rothman has been pushing this for at least 10 years, but I think he
doesn't understand the basic economics. What he wants is for there to
be one, big public digital library that lends digital books to anyone
for free. So... where would revenue for the publishers come in? He
thinks that some kind of monolithic fee system would satisfy the
publishers, but where would the money for a tempting fee come from?
Libraries manage because they *don't* pay a per-use fee. He somehow
thinks that "magic will happen" that will make all of this
economically feasible. In fact, he thinks this would save libraries
money. I think he engages in utopian thinking.
kc
Quoting "B.G. Sloan" <bgsloan2_at_YAHOO.COM>:
> Interesting blog post on The Atlantic magazine web site by David
> Rothman, "the founder of TeleRead, the oldest English-language site
> offering general e-book news and views."
>
> "Might the time have finally come for a well-stocked national
> digital library system (NDLS) for the United States? That's the
> topic of this essay, and many of the same concepts could apply to
> other countries, including Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Italy,
> Australia, Japan, China, India, Brazil, and various other nations.
> Perhaps national digital library systems could interconnect, forming
> a global one. But for simplicity's sake and reasons of self
> interest, I'll focus here on a digital system for the United States."
>
> Full text at: http://bit.ly/dz23Rj
>
> Bernie Sloan
>
>
>
>
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Mon Nov 08 2010 - 03:40:58 EST