[forrestthewoods]

People with sensory impairments can buy e-books. Why would their accessibility concerns grant them free access to the fruits of someone else's labor?

If you really, really want just pirate it. It's economically equivalent.

[mezzie2]

So people with perfect vision and hearing should be able to check out materials from a library and people with impairments shouldn't? That's also against the law.

So you're against the existence of libraries at all? Since they provide free access to the fruits of someone else's labor? That is at least an honest position. I won't pretend to have any respect for it, but at least it's consistent.

[forrestthewoods]

> So people with perfect vision and hearing should be able to check out materials from a library and people with impairments shouldn't? That's also against the law.

People with impairments can also check materials out from the library. The existence of a library for some things does not mandate a library for all things.

> So you're against the existence of libraries at all?

I think that first sale doctrine strikes a great balance for physical goods. If you buy a hammer you can later sell that hammer. Or you can give it away. Or you can setup a little library where people can borrow it either for free or a small fee. Over time the hammer will degrade and some people might prefer a new hammer. The rate at which a hammer can exchange hands is severely limited by space and time. I live in Seattle and can not easily borrow a hammer from a friend in New York or London.

Digital goods are a different beast. Copies can be made instantly, perfectly, and effectively for free. There is no such thing as "borrowing" an e-book. There is only being allowed to make a perfect copy or not. Digital goods are not bound by space or time. A global library with infinite, instantaneous transfer of rights would limit sales to peak concurrent user count. This would obliterate economic incentives for producing new content which would be, imho, a catastrophic net loss for society.

Physical good and digital goods are extremely different. They can and should have different rules. Trying to force them under a single umbrella is sub-optimal for both.

If I were King my changes to copyright law would be related to duration. I'd shorten it from life+70 years to something like ~30 years with the ability to extend it an additional ~20 years with an increasing per-year fee. And possibly add some form of "use it or lose it" after just ~10 years. Or something along those lines. I am not King so I've not fully thought this through. However as someone who makes and sells proprietary entertainment software I have thought through the ramifications of global digital libraries with instant and infinite transferability.

[rockskon]

It puzzles me to hear of these "degradation" arguments, as if it isn't common to find perfectly readable books over 100 years old in antique shops.

"Degradation" is the conception publishers want to think of applying to their goods. Because they want an income stream worthy of items that perish in a matter of years, not decades or centuries.

[BlueTemplar]

I generally agree, but I'm not sure that your example works : it smells of survivorship bias (or whatever is the equivalent name for objects rather than people?)

[rockskon]

Books do not biodegrade in a timeline we'll ever see in our lives unless there's water damage. Which is relatively rare.

It is very much not uncommon to see books several decades old in libraries. And I suppose it is survivorship bias in the most literal sense, but that's because there's so many survivors. It's practically the rule.

[BlueTemplar]

Don't they ? I have books printed in the last half of the 20th century where I'm starting to get worried about the yellowing of the pages (and the seemingly degrading structural integrity of the pages).

I've heard it was something about acidic paper (with it also being a plague of cheap printing, while being much less of an issue of expensive printing techniques).

(«several decades old» is a low bar...)