Fantastic breakdown of publishers suit against lending digital books from on !
wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/e
Couple key points missing, though.
Conversation
Replying to
Recently, over 1000 authors including and (both mentioned on air) spoke out against the suit and other practices harmful to libraries at
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Second, it is key to note that major publishers offer NO option for libraries to own, preserve, and loan digital books—CDL is all there is in terms of library preservation for books in digital format. Many important marginalized voices are published digital-only.
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This fight is awfully reminiscent of Right to Repair—but for book ownership. It’s appropriate to focus on libraries, but emerging “Netflix for books” apps, plus Spotify entering audiobooks, show that the moves being made are toward licensing for all, ownership for none.
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This has big implications in terms of book bans/ability to alter or censor book content, availability & curation of midlist, local, traditionally marginalized, etc., stories for now+posterity, and reader surveillance.
But it’s past my bird site bedtime, so I’ll leave it there.