I know the NYPL will let me check out ebooks, but the result is wrapped in layers of DRM that tie it to my computer (or, with some work, a Sony Reader or B&N Nook). One thing I'm sure of: e-reading will succeed if and only if the text is truly portable across many devices. My most frequent reading location will be a tablet-sized e-reader, but I may want to access the material on a desktop, laptop, work computer, public location, phone, etc. Without that functionality, we've taken a step backwards from physical books (which, for the price of inconvenience, I can have wherever I want).
I don't have a problem with DRM itself. In fact, I'd embrace it if only I could access the data anywhere. What's so difficult about that? Every e-reader app for the iPad provides syncing capabilities with its respective hardware; surely the NYPL can figure something out!
But I may be asking too much for the NYPL's books to be freely available, so how about this: I will gladly rent books rather than buy them. When I purchase a book from Amazon, B&N, etc., instead of just downloading the text straightaway, ask me how long I want the book for (1 day, 1 week, 1 month, forever) and charge me accordingly. Maybe the book costs $10 to own, but I can have it for a week for only $3. And after a week, I'm locked out. Need more time? Three more dollars, please!
Or how about this - instead of a la carte pricing or rentals, I'll pay a flat rate for unlimited reading. Maybe it's a few hundred dollars (I have no idea what the efficient level would be off the top of my head) to subscribe to Amazon's library. Lock the ebooks to my devices so I can't distribute them and you got yourself a deal.
This can't be difficult to implement on the technology side, though I imagine it would meet some resistance on the publishing side. The evidence for success is strong, however - look at movies and music, which have both embraced successful rental or subscription plans.
One of the keys to this model could be how hard it is to access the filesystems of the devices in questions (iOS devices most notoriously). Putting a DRM'd file on a computer is, let's face it, an invitation for someone to hack and redistribute the information freely. But because we can be confident that consumers will use controlled/closed devices to access their ebooks, part of the hacking threat is mitigated.
But again, there's nothing revolutionary about this idea. Movies and music have been doing it for some time. We just need to expand our conception of "multimedia" to include text as well.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Short answer: copyright laws.
How would authors feel if the ebooks that the library is letting people borrow were easy to copy?
Wouldn’t that just be giving their work for free. They would disagree for libraries to distribute/rent/lend out e-books if they were easily copied… It would be too easy for many people to copy the work make a profit and never give due rights to the author and publisher…
i.e. this way it helps feed the author. That’s not to say that some hackers can find a way to easily copy that book no matter what format its in.
I disagree. I think the entire point here is that all media consumption is graduating to the economics of the music and (more recently) movie industries. Digital goods do not need to be owned to be consumed — the new Apple TV goes so far as to make it impossible to download; rental is the only option.
I don’t think this is surprising, either, given the push to move data into a cloud infrastructure. In the cloud, you don’t own anything — you are a perpetual renter of data, be it storage, music, video, or text.
Ease of copying is not an excuse. If you think that rentals are easy to copy, you should be terrified about purchased books — after all, wouldn’t I (the malicious hacker) have that much longer to crack the DRM?
as far as i know you can do what you ask for ,
amazon kindle allows you to do the same , iOS , Android , Kindle , Windows &….