The National Science Foundation, along with the National Technical Service Foundation, released studies on this new technological threat assault on traditional publishing houses.
“There will undoubtedly be some copying of books…that will substitute for the purchase of books. The amount of such copying… is inhibited by…the current frequently higher per-page cost of making copies as compared with the cost of buying the book.” [emphasis added]
The public’s access to unlimited, free, perfect copies was not yet realized; the strictures of real-world physicality could, for a time, allay the publishing industry’s fears that they would be replaced by a single machine.
Fast-forward to this decade, and here we are again. eReader devices are quickly becoming ubiquitous, as over 20 million people in the U.S. own a dedicated (not tablet PC/iPad) eReader device, quadrupling the number from 2009. One digital copy of a book is sufficient, on a technical level, to reach every working eReader simultaneously. The cost of reproduction has essentially been eliminated.
Many libraries already have a system in place to loan out digital books. If you’re not familiar with eBook rentals, here’s how it works now—the library tells the publisher how many “copies” it wants, and that is the magic number for how many public users can access the eCopy at any given time. Regardless of how you feel about authors’ rights and the publishing industry, it is clearly a system that ignores the benefits of digital technology and tried to make eBooks function as much like traditional, physical books as possible.
But it gets worse. In early 2011, HarperCollins strictly limited the amount of loans an eBook license allows a library, to simulate “physical wear-and-tear.” 26 loans per eBook license. Two weeks ago, Penguin Publishing decided to opt out of the whole eReader ordeal, at least as far as libraries are concerned. They are still quite happy to sell each person their own digital copy.
The arguments against eReader library loans are eerily similar to the arguments against photocopies 40 years ago. This time, however, the costs and physical requirements for public dissemination of literary, technical and scientific materials are nearly zero. If one digital copy of a written work can be simultaneously available to everyone with an eReader and a library card, I can see why publishers are afraid. But how far removed have we gotten from the purpose of a public library when public access is being gated behind artificial restrictions?
If you think I’m missing the big picture, or have an opinion on libraries, eBooks or the future of publishing, please leave a comment below.
Speaking as a Librarian in a major NYC library system, I have a unique perspective on this issue. Just to clarify one point you bring up early on, reference books, books that are not checked out, are as prone to wear and tear as other books. We try to take care of the books but they get worn out and we reorder them.
The reference books have new editions coming out every year. The Almanac, the Physician Desk Reference, etc. have editions each year and we reorder those that have gotten the most used. The idea that the photocopy machine stops us from reordering is not true. We reorder that which is used. If I see many people using a reference book I will either reorder the book the next year or even get another copy to allow more than one person to use it.
More and more patrons are interested in e-books and ask about it at my library. I don’t see why publishers should be afraid of e-books being available through the library. You talk about the dangers of making e-books “simultaneously available” to everyone but that’s the way hard copies work now except the publisher had to print those books on paper instead of digital copies which must be cheaper to produce. These “artificial restrictions” are part of the playing field. And the cheaper it is to produce the materials that savings should be passed onto the patrons.
However, I understand that in the transition period there may be some “artificial restrictions”. For an example, Queens Library, allows 3 songs downloaded per week for you to keep over their website. QBPL could allow customers to download as many songs as they want but QBPL decided it would help them if they placed an “artificial” but key restriction on the amount people could download. I think this benefits all involved. To cut the libraries out of the equation is wrong and Penguin will suffer as a result of that decision. Probably they’ll recant and allow libraries digital access. It’s inevitable.
We’ll see that these artificial restrictions are going to be the rules of the road for now but perhaps in a future unseen we’ll have more free access to information than ever before because of e-books and that’s a good thing for everyone.
Thanks for the information about reference materials being just as prone to wear as everything else, I did not realize at all that that was the case.
To clarify, that study on the “threat” of photocopying was from the 1970s, and it was a response to the publishing industry’s assumptions that photocopying would destroy their businesses. My position is that the alarmist reaction against library eBook loans from some publishers is similar to the fears that were raised when photocopying was a new technology. Those fears were mostly dismissed by studies from the NSF and the NTSF.
I agree that savings in production and distribution should be passed on, particularly to a public system built to facilitate the spread of information. And I personally hope you’re right that digital access becomes the norm, and not the exception, in libraries.
But I would push harder; for unlimited, rather than capped, lending of a single digital copy. Why throttle access when there is no longer a physical barrier?
I also am against digital “wear & tear”, where an eBook loaning license expires after a set amount of loans. There is no practical reason this exists, except that publishing houses are accustomed to the revenue stream from replacement orders.
When the Queens library limits the amount of downloads they allow, I view that more like capping the number of books you can check out at any given time. That, to me, isn’t a restriction placed inherently on the digital goods themselves. No one, as far as I know, is saying you can only listen to an MP3 file 50 times before it becomes unlistenable in an effort to simulate a scratch on a CD.
Thanks for the comments, mistervijay.
The Department of Justice, the European Commission, and the states’ attorneys general, all seem to think that e-book publishers may have done more to seek profits than is permitted by antitrust laws. According to this Wall Street Journal article, the publishers being investigated include HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Penguin among others. Amazon and Apple are also being investigated for their pricing of the Kindle and the iPad, and for both companies’ use of the “agency model” to set prices and promote their devices. The article highlights a passage from Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, in which Jobs is quoted as saying:
It will be interesting to see whether these investigations into improper collusion between publishers might ultimately alter the relationship between e-books and artificial restrictions on library lending.