• cm0002@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I haven’t seen a library with software to lend since I was a kid, I used to go and get a ton of games n random software and rip them all lmao. But there was a lawsuit from software companies (ofc, can’t have any fun in this world) at some point in the mid 2000s against a library district and it all got pulled. The lawsuit was based on the fact they had to share non-transferable, non-shareable license keys to make it work, which is why we still have movies and console games at libraries, because there’s no license key involved.

    • Wren@sopuli.xyz
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      8 months ago

      Yep, loaning physical media with software isn’t a thing anymore for that exact reason. Any software or digital platform we offer (ancestry, language learning, ebooks, etc) we either have a ‘one copy one user’ licence which essentially functions like a physical copy, we’re directly paying for each time something is accessed, or we have a subscription specifically made for libraries. We can loan out things like Kindles loaded with ebooks that we’ve purchased, but there’s still a grey area with loaning out a tablet that has the major streaming services installed (with accounts paid for by the library), so we haven’t gone down that route yet