Following up an earlier story about Penguin withholding library e-books in the UK as well as the US, The Bookseller reports that the Publishers Association supports Penguin’s decision to withdraw its e-books.
PA c.e.o. Richard Mollet said: "Today’s announcement [by Penguin UK] underlines what the Publishers Association has been saying for some time about the risks around e-lending. Whilst publishers are and always have been fully supportive of libraries, it also has to be recognised that in this still developing area, it is right to be concerned about the security of digital files in the supply chain."
The “security” issue puzzles me a little. I have yet to see any indication that library e-books are any less “secure” than the ones that publishers are only too happy to sell through Amazon and other vendors. Sure, the DRM can be cracked, but it can be cracked on any sold e-book as well as any that is checked out.
But apparently Penguin is concerned that libraries must be offered “only if those files were held behind the firewalls of the suppliers” (such as Overdrive). I thought that was how the system worked already?
I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see how things work out. I wish publishers would get over their paranoia and accept that it’s better to lose a little security than to lose potential paying customers.
“I thought that was how the system worked already?”
It does, for ePub users. But for Kindle library users, the books come from Amazon, not from Overdrive, and don’t require additional software. It’s FAR more convenient and convenient mean less piracy, not more. The easier you make it to buy or borrow ebooks, the less likely people will go to the trouble to pirate them.
What Penguin and other publishers don’t get is that if their books aren’t available for me in the library, it doesn’t mean I’ll hop over to Amazon and buy them. It means I won’t buy them and I won’t read them, I’ll buy or borrow something else.
From the original Penguin statement it seemed to be that they were much more worried about out-of-area lending than DRM. Afraid, in other words, that people they refuse to sell books to might acquire them legitimately (by borrowing from a library located in another country) rather than just downloading them from a file-sharing site.
I’m sure the people running such sites will be thankful for the Publishers Association continued support for file-sharing.
I think that Teleread and other, similar sources need to help us poor readers out with an explainer as to the conditions of sale that exist between libraries and eBook sellers. Do they actually buy the eBooks or are they licensed? If the buy the book, why do they not have full control of it as per the doctrine for first sale?
Until my understanding of this is far better than it is today, I am hopelessly unable to decide who to side with.
Frank – I believe what we need is readers who say to the publishers and sellers we do NOT ACCEPT your conditions of sale if you expect us to accept licensing instead of ‘selling’. They have “BUY” on their web sites so as a reader when I click on “BUY” I expect and insist on executing that sale. So when I “BUY” an eBook I execute full ownership of that eBook, full ownership rights to loan and sell on that eBook.
Readers need to tell those publishers in their faces that this is what we insist on.