Thursday, February 17, 2022

This is evil!!

The Maryland court blocked the library ebooks law from going into effect, claiming that it violated copyright protection.

Now, that might be, and by itself wouldn't have riled me. But, the very next sentence in the Publishers Weekly Daily eletter says this: "Hachette Book Group parent company Lagardère saw record gains last year, with HBG up as well even discounting its purchase of Workman Publishing."

And they aren't the only publishing company setting records for profit and sales!

But, they won't let the libraries have ebooks at a fair price (the pricing to libraries is definitely ridiculous and gouging) or in a timely manner. Why? Because it might damage their record profits. It would be different if they weren't making tons of cash and paying their executives sinfully extravagent salaries and bonuses (all the while paying their rank and file workers scandalously low wages and exploiting them). But they aren't.

Copyright is to protect the rights to make a fair profit for authors and publishers. It is an attempt to balance the rights of producers and consumers. But, the balance of late is far too much in favor of the corporate producer (not most authors, mind you) at the expense of the consumer.

Just an
</idle musing>

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