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from the today's-borrowers-are-tomorrow's-buyers dept.
In July, Macmillan CEO John Sargent outlined the changes in response to "growing fears that library lending was cannibalizing sales." On September 11, the American Library Association (ALA) started circulating a petition in hopes of pressuring Macmillan to not go through with its plan, which is scheduled to go into effect in November. "To treat libraries as an inferior consumer to the general population, it's the wrong thing to do," said Alan Inouye, director of the Office for Information Technology Policy at the ALA. "Libraries are generally held as amongst the highest esteemed institutions in the community."
"Allowing a library like the Los Angeles Public Library (which serves 18 million people) the same number of initial e-book copies as a rural Vermont library serving 1,200 people smacks of punishment, not support," librarian Jessamyn West wrote on CNN. She also points out that Sargent's claim that apps let people check out books in states and countries where they don't live "betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how public libraries work." There are a few that let you pay for a library card regardless of where you live, but not many. Digital Trends reached out to Macmillan for comment but did not receive a response.
Source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/news/macmillan-e-books-library-waiting-period/
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @09:03PM (6 children)
There is plenty wrong with how the IP system operates. Being a parasitic leech is just one of them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @09:08PM
What changes to the ICUP system do you think are going to stop people from getting free books?
Nothing will stop it other than burning everything down. Even if so-called leeches caused many publishers to go out of business, there would still be plenty of old content and new content being released.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @09:19PM (2 children)
Product has infinite supply, and zero cost. Guess I'll pay Macmillan... not.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @10:34PM
No problem with you stickin it to the mcMan, rent seeking our hard earned. However gp stated a practice of seeking to pirate _all_ books available. That is only goimg to hurt authors in long run.
(Score: 1) by Trilkhai on Tuesday September 17 2019, @05:02AM
Most of the cost in producing a book, whether electronic or physical, comes from paying the cover artist, editors, author, publicist, and so forth. The authors who go independent end up either paying for all of that out of their own pocket (in which case they're lucky to break even), or spending the vast majority of their working hours to attempting to perform all of those jobs themselves rather than focusing on the one they they're talented at.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @09:49PM (1 child)
Copyright term lengths are effectively unlimited. Humanity may be gone by the time a 2019 book falls out of copyright. So who are the leeches again? It's the companies and individuals that expect to profit indefinitely from effectively free-to-replicate "digital goods".
If you can't make a living from donations, commissions, crowdfunding, etc., then maybe you aren't fit to earn money from your works.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @09:14AM
And OP does not necessarily seem to be talking about pirating a 50 year old copy of an Asimov story or 1960's Mickey Mouse cartoons, but rather items that catch his fancy wherever he sees them. I'd guess that includes titles which were just published.
One could make the opposite case just as easily: If you can't afford the price that the creator (or those whom the creator appoints on their behalf) asks for then you can walk away and take nothing.