I definitely agree with the limit of only lending what IA bought - and their brief violation of that policy was wrong in my opinion. But that shouldn't be used as an excuse to enforce a completely separate regime on "digital books".

I was not aware of the dividend on every loan in other countries. If you can provide a reference to where and how much, that'd be quite interesting.

Under EU legislation, all 27 member states are obliged to have a scheme to remunerate authors for the lending out of their works by libraries.

Ireland has it in place under the provisions of our Public Lending Remuneration Scheme, which is currently capped at €200,000 per annum, paid at a rate of 4.39 cents per title borrowed in 2020. Payments to individual authors are capped at €1,000 with a minimum sum of €2. Authors receive an average payment of just under €32 per year for having their books borrowed from public libraries in Ireland.

Under the PLR scheme in the UK authors can receive a maximum annual payment of £6,600.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40345067.html

Great to know, thanks.

I wonder how that compares with the fees US libraries are being for digital lending rights to publishers…

> Ordinary libraries can only lend as many copies as they have at a time

This is the same as controlled digital lending.

> and eventually have to replace them (due to wear and tear or e-licensing conditions)

Physical books frequently last longer than copyright terms and it's not obvious why authors should be entitled to double dip just because someone spilled their coffee, i.e. it should be equally reasonable for a library to print their own physical replacement copy of a damaged book that they already own, because they already own it.