Chinese downloaders to blame for UK library e-book crackdown

The Guardian has an article on the UK-based Publishers Association’s recent decision to restrict libraries from lending e-books remotely (which we carried Eoin Purcell’s blog post decrying a few days ago). This article goes into a little more detail about the basis of the decision.

Apparently e-book readers in China were “joining British libraries and plundering their virtual collections for free,” which is of course an abrogation of the same territorial rights that have caused e-book stores such as Amazon or Waterstone’s to stop selling e-book editions outside their licensed countries. From that point of view, it’s understandable that publishers would want to impose restrictions.

The article notes that UK libraries use the same Overdrive-based systems as the one I reviewed here, which enable readers to download e-books remotely for a limited period of time. At the end of the checkout, the DRM automatically expires the book and the library makes it available for “lending” again. The problem is that libraries have been lending outside their boundaries, and calling the service “Free ebooks, wherever you are, whenever you want.”

Richard Mollet, chief executive of the Publishers Association, said: "Our position is that we have to be certain that ebook lending does not pose a serious threat to publishers’ commercial activities – ebook sales. Untrammelled remote access ebook lending would pose such a threat, which in the end would be of no benefit to anyone, including libraries."

He added: "There will be some circumstances where remote lending might be the only way people can access a libraries, if, say, they are disabled, and in that situation it is up to library authorities in concert with publishers to come up with ways that can happen."

The whole thing kind of leaves me scratching my head. At least for my local library, in order to be able to check out books at all—including e-books—I had to go into a library branch in person, at least once, to apply for a library card. (Of course, my local library also requires that its patrons must be tax-paying citizens of the local county, or else pay an extra-county lending fee.)

It would seem to me that the whole “China syndrome” could be avoided by requiring just one personal visit to set up a library card, then allowing downloads to that person thereafter under the assumption that if they were able to visit, and gave a valid UK address, they are probably a UK citizen. Exceptions could be made for the sort of shut-ins who have a hard time getting out to libraries. Perhaps a librarian could visit them to sign them up instead.

Indeed, one librarian brings this notion up later in the article: "All our members are Luton customers, they have to physically come into the library and produce ID to join," [Luton Libraries principal librarian Fiona] Marriott said. "We see ebook lending as an important way of extending the service."

For its part, Overdrive CEO Steve Potash insists that the China lending was an isolated incident that it acted on within 24 hours of discovering it, and that it has instituted controls to make sure geographic restrictions on e-books are enforced.

I do see one valid cause for disgruntlement on authors’ parts, though:

Other authors object to ebooks on the basis that while they currently receive 6p every time a physical copy of their book is borrowed from a library, they don’t get a penny if the digital version is loaned.

I’d suggest that the Public Lending Right needs to be updated and extended to cover e-book lending—but given what’s been happening with the Public Lending Right in the UK recently, even the subsidy for print lending may be in jeopardy.

One thing the article doesn’t mention is just how easy it is to crack the DRM on library e-books and keep them forever instead of gamely allowing them to expire. It is not any harder than it is to crack purchased e-books that use the same DRM; the difference is that with a purchased book, at least the money has changed hands once. And that’s true whether you check the e-book out remotely or go into the library to do it.

(Found via EBookNewser.)