> Controlled Digital Lending replicates the print lending process digitally in a way that respects copyright by maintaining this ratio.
Maintaining an owned-to-loaned ratio does not respect copyright.
The core concept of copyright is very simple: only you have the right to make copies. It doesn't matter if you destroy a copy beforehand, making the new copy is still illegal. Copyright is about permission, not equivalence, and you can't resell or loan out permission.
Or at least that's what the Second Circuit said when ReDigi was trying to sell used MP3s.
The thing is, the true core concept of copyright law is "whatever enables America's cultural empire to be cutthroat ruthless assholes that can devour other countries' competing cultural empires[0]". Free speech backed[1] by government-granted monopolies on that speech is the path it took to build such an empire, which is why copyright law became what it is today. The US government, in a sense, is perfectly willing to see its own library system grow increasingly irrelevant to curry favor with its domestic cultural industry.
The fact that said cultural industry is perfectly willing to censor itself to get market access in China probably means we've given them way too much free reign. China does not respect copyright. It doesn't respect freedom of speech, human rights, multiculturalism, feminism[2], gay rights[3], antiracism, or anything else the American people value, or even what the cultural industries themselves pretend to value. Hell, it doesn't even respect socialism[4].
Anyway, we should consider compulsory licensing. It's closer to respecting copyright than Controlled Digital Lending's lip service. Just have the government set a price to be paid by libraries for loaning out e-books, and let them manage their own services and e-book files.
[0] This is why, for example, Japanese media companies tend to be more litigious towards US fans than Japanese ones. Any author or publisher outside the US is at constant risk of cultural gentrification, and has fought tooth and nail just to gain a beachhead into US culture.
[1] To be clear I am NOT one of those "copyright backstops 1A" people, but the judicial system is full of judges who think it does
We already do this for songs; anyone can pay the mechanical rate and record their own cover of a song.
It is an imperfect comparison, since a cover is its own recording, and ongoing royalties are involved, but the point is that there are some precedents for setting a price.
Maintaining an owned-to-loaned ratio does not respect copyright.
The core concept of copyright is very simple: only you have the right to make copies. It doesn't matter if you destroy a copy beforehand, making the new copy is still illegal. Copyright is about permission, not equivalence, and you can't resell or loan out permission.
Or at least that's what the Second Circuit said when ReDigi was trying to sell used MP3s.
The thing is, the true core concept of copyright law is "whatever enables America's cultural empire to be cutthroat ruthless assholes that can devour other countries' competing cultural empires[0]". Free speech backed[1] by government-granted monopolies on that speech is the path it took to build such an empire, which is why copyright law became what it is today. The US government, in a sense, is perfectly willing to see its own library system grow increasingly irrelevant to curry favor with its domestic cultural industry.
The fact that said cultural industry is perfectly willing to censor itself to get market access in China probably means we've given them way too much free reign. China does not respect copyright. It doesn't respect freedom of speech, human rights, multiculturalism, feminism[2], gay rights[3], antiracism, or anything else the American people value, or even what the cultural industries themselves pretend to value. Hell, it doesn't even respect socialism[4].
Anyway, we should consider compulsory licensing. It's closer to respecting copyright than Controlled Digital Lending's lip service. Just have the government set a price to be paid by libraries for loaning out e-books, and let them manage their own services and e-book files.
[0] This is why, for example, Japanese media companies tend to be more litigious towards US fans than Japanese ones. Any author or publisher outside the US is at constant risk of cultural gentrification, and has fought tooth and nail just to gain a beachhead into US culture.
[1] To be clear I am NOT one of those "copyright backstops 1A" people, but the judicial system is full of judges who think it does
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism_in_China#Arrest_of_Fe...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_rights_in_China#Censorsh...
[4] If labor unions are illegal, you're not socialist.