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Originally Posted by Kumabjorn
Ahhh "licensed", well that explains their power. I would have imagined that they could buy e-books from Amazon (mobi) and B&N (epub) and then lend them to clients, with backing in the law. In other words, the law was there to protect lenders (library users) and not publishers.
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It's more complicated than that. Libraries don't acually buy from Amazon or B&N; they contract with a 3d party (usually Overdrive in the US) to take care of the actual checking out process; what they pay OD is based on how many books they've licensed.
I was under the impression (based on reading about E-lib) that Swedish libraries use a similar service.