The relationship between physical book checkouts and author/publisher revenue is less direct, but the ebook contracts are an attempt to emulate decay and damage to physical books that require periodic repurchases. Arguably you are hastening the end of a physical book's life and its need to be repurchased, or need to stock more copies, by checking it out.
Please don't misunderstand my explanation to be an endorsement of standard ebook lending contracts.
Indeed. The publisher charges universities etc. a one time lump sum to purchase N copies of a book. The author gets next to nothing.
Source: am an author of technical books. Royalties will buy me a few cardboard boxes.
Sure there is some normal wear and tear that isnt "breaking the book", but if you browse through your library you will find lots of books that were purchased 20-40 years ago that are still in good shape. I don't really think normal wear and tear is very significant.
If 100 people all try to check it out, there would be a huge waiting list and the library would try to order more copies.
I pirate all my books btw, just saying if everyone did it ofc there'd be(already is) impact. Easily smartphones+kindle is worse though.
The library in the small town I grew up in is still lending lots of books and ebooks in addition to lending movies and music and providing computer access, training and other services. The library down the street from where I live now is the same. Libraries are more vibrant and active now then when I was a kid.
Where are you that libraries have become "performative"?
For this to work what is needed is a blanket license for search and snippet use. Can't buy a whole library for such a sparse use case, ain't gonna read it in the classical sense. This approach can guarantee the generated text will not replicate the source material, just use it for reference, with citations.
- DeepMind RETRO - https://www.deepmind.com/publications/improving-language-mod...
In the digital age, why not cut out the middle man? Have a publicly funded e-library that pays authors directly based on how often their content is downloaded.
You can't just arbitrarily decide that only one party "deserves" to make money from the book, and doing so would probably lead to a lawsuit.
Yes, you shouldn't arbitrarily decide anything. You can today, however, meaningfully conclude that "publishers are kind of useless, how are they still in business when much of what they do isn't necessary?" You'll find the answer is probably old law.
So, yes -- bring on the lawsuits. Let's see what happens.
[not related to OP] I have a similar feeling every time someone moralizes in any discussion: we could argue about morality, but we need to start with a common moral framework and define what "good" and "bad" are first. Everyone assumes these are generally agreed upon but the devil is in the details when discussing something like the OP.
Don’t outlaw libraries just because the internet now exists or legalize them but only with absurdities like fucking wait lists.
Three copies, for the a metropolis of several million. :)
It is a bit ridiculous that "buying copies" and then imposing artificial scarcity on these is the best mechanism that libraries and publishers have figured out to compensate content producers, but I'm optimistic that they'll eventually figure something out.
>I regularly lend e-books from my city's public library...
Perhaps more importantly, the cost of books in libraries is not assigned based on the number of books checked out or read. It tends to be people in lower and lower-middle economic classes who use libraries more, even while they pay less than the per-capita average cost to keep those libraries running and their shelves stocked.
Libraries are communist entities. Even worse than that, from a capitalist perspective, although checking out books requires you to be connected with the tax base or funding source for the library, you can generally go to any public or academic library and read books on-site even if you're from another country or planet and aren't entitled to check anything out.