[forrestthewoods]

> this digital copy could only be checked out by one person and only when the physical book was not also checked out

Even if that were the case I don’t think it’s acceptable.

Physical used goods have limitations on transfer rate. If you want a used book you have to go to the store. Or have it shipped across the country.

I adamantly oppose a global digital pool with instantaneous transfers. In that world you never need to sell more than peak concurrent users. If that were the case then each copy would need to sell for thousands of dollars for content creators to afford food.

The same argument applies to “used” digital movies and games. It’s nonsense.

[cmiles74]

This is kind of a stretch, the Internet Archives book lending program under the CDL was not like a free Amazon. Reading software is limited and not great. Check out their website for details.

https://help.archive.org/help/borrowing-from-the-lending-lib...

IMHO, people who could afford the book are unlikely to have the patience to work through this process. Indeed, downloading from a pirate site would offer a lot more flexibility for the reader.

[mixologic]

> If that were the case then each copy would need to sell for thousands of dollars for content creators to afford food.

That is precisely the agreement that existing libraries have with publishers now. The digital copy that they buy to lend out comes with restrictions on how many copies can be lent at a time, and also costs a lot more than just buying one copy of the book.

[forrestthewoods]

That's certainly not the license that Internet Archive paid for!

If we want media licenses to cost thousands of dollars so they can be loaned out digitally fine. That's something that can be fairly negotiated.

What I oppose is a regular off the shelf purchase being used for unlimited, instantaneous digital rentals. That's disastrously terrible idea.

[Dylan16807]

Then find a lawsuit that specifically goes against the instantaneous part, because a ruling that says "no lending at all" is just awful.

[forrestthewoods]

The word “lending” doesn’t even make sense with digital goods. Nothing tangible is being lent or borrowed. Another perfect copy is being allowed to be made. Ironically it might not even be the same copy! Someone “borrowing” a digital good might download a copy of a new version or in a different language.

[rockskon]

The idea is to impose the restrictions of physical goods onto the digital one.

Your idea is to eliminate the very concept of a library where ebooks are concerned.

You may want to rethink your argument.

[forrestthewoods]

> The idea is to impose the restrictions of physical goods onto the digital one.

You know how some people think rent control is a good idea but then every economist explain how it’s actually bad? That’s how I feel about “impose the restrictions of physical goods onto digital”. It’s a terrible idea that has terrible ramification if you follow things to their logical conclusion.

> Your idea is to eliminate the very concept of a library where ebooks are concerned.

Yeah that’s totally fine. The metaphor of an ebook library is bad and illogical.

If you wanted to write digital-first copyright laws you wouldn’t invent a faux library. There’s better solutions out there.

[Amezarak]

> If that were the case then each copy would need to sell for thousands of dollars for content creators to afford food.

We have an enormous surplus of content creators and most of the content is not very good. I don't see why we need to structure our economic system such that people must be able to making a living churning out mediocre scifi/romance/mystery novels. If they can, great, but I don't think that's the goal we should be aiming for with copyright. There would still be plenty of novels turned out every year even if copyright did not exist.

> In that world you never need to sell more than peak concurrent users.

That sounds good to me, and I doubt it's really much more than the number of sales now. Many/most people would still buy their own copy anyway, just as they do today when a new book comes out.

Copyright law as structured today is destroying more art than saving it; the number of out-of-print but copyrighted works that are vanishing from human knowledge is astronomical.

[forrestthewoods]

> I doubt it's really much more than the number of sales now

Yikes. I can not possibly disrespectfully disagree more with everything you said.

Baldur's Gate 3 has sold about 15 million copies. It's peak concurrent user count on Steam is 875,343. A difference of about 20x that will continue to grow as BG3 will sell meaningful copies over the next 10 years.

Limiting sales to peak CCU is categorically insane. And deeply illogical.

And yes I am talking about a video game because the copyright laws for books and games are the same. I would expect the CCU/sales ratio for most successful books to be even larger than that of games which have a much more hyped launch day.

[Amezarak]

The people that would borrow the game from the library to play it might at best pirate it if they couldn’t get it from the library. Maybe they’d pay a few bucks tops rather than $60-80. Library game borrowers are not big game buyers in the first place.

