An Update on Maryland's Digital Content Legislation

Andrew Albanese of PW recently updated on the progress of Maryland’s library digital content legislation, requiring “a publisher who offers to license an electronic literary product to the public to also offer to license the product to public libraries in the State on reasonable terms that would enable public libraries to provide library users with access to the electronic literary product.”

This article has several quotes from me, but is nevertheless worth a read. :-)

For now, I’d just like to reiterate that we in Maryland libraries don’t view this legislation as being somehow “against” any publisher. We’d like access to content on reasonable terms. Certainly a librarian’s and a publisher’s definition of “reasonable” might differ. We hope for fruitful negotiations.

The separate Senate and House bills have passed in their respective chambers. By “electronic literary product,” it should be noted, the primary intent is ebooks and digital audiobooks. Libraries face gaps in access to streaming video and other media, but we’re starting with the basics. The bills now must be to be reconciled (so the verbiage is unified) and sent to Governor Hogan. We hope Governor Hogan will sign the bill. We plan a celebration if the bill does pass, thanking our legislators for their strong support of Maryland readers.

So, if it does pass, some big questions. What is “reasonable”? RF has often suggested that a variety of models are necessary, including a perpetual option at a premium price and a metered (by circ, NOT time) model. The idea is to allow for long-term use (and to avoid having to relicense every title) while meeting high initial demand. Of course, price is the real issue: at the right price, any old model will work. If we paid $0.25 a circ, in public libraries at least, the other terms would generally be unimportant. The publishers I’ve spoken with are not keen on the perpetual access model, but it is the most popular in the survey of librarians we took a while back, hence the need to offer more for it. So, how about $30 to $45 (depending on the title) for (say) a 40 circ license and $75 to $100 for a perpetual license? Perhaps no publisher will agree with the former, but this pricing would offer a better return than they get on print titles (which might well last longer than 40 circs and for which we often pay nearly half cover price). Perhaps most librarians would balk at this cost for a perpetual access license. So, get one or two of perpetual on very popular titles, and know that you’ll not have to license that title again in two years and all your long running popular series will not have gaps. Meanwhile, if you have the funding, stock up on the metered licenses as well to meet immediate demand.

We could get very complicated. How about tiered pricing? All libraries are not created equal, so give a price break to qualifying small/rural/underfunded libraries. How about a subscription? I pay, say, $10,000 a year and a publisher lets me have up to 10,000 hits on a catalog. Royalties complicate everything, and library vendors will have to make their sites more robust to handle multiple models at point of licensing. Ownership and circulating titles in a “pretend it’s print” fashion (under copyright, not licensing) would be wonderful, but will we get that with most publishers? The two basic models (perpetual/metered) would at least be a start. Please share your thoughts on what might work!

So, let’s all talk and let’s all listen. If Amazon (and Audible and Blackstone) lead the way, not because of any legislation, but because they think they can work with libraries profitably, excellent. Maybe others will follow.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that for now at least it wouldn’t be nice to see other states (and maybe even the county) work on legislation like Maryland’s. Rhode Island seems poised to to lead. Legislators, who often support libraries, are standing by.