Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
Again, you can’t analogize physical media and digital media in any meaningful fashion. Purchasing an actual book is not the same thing as purchasing a license.
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Well, they certainly can be compared. Book get damaged with use, lost, there's a physical limit on how many of them can be loaned out at one time. Library system of delays and penalties is built on paper books. I'm really not trying to choose sides. All I'm saying is that legality is still in the flux. Nothing is decided.
We now see printed books market as plainly regulated and logical affair, but it really wasn't so in the past. As soon as printing press became available, it ushered an era of piracy and disorder. It took a lot of time before it was all regulated to the state that it is today. Even libraries themselves, we see them as a public good, but they came a long way from institutions that chained their books and had them always behind their doors, to libraries that loan the books out.
To be clear. I'm pretty conservative regarding this. I'm actually leaning to the opinion that libraries shouldn't lend out certain ebooks at all. They're just too easy to pirate.