Publishers limiting library e-book loaning?

[Nathan Bransford]

Interesting news today:

HarperCollins has announced a 26 loan limit on e-book lending for libraries, reports Library Journal. This means that new e-books licensed to libraries from vendors can only be loaned 26 times before the license expires and a new one must be purchased.

What do you think? Should libraries be able to loan e-books indefinitely or should they have to re-up to compensate authors/publishers?

http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/?p=4523

[Guardian]

1: From the perspective of the publisher; it's good as it's compensating the lost sales as many people used to go into libraries instead of buying a book. As it's a digital format, these license fees also would cover the losses which would come from possible illegal copies. It's also a surplus income. So I can understand their perspective.
2: From the perspective of the library; I don't believe that libraries are going to buy a book license after every 26 over and over again. They're going to license free e-books instead as it won't cost them a single dime.
3: From the writer's perspective; I don't know. Are we going to get something after this? If yes, it's also good from our perspective.
4: From the reader's perspective; it will be considered as the "Joke of the year". Although I don't believe these license fees would affect them that much, but because of #2, they simply won't be able to get the desired e-books in certain libraries. Libraries won't pay over and over again, that's a guarantee.

I can understand the core idea, maybe I also agree with it... but it can backfire anytime and presumably it will.

By the way; who the hell figured out this number? 26. Why not 25, 30, 35 or 40? It's just like a cheap sales number... Buy 25 and get one more for free!

[Doug Pardee]

I'm with Mike Perry, who commented at PWxyz. A better system is to simply charge the library for each loan, rather than make libraries buy copies up front.

For printed books, libraries have been able to rely on the First Sale Doctrine. They have no such aegis for e-books. Macmillan and Simon & Schuster refuse to allow any of their titles to be lent as e-books, and now HarperCollins is putting lending-count restrictions on theirs. The libraries currently have no legal recourse; they lend e-books only by the grace of the publishers.

[bcomet]

Not so much with libraries, but with on-line lending sites, I have had my concerns.

What is already happening in my library is that hard copies of new, popular books (like Twilight) are only lent with a dollar charge and a two week limit. But who gets the dollar?