Games can and do already get around this anyway via software, if you want to argue the laws should work differently for them then I’m open to that, but I also don’t think games matter enough on a societal scale that we should tolerate current copyright laws in order to protect video game studios over the long tail of disappearing orphaned works.

[forrestthewoods]

If your goal is to prevent orphaned works there's much better and more targeted changes that could be made to the law! Don't need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

> Library game borrowers are not big game buyers in the first place.

That's because today there is effectively no such thing as digital game borrowing. If there were then there would be a platform that seamlessly grants and revokes licenses on application startup/shutdown.

People just want things cheaply. Why pay $60 for a game when AmezarakGamesStore lets you play for just $5? People used to buy used discs from GameStop for $55 instead of buying a new copy for $60. Consumers don't care. They justifiably just want to spend the minimum amount of money necessary!

[pastage]

IA did not charge nor did they get revenue from their users in other ways. They did have a system to handle borrowing and make it cumbersome to read stuff. That is an important distinction.

[rockskon]

Steam effectively implemented digital game borrowing years ago. Works just fine.

[mdp2021]

Access to copies cannot be taken as negatively impacting sales. (On the contrary: access can reveal opportunities.)

[tomxor]

You're arguing against a principle that applies to physical libraries (Who also have films btw)...so are physical libraries also nonsense?

Libraries do not serve the interest of publishers (and let's just focus on publishers because if we're being real here, publishers are the ones who stand to lose money - "think of the authors" is just a distraction)... i digress, Libraries exist as a benefit to society, they aren't supposed to neatly fit into absolutist capitalist ideals.

[pineaux]

Also you are allowed to lend your book out to anybody in earth at any time you want. You have bought the book, its yours you can do with it what you want. Burn it, read it, use it as toiletpaper. You arent allowed to republish the book however and earn money on it. Or give it away for free. So the real question here is: what is the definition of publishing. Is the IA publishing?

[Ray20]

>Libraries exist as a benefit to society, they aren't supposed to neatly fit into absolutist capitalist ideals. Libraries fit perfectly fine in the absolutist capitalist ideals (because they exist as a benefit to society), it is itellectual property that are not.

[forrestthewoods]

> let's just focus on publishers

No. I'm focusing on all media - books, tv, movies, games, etc. It's one set of copyright laws.

> so are physical libraries also nonsense?

Copyright strikes a balance of rights between content creators/owners and content consumers. Physical libraries with the limitations of physical transfer strike are a reasonable balance. A global digital pool with instantaneous and unlimited transfer of non-degradable goods does not strike a reasonable balance.

[tomxor]

> Physical libraries with the limitations of physical transfer strike are a reasonable balance. A global digital pool with instantaneous and unlimited transfer of non-degradable goods does not strike a reasonable balance.

That's a more interesting argument. I think it's valid, abstractly at least.

> Copyright strikes a balance of rights between content creators/owners and content consumers

Originally sought to, perhaps. However copyright has devolved into almost entirely serving the interests of the transferred owner who are overwhelmingly huge publishers.

It makes sense to me that a digital library poses an existential threat to the business model of those large publishers who have gradually moved away from obtaining or encouraging the creation of new original works (the original intention of copyright) to reselling and repackaging existing content over and over again. This is why things like DRM exist, not to prevent piracy, but one one many mechanisms serving this strategy by controlling how ordinary consumers can consume what they "bought", when, where, on what, for how long... so many types of restrictions all serving to extract the maximum economic return for each original piece of work they own - A library completely undermines that strategy, because it necessarily removes most of those mechanisms to function.

[thfuran]

The constitution explicitly states that copyright exists "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts". It's not meant to be about serving the financial interests of content owners except insofar as that also benefits society.

[immibis]

That's where the brainwashing comes in: good for society === makes rich people richer

[8note]

What's missing is a requirement that any digitally published works must also be made available as physical media. Content owners can't keep their media out of public libraries by only publishing digitally. Otherwise, libraries need to be able to lend digital works

[account42]

> Copyright strikes a balance of rights between content creators/owners and content consumers.

Not at all. Creators have no ihnerent rights that need to be balanced. Copyright is only granted with the argument that encouraging creation benefits society. That is the only argument for its existence.

[BlueTemplar]

Or we could set up an alternative system making sure that authors can make a living from their works (and not just the most popular ones either) :

https://stallman.org/mecenat/global-patronage.html