My library makes people use shitty apps for ebooks and audiobooks instead of using whatever reader/player you want
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MacStainless@piefed.social 3 days ago
Just use your local library and get all the books you want for free and in the most legit way possible. No idea why you feel the need to pirate books.
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
MacStainless@piefed.social 3 days ago
That’s not their fault. Libby / overdrive is what the market offers. If a library wants to loan digital books, that’s the answer. This is a competition and marketplace and monopoly problem. Not a library problem.
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
I wasn’t assigning blame, I was just giving a reason some don’t want to use the library offerings
unphazed@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Problem is the wait lists. Cosmere books in my area are on an approximate 18wk wait. Audiobooks nearly double.
dgdft@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I respect the spirit you’re going for, but FYI, Libby and Overdrive are private-equity owned and just as exploitative (if not more so) than the major publishers were.
They do not give libraries an unlimited license for digital books, but rather make them pay what they would for a physical book, and allow them to loan out the digital copy a relatively small number of times (usually around ~4-5 IIRC) under the guise that a physical book would have been irreparably degraded after having been lent out that many times. There’s a stream of billions of dollars being moved from non-consenting taxpayers going right to a monopolistic gatekeeper.
If we’re talking physical books, libraries are definitely still great for that, but I find that the vast majority of the time I look to check if they have a specific book I’m after, there are zero physical copies anywhere in the system, and all the digital “copies” are already “checked out”. E.g., I went looking for a copy of PKD’s Valis last week, and my options were: library audiobook (vomit), wait two weeks for a “checked out” digital copy from the library (vomit), buy from Amazon (vomit), or sail the seas.
So no, that’s a shitty substitute – and your moral high-ground has a sinkhole beneath it.
MacStainless@piefed.social 3 days ago
That may be true but until a better solution for ebook lending exists, libraries in their current form using Libby / Overdrive is still an enormous public benefit and is a direct service from local taxes that benefits humanity.
I don’t agree with Overdrive’s practices but I absolutely don’t hold libraries accountable for that because they can’t control what the market offers.