back to article E-books the same as printed ones, says top Euro court egghead

In a seemingly commonsense but important decision, the top advisor of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has decided that electronic books (e‑books) are legally equivalent to their printed versions when it comes to lending them through libraries. In an opinion released [PDF] Thursday, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar said e‑ …

  1. Bibbleq

    So does this mean we can stop paying VAT on ebooks now too ;)

    1. Number6

      That was my immediate thought too.

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge

      And sell them on...?

    3. Mage Silver badge

      Harmonisation

      Governments will see it as an opportunity to add VAT to paper books.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I probably wouldn't borrow an e‑book anyway. People always do e-ink doodles in the margins.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      You should see the state of my kindle afterwards, curling edges, torn pages and coffee stains on may of the pages.

      1. Pen-y-gors

        Stains?

        Think yourself lucky they're just coffee stains!

  3. petur
    Coat

    18 languages but not English

    "Szpunar's opinion – which is available in 18 languages but not English yet"

    I guess they're saving money and betting the English translation will soon not be needed

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 18 languages but not English

      "English translation will" "not be needed" (*)

      Absolutely. All Brits I know, including myself, have 18 second languages.

      (*) See how I fiddled with facts or, in this case, a direct quote there? You can barely see the seams as I drop a single word to twiddle your words into my world view. That's how to spin a la Brexiteer (hmmmm.) You should see what I can do with numbers. Perhaps I should stab you in the eye instead like the sturdy Bremainer I am

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 18 languages but not English

        Clever.

        BTW, what tags generate that small font? I've given up trying to find a consistent guide to El Reg comment tags because there doesn't appear to be one.

        1. DaLo

          Re: 18 languages but not English

          < sub > I presume< /sub >

          1. Old Handle

            Re: 18 languages but not English

            <small>No support for "small" then?</small>

            edit: Guess not.

  4. Terry 6 Silver badge

    Not translaed into English

    I'm not surprised that the opinion hasn't been translated into English yet. After all, after next week we may be leaving the EU and the British courts would then be free to judge how they like, e.g. that we can't lend ebooks, ever, to anyone. Not, of course, that I personally believe that British establishment would cave in to lobbying from the big publishers. We don't have any history of letting big corporations get away with Blue Murder, do we?

    1. Barry Mahon

      Re: Not translaed into English

      Sorry to bother you, and prick your balloon, but, officially, English is the language used by other EU member states. While I won't be sorry if UK pick up their ball(s) and leave the pitch on Thursday, the UK does not own the English language.

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: Not translaed into English

        "the UK does not own the English language."

        But ... but ... but ... we nicked it fair and square from a whole shed-load of other people.

    2. Pen-y-gors

      Re: Not translaed into English

      The Irish may still want to read it you know.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Not translaed into English

        Gaeilge?

    3. x 7

      Re: Not translaed into English

      what is the English word for "translaed"?

  5. The Nazz

    Restrictions on becoming a "library"?

    Are there any as i have a few e-books and no end of friends, er i mean potential borrowers.

    1. Justicesays

      Re: Restrictions on becoming a "library"?

      Just looked at the (UK) legislation and it looks to be a bit of a grey area.

      The PLR only applies to Public Library Authorities, and only their samples are collected for funds distribution determination.

      Technically any community run or private library would have to fund their own lending rights.

      But the Government is not cracking down on it because (I assume) it would cause outrage due to all the public library branches that have been taken over by volunteers when they would otherwise have been closed. If they enforced it they would have to arrest them for copyright violation or make them cough up extra cash...which would not be popular with the voters.

      Expect legal action from the Author rights group when too many of the libraries are volunteer ones.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Restrictions on becoming a "library"?

        "Expect legal action from the Author rights group when too many of the libraries are volunteer ones."

        On the whole, they are still public libraries under the auspices of the Local Authority but are staffed by volunteers. The LA still pays for the building, the books etc.

    2. CanadianMacFan

      Re: Restrictions on becoming a "library"?

      I don't know about the EU but in Canada (and I think the US) books purchased by libraries are much more expensive than what a person buys. This is to make up for "lost" sales. What really sucks is that e-books are limited to being borrowed something like 26 times. The "logic" behind this according to the publishers is that physical books get damaged over time and need to be replaced but e-books don't so they place this limit on the e-books. The libraries here are trying to put a stop to the practice but haven't yet been successful.

  6. Peter Prof Fox

    I write books

    As long as I(AKA Merlin Smallbone) get paid I don't care if they're carved into ear wax. A book is a thing with paper leaves, an e-book is not only a different medium BUT ALSO TRIVIAL to copy. Somebody could go to the bother of photocopying one of my books but what's the bother or (a) not only making a copy for his mate (b) posting it on-line where it is impossible to get it removed from without inordinate expense.

