C’m on HarperCollins . C’m on . We know that books are n’t flying off shelves like they used to , but you ’re not help subject with policies like this — setting your ebooks to lock up after 26 rentals and forcing libraries to buy a young written matter to keep them on shelves . Ugh .
The publishing firm ’s principle is this : physical books get into out — HarperCollins has watch that this happens after 26 cheque - outs , on middling — and so ebooks should wear out , too , allowing publisher to gain from libraries ’ subsequently buy copies . In anOpen Letter to HarperCollins & Readers of eBooks , Oklahoma ’s Pioneer Library System eloquently draft why this “ forced obsolescence , ” as they call it , is an sharply idiotic idea :
The argument against the arbitrary number is twofold . First , alternate of books in library is based upon the condition of the book , not the number of times it has been checked out . It is not unusual for popular books to be checked out 100 times or more before the wear and bout of circulation takes its cost and the Holy Scripture has to be replaced or vivify . secondly , eBooks , too , eventually wear out . The electronic file formats become obsolete in a issue of age as technology progresses and customer interests change . retrieve the switch from VHS to videodisc or cassette to compact disc ?
Putting those business aside , have ’s discontinue to moot the implicit in principle here , which is both dumb and dangerous : new formats should inherit the shortcomings of old ones . That ’s farcical . Why should an ebook , which is not a physical thing , degenerate at all ? That ’d be like a movie studio apartment telling you to expect your DVDs to get fuzzier and fuzzier with repeated screening , because that happened sometimes with VHS tapes . I do n’t know how publishers are go to survive in a digital era , but if this is the best they can come up with , they deserve to have . [ Pioneer Library SystemviaGeekosystem ]
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