You may have seen in the last few weeks that Internet Archive is trying to raise public support and funds for a legal fight. The thing they are being sued over? Exactly that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachette_v._Internet_Archive
It’s an outdated business model, but the problem it tries to solve is real. You wouldn’t want the author to be payed for a single copy which the library freely distribute to as many users as it can. And when I say “freely”, I mean it’s free for the library - the readers will pay subscription. And when I say “library”, I don’t mean your local community library - I mean a big company that operates an online library.
For some reason books are the only media that operates by this model digitally. One would assume it’s because how physical libraries work - but video libraries were a thing, and so were game libraries, and you don’t see online video libraries or game libraries that use this model.
Maybe it’s because of advertisement? You can easily put ads in books (newspapers always have ads in them), but due to the static nature of books and the complete control the user have on the pace, you can’t force the readers to read your ads.
At any rate, this is not really scarcity because this model does not actually allow them to inflate the price. The library’s patrons pay a general subscription, so any specific book does not have a price in the library and therefore they can’t raise its price just because the library does not have enough copies of it. And if someone is willing to pay more in order to jump the queue - they can just as easily buy their own digital copy of the book.
Tell me this isn’t real.
It is totally real
You may have seen in the last few weeks that Internet Archive is trying to raise public support and funds for a legal fight. The thing they are being sued over? Exactly that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachette_v._Internet_Archive
Artificial scarcity of digital goods is a fucking blight.
It’s an outdated business model, but the problem it tries to solve is real. You wouldn’t want the author to be payed for a single copy which the library freely distribute to as many users as it can. And when I say “freely”, I mean it’s free for the library - the readers will pay subscription. And when I say “library”, I don’t mean your local community library - I mean a big company that operates an online library.
For some reason books are the only media that operates by this model digitally. One would assume it’s because how physical libraries work - but video libraries were a thing, and so were game libraries, and you don’t see online video libraries or game libraries that use this model.
Maybe it’s because of advertisement? You can easily put ads in books (newspapers always have ads in them), but due to the static nature of books and the complete control the user have on the pace, you can’t force the readers to read your ads.
At any rate, this is not really scarcity because this model does not actually allow them to inflate the price. The library’s patrons pay a general subscription, so any specific book does not have a price in the library and therefore they can’t raise its price just because the library does not have enough copies of it. And if someone is willing to pay more in order to jump the queue - they can just as easily buy their own digital copy of the book.
Its definitely real for audiobooks. I gave up on one after it said the estimated wait was 17 weeks, and instead sailed the high seas