this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
129 points (97.1% liked)
Technology
59534 readers
3168 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Because their entire argument thus far has basically been “but we’re a library.” But that completely misses the point that even libraries need to comply with licensing laws. Even with ebooks, they can’t just lend an unlimited number of copies. They have licensing agreements with the publishers, to be able to lend [x] copies of [y] book at a time.
They purchase digital licenses to be able to lend those books, and they can only lend as many licenses as they own. Just like physical books. They need to use time-gated DRM to automatically revoke access whenever the rental time is up.
And at first, that’s exactly what IA did. But they decided to disable that DRM, and just start lending unlimited copies to people instead, which flies in the face of established copyright law.