You may have read about this in the past few months, but if you haven’t here’s the gist: Harper Collins (and soon other publishing giants) has enacted a policy to make their digital library books self-destruct after being checked out 26 times.

The ability for libraries to loan ebooks was a huge help to the many struggling libraries, but this move could really damage their income. And really, making something you purchased just disappear? It’s so uncool.

This move by Harper Collins and their digital distributor, OverDrive, will force libraries to buy digital books for loan over and over and over again. The link I posted at the top, to Cory Doctorow’s take on this situation (via Boing Boing) has the interesting suggestion that libraries should just skip buying digital content with DRM at all, but as we all know, that sometimes isn’t a possibility. Any of you buy The Beatles’ music from iTunes years ago only to find out that now you have to pay 30 cents per song to remove DRM?

Well, you might think, physical book copies wear out eventually and need to be replaced. Check this out:

Libraries everywhere are boycotting Harper Collins. If you want to get involved, check out the Boycott Harper Collins page at Change.org and sign the petition.