From the November 11, 2011 TLS review by David Finkelstein of Michael J. Everton’s book The Grand Chorus of Complaint: Authors and the Business Ethics of American Publishing:

In the nineteenth century, American publishers were rarely viewed positively. They were vilified as thieves and predators engaged in the systematic business of “cutting each other’s throats,” to quote a late-century commentator. Yet contemporary publishers saw themselves less as villains than as merchants of culture and civility, using self-serving rhetoric that linked culture and competition, moral virtue and economic wealth.

. . .

Everton offers an unusual perspective on this issue, focusing on the bombastic debates over natural and moral rights that took place in American circles at mid-century. His perspicacious conclusion is that in this case, opponents of unethical publishers used language as a weapon to cast authors as persecuted moral authorities in a land dominated by crass commercial interests.

Yes. Some of the issues are different this time around, but let’s just substitute “libraries” for “authors” in that last paragraph and see how far it can go.

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From “The Digital Shift,” Librarians Feel Sticker Shock as Price for Random House Ebooks Rises as Much as 300 Percent:

New prices for Random House’s ebooks took effect on Thursday, and as the details emerged a number of librarians across the country expressed dismay at the doubling and tripling in prices they are seeing.

“We’re very concerned. These are tough times for libraries. It’s very tough here in Louisville,” said Debbe Oberhausen, manager of collection services, at the Louisville Free Public Library. “We want to provide this service, but this kind of pricing is really going to take a huge chunk of our budget,” she said.

. . .

“We believe our new library e-pricing reflects the high value placed on perpetuity of lending and simultaneity of availability for our titles,” said Stuart Applebaum, a Random House spokesperson. “Understandably, every library will have its own perspective on this topic, and we are prepared to listen, learn, and adapt as appropriate,” he said.

“Simultaneity” here means that Random House’s titles are available to libraries on the same date the retail edition is put on sale. It is not referring to simultaneous, multiple user access. The model remains one book, one user.

I don’t know that you need any commentary from me about this. It’s just part of the pattern. Publishers are completely lost as to what they should do anymore. If they weren’t lashing out and hurting readers, libraries, and authors, I’d feel sorry for them.

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The problem with DRM, photo by djfiander, cc by-nc-sa. As DJF notes in his comment on the photo, “Spotted on the Toronto subway: if the publishers had their way, she wouldn’t be allowed to take this many notes in her copy of this book.”

Reminder, publishers still hate you. From The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus blog comes this report, E-Textbook Vendor Sues Publisher for Ending Licensing Agreement. The actual fight between the parties seems like it may be more complex than they are letting on (and I admit that I haven’t read the entire lawsuit which is embedded as a document in the blog post), but here’s the crux of the matter from my point of view (with emphasis added):

The conflict began last August, when Kno introduced new features to its e-reader platform. One of those tools, Journal, lets readers take notes and make excerpts for later reference in the software. The next month, Cengage claimed the added note-taking feature enabled copyright infringement “through the creation of a derivative work,” according to the complaint.

There you go. Cengage hates you because you want to take notes and clip passages from its textbooks for later reference. They think that is unreasonable; so unreasonable that they are trying to get out of their contract with Kno, and are willing to endure a lawsuit.

They hate their readers and customers and fair use rights that much.

Thanks, Catherine Pellegrino, for pointing this out via retweet.

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