For starters, the First Sale Doctrine does not apply to eBooks , whether an individual consumer or a library holds the purse strings. Let's leave libraries out of it for a moment.
When a consumer pays money in order to access an eBook, that consumer is not buying that eBook. That transaction is more accurately described as paying for a license to access the book. The consumer never owns the eBook and the seller ultimately retains control of it, even when the consumer downloads it to their device. A prime illustration of this distinction between ownership and licensing occurred earlier this year, when Microsoft shut down eBook sales in Microsoft Store.
Microsoft removed the eBooks from their customers' devices. Even with the refund, many customers were angry that they had lost access to the content, which was the impetus behind their purchases in the first place. In order to access eBooks, customers would have had to have endorsed a terms-of-use agreement that explained Microsoft's right to remove access in the fine print. People check these boxes all the time without reading or understanding them. The reason why payment for access does not equal digital ownership largely has to do with something called Digital Rights Management, or DRM, which Dingledy and Matamoros have defined as "technology that controls access to content on digital devices" 1.
DRM is neither the same as, nor a substitute for copyright, but it is a factor in a lot of copyright discussion. DRM is put in place to protect copyright holders in the digital age.
It is very easy to duplicate and distribute infinite perfect, digital copies of a copyrighted work. On the one hand, authors, studios, companies, etc. Others argue that DRM gives too much power to copyright owners and not enough to individuals who want to enjoy the works legally.
This is barely scratching the surface of all the issues at work when it comes to copyright, DRM, and the information landscape. Seriously, Dingledy and Matamoros wrote a twenty-seven-page chapter in an entire book on this subject aimed only at librarians. Access codes for software purchases, paywalls on academic papers, limited monthly numbers of free news articles, and putting in your library card number and PIN to access a database are a few of the myriad examples of DRM at work that many of us experience every day.
Libraries and eBooks In the library environment, where one purchasing entity is trying to loan a large volume of eBooks, we have a related-but-distinct kettle of fish. As a librarian who works with our customers face-to-face, online, and over the phone, my experience has led me to understand that there are some truths about eBook lending that surprise our cardholders.
These are the results of DRM issues colliding with the library model of lending titles to facilitate access to information:. Why are these agreements so restrictive? Publishers have argued that library lending negatively impacts sales. Library advocates have argued that libraries serve to increase book sales. Specifically in response to the Macmillan embargo, Steve Potash, the CEO of Overdrive one of the eBook-lending juggernauts , has argued that Macmillan's claims about libraries impacting sales is false and unsupported by data.
What does this mean for libraries and digital content in the future? Macmillan's embargo is not an isolated incident for libraries, or even public libraries, or even eBooks. We are joining libraries around the country in dropping our subscription to Lynda Library over privacy issues.
This past winter, the University of California system ended negotiations with Elsevier, a huge scholarly journal publisher, over issues of cost and access. Amazon is a huge publisher of eBooks that frequently refuses to sell some of its exclusive products to libraries.
This past summer, New York, Brooklyn, and Queens public libraries all dropped Kanopy due to its pay-per-use model which is why we and other Denver Metro libraries limit the service to our respective home county residents only. Among those browsers, romance was the most popular genre, followed by all fiction, mystery and suspense, historical fiction, and science fiction and fantasy.
Libraries are sometimes hard-pressed to keep up with this demand. Extremely long waiting lists for popular books are common. In Fairfax County in suburban Washington, D.
There are several major efforts underway to digitize books, especially older, out-of-print, non-copyright protected books, including at Google, the Internet Archive, and Harvard University. Many publishers are worried about the effect that unlimited library lending of e-books will have on sales of digital titles and about piracy of digital material. Instead, it confirms that the public library does not only incubate and support literacy, as is well understood in our culture, but it is an active partner with the publishing industry in building the book market, not to mention the burgeoning e-book market.
A third and a fourth, Hachette 13 and Penguin 14 , do not generally sell to libraries but are embarking on pilot programs to test models for e-book borrowing. A fifth publisher, HarperCollins, limits library lending to 26 check-outs per e-book, after which libraries may repurchase the title to continue lending it. The libraries were able to transfer about two-thirds of their content. Prior to , e-book borrowers were able to check out several formats of e-books from their local libraries.
Kindle Library Lending, which became available September 21, , allows library patrons who own Kindles to borrow Kindle books from over 11, public and school libraries in the United States.
It also allows borrowers to make notes in their copy of the e-book and to highlight certain passages; these markups are visible only to that user, not other library patrons or Amazon user.
This means that libraries do not need to convert any files from ePub or other formats in order to have those titles available via Kindle. It examines the potential frustrations e-book borrowers can encounter when checking out digital titles, such as long wait lists and compatibility issues.
Finally, it looks at non-e-book-borrower interest in various library services, such as preloaded e-readers or instruction on downloading e-books. Libraries have traditionally played a key role in the civic and social life of their communities, and this work is aimed at understanding the way that changes in consumer behavior and library offerings might affect that unique relationship between libraries and communities.
This report is part of the first phase of that Gates Foundation-funded research. Subsequent reports will cover how people in different kinds of communities urban, suburban, and rural compare in their reading habits and how teens and young adults are navigating this environment.
Further down the line, our research will focus on the changing landscape of library services. The Pew Internet Project conducted several surveys to complete the work reported here. All quantitative findings in this report, including all specific numbers and statistics about various groups, come from a series of nationally-representative phone surveys. The first was a nationally-representative phone survey of 2, people ages 16 and older between November 16 and December 21, They alert us when OverDrive services are not working as expected.
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