Something about Penguins Hating Libraries

Penguin Books has pulled its e-titles from publisher Overdrive and from library lending programs. 

Penguin (and other companies that have pulled their support for library lending) claim that putting their books out there for free to the public encourages piracy and profit loss.  I can see their point.  Library's have always promoted piracy.  This past year alone I can not count how many times I caught little old ladies hunched over the copy machine with a copy of The Help.  You have to watch those crazy ladies.

Penguin Stops Selling e-Books to Libraries - Publishers Weekly

Library Book and Tech News: Cyber-Book-a-Tron

I am a librarian from the future.  I am sent from the future to save you, the librarian who will save us from the coming information apocalypse.  Come with me if you want to read.

Netflix announced that it will not pursue the separation of its DVD and streaming services.  Customers of Netflix have already quit or made their decisions.  NYTimes

Charlaine Harris, who already announced her True Blood-based Sookie Sackhouse vampire novel series is almost over, will be writing a graphic novel.  The new series will be based on supernatural stuff and probably be better than the AMC TV series that it was based on.  USAToday

After DC made an exclusive deal with Amazon for their graphic novels, the bookchain Barnes and Noble removed around 100 graphic novels from their shelves.  The break up is set to be a sad one, with B&N sitting alone crying and burning old pictures of Superman.  WSJ

The FCC has passed a resolution that all cellphones must have GPS capabilites by 2018.  Get ready to be tracked by a government agency grasping for relevancy.  techcrunch via geekologie

Italian Wikipedia is no more due to an Italian law that states that if a person has a problem with information shown on any web content, a statement of contradiction must be added to the page in a unaltered form whether it is true or not.  As Wikipedia is constantly updated, this negates their business model.  There goes my Italian Stallion page.  wikimedia via boingboing

Miramax CEO Mike Lang stated that diversity of services offering online content is more important than battling online piracy.  Monopolies cornering the market through exclusive deals can hurt content more than people randomly sharing the content online.  torrentfreak via boingboing

eBook ePiracy: Are Libraries Guilty?

Pirates have a magazine!?

Recently, I posted my ramblings about ebooks and whether or not libraries should begin using them. In that article, I expressed concern that publishing companies may be freaking out because, well, when stuff goes digital, people steal it.  Well, here is an awesome article from ZDnet.com's Tech Broiler Violet Blue expounding on the notion of ebook piracy and ebook lending and what it may mean to the industry.

What I find funny is the same "reasons" pirates use for copying and pasting their favorite song, movie, TV show or book are mostly the same reasons that library's give.  Freedom of information.  Help the community grow.  Yadda Yadda.  Now do not hate me for saying that.  Just look at your libraries DVD collection and think about how many times you check out each copy, for free.  The only difference in me torrenting "Best of Elmo's World DVD Collection" and checking it out at the library is that the library is socially acceptable and government funded that I know bought at least one copy of the material.  I am really interested to know what people think about this.  Leave your comments below and fill my ignorant head.