Ebooks must be convenient, I suppose.  They are also a threat: to
libraries and to readers of books.

The threat to libraries is that ebooks eliminate their traditional
function.  Maybe libraries can find new functions or maybe not.

However, all that assumes that ebooks as we see them today will and
should be accepted by society.  If they are instead an unethical
attack on our freedom, that changes everything.  And that's what they
are.  See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html for
a 1997 picture of the ugly future we are headed towards.

What ebooks do to their readers directly is much worse than what they
might do indirectly via their effects on libraries.  Most commercially
published ebooks are simply not available under acceptable decent
conditions.  Commercial ebooks deny readers' traditional freedoms,
through DRM and through mandatory contracts.  You're not allowed to
give them or lend them.  You're alwasy surveilled.  You need
proprietary technology to read them at all.  See
http://stallman.org/articles/ebooks.pdf.

Under these conditions, the only ethical copy is an illegal copy, and
any legal copy requires DRM decontamination (which is itself illegal).

Libraries can't distribute the illegal ethical copies, and they must
not distribute the legal unethical copies.  Under these conditions,
libraries must declare ebooks anathema.

The only path to an ethical future for books and reading starts with
society's rejection of user-restricting ebooks.  Libraries and
librarians are in the best position to mount this campaign.  The first
step is simple: reject the premise that business should dictate the
terms on which we read books.  Don't seek to adapt to ebooks as they
are today -- denounce them and oppose them.

Then librarians can say: We must have a library that lends printed
books, books that don't restrict and attack their readers.  Libraries
will not be obsolete or anything like it.

Libraries could hook up with print-on-demand systems so that they can
have enormous catalogues but only print the books people ask for.  If
necessary, invite the first requester to pay for the printing of the
copy.  This compromise is preferable to partial acceptance of
commercial ebooks, because it surrenders something secondary and
preserves what is primary.

Suppose we overcome the publishers and convert ebooks into something
ethical?  At that point, libraries may find a role in the digital
publication of ebooks, in making them available to the public.
Today's commercial ebooks leave no room for such a role, but ethical
ones might.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/