From: Joseph Wickens <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2018 10:27:18 -0300

Hi Steven,
The fact remains that these books are not now lendable and that many libraries increasingly favour this format and  I am not sure what kind of exemptions could be written into any copyright law that could make this possible (except for the inclusion of stipulations regarding DRM).   "Lending" an e-book is actually giving a digital copy of the item to the end-user which differs radically from a physical copy which is actually loaned, and returned.  I think the problem is not a copyright problem  and a technical problem but only a technical one. If providing another library's patron the use of an ebook could be done in such a way that the file could be secured so as to limit use and prohibit reproduction we would have something that publishers could agree to.  Some efforts in this direction have been made, most notably Occam's Reader, but the process is by no means perfect. And there are even some enlightened publishers who have allowed e-lending without (as far as I can tell) any of the DRM measures you would think they would want (see VIVA's ebook lending agreement).

I think a united effort by the bright people and the people of good will is needed to crack this one and sooner the better.
Thanks
Joe Wickens


On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 10:47 PM LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: "Sowards, Steve" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2018 12:11:46 +0000

Of course, the ILL problem behind “electronic format only” is not because of the format per se. The key problem is the fact that copyright law exemptions for ILL have not caught up with the evolution of scholarly publishing. The technical problems for e-book lending could be solved by bright people, but won’t be as long as we have legislation (and legislators, and lobbyists) standing in the way.

 

Steven Sowards

Associate Director for Collections

Michigan State University Libraries

366 W. Circle Drive

East Lansing MI 48824

 


 

From: Joseph Wickens <[log in to unmask]>

Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2018 13:20:13 -0300

And the "the loss of the twenty-first century" is our inability to share the bulk of library book collections from 2000 forward with other libraries at all because they are being acquired in electronic format only.  This forum addresses the most important problem facing Interlibrary Lending today. Thanks for sharing, Jim.

 

Joe Wickens

 

On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 12:27 AM LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>

Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2018 06:27:52 -0700

Last week, the Internet Archive's open library forum was devoted to the practice and possibilities of controlled digital lending, a way of relying on fair use to begin to make in-copyright library materials available to the public digitally while respecting copyright and complying with the law.  Three recent documents:

 

1.  a longer white paper on the subject:  https://osf.io/preprints/lawarxiv/7fdyr/    Further document is included at https://controlleddigitallending.org/readings

 

2.  a more concise 'position statement' authored by legal scholars at Harvard, NYU, Georgetown, Duke, and the Internet Archive:  https://controlleddigitallending.org/statement

 

3.  an even more concise blog post by Duke's scholarly communications librarian David Hansen summarizing the issues:  https://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/2018/09/28/controlled-digital-lending-of-library-books/

 

The problem addressed is critical, what Brewster Kahle of the IA calls "the loss of the twentieth century" -- our collective inability to access the bulk of the material in our library collections, from the 1920s forward, in any form other than print.  

 

Jim O'Donnell

Arizona State University