I’m still getting my videos at my local libraries.
I read a blip on Boston Common from Amy about how some Blockbuster franchises are still charging late fees. She includes the fine print on her weblog. Apparently their latest advertising campaign about how they’ve eliminated late fees omits some details.
Late fees or no, I don’t understand why people might pay more money to rent a movie from a video store when their local library owns the same item. I’m lucky that I can borrow video and audio materials for free from several different collections. I can’t remember the last time I paid to rent a movie. (Of course, it’s been quite a while since I’ve had time to watch a movie, but I used to watch a few a week while I worked on some Web stuff.)
The library where I grew up didn’t have these offerings. They do now, from what I hear. I’m still excited to think my local libraries hold more than books.
Addendum 3:20 pm: Boston Common includes this item today. So far, it’s the second of two posts for the day.
Please feel free to comment! I encourage interactivity. From what people are saying, I gather access to audio/visual materials in libraries is rather important to library customers. Librarians from around the country read this weblog. Your thoughts count and can make a difference.
January 13th, 2005 at 9:49 am
I’m all for utilizing library video collections, and sometimes you get amazing back catalogs of older material that chain stores just don’t bother stocking.
Still, very few libraries maintain current selections to meet demand. What’s more, their hours generally aren’t convenient for video rental. I find the BPL hard to use even for books for this reason. It doesn’t help that my neighborhood branch has been indefinitely closed.
January 13th, 2005 at 1:39 pm
I agree with Chris. While libraries do stock some excellent videos/dvds, they often aren’t new and/or popular releases. Also, most libraries tend to close around 6-6:30, making it difficult to run to the library and grab a video on a whim. What I wonder about more often is why people don’t utilize their video on-demand services. It’s cheaper and easier than renting from a video store. Granted, the selection isn’t nearly as large, but give the cable companies a few more years to increase their libraries.
January 13th, 2005 at 5:04 pm
My local library gets all the new popular releases just about the day they hit blockbuster, in DVD and VHS. HOWEVER – they get like 1 or 2 copies, unlike Blockbuster which gets about 30 copies? They’re not free, but they are very cheap ($2 plus tax for 2 days, Sunday and holidays don’t count). (Educational videos are free.) Plus, you can’t put the videos in the book drop because they’ll get clobbered and injured. My particular branch doesn’t have a whole lot of old stuff because they weed (space issues and all), but they will get videos from the central branch in one working day. Anyway, I’d be happy if my local public library were open on Friday evening. They’re open late M-Wed, but not Thurs-Sunday.
CDs, on the other hand — they are great to get from the library. Our selector is a wizard on music so we have awesome stuff (though perhaps less of the bubblegum pop?)
February 10th, 2005 at 12:07 am
I wonder what the copyright status of a one patron per video at a time video on demand service from a public library is? Hard drive arrays can certainly store the material well enough (there’s at least one commercial user serving video from a databaste, even).
February 10th, 2005 at 12:13 am
Hhhmmm … good question, James. And does it change because something’s in a digital format stored on a hard drive as opposed to being a VHS tape, DVD, reel to reel film, etc.
Welcome back!
February 10th, 2005 at 12:38 am
Well, one aspect might be the DMCA anti-circumvention provision for a digital DVD source, assuming that a library didn’t want to do things the fast, efficient and easy way which the DVD Copy Control Association would probably consider illegal circumvention of an access control technology (though that’s a debatable point, since per person access control was what the law had in mind, not media-based).
Analogue would work technically but be slower and of reduced quality, partly because of artifacts introduced in the conversion to a normal video signal. At perhaps 800MB per video in moderate quality or 2GB in DVD quality (per version, single audio track in each version) it’s relatively easy to store this sort of thing today. Moderate cost storage solutions just to save wear on tapes would cost relatively little – meaning something like a server with 6 of 400GB hard drives in RAID 10 setup delivering 1200GB of storage for something under $3,000 and playable over any internal network a library may have. Any use for an on demand video library with 1500 better than SVHS recordings?
Serving video to the local community would be somewhat harder because I expect legal complications, regardless of the merit of the claim. Relatively easy to serve a few hundred video streams from a library, says this person used to a site serving more than 80 megabits per second of data out to the net. Basic access control is easy enough using IP addresses – can restrict acess to the checking out patron only, by IP address.
Expect the local cable company to object, even though this is effectively a private video distribution system.
Checking out from a central lbrary is, in theory, easy enough. Update central library records to show video checked out, copy to local library and burn onto CD, hand patron CD a few minutes later. Sounds like easy enough fair use to me, given the diligent record-keeping we can expect of librarians. Why the risk and inconvenience of physical transfer when you can do it this way?
Many possible legal complications along the way.
February 10th, 2005 at 11:15 am
That’s a screenfull.
When you say loaning them based on IP addresses, do you mean using the borrower’s IP address? What would you do about people who don’t have steady IP addresses? I use dial-up. Each time I connect, I have a slightly different IP address. I’m assuming other people using the same service will also have similar ID address changes, making loaning videos based on a constant IP address difficult because anyone with a particular service at a particular point in time might have the right IP address to view a movie “on loan” to someone else.
Some of the libraries I visit use the customer’s ID number and PIN for access to his/her account online. Perhaps using that combination of numbers would be more secure.
February 11th, 2005 at 12:18 am
The ID and PIN would be one way, granting access to that work to the IP address making the request. First come, first served, no authentication, would be anouther, possibly limited to addresses apparently within the local area. Another way would be issuing a ticket (perhaps for a small fee to cover bandwidth cost) and accepting any IP which knows that ticket number. Assuming here that there’s a desire to reproduce current borrow, on loan, returned treatment, which would probably ease a fair use argument.