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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
it is not an infringement of copyright for a library or archives, or any of its employees acting within the scope of their employment, to reproduce no more than one copy"
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As stated, they cannot just reproduce copies. The law may allow one copy, two, three, ten, the figure is not all that important, libraries have to act within certain bounds. That's a totally different ball game to unlimited duplication which piracy entails with no bounds at all. The bounds libraries operate within have been discussed and balanced with the needs of allowing access and preserving access to the material with the rights of the creator. Piracy does not consider those needs. Had the discussion resulted in a law that allowed libraries to make unlimited copies on demand and provide them for free to joe public, then in that case I would concede that piracy is the same as libraries and because libraries have been granted the legal right to do so it would make sense that piracy should also be made legal. But had that been the case, we wouldn't be having this discussion as piracy would already be legal.
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Publishers have repeatedly refused to go along with technological measures that allow ebooks to work like that. Many can't be loaned with Amazon or B&N's loaning tech (for two weeks! Once per title!) much less transferred; no ebook store allows the transfer of one's purchases to a new person.
Part of the reason for rampant "piracy" is the total lack of *legitimate* ways to share digital art-and-entertainment media, even on a small scale.
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I'm aware of that and in most cases I think publishers are rather short sighted in some of their goals or rather how they're going about achieving them. I'm actually hoping that the recent judgement regarding resale of digital software is extended to movies, music and ebooks.
Whilst I'm not in favour of piracy, I do think there are grey areas where actions that are considered piracy or copyright infringement really should not be and I wouldn't like to see people prosecuted in those cases even though they're breaking the law. However, most discussions surrounding piracy are focusing on the unlimited copying and distribution of another's works which I do agree should be illegal. In that regard I can't accept that library loans is the equivalent of piracy.