Profit they're only getting because they figured out a way to cheat the concept of ownership and get around the first sale doctrine.
> The physical restrictions in a library - ala, only 1 person could read it at a time - is what prevents publishers from trying to charge more or prevent it.
Publishers hate digital lending that doesn't give them money, even when it acts just like a physical book: one person at a time, takes hours to be restocked, etc. Restrictions like that don't stop publishers from fighting back; only precedent keeps them in check.
How do you figure we get around this problem? The ability to reshare infinite electronic copies of a work does make this a legitimate issue compared to a physical good. I don't have any good answer.
A scheme where you lend each copy you own to one person at a time and don't use it yourself, with them deleting the loaned copy at the end, and with a reasonably large granularity like "1 day", needs to be legal. And probably disallow publishers from blocking such a scheme.
If we had some form of universal income, or other form of distribution of goods such that people didn't need to labor for a living (at least not with the current US norm of 40-50 hours a week), then it would be much more practical to say that all books are free for mass consumption. Then authors can write not for compensation, but for the pleasure of writing and knowing their works will be appreciated. And writers with a famous profile, who want the spoils of compensation, can be sponsored/patronized, like artists in the Renaissance.
They do not, they are government funded. But to say they are funded insufficiently as is (without this advent of better electronic resources) is under selling the issue.
>Perhaps there could be a form of library "fee" that is funded by tax payers, in a similar way to how public radio gets funded.
If your local, that's called taxes. And people reaction to paying more taxes is pretty much why corporations always win. We'd rather sacrifice time with intrusive ads than pay more for a community effort.
The cost of advertising on the Super Bowl is about $8/hour, so not only are people selling g their time for $8 an hour, they are then paying more than that on top in extra costs in buying things (the only reason someone advertises is because they make more profit then by not advertising, the expected return on an hour of Super Bowl adverts is more than $8 per viewer)
Adverts are a cancer on society, one we love.
The physical restrictions in a library - ala, only 1 person could read it at a time - is what prevents publishers from trying to charge more or prevent it.
The basic issue is that if a library is filled with electronic books, the publishers will stand to lose a lot of profit. Now I'm not arguing that they deserve this profit, but there's no good model so far that both preserves the profit motive, but also make available the copyrighted material digitally and unrestrictedly.
Perhaps there could be a form of library "fee" that is funded by tax payers, in a similar way to how public radio gets funded. The state pays some amount to each published author who make their book available in the library, from a pot of money collected from taxation.