I unexpectedly found myself on the side of the road Friday when my bus driver declared “last stop” rather sooner than usual. Making the best of it I walked down to the grocery store, and my route took me past Chapters. I have a hard time walking past a bookstore. My poor-studenthood used to keep the bibliospending in check, but now it takes all sorts of mental effort. As I neared the entrance I started enumerating all the reasons why I shouldn’t stop: I still have books I haven’t read from the last Amazon order, I have one more library book to finish and two more I’m planning to borrow, I just bought a copy of The New Yorker the other day, etc. As I passed a group of patrons sitting outside the attached coffee shop, a young woman turned to her friends and articulated the reason she wouldn’t be going into the bookstore:
“I haven’t read a whole book since like grade 4.” How could I argue with that? I walked on.
A couple weeks ago in the wake of the aforementioned amazon order, I signed up for an Ottawa Public Library card. I’m not sure why I didn’t do so sooner; public libraries are awesome, especially in the age of the interweb. The library catalog is searchable online, books can be requested online, renewed online, etc. The chance to read widely and with no risk (don’t like the book on the history of parsnips in 18th century France? Take it back and get one about the frogs of the Amazon) is something I’m quickly going to be unable to live without, I’m sure.
I am a little puzzled about how libraries are allowed to exist in our capitalist society. The intellectual property giants scream and cry against file sharing, but never seem to complain about libraries: state-sponsored institutions that will lend you as many movies, cds, and books as you want, for free. Perhaps, because libraries traditionally deal in books and, as such luminaries as Steve Jobs well know, books don’t matter, they are given a free pass? Who knows. Don’t knock it. Get a library card.
I’m pretty sure that libraries have to cough up “royalties” or usage fees depending on how often a book is taken out. They don’t just pay for a book and that’s it as far as I know. Kind of like how musicians get paid when their stuff gets played on the radio.
I completely agree on the library card though. Except I never get through the books fast enough. I have to take one back tomorrow that I only just started :-(
This should answer your final question:
http://www.plr-dpp.ca/
Also consider net-flix in this question, which is currently protected under the US first-sale doctrine, where if you bought the media outright, then you can sell the content as well as the media to someone else. Pitty about DRM :-(