Chuck sent me a heads-up about a recent action taken by the Free Software Foundation to get libraries to eliminate DRM from circulating electronic materials. While I won’t argue with them about the broader concept about free software and DRM, these activists have missed a very important point - circulation is fundamental to the way libraries work.
Yes, libraries are (essentially) free. Just about anyone can come in to any local public library, sign up for a library card, and check out movies, DVDs, books, training materials, and even tools (at some libraries). As most of you know, libraries use a system of circulation to monitor what materials are available for checkout.
So that materials can be available to as many people as possible, libraries limit the number of days that patrons can borrow materials. At my own library, these borrowing periods range from seven days for CDs, DVDs, and popular reads (books in high demand), to a high of 21 days for most other books in our collection. If a book hasn’t been requested by anyone else, or if it doesn’t fall into any of the aforementioned 7-day categories, people can renew items as many times as they wish.
As most of us learned at a very early age, you don’t own anything in the library - you borrow it and, most importantly, you take it back once you’re finished with it so that others may enjoy it. It’s a policy based on sharing, a concept that most of us have grasped by the time we reach kindergarten.
Many libraries are making digital materials available for checkout. I can’t speak for Boston Public Library, but at my library, patrons are allowed to check out ebooks for a limited borrowing period. Once that period has passed, the digital files are locked and are virtually “returned” to the library collection, where they become available to other patrons. You can’t click a button on your ebook reader to automatically renew the item, but if no one else is waiting for the title, you’re free to return to our eLibrary and check the book out again.
Explain to me why this concept should be different just because we’re dealing with data instead of a physical item? Why should libraries suddenly start giving things away when they’ve never been in the practice of giving away library materials to patrons?
This action against BPL is misguided, and the anger is misdirected. I have to wonder if anyone from the Free Software Foundation bothered to talk to a librarian to gain an understanding of library circulation policies and how they support the library’s mission of being “free to all” - which means free access to all, not freedom of ownership. Had they spoken to a librarian, I’m sure that the FSF would understand that circulation isn’t just bean counting, it’s a means of determining library usage, and that these usage statistics are used to establish library budgets - these same budgets that make it possible for us to provide access to ebooks in the first place.
If they’d talked to a librarian, maybe they’d realize that their bone to pick isn’t with the libraries, it’s with the vendors who provide library materials, or even better, they’d recognize this process for what it is - a 21st century version of the tried and true library circulation polices that exist almost everywhere.
