“…traditional libraries underline an inconvenient truth: allowing people to share things – principally books in the case of libraries – does not lead to the collapse of the industry trying to sell those same things. But publishers really don’t seem to have learned that lesson, judging by this article in the New York Times about the nonsensical attitude they have to libraries lending out ebooks:
In their eyes, borrowing an e-book from a library has been too easy. Worried that people will click to borrow an e-book from a library rather than click to buy it, almost all major publishers in the United States now block libraries’ access to the e-book form of either all of their titles or their most recently published ones.
This suggests that if libraries didn’t exist, and somebody tried to set one up, publishers would use the same logic to refuse to sell traditional books for that purpose. History shows that’s an absurd position, but equally absurd are the efforts of publishers to make borrowing ebooks less convenient…” Story
