Public Library is Distributing Public Domain Works With Private DRM
The Seattle Times is reporting that the King County Library System in Washington state is now offering audiobooks that can be downloaded and accessed from people’s home computers. This seems like a resonable advance in bringing libraries toward lending digital goods until I saw that books in the public domain are among the list of books people are waiting their turn for, only Windows users can use the service and after 21 days you have to give the public domain work ‘back’.
DRM Invades the Public Domain in a Public Institution
Among the list of “most popular e-books” checked out is Time Machine & the War of the Worlds and in the list of “Top e-books library patrons are waiting for” is A Tale of Two Cities. According to the library’s site, they only have three digital copies of Time Machine and none are available. If you want to listen to A Tale of Two Cities, you are out of luck as well since they only have ten digital copies and all are “checked out” at this time. The current e-book system is also badly restrictive. If you check their Audio Listening Options you discover that you can only have the audio book for 21 days, you can’t burn all titles to CD and you’d better be running Windows or you don’t get to listen to public domain works at all. But, these books are in the public domain meaning we all have the right to reproduce and enjoy these works. Why would the public library, of all institutions, have people waiting their turn to enjoy something that can be distributed freely?
Rights of Performances of Works
Now I fully realize that with these being audio books, some producer made a recording of these public domain works and holds rights over those recorded performances. Anyone familiar with Project Gutenberg however knows there is a better solution. Project Gutenberg has 15,000 e-books available for unlimited consumption and distribution by anyone for non-commercial use. They are all works in the public domain and, as a result can be downloaded over and over again with no waiting. You can share it with a friend or burn it to a CD or do whatever you want with it including A Tale of Two Cities, The Time Machine and War of the Worlds. The King County Library would do a better job serving it’s public with simple links to Project Gutenberg than with the DRM-based solution they are currently spending money on.
What Project Gutenberg Offers
If I do a search on Project Gutenberg for file type MP3, I get 567 recordings of public domain works free for the taking. Why isn’t the library distributing this material so that no one has to wait in a digital line to listen to what belongs to them anyway? The library could go as far as helping to contribute to these open projects, further enriching public ownership with the public’s own dollars. This is clearly a failure of the public library system to take advantage of the public’s works and a failure of the Seattle Times to recognize what’s going on here. I have written to them both to say so.
As public library systems across the country move into digital distribution of works, I certainly hope they look to distributing works in the public domain in a way that actually serves the public instead of serving corporations looking to control and profit off of something that should be soaking in freedom: freedom to share and enjoy and learn.
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Comments (2)
It’s no wonder that the mp3s offered at the Project Gutenberg website are free. As far as I can tell, all selections are read by computer, which makes them practically worthless as far as I’m concerned. I guess you get what you pay for, uh?
You’re right in that many of the audio titles Project Gutenberg has are computer read (something I’m not a fan of), but many titles are read by living, breathing humans. Obviously, there needs to be many more, but certainly public libraries could use their resources to aid in this effort instead of funding private productions.