Do authors have rights to be compensated? If I go to a library and take out a book, the author doesn't get compensated again. The book may be read by hundreds of people but it was only paid for once.

If I lend a book I own to a friend, the author doesn't get compensated again. It's my book, not the authors, and I can let anybody I want read it.

There has never been an expectation that authors get compensated for each person who reads a book. The system has never worked like that. A book is a physical object and authors get compensated for each physical book that gets sold.

It's only with the recent advent of ebooks in recent decades that "pay per reader" has even become technologically possible. Since the 90s.