[Web4lib] Kindle lending

[Tim Spalding]

FWIW, I wrote up my idea for an "organic"-style sticker, which
publishers would get if they acceded to a slate of lending rights. It
would also build awareness of the issue.

Thingology: Library Friendly...
http://bit.ly/9mq4qm

On Ms. Krier's argument, I have a lot of sympathy with the idea of
pushing for equivalencies. Before someone else says it, however, as
many have said, there is something backward about replicating the
limitations of print in a digital world that doesn't need it. Fair
enough. But, from a public-relations and even legal angle, libraries
will best succeed by claiming ancient rights, not by creating a bundle
of new rights and insisting they are equivalent to the ancient rights.

Besides, the "logic" of digitization and the elimination of
"arbitrary" restrictions doesn't stop at being able to lend something
out to only one person at a time, or having to come to the library to
get the item. Paying for content is also an artifact of technology.
Nobody paid for the content of books before Gutenberg. They paid only
for their production. The economics of the printing press--namely (1)
a machine and process too expensive for any individual to own, 92)
requiring a scale of operation that can be policed, and (3) producing
books at a fraction of the cost of hand production--made the sale of
content qua content possible.

Arbitrary as it is, I hope this "restriction" continues. A world where
people can only make a living on their brains if they avoid making
copyable goods is going to be a much poorer one.

Best,
Tim