Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Libraries struggle to afford e-books, seek new laws in fight with publishers

abcnews.go.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 209 posts

Re: Libraries struggle to afford e-books, seek new laws in fight with publishers

#191

Post by ClumsyPilot »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #190
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could you possibly arrive at this conclusion? Think of the most famous stories / literature works before year 1500 - myths of Ancient Greece, the bible, ancient folklore about fairy folk - none of it was produced for a market of any kind. You are unfairly taking credit for the fundamental human need of self expression, and assigning it to your preferred ideological position. Can you name 5 famous stories, before…

> How could you possibly arrive at this conclusion? Because I know what it means to create something for the market? > Can you name 5 famous stories, before year 1500, that were made ‘for the market’? Given that I've already pointed out that all such stories were made for the market, how do you expect me to answer this? Can I name five famous stories from before the year 1500? The Tale of Cupid and Psyche The Shahnam…

> Given that I've already pointed out that all such stories were made for the market

You made unsubstantiated assertion that lays claim to a millennia of human history. You offered no evidence of any kind.

> I know what it means to create something for the market

Firstly, that that statement itself is debatable. Secondly, one would need extraordinary knowledge of history to make claims about for thousands of stories written across thousands of years.

I cannot help but conclude that you are an ideologue and you believe there is no life outside ‘the market’ and when I write something in my personal blog, or invent a story for my child, that’s ’the market’ too.

I find this level of ideological appropriation repulsive.

Re: Libraries struggle to afford e-books, seek new laws in fight with publishers

#192

Post by dredmorbius »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #61
ghaff wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I don't go through anything like the number of books I used to. I have a ton of unread stuff on my Kindle--some of which is admittedly large collections of classics which I got for $1 or $2 each.

What about people who cannot afford a Kindle, or cannot afford to buy e-books?

A new Kindle runs less than $100 in the US (it's largely subsidised by Amazon, they want you to buy books). You can find used models for as little as $20 on Craigslist currently.

Other eBook readers from firms such as Kobo or Onyx start at about $100 to $200, and again may be found used for a small fraction of that price.

That's still a hurdle, but roughly the cost of a new trade-paper volume with the capability to hold many hundreds or thousands of books.

Depending on what you're looking for, there are ebooks which can be found, legally, free of charge from sources such as Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks, the Internet Archive (both to check out or to download with no limitations), and other libraries. The US Library of Congress has been expanding its own offerings (I'm not up on the latest, though am given to understand it's generous), and many large-city libraries (Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Kansas City, etc.) have extensive digital lending programmes.

That's without leaning on book liberation sites such as ZLib, LibGen, or Anna's Archive, though those have quite extensive holdings.

Re: Libraries struggle to afford e-books, seek new laws in fight with publishers

#193

Post by dredmorbius »

nofollow wrote: post #94

related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36998643

Title/site context: The Coming Enshittification of Public Libraries (karawynn.substack.com) 2023-08-04

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36998643>

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36998643>

Re: Libraries struggle to afford e-books, seek new laws in fight with publishers

#194

Post by AnthonyMouse »

harvey9 wrote: post #178
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one company has a monopoly on faucets, another has one on pipes, another has one on valves, you're trying to argue that there is plenty of competition for "plumbing supplies" but that doesn't help you if you need a faucet and there's only one supplier. Notice how your argument, if true, would defeat the point of the monopoly. If there were ten books that were all fungible with one another then each of the supplier…

No. I have a monopoly on faucets made to my design, not on faucets generally. Bloomsbury have a monopoly on Harry Potter books, Penguin can still publish Percy Jackson.

> No. I have a monopoly on faucets made to my design, not on faucets generally.

You can try to subdivide any particular market but you still can't get yourself out of the second half of the post: If the products were actually substitutes then the prices would approach the marginal cost. If they're not, they're not.

College textbooks are an obvious example of this. Anybody can make "math textbook" but only one of them will have the homework problems your professor will assign in them, so you need that one and the publisher has a monopoly.

Re: Libraries struggle to afford e-books, seek new laws in fight with publishers

#195

Post by AnthonyMouse »

c0pium wrote: post #122
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one company has a monopoly on faucets, another has one on pipes, another has one on valves, you're trying to argue that there is plenty of competition for "plumbing supplies" but that doesn't help you if you need a faucet and there's only one supplier. Notice how your argument, if true, would defeat the point of the monopoly. If there were ten books that were all fungible with one another then each of the supplier…

That’s not how this marketplace works at all. A better analogy is to say that BMW has a monopoly on making BMWs, yet they are still forced to compete with Porsche, who has their own monopoly on creating Porsches. There’s a two-sided marketplace for creative works, where publishers need to get works from creators and license them to customers. They want to maximize their own profits, but they also need to make a certa…

> A better analogy is to say that BMW has a monopoly on making BMWs

BMW is a trademark. You can't take a Kia and put a BMW badge on it. You can, in principle, make an exact replica of a particular BMW model and put your own badge on it, and in that sense BMW doesn't have a monopoly on "BMWs" except insofar as some of the parts may be patented or (for the software) copyrighted. But that isn't an analogy, it's the original thing.

