victorhck

2019-11-10 11:45:09

Publishers Should be Making E-Book Licensing Better, Not Worse

eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/publ…

#hash(0x187a550) #hash(0x187a628)

Macmillan, one of the “Big Five” publishers, is imposing new limits on libraries’ access to ebooks—and libraries and their users are fighting back.

Starting last week, the publisher is imposing a two-month embargo period on library ebooks. When Macmillan releases a new book, library systems will be able to purchase only one digital copy for the first eight weeks after it’s published. Macmillan is offering this initial copy for half-price ($30), but that has not taken away the sting for librarians who will need to answer to frustrated users. In large library systems in particular, readers are likely to experience even longer hold queues for new Macmillan e-book releases. For example, under the new Macmillan embargo, the 27 branches of the San Francisco Public Library system, serving a city of nearly 900,000 people, will have to share one single copy right when the demand for the new title is the greatest.

The harms to libraries and their patrons during these two months go far beyond wait times. E-books are a critical resource for library users with vision impairment, dyslexia, and other physical or learning needs. An embargo on new e-books disproportionately harms these readers who rely on digital formats, and violates the principles of equitable access at the core of library services.

After the two-month embargo period ends, libraries will be welcome to purchase additional copies of the e-book under normal terms, which aren’t great to begin with: typically, a $60 price tag for an e-book that can only be lent out to one user at a time for two years or 52 lends, whichever comes first. After that, the library has to license another e-book. On top of that, libraries tend to have different agreements with each of their publishers and vendors, all of which are subject to change.

This is a significant mark-up over what a consumer might expect to pay for a new e-book, and a falsely restrictive model compared to libraries’ rights for physical books. When a library purchases a physical book, the purchase is covered by first sale doctrine, which means the library can lend it out freely, repair it, give it away, or resell it. But libraries don’t have any of those protections when it comes to e-books.

So why is Macmillan imposing additional burdens? In a July memo, CEO John Sargent says the publisher’s move is motivated by “growing fears that library lending was cannibalizing sales” of new e-books and a need to “protect the value of your books during their first format publication,” but fails to present any evidence to back up his claims. (He also ignores existing, consistent evidence to the contrary.)

In response, libraries across the country have boycotted, or at least strongly denounced, Macmillan e-book purchases. In another extraordinary step, the American Library Association has invited library users to sign onto a petition against the new embargo. The campaign, called #eBooksForAll, had over 160,000 signatures before the embargo started last week. Since then, the signature count has climbed to nearly 200,000.

All of this does not mean that Macmillan has it wrong on e-books across the board; for example, Macmillan publishes Tor Books, the only DRM-free imprint in the Big Five.

But of all the Big Five publishers to change e-book terms in the past year, Macmillan’s e-book embargo for libraries is by far the most contentious. The other four—Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster—are surely watching the backlash. We urge readers, and authors who like to be read, to sign the ALA’s petition and let Macmillan know that the embargo is a mistake.

Debian

2019-10-28 16:12:20

Debian Donates to Support @[url=https://floss.social/users/gnome]GNOME[/url] Patent Defense bits.debian.org/2019/10/debian…

Stefano Zacchiroli

2019-10-23 18:01:53

La biblioteca universale del software trova casa a Bologna repubblica.it/tecnologia/2019/… via @[url=https://mastodon.uno/users/repubblica]Immagina[/url]

Shark Blackle

2019-10-20 05:29:44

spent the better part of the day theming my phone's home screen...

Harald Eilertsen

2019-10-14 18:35:11

Klaus wrote the following post Mon, 14 Oct 2019 18:23:17 +0200

The-Open-Book
joeycastillo/The-Open-Book

THE PREMISE: As a society, we need an open source device for reading. Books are among the most important documents of our culture, yet the most popular and widespread devices we have for reading — the Kobo, the Nook, the Kindle and even the iPad — are closed devices, operating as small moving parts in a set of giant closed platforms whose owners' interests are not always aligned with readers'.

The Open Book aims to be a simple device that anyone with a soldering iron can build for themselves. The Open Book should be comprehensible: the reader should be able to look at it and understand, at least in broad strokes, how it works. It should be extensible, so that a reader with different needs can write code and add accessories that make the book work for them. It should be global, supporting readers of books in all the languages of the world. Most of all, it should be open, so that anyone can take this design as a starting point and use it to build a better book.

dave

2019-10-09 17:06:50

damn good take on the rms situation

wingolog.org/archives/2019/10/…

anarcat

2019-10-06 22:00:13

Calibre replacement considerations anarc.at/software/desktop/cali…

Software Freedom Conservancy

2019-10-02 21:30:43

Two companies have begun a fight regarding GPL compliance, yet neither complies with GPL's most basic provisions. sfconservancy.org/blog/2019/oc… #gplcompliance

JackieLibre :copyleft:

2019-09-16 16:08:24

I was working on #3dprinted #enclosure for @olimex #Lime2

The SATA port does not fit as neatly as it could and the board is actually attached to the box with just one screw, but it works. 🙂

If anyone would like to print their own box or even better improve it, move the holes for ports and screws by a few milliliters, so they will fit more tightly, let me know and I will upload the #STL and #OpenSCAD files on GitLab, FramaGit or somewhere.

