eBooks and Libraries

[a_cubed]

On The Register recently there was an interesting article about ebooks and how the book publishing industry seem to be following the music and movie industry down the same path of woe by trying to screw their customers in the move to digital distribution. Leaving aside the actual proportion of costs which the physical printing, distribution and returns of overstock entail, the idea that the digital edition costs MORE than the print edition really is utterly stupid. Modern publishing uses internal digital formats for the files which are then passed to the printer for physical printing. Getting this into the digital distribution medium is  trivial one time programming exercise. While I would be willing to accept that the digital price difference should only be small, the fact that new ebooks are selling at higher prices than the hardcover is just stupid.

Anyway, that’s all covered in the article. In the comments the author discusses the issue of the public lending library with some of the commenters. That’s what prompted this post, actually, which is thinking how it might be possible to run a public lending library with ebooks. The whole point of a public lending library is that the library buys the book once (depending on where you are they then pay a royalty fee for usage, or not) and lots of local people get to read it. There was always an issue raised by music publishers about LPs and later CDs being available this way since people were clearly borrowing things from their library and copying them, first onto tape then onto CDRs then into digital music files. The same thing would likely happen with public libraries. So, is it possible to have a system of public libraries (who will operate within the law as much as they can, although their patrons won’t necessarily do so if it’s easy)? Here’s for once where DRM might actually have a use. Consider a dedicated public library ereading machine. This machine has only one data interconnect method, and uses hardware-based encryption to decrypt the file held on its storage and display it on the screen. The device is physically sealed and designed so that cracking it open is hard to do and once done accessing the data transfer between the processor and screen is hard to do. These devices are loaned to the library user with the books they’re borrowing on them. When you go to the library you give them the current device back and get another with the books you want this time loaded up. Yes, you have to physically visit the library to do this, though the devices could be mailed through the post like DVD-rental services, for those in remote areas (postage costs would mean the device would need to be as light as possible, but since it is only trying to be a read-through device and not a general purpose device, this should keep the weight down). The library can, depending on the legal situation, either track how many loans they’ve made and pay the appropriate royalty fee, or limit the number of parallel loans to the number of “copies” they’ve “bought”. The point of this is to provide a replacement for the free public lending library service that minimizes the disagreements with the publishers, all of whom have long argued that public lending libraries unfairly undercut their business, but which still mostly survive in the UK at least, because of public support for free access to information, beyond what’s available for free online.

Originally published at blog.a-cubed.info

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Are you familiar with PLR (Public Lending Rights)?

I get about two grand a year from the PLR system in compensation for library loans of my books. There's an issue to consider there.

Another point: the big publishers are owned by large conglomerates that also own film, TV and music corporations. Group-level policy on the internet is set at the top and dictated to all subsidiaries: publishers and editors know that copying the Music and Film biz is stupid, but saying so in public -- much less acting on this knowledge -- is a career-ending move.

(That's why some smaller publishers -- Baen, Nightshade, et al -- are Doing ebooks Right but the big folks like Tor or Orbit aren't.)

[tobyaw]

There has to be a parallel with the rather painful way that some public libraries have implemented electronic loans of audio books. qidane gets through a lot of audio books; he has tried borrowing them in electronic form from the local library in Dundee. It’s a bit of a pain with some books only being available in certain formats, and only available for certain devices. It looks like they lend ebooks in a similar manner.

http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/library/ebooks

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

"Are you familiar with PLR (Public Lending Rights)?"

Yes, and I did note that in some places (e.g. the UK) lending comes with further issues to consider. In this case the PLR payments that UK public libraries make beyond the purchase price of the volumes they lend. This suggestion is intended as a way to continue to offer free at the point of delivery loans of items which are then quite difficult to copy (the analogue hole is still there, but scanning from an e-ink device is going to be at least as awkward as scanning from a physical book. THe whole point here is to find a way of continuing public libraries over the clear objections that the publishing industry would raise against it undermining the new ebook trade. If it is as close as makes no difference to the current physical system then it's easy to continue to argue for public access being a publicly provided benefit.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

That system is different because they're simply using the existing DRM schemes to try and enforce the "loan" not "purchase". Now, it's better for the user than the suggestion I've given because one can download. But, once it's been downloaded it's crackable and copyable. Though, I suppose the publishers can't admit this because the sales they make of the same material just with different DRM allowances use exactly the same mechanisms and they can't admit that these are actually useless (see Ed Felten on "keeping honest users honest"). So, maybe my proposal isn't needed because the publsihers are buying their own snake oil about DRM and believe it's actually doing something. My worry is that they'll find a way to paint libraries as part of the "piracy problem" and further undermine them. But, perhaps this isn't happening and so my suggestion isn't needed.