the ISBN is replaced with the ISPN: International Standard Publication Number. or more accurately, the 13-digit International Article Number system of barcodes is superseded by a new base-34 system
all current ISBNs begin with either the digits 978 or 979, occupying the space of an IAN country code to declare that this is an ISBN (in the country of ‘Bookland’), then two digits for the geographic region (a maximum of 100 regions on earth, so many states have to share), then four for the publisher, three for the individual title (yeah only 1000 books per publisher before they need a new code), and one check digit. they were running out of ISBNs, which is why in 2007 they had to give Bookland a second country code. 979 used to be Musicland, the country code of sheet music, before the Bookland nation attacked. all this has done is doubled the possible number of ISBNs, delaying the problem until later
moving to an alphanumeric system solves this supply issue. instead of 1000 possible country codes, there’s 39304
so for ISPNs, instead of 100 there’s over 1000 two-character region codes (which can become ‘registrar codes’), and instead of 10k there’s over a million meg possible publisher codes per registrar, and instead of 1k there’s now 40k possible ISPNs per publisher, for forty billion gig possible ISPNs per registrar and forty trillion tera in only one of Bookland’s two existing IAN county codes
the reason i’m doing this is because i want everything published to be given a ISPN. sheet music and magazine publications already get them, and some registrars are assigning them for other things. so now everything everything everything everything that can be considered ‘published’ gets an ISPN, from film to telly to game
every edition of a work gets a unique ISBN (hardback, paperback, ebook, audiobook etc) and this principle applies to the expanded ISPN. the individual entries can be collated together, but they are separate. so all the many many rereleases of films get their own ISPNs - the IMAX version gets an ISPN while the general theatric gets an ISPN and the streaming release gets an ISPN. and the dvd gets an ISPN and the bluray gets an ISPN and the 4kbluray gets an ISPN, except for the fact that those are being replaced with USB card video releases, which of course gets an ISPN
there’s an ISPN for each video game release on each storefront, but only retrospectively. going forward it’ll be a platform-by-platform thing, one ISPN for Linux, one ISPN for legacy Suryast etc. all digital storefronts offer the ability to transfer your game by packeting it into a code, letting u give it to a friend or sell it on an open market, or even to a different library system if it offers that game (incl the USB card printing kiosks). you can have multiple copies of the same game on all storefronts. all storefronts must offer a guarantee of transfer should they ever close, like is occurring with the deprecation of the Xbox store as a quasi-automatic migration of its libraries to steam: all existing xbox machines (none new shall be wrought unto this earth, and the Xbox 5 is cancelled) are now considered as running Suryast and can play all steam releases that are Suryast compatible, and u can run all xbox games on steam (forevermore, as windows/xbox -> linux translation is super easy)
it’s your legal rights to do with your libraries what you wish. of course, none of that affects your illegal rights to good old fashioned piracy