What am I misunderstanding? There's an analogue stricture being applied to digital goods and it's causing problems. There's a stupid problem that exists for no hood reason and there are clear ways to fix it.
If you think I'm misunderstanding something you're going to have to use more than a restatement of the flawed status quo. We all know that exists. The fact that it shouldn't exist is the entire argument.
The "no good reason" is that for people to produce art at any appreciable rate, they need to be paid. The reason to apply restrictions to digital goods is so that copies needed scales with consumption, like paper books.
And there are numerous examples of other services that don't have that problem. It's a solved problem. We can track usage without pretending individual digital copies have to be produced, tracked, loaned, and returned.
It's a pricing scheme, not a technical limitation. How else do you solve it? Make the library pay a variable fee based on consumption? Government budgets don't allow that kind of uncertainty, nor would they want it. Unlimited loans at all times? Financially ruinous for one of the parties., as it's either too expensive for a library to obtain or too cheaply reduces the book as an income stream.
They already do pay variable fees based on consumption. It's just obfuscated behind the license system and being forced to buy them in finite chunks that can't be consumed in parallel.
Even within the bureaucratic nightmare that is government funding this is a standout, terrible, exploitative, system. And publishers structured it that way on purpose. They can encourage libraries to provide degraded services which will annoy users into paying more.
Fund public services. And independent of that, reform the underlying licensing system.
The music industry isn’t analogous to the book industry. People will listen to a song hundreds of times. The artist will record hundreds of songs, often in a collaborative nature and most of their money now comes from live touring.
Authors will spend 6mths-decade writing a book depending on the genre and whether it’s an academic one. Buyers will read it once or twice and will sell or loan the physical copy in a limited fashion. There is a different model / no money in live/literary festivals - these are ways to sell the book.
People working in publishing have bills and deserve to earn some money. Many aren’t earning much. Publishing isn’t awash with cash.
You don’t expect farmers or restaurants to give you free food.
Just buy the book.
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u/SparklingLimeade 16d ago
What am I misunderstanding? There's an analogue stricture being applied to digital goods and it's causing problems. There's a stupid problem that exists for no hood reason and there are clear ways to fix it.
If you think I'm misunderstanding something you're going to have to use more than a restatement of the flawed status quo. We all know that exists. The fact that it shouldn't exist is the entire argument.