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Comment by jonhendry | Hacker News Reader

"Which, in meatspace, you can lend an infinite number of times."

Well, no, because in meatspace you have a more limited social circle. Few people would lend a physical book to a complete stranger, or if they did, would know they'd probably never get it back. Plus of course time is a limitation, and if a borrower is not local, there's the time of transit back and forth, which doesn't exist for an e-book.

And as a practical matter, it is pretty unlikely that you'd be able to find a borrower for every one of your physical books. But that would be possible with e-books, given a way to lend them to strangers, because of the way the site can match borrowers to lenders.

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I guarantee you that I have a book I have loaned out more than once.. a couple times, in fact. Amazon only lets you lend it once, for up to a maximum of, what, 2 weeks?

In meatspace I can sell my book to a friend... or give it away.

Why is it that with ebooks some authors feel enititled to a sale for each and every person who wants to read their book? That is never how books worked in the past.

I thought all this information technology would liberate information, not restrict it to such an extent.

You say that a site allowing lenders to be matched to borrows would... what? You can only loan each book once.

I think there's a bit of a "disillusionment factor" at play here.

Content producers thought the digital world would remove distribution costs while maintaing the same per-unit price and increasing number of sales, hence multiplying profits. They didn't understand how distribution costs would disappear for consumers as well, making "original copies" indistinguishable from "second hand".

Now they're starting to understand, and they think (or have been told by "old media" companies) that this will put pressure on price-per-unit, people will "steal" it and sales will collapse, and they'll all go broke. Hence the constant outrage.

Old internet geeks, by now, know chapter and verse about the need for new business models, the reality of p2p actually growing the market as a whole etc etc; but these people don't, they're like Metallica circa 1998. Most of them don't even make much money; talking to them about new business models is like trying to convince your average "bodega" shopkeeper that he should think about advertising in the NYTimes or on TV.

They - and many others - didn't understand that distribution (costs) was what they were paid for and content was much less valuable than they thought.

"You say that a site allowing lenders to be matched to borrows would... what? You can only loan each book once."

Yes, but everyone with that ebook can lend it once. Matching sites like the one under discussion make it more likely that an ebook will be lent, than would be the case if the customer were just lending to friends (I know I have books that are of no interest to any of my friends, so without a matching service, I would never lend them to anyone.)

http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php

Not totally free (due to shipping), but it's definitely cheaper than buying all your books new.

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