FW: [Web4lib] Netlibrary audiobooks (was RE: Overdrive)

[Reynolds, Bess]

Don Saklad asked me to forward this to the list.

Bess
-----Original Message-----
From: Don Saklad [mailto:dsaklad at gnu.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 11:06 AM
To: TEdelblute at anaheim.net; dsaklad at gnu.org
Cc: Reynolds, Bess; beanc at pbclibrary.org
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Netlibrary audiobooks (was RE: Overdrive)

Sent-From: "Richard M. Stallman" <rms at gnu.org>
To: "Reference, General" <gref at bpl.org>
cc: <dsaklad at zurich.csail.mit.edu>
cc: johns at gnu.org
In-reply-to: 
	
<48B44DF16A5F2A41A60CFCD46F132AC7018E218B at glstexsrv001.private.bpl.org>
	(gref at bpl.org)
Subject: Re: Boston Public Library
Reply-to: rms at gnu.org
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 12:44:28 -0500

To the Management of the Boston Public Library,


Don Saklad forwarded me your message which reports that OverDrive
Audio Books use "copyright protection technology" made by Microsoft.

The technology in question is an example of Digital Restrictions
Management (DRM)--technology designed to restrict the public.
Describing it as "copyright protection" puts a favorable spin on a
mechanism intended to deny the public the exercise of those rights
which copyright law has not yet denied them.

The use of that format for distributing books is not a fact of nature;
it is a choice.  When a choice leads to bad consequences, it ought to
be changed, and that is the case here.  I respectfully submit that the
Boston Public Library has a responsibility to refuse to distribute
anything in this format, even if it seems "convenient" to some in the
short term.

By making the choice to use this format, the Boston Public Library
gives additional power to a corporation already twice convicted of
unfair competition.

This choice excludes more than just Macintosh users.  The users of the
GNU/Linux system, an operating system made up of free/libre software,
are excluded as well.  Since these audiobooks are locked up with
Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), it is illegal in the US to
release free/libre software capable of reading these audiobooks.
Apple may make some sort of arrangement to include capable software in
MacOS (which is, itself, non-free software for which users cannot get
source code).  But we in the free software community will never be
allowed to provide software to play them, unless laws are changed.

There is another, deeper issue at stake here.  The tendency of
digitalization is to convert public libraries into retail stores for
vendors of digital works.  The choice to distribute information in a
secret format--information designed to evaporate and become
unreadable--is the antithesis of the spirit of the public library.
Libraries which participate in this have lost their hearts.

I therefore urge the Boston Public Library to terminate its
association with OverDrive Audio Books, and adopt a policy of refusing
to be agents for the propagation of Digital Restrictions Management.

Sincerely
Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
MacArthur Fellow
rms at gnu.org
rms at gnu.org


cc: John Sullivan for posting on http://fsf.org