Libraries struggle to afford e-books, seek new laws in fight with publishers • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by xrd » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 2:45 PM UTC

mixedmath wrote: post #11

This is an interesting problem. I love my library. And I use both physical and digital books. On the one hand, it's probably true that more people can read a digital book. Ob the other hand, I have read fewer than 20 pages of a bunch of ebooks - enough to see if I might like them. Do these count as checkouts? Am I a very expensive library user? (And I also am happy to have several ebooks that I'll read sometime, casu…

This is a very important point. Libraries should fight to legislate analytics on exact usage when checking out an ebook, especially if they are paying for a set number of usages.

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

#42

Post by samtho » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 2:45 PM UTC

bluish29 wrote: post #18

JKCalhoun wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, surprised (not surprised?) to see the used-textbook market seemingly gone now when I was recently visiting my daughter at the University of Kansas. It used to be a small industry that nonetheless allowed a brick and mortar store to thrive as a secondary bookstore to the university's student union. Never mind the savings for students.

Even with paper textbooks, publishers will now provide online assignments (which is convenient for universities) and other online materials which you will not be able to sell (it will expire) with the book. So they force students to buy new textbook for each class.

This is classic rent seeking behavior. The more insidious aspect is that this is foisted upon a captive audience of kids/young adults that agreed to tens of thousands in non-dischargable debt when they turned 18.

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

#43

Post by samtho » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 2:51 PM UTC

perihelions wrote: post #17

[flagged]

This reads like that awful take a few years ago that libraries need to be replaced by private bookstores. Like the author of that, I don’t think you are familiar with the role that libraries play in their local community and probably should not prescribing a technocratic solution on an institution that you fundamentally do not understand.

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

#44

Post by beej71 » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 2:58 PM UTC

> "They do have a funding problem, but the answer is not to take it out of the pockets of authors and destroy the rights of creators and pass unconstitutional legislation,” said Shelley Husband, senior vice president of government affairs at the Association of American Publishers

I'm guessing Husband's solution is to raise taxes to pay themselves for more expensive books.

The AAP is also suing Internet Archive, incidentally.

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

#45

Post by toomuchtodo » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 3:00 PM UTC

beej71 wrote: post #44

> "They do have a funding problem, but the answer is not to take it out of the pockets of authors and destroy the rights of creators and pass unconstitutional legislation,” said Shelley Husband, senior vice president of government affairs at the Association of American Publishers I'm guessing Husband's solution is to raise taxes to pay themselves for more expensive books. The AAP is also suing Internet Archive, incid…

The Internet Archive is participating in the legal process to get to a conclusion that ebooks are the same as physical books, otherwise the concept of libraries is over (except for those who can pirate and the data stores that exist across the internet, Anna’s Archive, Zlib/libgen, etc).

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

#46

Post by LegibleCrimson » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 3:03 PM UTC

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #39

derbOac wrote: post #6

I get so frustrated by these games. Publishers should lose copyright to every work they do not offer in perpetuity with every purchase in every format, and there should be no postsale restrictions on any item beyond what is implied by copyright.

> Publishers should lose copyright to every work they do not offer in perpetuity with every purchase in every format If such a law comes, the publisher will set the price to, say, 1 billion USD.

Yeah, I keep seeing suggestions like this and I just don't get it. Like the only way people can fathom something being available is if it's for sale. We really need shorter copyright terms more than anything else.

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

#47

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 3:04 PM UTC

xrd wrote: post #41

mixedmath wrote: post #11

This is an interesting problem. I love my library. And I use both physical and digital books. On the one hand, it's probably true that more people can read a digital book. Ob the other hand, I have read fewer than 20 pages of a bunch of ebooks - enough to see if I might like them. Do these count as checkouts? Am I a very expensive library user? (And I also am happy to have several ebooks that I'll read sometime, casu…

This is a very important point. Libraries should fight to legislate analytics on exact usage when checking out an ebook, especially if they are paying for a set number of usages.

[deleted]

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

#48

Post by ghaff » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 3:06 PM UTC

perihelions wrote: post #37

ghaff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is it's real. But you're right that it's peak-HN that one can't be sure it's not satire (or trolling).

I'm absolutely sincere and I'll reply to any well-intentioned questions. I don't think I'm out of touch. I think this is the future of society and technology—meaning for the future for absolutely everyone, not just a few tech elites. It's jarring to me to see that flavor of accusation, when pirate libraries are freely available to billions of people who don't even have theoretical access to the stuff you people are t…

Who is going to create all this content once it's going to be put up on this pirate library that billions of people use for free? I've written a couple free books but you don't need a pirate library to access them. They're on my website.

But if I were thinking of writing a book partially to make money and I knew it was just going to be given away and there was no reason for anyone to buy it, I wouldn't bother. Especially given most books have cost in addition to the author's time associated with them. Few authors are going to make a living off lectures and book readings. And most readers aren't going to buy physical books when they can get an e-book for free.

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

#49

Post by beej71 » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 3:08 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #16

bluish29 wrote: post #4

The argument in publishing industry (about papers and textbooks) is that if you cannot afford to buy/rent at the current market value then you still can use a public/university library to get it. This became actually more of a cliché than an argument over time. Now with a significant portion of textbooks (and books in general) become mainly E-books, the industry limited library capabilities and required pay per lend…

Yeah, surprised (not surprised?) to see the used-textbook market seemingly gone now when I was recently visiting my daughter at the University of Kansas. It used to be a small industry that nonetheless allowed a brick and mortar store to thrive as a secondary bookstore to the university's student union. Never mind the savings for students.

One of my students told me they all pirate textbooks. I haven't been a student in a university for almost 30 years but I remember what it was like. It was a scam back then.

When I was in college, the internet was relatively young, but that didn't stop us from using it to cut out the bookstore out as the middleman for reselling books. Our local test Usenet group was where all the cool kids hung out and we used that as a place to sell and trade used books for a fraction the cost of the bookstore.

But that mechanism no longer works in the ebook era. So I'm not surprised students found another way.

(Dad was a teacher, too, and he also couldn't bear forcing his students to pay for new editions of a textbook. So he wrote his own. Students could print copies at cost in the print shop (pre-internet). I've continued the tradition of writing my own books and putting them online for free for the students. Greed over educational materials is a poor look. Also, AI is coming.)

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

#50

Post by giraffe_lady » Sat, Mar 16, 2024, 3:10 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #40

ryandrake wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, if you got rid of or reduced copyright, publishers would just find other ways to engage in cartel-like behavior and continue to screw everyone. I can’t think of any case where regulation/government was reduced and companies responded with something less profitable for the company.

Airlines are often brought up as becoming cheaper with less regulations. While it was mostly manufacturers building more efficient aircraft, people are generally willing to trade leg room for a cheaper fair. That’s exactly the kind of thing regulators and the free market may come to a different compromise. Worse, but cheaper is often quite appealing.

Anything else you've noticed the free market compromising on re: air travel.