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In the p-book era I’ve racked up enough library fines to build a headquarters, not just a branch. Hey, it could be worse. I think of the fines as donations to my favorite library system in a near-by county (alas, my own city’s library is too understocked for my needs). The issue is one of time. I’m self-employed, and in effect it costs me money when I must fight traffic. Simply put, I’ve got the most selfish of reasons to be keen on Project Gutenberg, whose public domain classics can remain on my computer forever. I love to skip around from title to title after I download them for keeps. Just finished At the Earth’s Core and have King Coal and several others going right now.

But what about books still under copyright? I’m grouchy about OverDrive-style “solutions.” I don’t want books to vanish from my PDA or otherwise be disabled after such-and-such number of days. Might not always be able to renew ‘em.

So what to do? Well, for years, the TeleRead plan has advocated perennial checkouts–the ability to keep even copyrighted library books on your machine forever. If it takes the inclusion of Digital Rights Mangement to sell the industry on this concept–well, if need be, I’ll stomach it. Jon Noring has told how the industry could at least make DRM less obnoxious through use of nonproprietary approaches.

But how would perennial checkouts work to allow publishers to make money, given the possibility of file-sharing? Well, suppose Reader A couldn’t successfully pass on a book to Reader B unless Fair Use or one of two other situations existed. First of the two others: B lived in the same library-service area and could check out the books wiht the same provisions for payment to copyright holders as in A’s case. The payment process could begin automatically, triggered by the file-sharing. In the second situation, A or B (or B’s own library system) could pay the content-provider directly.

Result? Library users could keep library books on their systems as long as they wanted, while also being able to share. I think it would show foresight on the part of the Open eBook Forum experts to develop such a capability. Then libraries would have yet another lending model available for copyrighted content.

My own hunch is that libraries right now will want to experiment with different models, but the TeleRead-style one is my favorite since it would allow users to build custom libraries on their own machines without worrying about zapping of overdue items. And at the same time, as you’ll notice, creators would receive compensation. Ideally this could happen someday through a national digital library fund–to reduce the famous savage inequalities of our schools and libraries.

 
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