Following the D-Day Invasion of World War II, the Allies found it difficult to reach Berlin and end the war. One major attempt to cross the Rhine River was called Operation Market Garden. It was a bold move to take multiple bridges crossing the Rhine and establish a major foothold on the Berlin side of the river. The operation failed, and that ended all hope the Allies had of ending the war in 1944.
Later, Cornelius Ryan wrote a book about the operation, which was subsequently made into a movie. He took the name of the book from an unconfirmed comment by one of the planners of the operation in which he said before the operation began: “I think we may be going a bridge too far.” Since then, this operation has been seen as a textbook case of, and an allusion to, overreaching.
Today I learned that HarperCollins is forcing Overdrive to limit the library circulations of e-books to no more than 26 times. As OverDrive put it in a communication to customers:
Next week, OverDrive will communicate a licensing change from a publisher that, while still operating under the one-copy/one-user model, will include a checkout limit for each eBook licensed. Under this publisher’s requirement, for every new eBook licensed, the library (and the OverDrive platform) will make the eBook available to one customer at a time until the total number of permitted checkouts is reached.
First we have endured the gutting of the first sale doctrine in relation to e-books, which in the case of print books has allowed libraries to make untold millions in book sales over the years. And now this.
Then, what about publishers like Macmillan and Simon and Schuster, who don’t allow the circulation of e-books at all?
Publishers are pushing too far into our territory and it’s high time we fought back. We need to let them know that they have gone a bridge too far.
No related posts.
[...] Roy Tennant’s thoughts [...]
[...] A Bridge Too Far [...]
Great literary reference, Roy. My late father landed in Normandy on D-Day, did things that later won him the Silver Star, and saw the liberation of Paris on through Germany. I wish he were alive so I could ask him about this topic.
Are there any studies that show the rate of re-circulation of ebooks versus paper books? By rate I ask the speed. It seems like popular titles could pass from patron to patron rapidly, whereas in the physical world it would take a tad longer to get the physical longer for recirculation.
Curious about the number 26. There’s been plenty of research in library science over the last few decades, so it seems reasonable to assume they’ve based their decision on quality work. I’d really like to see how they arrived at this figure.
I have posted a link to your call to arms on our wiki. Those of us in New Zealand here who work in the library and information sector and care about these new developments, I’m sure wouldn’t hesitate to support you in your comments here.