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Comment by mch82 | Hacker News Reader

Anyone know how to donate a movie or audiobook to a library (in situations where they don’t have them)?

I’m interested in the concept of donating media to the library instead of buying it for myself. However, it doesn’t seem like there’s a simple way to do that…

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They don't get to use regular consumer digital media. They have to use specially licensed extra-expensive versions that permit lending.

I’m not sure that’s the case for physical items like DVDs, because I’ve never seen anything indicating it’s special and the replacement costs are in line with “buy it on Amazon”.

No, physical items have reasonable legal protection against the IP holder trying to dictate what you do with it after purchase. The first sale doctrine allows libraries, game and video rental shops and such to physically lend copyrighted works. But when "purchasing" an ebook is actually just purchasing a heavily restricted and revocable license to personally use a work but not share it in any way, it doesn't apply. So libraries have to buy special ebook licenses that cost several times more than consumer ones and expire after dinner number of views. I assume it's similar for audiobooks and movies, but it's all up to individual publishers what restrictions and costs they'll impose on the licenses that permit lending.

It's insane really - a library could buy a book and a robot with a camera, and let you turn the pages using the robot, and that would be fine; but ebooks are different, like software.

Blu-ray is 'digital media' but because it's physical, US libraries can buy regular copies and lend them out as they wish.

See 'first sale doctrine': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine?wprov=sfla...

It isn't that it's actually illegal, but you can't sell/lend/rent what the distributor refuses to sell to you, and video stores would have the in demand new releases weeks or even months before they'd be sold on the consumer market. They got them because the likes of Blockbuster were willing to pay $70 or $80 in 19800's dollars for that privilege.

Can you give an example of a Blu-ray disk that's available to borrow at your local library, that isn't yet available for purchase on the consumer market?

Depends on the library and its staff.

Most libraries have way more than they can fit on the shelves, but if you talked with the purchasing person you might be able to work something out.

The vast vast majority of donated media goes straight into the "sell at the next fundraiser" pile. Partly this is because much of what's donated is not in high demand (They tend to get lots of Time-Life picture histories and things like that that were hawked by the millions on infomercials). Mostly it's because what they need is funding - they already have way more material than they have shelf space for most of the time.

Yeah the most likely “work things out” is they’ll let you buy brand new releases and donate them the day after release (saving them from having to buy it).

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