@Erpel sometimes the hustle just really keeps you busy and away from such thought. Sometimes its good. sometimes not.

@pleaseclap @hobbsc @hailey

Time for a little rant on the topic.

So in general libraries only really lend out as many digital copies as they have physical books. Which the pubs tolerated that I suppose. I you wanted to lend more e-books any given time you need a subscription from the publishers (because thats the world we live in...) They come with a time-limited DRM so that the reader only has a certain amount of days to read the book. Afterwards (if you did not extend it) access to the book was blocked. Adobe with their system taken care of that.

The archive was or still is digitizing books they have physical copies to lend them out one-to-one. That certainly already stretched copyright but I guess the publishers had no real legal ground to fight this. So they might just let it slide damage is minimal anyway.

In germany I am allowed to make copies of stuff I bought for personal archival, though with stipulation that no DRM has to be broken in order to do so. So I am a pirate as well lol. Most of library was obtained by removing DRM from books I bought. Some interesting side-fact. Makers of everything that can store data in any form have to pay a small fee to some authors assocition for every device they make to accomodate this right

So someone at the internet archive seemed to have the bright idea to lend out e-books in unlimited numbers. Which lead to the publishers suing them. I mean I get the archive wanted to do good by still allowing people to access knowledge while locked in home. It just comes to bite them so hard rn.

Generally their idea of digitizing and lending out older books which might have never seen digital releases and are out of print is great. Good for preservation of stuff. They just overdone it...

Oh also I want to rant about the publishers as well. They just cannot get their pockets lined enough it seems. They really like hiding behind "the poor authors that don't get paid by pirating". Its such an easy excuse.

Thing is they might have a point but likely not for the majority of authors they house.

See generally when licensing your work you basically get to two options of getting paid. Either they offer you a fixed upfront and tell you everything is said and done with this one payment. Even if they sell millions. Or they go down the royalty model where you get a certain amount per book sold.

I think most publishers will offer you a mix at these times. So they will offer a fixed payment plus some small amount per book sold. Thats atleast for physicals.

I don't know how exactly authors are paid in these digital lending arrangements. Although I dunno how it works for physical lending as well. If someone know let me know.

I just have an inkling the authors don't get much from this...