Sony Breathes New Life Into Library Books

Barence writes "Sony has launched a new range of touchscreen eBook readers — and is breathing new life into the concept of public library books. The readers offer support for free eBook loans from local authority libraries. If you're lucky enough to be a member of a local library supporting the service (50 have signed up so far in the UK) you'll be able to visit its website, tap your library card number in and borrow any book in the eBook catalog, for free, for a period of 14 or 21 days. The odd thing about this is it works in a very similar way to the good old bricks-and-mortar library. While a title is out on loan, it's unavailable to others to borrow (unless the library has purchased multiple copies); it only becomes available again once the loan period expires and the book removes itself from your reader."

The Nook already does this in the US.

[wiredog]

IIRC, most libraries that loan e-books use the EPUB format, so any non-Kindle reader should be capable of borrowing library books.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[lxs]

I couldn't agree more. They may give some slack but you're still on a leash. However after stripping off the DRM (which is still legal in the civilized world) I find that I really enjoy reading ebooks.

Scheme already running in Hamburg

[gondel]

I am not sure if this is really news. We have had a scheme like this in Hamburg for much more than a year. http://www.bibliothek-digital.de/hamburg [bibliothek-digital.de] You take a book or newspaper out and it is unavailable to others, exactly as described in the article. You cannot return an article early, even if you are finished with it. Perhaps the main difference is that in Hamburg, the selection of books is very weak, but the selection of newspapers and weeklies is better.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[mcgrew]

If it's in the public domain you can download it free from many internet sources. No need to visit a library at all, unlesss you want the dead tree version.

Internet Archive [archive.org]
Gutengerg Project [gutenberg.org]
lots of universities [virginia.edu] post PD books on the internet, as well as a lot of books that are still under copyright. I was assigned Only Yesterday in a history class I took in the late 1970s at SIU (I still have the book), and now It's on the internet as well [virginia.edu]. It's a good read, I reccomend it.

Plus, there are Creative Commons books out there as well.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Shompol]

So basically you want to be allowed to steal the book. I think that's being an asshole to other people who also want to rent it, not something logical that should be allowed. You don't deserve that control at all.

1. Yes, I do. We all do.
2. What about books written over 100 years ago, they are out of copyright now, right?
3. Why do we have to wait 100 years for it to happen? So the publisher's great-grand-children don't have to work for living?
4. What about kids from poor families? You are denying their right for intellectual development because they cannot afford to pay for electronic copy, that costs you nothing to create? What about middle-class kids? As far as I am concerned, they should be PAID to read books, not the other way around.

Re:The Nook already does this in the US.

[InlawBiker]

You can remove the DRM from EPUB, PDF and PRC (Amazon's flavor of Mobi DRM), but it's not easy enough for the general public to do. Google Mobidedrm and ineptpdf.pyw.

I do this for everything I've bought on my Kindle just on principal. Kindle doesn't support ePub, most likely so they can lock you into their evil monopoly plans. If I had it to do over again I'd get a device that supports ePub, just to avoid the hassle. In this case I don't mind the DRM too much.

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[LanMan04]

There NEEDS to be a financial incentive for a publisher to publish books. And there NEEDS to be a financial incentive for an author to write a book.

Statement 1: True
Statement 2: False

Re:I hope this dies on the vine.

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM doesn't work. It's a fundamental problem.
So library DRM doesn't work either.

Re:Jesus would be so confused by the economy

[martin-boundary]

I know a lot of folks around here deplore such restrictions, but please remember that it's an artificial restriction on something you are not paying for, as a condition to access something that would not otherwise be available to you.

But you're wrong, it would be available to you. The world is full of authors who are willing to give away their work without compensation, eg academic works, religious works, topical news and press releases. The writing for pay model is actually a small part of the full spectrum of writing that's going on every day. If DRM was impossible and nobody paid for documents any more in the future, then we'd still have substantially the same choice available as we have now, although if the only thing you like to read are Stephen King novels, then you'd probably be out of luck.