Comments on: Libraries Own their Ebooks and Nothing Improves

By: Catherine

Catherine — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 02:20:00 +0000

I’ll sell you th’ dope, cos you’ll need it to properly absorb all this…but you won’t own the intellectual property rights to it.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:18:20 +0000

Well, if that’s Random House’s policy, then they need to tell their lawyers to implement the policy in the contracts that the mediators sign in order to get the right to mediate for RH. Then the mediators have to perform their duties under the contract, or else. Meaning that they actually implement RH’s policy when presenting RH properties to readers.

If that means the mediators have to keep track of different policies for different providers and explain it all to the customer, well, welcome to the life of a content mediator, that’s the business you decided to enter.

By: Paula V. Brown

Paula V. Brown — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 13:16:43 +0000

The cyberscript of a book is a real something to own. Libraries should be able to buy that from the author, directly or their agent, unless they have a contract with the agent or publisher that says they cannot, whether in whole or in part, depending on who else owns a piece of the action, such as the illustrator. In a self publishing world we could, if allowed, read online or print screen after screen. One time if we buy one copy. That means one user may borrow it at a time. For popular titles we buy rights for more copies in use at one time, not unlike a classroom text. We may get the title updated for a price if the author agent allows, with each new edition. If we chose to give it away or take a donation for it or our 5 cybercopies, then we no longer own it. If an author or agent restricts that, maybe we just won’t buy from them.
Libraries are a huge market and PR machine. ALA should go to the authors until this is resolved with a simple plan.
As it catches on, people like Stephen King and Cory Doctorow may just help this model get established, and move their publishers on to more workable models. Let’s ask some authors to jump onboard, verifying they have not signed away their creative souls and have no intention to do so to an agent or publisher. We might just find out many authors don’t even know if they are even owned! We might have a legal app for that!

By: » Problems with ebooks

» Problems with ebooks — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 23:23:31 +0000

[...] Libraries are trying to move with the times and get with the ebook craze. It’s now possible to borrow ebooks, some of them have a three week return policy as with print books while others have a longer time span making it possible to read the book over an extended time. As with retail customers libraries don’t actually own the ebooks except for ones sold by Random House, this company is trying to make it possible for libraries to own the ebooks but there are glitches as they don’t sell direct to the library but have a clearing house in the middle of the transaction and the clearing house might have other ideas. You can read more here. [...]

By: Sarah Mae

Sarah Mae — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:33:04 +0000

The default checkout time in Overdrive is 2 weeks but you can change it to 1 week or 3 weeks when you actually checkout. You can also change your account’s default checkout time to 3 weeks.

By: Annoyed Librarian

Annoyed Librarian — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 20:19:30 +0000

The physical competition among librarians is so rigorous that doping will always be a part of the field. We just need to learn to live with it.

By: Joneser

Joneser — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 20:00:59 +0000

Feel free to join me in the Not-M&S material club.

But didn’t an ALA president partner with Lance Armstrong and LiveStrong for her tenure’s project?

By: cranky librarian

cranky librarian — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 14:13:25 +0000

This is all too complicated and makes my head spin. I guess I won’t be a Mover & Shaker any time soon.

But AL – what about Lance Armstrong and doping? We need a column on doping librarians!

By: anonymous

anonymous — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 00:52:28 +0000

Random House’s assertion is ludicrous. First sale doctrine has always been predicated on the assumption that one owns the physical media (paper, vinyl, plastic) but not the intellectual property including the bundle of rights associated with the abstract notion of copyright. With ebooks, there is no physical medium involved. So this can be no more than clever pivot-speak to divert attention from the issue of what bundle of rights does a copyright owner retain and what bundle of rights does a licensee of an ebook obtain? The first sale doctrine is a doctrine only because with physical media, there is no practical way to redistribution of physical media. You can sell the physical medium because you own it. The fact that there is intellectual property embedded in it is, as a practical matter, irrelevant and legal because there is no practical way to regulate it.

But the reality is, since there is no physical media involved with an ebook and since there is nothing with physicality to convey, there is nothing about an ebook to own. I expect Random House, if the facts are accurately reported, will be issuing a clarification real soon now.

Can’t wait. Yikes.

By: Joey

Joey — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 15:11:03 +0000

“I assume it’s because of scarcity. There aren’t that many ebooks and they’re all really popular”

It’s so absurd that we are forced to discuss the issue of ebooks using these terms. There is an infinite number of ebooks! Why should we have to use these imaginary terms to have a conversation about ebooks with publishers?