Do We Need State (and District) Ebook laws?

With Connecticut, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia passing laws in an effort to get fair and sustainable library ebook terms, and the Illinois and New Jersey legislators and soon others exploring such laws, a clash is not surprisingly developing over the need for and efficacy of such laws.

To judge from legislative testimony, the Big 5, or at least their lobbyists, and OverDrive think the laws unnecessary and indeed likely to be harmful.

As far as I know, none of the smaller or Indie publishers have commented. This is likely because they don’t need to. With rare exceptions, their offerings already meet any standard for what might be considered reasonable. As always, RF encourages libraries to discover and share their titles, many of great interest, even award winning. Why not reward those who don’t gouge us?

The Ebook Study Group ((Kyle K. Courtney, Juliya Ziskina, Heather Joseph, Meikle Hall, Tucky Taylor, and John Chrastka) recently published an opinion in Library Journal, Moving “Beyond the Publisher Playbook: Why state-level contract law is essential to the future of digital library rights,” responding to an earlier opinion piece that repeated some of the publisher/one library vendor claims about the laws.

Many followers of RF have likely read it. If you haven’t, it is important and worthy of attention. We won’t go into details about its claims, but commend it for showing the need for ebook laws, not only for sustainable terms but for carrying out the mission of libraries in an increasingly digital age.

We will, however, add a point about the need for state-level laws. The piece notes that “For over a decade, national organizations pursued a strategy of incremental negotiation, asking publishers to voluntarily reform a highly lucrative, predatory licensing market. That approach failed.” Fail it indeed did. We add that without action, the failure will continue. ReadersFirst recently released a study about ebook terms, suggesting a very-much middle ground between what might be the most basic costs (consumer retail) and the current inflated. We wrote a piece about it and discussed it the ALA Ebook Friday meeting. At that event, a representative from a VERY large publisher said that they would never agree to these modest terms or negotiate at all to any library proposal, calling negotiation “price fixing.” Calling BS on that one. The closest I’ve seen to price fixing happened in 2018, when within a few month four of the Big 5 went away from perpetual access and adopted nearly identical metered terms. The timing is certainly suspicious. A bunch of people don’t have to gather in a smoke-filled room and twirl black moustaches to engage in fixing pricing.

We called for negotiation in our study. Major library organizations have jointly called for negotiations. The publishers still aren’t listening. They are not going to listen. Yes, state laws are necessary. If we are ever going to get fair terms, it seems we must force the issue. I’m happy to hear of some better path. Until that path is clear, state-level laws are our only redress. We don’t need more studies. We don’t need more information. We need action. RF encourages all states to get involved so that we can create a movement with enough economic clout to get them to talk with us.

Until then, shop Indie and create demand for new voices.