Electronic books at my public library
Loudoun County, where I live, has an excellent public library system despite its notoriety for a little Internet censorship lawsuit that went through the federal courts a few years back.
Yesterday I discovered that our library has a new agreement with www.netlibrary.com to provide access to electronic books and audiobooks. Paging through the catalog, they have a lot of technology books the library generally doesn't carry because, one would guess, they become obsolete too quickly. They also have a decent selection of bestsellers in the audiobook catalog. Best of all, I can access all this content from home.
Now, yes, it is laden with DRM techniques and tools to prevent theft, but I kinda expect that from a public library system. They are using Microsoft's Windows Media Audio (WMA) format to expire audiobooks after 21 days (unfortunately forcing one to use Windows Media Player 9 or higher), and the online books which are in PDF format are broken down so that each page is a separate PDF file to be downloaded. Neither are impenetrable, but they raise the technical barrier for the average joe who might be looking to steal content at the slight cost of technology platform lock-in. Nothing that iTunes/iPod does not already do.
My only point in posting this is that I often hear people grumble about tax dollars and how they perceive they do not see the benefits those tax dollars provide. In this case, I'm awfully glad to see my tax dollars put to work this way.