Losing Sleep

I recently saw this article up at the Wired blog. It’s funny that this came out the same week that I put up my very first blog post (other than the introduction). It was because of this very reason that I started this blog. I was doing some research a couple of months ago for one of my graduate classes and wanted to use a clip from an audio book in a presentation that I was creating. That audio book was available in the Chicago Public Library Digital Audio Books Catalog. So I began to go through the process of checkout when I discovered that Overdrive Media is only available for Windows Media Player and compatible devices. Macs running OS X and Linux machines are not supported.

I’m a Mac user.

Okay. I’m going to state the obvious. Macs are a very small portion of the home computer ecology. I can’t expect everybody to create applications that support Macs when there really is very little market for it. I absolutely support that idea. I was disappointed that I can’t download audio books to listen to on my computer, but I can live with that.

Here’s what really bothers me. iPods dominate the audio market. (source, source, source) Chicago Public Library has bought into a service that basically locks out iPod users which happen to be a majority of the audio playback market. Now even if somebody has an iPod they could still be a Windows user and therefore listen to the audio book on their Windows machine but I really doubt that. I don’t have any data to back me up but I’m willing to bet that most people that listen to audio books are listening to them while they are doing something else like driving, exercising, commuting to work, etc. They are probably not just sitting in front of their computer. CPL has bought into an audio book download service that probably locks out a majority of the people that would download an audio book and listen to it. It would be nice if CPL and other libraries that use this service demanded compatibility with all audio playback devices (mp3 players and the like) so that ALL their patrons could use this fantastic service. (By the way, I am not an iPod owner.)

There is a rumor that Apple might be opening up their Fairplay DRM a bit for licensed vendors, so maybe Overdrive will be able to support iPods at some point in the future.

One thing that I should clear up is that I do not support checking out materials from the library and ripping them to your computer. I was taken to task for that at another blog and the other writer is absolutely right. My purpose for using the audiobook was for an author presentation I was giving in a class I was taking. Please correct me if I’m wrong but as far as I understand it, it is within my fair use right to incorporate 30 seconds or 10% of an audio clip (whichever is less) in any multimedia presentation that I create. So if I checked out an audio book on CD (with no DRM) and ripped a portion (according to fair use guidelines) to my computer to place in a powerpoint, that’s okay. With Overdrive DRM, (I can’t use this because I own a mac) I can’t do this because according to the DMCA circumventing DRM is illegal (and windows users that I have talked to about this know of several different ways to possibly circumvent this DRM). I understand that CPL wants to expand service to their patrons, but it shouldn’t necessarily be at the cost of fair use.

Then again, you could always just check out the CD and rip it to your computer, then you can use it anywhere and anyhow you want.

P.S.
I didn’t realize it, but some audio books from Overdrive can be burned to CD but others cannot. It depends on the wishes of the publisher.