Quote:
Originally Posted by Penforhire
I have no idea what a fair distribution is but the complaint about digital goods is at least comparable to library books.
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I concur that there is a similarity. A single copy of a library book is used by many people and the author is only compensated for the one book.
However, the scale and ease of distribution of sharing files on the internet break the comparison to libraries.
Libraries do not have infinite budgets. They can only buy so many copies of an ebook for lending to their customers. Only one customer at a time can read the ebook. As such, with DRM, libraries remain exactly the same with ebooks or with physical books. But it's only DRM that enables this to be true.
Without DRM, a library could buy 1 book, lend it out to a customer, who instantly copies it and puts in on a file sharing site on the internet.
Lee