    So (1) e-books are a completely different technology with different issues

    (2) I don't care how many copies are made so long as when they're read I get a ker-ching.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Childcatcher

      Re: I write books

      "Somebody could go to the bother of photocopying one of my books but what's the bother" - If they are any good I probably would or might or might have would've. I'll now have to take a peek ...

      I can take a guillotine to the spine of a paper book and in a few minutes get a scan of its pages. I can then effectively turn a paper book into an eBook *and* a paper book because I can print it out. If I OCR the scans I'll get the same quality of output that Amazon has sold to me a few times before I threw their Kindle out of the window and then did my dark with a lump hammer and bolster on it. [Get his DFPs now nurse, no _NOW_]

      I am a consultant. I charge by the hour or by the piece of work. Sometimes I give my time/effort gratis (my Windows 7 machine suddenly became Windows 10 and is broken - you know the scene). If you don't pay me - sometimes in kind and sometimes in beer but generally in money - then I can withhold my services.

      If instead I wrote books (or music or whatever), I would like to think that a similar model might apply. Its bad enough that I would have to get someone else to publish me and take their *ahem* cut - there's whole can o' worms but, again this needs looking at, there's a legitimate middle man thing going on there as well.

      Anyway, it's complicated but I don't think that debating semantics is particularly useful. What would be nice is legislation that cut through medium and delivery mechanism and decided that an honest day's work was rewarded appropriately.

      1. Deltics

        Re: I write books

        So you can take a guillotine and make an e-book copy of a bound copy.

        But you didn't "turn [the] paper book into an e-book". You destroyed a bound book and created an e-book copy. At which point the point that an e-book is a different medium with different technological characteristics kicks in. Just because you started with a paper book rather than a digital copy of the content doesn't change the nature of what you ended up with.

        You can call this "debating semantics" if you like, but sometimes - and especially in law - the semantics are important.

        The judgement in this case - if reported accurately - is an exercise in navel gazing given that it apparently and deliberately ignores the consequences of the real differences in this case.

        You cannot simply direct that an e-book should "in principle" be allowed to be lent in the same way as a physical book without paying attention to the differences between a physical, paper book and a digital copy of an e-book.

        When you ask to borrow a physical book from a library they do not send someone into the back room to photocopy the book you want to borrow. They give you the book itself. In this way the author is compensated for the ability of the library to lend, and if you don't give it back the library has lost it and cannot lend it to anyone else.

        Sure, you could take that borrowed book and copy it in some way, but any copies produced from the original will very obviously not BE that original. On the other hand, a digital copy of a digital original is indistinguishable from the original so unless you can protect against such copies being made you cannot treat the two as equivalent because they simply aren't.

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: I write books

          When you borrow an ebook here it is only readable on the supported devices for 2 weeks, you can also jump through some hoops to "return it" by expiring the loan.

          I could use a rooted tablet to get a permanent copy, but I could more easily find a copy on a torrent site.

    2. Deltics

      Re: I write books

      I think (hope) you meant that you want a ker-ching when a /copy is made/, not every time /any copy is read/. ;)

      1. oneeye

        Re: I write books

        Well, author's are in for a new e-book scandal. I believe it's Amazon that will be only charging customers for the percentage of an e-book read. In other words, I can return it - no charge. They had a break down, but if you start reading a book, and decided by page 100, that it purely sucked, then, I think you can get off without charge. This is for renting books. Here is an article explaining the changes last year.

        http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/06/amazon-will-pay-e-book-authors-per-page-when-users-rent-books/

        And a good article on e-book pricing:

        http://www.idealog.com/blog/if-amazon-pricing-of-ebooks-is-the-problem-is-agency-actually-the-right-solution/

        And author's earnings with lots of analysis, charts & graphs galore:

        http://authorearnings.com/report/february-2016-author-earnings-report/

    3. Warm Braw

      Re: I write books

      On his sixteenth birthday, orphan Tristram finds he has a legacy of millions if he will undertake to research time travel

      I suspect that if I were reaching for my guillotine it would not be for the purpose of making unauthorised digital copies.

      But that does make for an interesting point. It may actually be in the greater interest of authors (and composers/song writers) who are unlikely ever to make much money out of their work to have an audience for it rather than to collect small sums from a few select followers that will in no way compensate them for their effort. At least they then have an established market that they can monetise in other ways. That's already the default position for much of the music industry - the musicians make the money from live performance and merchandise, not from the recordings.

      I'm not suggesting (in case Orlowski has his hands hovering over the keyboard) that authors should be denied the right to collect lending fees or digital royalties, just that in many cases it really isn't a great business model.

    4. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: I write books

      "(2) I don't care how many copies are made so long as when they're read I get a ker-ching."

      I don't dispute your right to get a ker-ching from each sale. But I do dispute your right to get a ker-ching from every reading. If I buy a book then I have the right to "dispose" of that book how I wish once I've read it. Lending it friends or selling it on is my right.

    5. Bakana

      Re: I write books

      There is one small problem with photocopying a book.

