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Comment by nekusar | Hacker News Reader

Exactly. All libraries are worthy of being supported and grown. I make no distinction between a physical dead-tree library and a digital library.

The only reason we even have dead-tree libraries at all is because 100 years ago, that was what John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie put forth to whitewash their horrible capitalist behaviors across the USA. And because it was done by those generations' billionaires, public libraries because acceptable.

If public libraries were created in the last 20 years, they would have been banned and felony copyright charges would have been levied. In fact, thats exactly what happened WHEN people tried to create free digital libraries.

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> If public libraries were created in the last 20 years, they would have been banned and felony copyright charges would have been levied. In fact, thats exactly what happened WHEN people tried to create free digital libraries.

I wonder why nobody created a Netflix-like subscription for digital books

Amazon maybe? Kindle Unlimited. In some ways Audible with audiobooks. Which actually has lot of entrants though they tend to limit listening time on large part of their portfolio.

Libby very much exists, you just need to sign up through your local library.

The problem with Libby is finding a local library that has a good selection. Mine does not, and my state does not have the feature of being able to get a library card from any library in the state. I would have to buy a membership to a non-local library, which can be surprisingly difficult to do if what you care about is a large selection of ebooks.

Because you have to pay a ton more for a lot of digital copies of books if you're doing any kind of lending and you're competing with existing libraries. So you both have higher costs (e.g. you have to pay more for a digital file that may have DRM, be required to self destruct after a certain number of uses, doesn't allow multiple lends at a time, etc.) and your prospective consumers have a free option so convincing them to pay is going to be difficult.

The economics aren't there.

Public libraries lend DVDs and Blu-Rays yet Netflix still exists.

Netflix has a larger market base (far more people watch TV and movies than read books, particularly at a level high enough to justify a subscription) and a market base that is far less likely to already be aware of the free alternative (most serious readers of the sort that go through that amount of books are already aware of their local libraries, whereas serious movie/TV watchers are less likely to be so).

Additionally, modern Netflix is a streaming company, and even DVD Netflix was sending the materials directly to your house, which is a differentiator versus the library, whose materials need to be picked up. There's a convenience factor as an incentive to pay. Library streaming exists, but it's awful - very limited library and very limited watches - versus Netflix where once you sub you can watch as much as you want.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_(company)

There was already one that existed in the web 2.0 era. Founded in 2012, raised a $3M seed from Founders Fund and a $14M A. Completely failed though and was acquihired by Google to have the founders lead Google Play Books.

Amazon now has Kindle Unlimited but I think it's mostly romance slop and self-published books. Seems like publishing rightsholders were just too inflexible to let the business model take off.

Kobo Plus: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/plus

The reason I don't subscribe is it takes me a lot longer to finish a book/audiobook than a movie. I just get them from the library/Libby - even if it's a 4 month wait, there are plenty of available books to read while I wait.

I consider libraries, public schools and maybe even public fire departments in the list of things that could never be proposed today if they didn't already exist.

Public libraries pay for their books

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