"Why eBooks Wear Out Faster Than Everyday Paper Books"
You’ll be reading that paperback decades from now
article. Why we need libraries to *buy* books not rent them.
https://www.lifewire.com/why-ebooks-wear-out-faster-than-everyday-paper-books-6831842
@brewsterkahle
I would say the biggest problem libraries have with ebooks are not "digital rot," but the onerous licensing terms forced on them by publishers, including embargoes, expiring licenses, increased license costs, and lending limits.
NPR's Planet Money did a decent summary earlier this month:
In 2019, a group of librarians (quietly) stormed the offices of a major publisher, Macmillan, to protest a controversial policy on e-books. On this show, how a tiny change - a book on a screen - threw an industry into war with itself.<br/><br/>Subscribe to Planet Money+ in <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/290783428">Apple Podcasts</a> or at <a href="http://plus.npr.org/planetmoney">plus.npr.org/planetmoney</a>a
@forpeterssake @brewsterkahle In the early e-book reader days, Sony had some products and their own book store. And I bought some books. And Sony decided it wasn't such a great idea to be in the e-book business and shut down their store.
And then Sony convinced me to strip the DRM from my books so I could read them on other devices. And now I will not purchase any ebooks in other than ePub format where I can strip the DRM and not have them become useless in the future.
@lmamakos @brewsterkahle Yep, I went through the same process! I maintain my own DRM-free ebook library now, some of which are in older formats, but I have never once had trouble converting them and reading them as long as they were DRM-free. As others have said, the problem is not ebooks so much as DRM.
(For the record, I still love a physical book sometimes. Plenty of love for both.)
Brewster Kahle
Pete
Louis Mamakos