Of relevance to this somewhat pedantic discussion, in Australia (at least), copyright right infringement is a civil action and not the sort of thing the police are going to stop you at the street corner for.
Quote:
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Generally, if you are a copyright owner and someone infringes your copyright, it is up to you to take action to stop the infringements and/or claim compensation or other legal remedies. This is a civil legal action.
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Taken from the "Protecting your copyright" document here:
Australian Copyright Council
The various exaggerated claims of illegal performances are largely irrelevant if the copyright holder never gets to know of them, or decides to take no action (which I can imagine is likely to be the case if any author heard about their work being read aloud in a library).
As I understand it, there can be issues about protecting your intellectual rights if it is proven you have not taken steps to protect them - but anyone using this defence would, I presume, have to prove that you knew about the other infringements.