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Comment by cavalierfrix | Hacker News Reader

In your library example, the author is still paid by the library system for their work.

Not once per person who reads the book though, only once per library, or more accurately, once per concurrent check out.

How many libraries are there? Libraries might be the biggest customer demographic of some books.

On an annually recurring license. So the taxpayer doesn't just buy hundreds of books no one asked for and will never read, he buys them ten times over.

In what country do libraries work like that? Not in America. In America, libraries do not pay annual licensing fees for books. A book is purchased or otherwise acquired, and then lent out as many times as the library pleases. When the book wears out, the library may rebind it and continue lending it.

This is covered by first sale doctrine. After the library owns that book it is theirs and neither the author nor the publisher is entitled to anything when the book is lent.

> In what country do libraries work like that?

I believe most former Commonwealth countries work like that.

Here's the info for Canada:

https://publiclendingright.ca/

It's not a huge amount... minimum $50/book/year, maximum $4,500/book per year, but I suppose it's significant if you have, say, 20 books, each bringing in the maximum.

It's a flat rate, though, not a per use charge.

Damn, I'm glad the American library system isn't held to such asinine rules. I can buy a second hand book from a shop that pays nothing to publishers, donate it to a library for free, and the library is now allowed to lend that book as many times as they please, never having paid anybody a single cent for that right.

That doesn't sound like a good system. They should pay a fee each time a book is lent out, to reward the author for writing the book.

You propose to peel back the first sale doctrine, stripping rights from consumers and give even more privileges to corporate publishers? Terrible idea.

That's not what I'm saying, please don't reply like this it's very tiring and against the guidelines. I'm saying it doesn't make sense that the authors and the publishers don't get any money after the book was bought once and then it can be borrowed an infinite number of times. The libraries should pay some sort of fee to compensate them. It doesn't reduce your consumer rights, you can still borrow the book from the library. You can still donate it to the library. You can still lend your book to your friends and family without paying for anything. That's how it works over here in the EU (I don't know how every library system works in each EU country), not exactly a place with less consumer rights than the US.

> I'm saying it doesn't make sense that the authors and the publishers don't get any money after the book was bought once and then it can be borrowed an infinite number of times.

Why not? That's how everything else works, at least in the US. e.g. my local hardware store will rent to you a variety of tools (which they also sell) or even trucks. They don't need to compensate the manufacturer for each rental; they just buy it like anyone else would. Even Netflix got their start buying DVDs and mailing them to customers to rent. As far as I know they have no requirement to pay ongoing fees or establish a licensing deal to do that (and apparently they have better selection for dvd rentals because of that).

> In America, libraries do not pay annual licensing fees for books.

We're talking e-books ("concurrent check out"), and they certainly do.

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...

> While consumers paid $12.99 for a digital version, the same book cost libraries roughly $52 for two years, and almost $520 for 20 years.

In both this and a traditional library, one person buys the book and then a bunch of people read it for free. What are you saying is the difference between those scenarios?

It is not possible for a single physical book to be read by hundreds of thousands of people, concurrently. an ebook enables this.

I think a more apt example is, if the library started printing the books and giving it out themselves.

Most libraries have ebooks these days.

They’re limited to a certain number of loans before the library has to buy another license, or a per-checkout fee. Physical books have about a 50 to 100 checkout lifetime and ebook licensing is similar.

Not the library I go to for ebooks.

There are quite a few different purchasing and lending models libraries use today. Outside of the big 4/5 publishers, many publishers will sell ebooks to libraries using a sim use model (pay 1 subscription fee and checkout as many times as possible over the period), and some will even let the library buy in that model perpetually.

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