Apparently many libraries, including the ones in my country, are moving over to a system where you're not allowed to digitally download the epub file anymore. You're only allowed to borrow the book, and read it, in a closed ecosystem: an app. This per definition then excludes the majority of e-ink readers that don't run Android. This is due to Directive (EU) 2019/882 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on the accessibility requirements for products and services (Text with EEA relevance) (source) entering into force June 28 this year.

As the Adobe DRM solution hasn't been updated for years, it isn't capable of fulfilling all the requirements that this law lays out without endangering the DRM solution. Text-to-speech is one function that isn't fully supported by Adobe for example. This means that there are apparently two directions to go for full compliance, Readium DRM which is barely supported as well or a closed app ecosystem.

This is frustrating on so many levels, especially if I would like to borrow an ebook in my native language that isn't available elsewhere on the web, which is often the situation for books in my language (and I'm guessing most languages outside of English). The alternatives left is borrowing a physical copy, or buying it.

The enshittification of everything continues...

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[–] Sirence@feddit.org 16 points 5 days ago (11 children)

Using Onleihe is already a horrid experience even now. There is only one 'copy' of each book and this copy is not only for my city, but the whole region, meaning all slightly popular books are reserved for years in advance.

I can borrow books from the website but the only way to return them before the allocated time is via an app. You can only return the book from the phone app after downloading it again onto the phone (which is a really weird design choice).

Since the allocated time per book can be very long (21 days) and returning books early is incredibly cumbersome, this makes the one copy per region bottleneck even worse since most people can not be bothered to 'return' their eBooks once they are done and just wait out the timer.

There are a lot of books in my language that are not (yet) on the shadow libraries and this DRM change probably means I won't have any way in the future to change this anymore.

[–] Lucki@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago (6 children)

Maybe there are different Onleihe services but the one I know of (onleihe.de) has multiple "copies" available, visible in the book "Infos" tab. Revoking licenses is also possible in the web reader. The revoking could be easier and it would be nice having even more licenses available for high demand items, but it isn't nearly as bad as you've described.

16 available licenses

Revoking licenses in the web reader

[–] Sirence@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Edit, sorry just saw your screenshot, didn't realize I could expand those lines. The website I login to looks a lot different so maybe it's a setting the Library has to enable or something.

These are all the options I see:

[–] Lucki@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I guess this answer is about the returning of licenses? Click on "Jetzt lesen" and the web reader opens. In the upper left you can return to the overview to see all your ready to read media and there's the option to return the book.

[–] Sirence@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago

Oh wow you are right, if you click the that button you get an option return the book. I never even opened the web reader because I just want to download the file for my e-reader, I wouldn't have guessed the way to return a book is hidden behind a button labeled 'jetzt lesen'. That site has some weird design choices imo.

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