HarperCollins sets 1-year expiration on library eBooks | Hacker News Reader

HarperCollins sets 1-year expiration on library eBooks

nytimes.com

40 pointserickhill7 comments

While none of this is surprising, they out an interesting twist on it when they say “...place additional pressure on physical bookstores...". Wait, so now they CARE about physical bookstores?

No, wait, they want to have their cake and eat it too: "Publishers are nervous that e-book borrowing in libraries will cannibalize e-book retail sales." Well. OK. Let's all make sure we don't let anyone BESIDES publishers fuck traditional bookstores... 'cause that'd be bad. Somehow.

What I don't see is HOW this is any different to the traditional model for libraries? Sure, an eBook doesn't wear out, but well treated, a hardcover won't either. People who are low commitment will borrow, and might then buy. Otherwise those people are never going to access your material at all.

And once again, they trot out the old "Won't somebody PLEASE think of the CONTENT CREATORS!" handwringing cliche, in this case "in the end lead to a decrease in book sales and royalties paid to authors.” which, as we know, is bullshit.

And now I'm wondering why I bothered writing this because it's not news, it's not surprising, it's just another installment of Traditional Publishing VS The Horrid Internet... OF DOOM.

Don't wonder why you bothered writing that.

You wrote it because it made me laugh really hard and gave us some awesome tweetable quotables.

And because you're right.

And because as long as they keep fighting the Internet in lame ways, we all should fight back in fun ways.

This is what happens when publishers are afraid of new media and they want to secure their bread. But it's not happening.

Most of the people who "share" books (they are hinting on piracy, if I am not wrong) don't buy it anyway. All they are accomplishing with this is - scare away the users who buy it.

Not to debate weather it's fair or not - but generally an "expiring" book will have a psychological effect on customer for sure. And this is not the best option to go for.

One thing that I think is being forgotten in all this is preservation. While I don't think that most libraries (except for librairies like the LoC) are in the business of preserving books anymore, how will this new licensing model HaperCollins is suggesting will allow for books to be kept for future generations?

Publishers haven't been the best at making sure out of print books don't just disappear. Same for the music, some music from the early in the century is probably going to go away because of copyright issues.

I think the preservation is a huge, if somewhat unrelated issue. To recreate the text of one of these books people in the future will have to emulate the environment the book exists on. In some sort of apolcalyptic future that destroys the linear progression of our technological innovation (and the ability to access old content with our new technologies as they appear) everything will be lost. The learning curve for/possibility of some future society having some rosetta stone moment that allows them to recreate and run a computer program is really hard to imagine. The monolith in 2001 a space odyssey might be a symbol of what people think we are about as a society. Our iPhones, Android phones and computers just strange blocks that are worshipped in their own rights. Who knows. But the barrier for understanding our culture from some temporal outside is growing extreme.

Dear book (/music/film) publishers:

If you release works without restrictions, I'll probably buy them.

If you release works with restrictions, I probably won't buy them and might obtain the cracked version illegally instead.

People will just jailbreak the self-destruct code attached to the books and make copies of them anyway, legal or not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com