Hisham

2019-09-29 14:24:24

we live in an age of surveillance, tracking, targeted ads and the whole dystopia

and sites STILL show me temperature in Fahrenheit!

come on people, use all this data for something useful for once! I know you know who I am!

Fitheach

2019-09-26 14:20:31

Bye, bye, HuffPost.
I can't be bothered reading your stuff if I have to jump through hoops first.

Rey, glow fox :ohgod_ohfuck:

2019-09-26 01:18:20

the report button for terrible puns is labeled 🔁

debacle

2019-09-21 23:46:27

Strategies for sustainable phones

On the Tinkerphones mailing list, Paul Boddie expressed some interesting thoughs about (lack of) sustainability of modern mobile phones. Things got worse lately, it seems.

It's a longer text, but we are on Diaspora, not Twitter. Our attention span is not limited to 280 characters. So here is the complete text.

Hello again,

Recently, having found myself needing to buy a fairly cheap Android smartphone
to keep communicating with the rest of the world, I found myself reviewing
what the options really were for buying something that would be (amongst other
things)...

• Viable for a reasonable amount of time: the featurephone I retired lasted
  15 years but was wearing out and obviously couldn't do smartphone things.
• Designed not to become obsolete purely because of cynical corporate
  decisions: for example, having a removable battery instead of something
  sealed in that may either spontaneously decide that it wants to burst out
  of the phone or that will eventually fail to hold a decent amount of
  charge, making the whole device useless.
• Running Free Software under my control as an end-user.

Obviously, the phone I ended up getting doesn't fully satisfy (3) even though
the manufacturer does provide something claiming to be the source code. It
does satisfy (2), being something of a rarity now. Time will tell how
successful it will satisfy (1).

Being aware of various initiatives, it was therefore interesting to read the
following review of Fairphone 3:

"Fairphone 3 review: the most ethical and repairable phone you can buy"
theguardian.com/technology/201…

I dislike the tone of technology reviews, especially when they talk of "last
year's" technology. They start to sound like fashion industry gossip ("last
season's collection") with largely the same implied level of regard for the
planet, workers' rights, and so on, unless carefully worded and qualified.

Fairphone have clearly refined their process of getting products to market
that satisfy their ethical goals, and they appear to be improving with regard
to software support, but even with their resources it appears difficult to
convince others that their premium (£200 according to the article) is worth
paying or that their longevity goals can be realised. Will the phone still be
usable in five years?

Coincidentally, another article approaches this latter problem from a
different angle:

"To decarbonize we must decomputerize: why we need a Luddite revolution"
theguardian.com/technology/201…

Although it is perhaps not a central observation of the article, one reason
why something like the Fairphone might not be usable in five years is down to
the ongoing escalation of end-user hardware requirements by software and
services. This is rather like the way Microsoft and Intel worked in concert to
make people upgrade their computers every few years, but now things like
"bloat" in Web and online services are factors, too.

Making a top-end device can mitigate obsolescence to an extent, but this
raises some worthwhile questions about where less well-resourced efforts for
making genuinely open phones might be best directed. Smaller initiatives
cannot hope to be using the latest chipsets because these are all exclusive
things for the largest companies. And sadly, "consumers" are programmed to
obsess about specifications and how new the technology is.

I wonder, and think that others have also wondered before, whether it isn't
worth concentrating on making more modest devices instead of supposedly
competitive smartphones where openness is the differentiator. I recall
discussions of the Fernvale kit, the Zerophone, and maybe Nikolaus considered
a featurephone design at one point.

One aspect that will always detract from considerations of featurephones is
that their capabilities are maybe limited and do not appeal to all kinds of
users. That some Web sites or services may be too demanding, for instance, and
that the hardware just cannot deal with modern things.

It certainly seems to be the case that there are systemic issues involved
here: the people writing software and deploying platforms need to stop and
consider their effect on the end-user, on device longevity, and on the planet.
But there must still be a core region of functionality that could
satisfactorily be addressed by a featurephone design (or something relegated
to that category by whatever it is that passes for a "proper" smartphone these
days).

Anyway, I think I have now written enough on this topic, but I hope that it is
worthwhile to air these thoughts in the hope that they help to inform any
future directions of the efforts undertaken in this community.

Paul

#tinkerphones #letuxos #sustainability #openhardware #freesoftware #fairphone #smartphone #featurephone