there is a DRM system involving a licence which you have to buy.

The only loans whatsoever of copyright files are by authorised (licenced) agents using DRM (Amazon, Kobo, Scribd, your local Library etc), not an individual or even a large Internet entity (e.g. Archive Org) simply doing it without authorisation.

By all means give someone a copy of a copyright media file if you think that's fine. But don't call it a loan. It's not, because you have no lending licence/contract and it's not a single physical entity handed over, you made a file copy and passed it on.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

I stopped loaning out paper books when I 1. didn't get them back. 2. got the book back all messed up!

No one has ever asked me to lend them an ebook, but if they did, I probably would do so. If I pay for it, it is mine to do as I wish.

The paper book is a physical entity. You can loan it. But even should you have an industrial free automatic scanner or copier, you can't copy the content to someone, that's part of what copyright means.

But you can only loan an ebook by loaning the device that has it (like the paper has the printed words). If you give a file, it's giving a copy, breaking copyright, as if you scanned or photocopied a paper book.

Paper book: You own the paper, and have a right to read it. You don't own the content.
eBook. You own the ereader, and anyone can read the ebook on it. You don't own the content any more than you do for the paper book.

There are ways the ebook could be transferred, in theory, but a loan isn't one of them. I do loan ereaders. I don't loan files.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

Maybe my searching skills are lacking, but I couldn't find another thread on this topic, which is why I created this one. I have never attempted to loan an e-book to anybody, and I was curious as to whether MR users would approve or disapprove of doing so. As Quoth pointed out, e-books are a new invention, and we're still trying to figure out what the parameters are for handling them correctly.

No worries. But we've been trying to "figure that out" since I've been here. I'm tired of discussing the the "morality" of ebook lending. I'm tired of any conversation about ebooks that starts from a baseline of assuming that all post-purchase practices done with pbooks can (and presumably should) be able to be adapted to ebooks.

It is my position that the casual sharing of copyrighted ebooks (done by any home-brewed method that creates additional copies of said ebooks that subsequently leave your possession) is copyright violation. Period.

I don't think it's the end of the world. I don't think it's a high crime. But I do tire of people using irrelevant comparisons to the loaning/selling of pbooks to defend the practice.