Notice what happens when you take the original thing (intellectual property) out of the equation, your statement becomes "Bayer has a monopoly on aspirin", which they don't, because the Aspirin trademark became generic and it's not under patent.

Re: Libraries struggle to afford e-books, seek new laws in fight with publishers

#196

Post by AnthonyMouse »

c0pium wrote: post #181
j_maffe wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure we're on the same page. How do you think libraries loan out ebooks, currently? DRM for this exact functionality is already implemented by most publishers

You should reread their post, libraries usage is incidental to what they’re talking about. Their point, that first sale should apply to ebooks, requires a fundamentally different approach to DRM. If I own my content and can put it on any device I want, how can the seller be sure I’m only using one copy at a time? Consider the case that I might have it on multiple different devices which aren’t connected to the intern…

> If I own my content and can put it on any device I want, how can the seller be sure I’m only using one copy at a time?

They can't, which is the same as it is now. DRM is a farce and everything is on The Pirate Bay. Which is why restricting libraries like this is ridiculous -- anybody who doesn't care to follow the law doesn't need to get a copy from a library, they can just download it from a piracy site. The reason you go to the library instead is that you want to follow the law.

Re: Libraries struggle to afford e-books, seek new laws in fight with publishers

#197

Post by leotravis10 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #193
nofollow wrote: post #94

related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36998643

Title/site context: The Coming Enshittification of Public Libraries (karawynn.substack.com) 2023-08-04 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36998643 > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36998643 >

The post has moved platforms since it was published, correct link is now here: https://buttondown.email/ninelives/archive/the-coming-enshit...

Re: Libraries struggle to afford e-books, seek new laws in fight with publishers

#198

Post by leotravis10 »

briandear wrote: post #124

How about eliminating libraries and provide vouchers for Kindle Unlimited for the poor? Work with Amazon to create some kind of Amazon library using Kindle as the platform. People with money don’t need public libraries — you can buy pretty much anything easily. People spend $18 on a McDonalds meal, $9.99 for an ebook is nothing. Big city libraries are mostly homeless shelters at this point. I’m not going to a public…

Very awful take, Brian.

Don't you realize that libraries are under attack by mostly all fronts (governments, politicians, publishers, copyright cartel, right wing zealots just to name a few) plus they're on the front lines of the country's problems because our government are too corrupt to do anything to help the marginalized and underprivileged. https://www.axios.com/2024/02/18/libraries-ebooks-hoopla-lib... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39474151

Also read here: https://buttondown.email/ninelives/archive/the-coming-enshit... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36998643

Re: Libraries struggle to afford e-books, seek new laws in fight with publishers

#199

Post by patcon »

ses1984 wrote: post #28
snapplebobapple wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its actually an argument for less regulation. Its the regulation causing the market failure. Cut copyright to a less stupid number like what it was originally 14 years. Make maintaining a copyright for those years contingent on having X % of sales available for free in libraries. We are asking the fundamentally wrong question with copyright, we should not be maximizing monopoly for copyright owners, we should be mini…

>Cut copyright to a less stupid number like what it was originally 14 years. Make maintaining a copyright for those years contingent on having X % of sales available for free in libraries I’m nitpicking but this isn’t less regulation, it’s different regulation. Some would even say it’s more. You’re reducing a number but adding complexity with the percent sales requirement.

Some regulation liberates closures, and some protects closures. I believe the person is advocating for less regulation that protects private closures, and is throwing in the idea of more regulation to liberate closures... perhaps as a way to repair the damage caused by the closure.

Maybe I'm assuming too much tho...!

I appreciate your comment regardless :)

Re: Libraries struggle to afford e-books, seek new laws in fight with publishers

#200

Post by dredmorbius »

leotravis10 wrote: post #197
dredmorbius wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Title/site context: The Coming Enshittification of Public Libraries (karawynn.substack.com) 2023-08-04 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36998643 > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36998643 >

The post has moved platforms since it was published, correct link is now here: https://buttondown.email/ninelives/archive/the-coming-enshit...

Thanks.

And I'd meant to post the (apparently stale) article link above, rather than the HN discussion thread a second time.

(I know why comment edits are limited in time scope ... but it's annoying. And yes, there is a workaround, ask mods how ;-)

Post reply on HN