Item — HN Reader

That would depend on the way it was set up... In my view, it would require a few specific ingredients:

1. Standard formats (PDF, txt, html, etc... heck... even chm e djvu)

2. Offline access (PDA, laptops, etc...)

3. Printing

4. Sharing (iTunes like)

5. Easy searching within a given volume and across volumes (google books)

Of course doing all of this while preventing rampant copyright violations is the tricky part. O'Reilly doesn't seem to be doing too well (on the copyright part at least) with their safari online project. You can pretty much find any of their books you want if you know where to look. Apple seems to be doing a good job with iTunes. Maybe it's time to have someone doing the same for books. There are several websites online that try to do this, but the legality of the works they have is ofter fuzzy. I've been tinkering with the idea of making a "del.icio.us" or "arXiv" type of site where people could place links to books (mostly technical) that are currently out of copyright. Wherever possible, links to online bookstores where you could buy the book would also be provided.

It would be possible to clearly watermark a PDF file with the serial number of the person who checked it out of the library. That way if it is leaked it shouldn't be too difficult to find the person who leaked it.

I would definitely use such a library if it existed, provided that it wasn't too expensive and had novels or books I could not find at my local (and free) public library.

I'm guessing that it would also not be too hard to remove the watermark... just like people did with iTunes. On the other hand, that doesn't seem to have hindered Apple's revenue stream.

In my experience, you can only easily find tech books, which admittedly is usually what I want, but finding Gore Vidal was shockingly difficult (in this case, impossible).

Technical books that are out of copyright aren't likely of use. Books that are out of copyright by now are aaaaaaaancient.