      The last time I looked, it costs more to make the Photocopy than it would to purchase a new Hardback copy of that same book.

      Certainly more than a Paperback copy.

      Plus, Scanned copies make for Lousy reading on most E-readers.

      Running the scan through an OCR translation program would then require someone to go through and Proofread & correct the thing for the errors inserted by the OCR translation.

      Again, by the time you've done all this, it would have been a lot cheaper (in terms of what 2 or 3 days of your Time is Worth) to have just purchased a legal copy.

  7. Duncan Macdonald

    Copyright infringement

    Anyone who is determined to keep access to a borrowed ebook without paying would probably get the book from one of the many illegal sites. Almost any popular book becomes available within a few days of being published electronically. (If only published in hard copy then it takes about an extra month before a PDF generated from a scan appears.)

    Copyright infringement because the term piracy is grotesquely incorrect .

  8. Coen Dijkgraaf
    Boffin

    Already borrow eBooks

    I already borrow eBooks from Auckland City Libraries in New Zealand.

    And yes, they have a one copy, one user policy and it has a due date or you have to press a button to return the book at which point you cannot read it anymore unless you check it out again. So I'm a bit puzzled as to why this is such a big issue.

    I believe there are also rules in place that each book is only allowed to be borrowed a fixed number of times before the Library has to purchase another copy. The digital equivalent of the book wearing out/being damaged and being replaced just so that authors don't miss out on royalties.

  9. Christian Berger

    If we would just address the underlying problem...

    ... and simply ban DRM. I mean you can also copy a physical book, that's what book scanners and printers are for.

    1. energystar
      Childcatcher

      Yea It's complicating the privacy issue also...[By introducing privative layers].

      But, you know? There is work, there is lifetime involved in creating those products.

      Is it right to dismiss any attempt to recap a small monetary compensation? Just for some of the monthly bills? Just because the media isn't physically palpable?

      DRM is the wrong solution to a rightly raised problem.

  10. Allan George Dyer
    Boffin

    Can of worms...

    So, with the "one copy, one user" model, could we have an intelligent device that reports back when the user puts the ebook down to make a cup of coffee or sleep, and then the system makes the copy available for another user in the downtime?

    Or, say, display the text for 10ms, off for 10ms, on again... and display to a different user in the off phases, so two users merely appear to be reading the book at the same time, because of persistence of vision?

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Can of worms...

      Or a quantum e-book which is in several places at once?

      1. billat29
        Happy

        Re: Can of worms...

        several places at once.. until you look at it....

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Can of worms...

      You don't even need persistence of vision effects with e-ink. You could pull the power and the screen will still retain the page image. That's the whole point of e-ink and the anwser to the 1-2 months battery life :-)

      You could theoretically have 100's or 1000's reading the same single e-book copy at the same time so long as the e-book reader only ever "turned" a page when none of you co-readers are doing so. Or maybe each e-book reader would act as a P2P node. You can have as many readers as there are pages in the book and each reader can only have one page at a time. The downside to the latter suggestion of course is that a popular book can only be read at the about the speed of the slowest reader in the group.

  11. Tony W

    Several things

    Amazon can apparently withdraw an ebook that you thought you'd bought so the technology doesn't seem to be much of a problem.

    But what I find odd is that most books I want to read aren't available as ebooks. When CDs arrived, record companies soon put their back catalogues on the new medium, so we now have a wonderful choice of recorded music. Publishers have huge back catalogues of books that they own the rights of, and are recent enough to be stored in digital form. But they'll only sell an expensive paper copy. I'd buy a lot more books if they were cheaper ebooks. And not only because of cost, I don't want to take heavy books on holiday.

  12. mm0zct

    What I want is Amazon's "AutoRip" for books, I don't want to buy a book twice just because I like reading dead trees at home, but prefer to take my kindle on holiday. Let me fill my bookshelf, but give me a ebook copy too, just the same as you do for CDs and mp3s (the only difference in the argument is that it's easier for me to rip the CD myself anyway, in theory I could build/buy a book scanner).

    1. Baldy50

      I agree this should be an option when purchasing a book, like the way some DVD's give you a code and the option to DL the film in a digital format but not having to pay twice.

      But what if you then swap, sell or give the hard copy away are you still entitled to the digital copy or visa versa?

  13. msknight

    Funding for the arts was always a problem.

    It does explain why Amazon have put money behind physical stores, as their e-book sales could take a hit... depending on negotiations, etc.

    From an author point of view, the already low income (£11k a year on average according to the Society of Authors) is likely to get even lower and not only push some people out of the market, but if a writer has to maintain a day job, then the quality (or production rate) will take a dive.

    Good job I have have regular employment. There is now only one reason left to create, and write... for the love of it.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Worn out ebooks?

    With the ebook services our library has used old copies get withdrawn after x number of issues. They're deemed worn out just like a paper book would be after being read x number of times.

    We then need to buy a new digital copy if we want to loan it again...

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