The public has been forgotten in our intellectual property system. The intent of copyright and patents in the US Constitution is to develop a robust public domain, but it’s taken this long for Steamboat Willie (Mickey Mouse, 1928) to finally be free to use. (I say that as if nothing is going to stop it before January 1st, 2024).
Copyright is rent-seeking. It’s worse than theft. Its closer to extortion. But because it is done by the owner class, it is condoned or celebrated by the state. A state that has forgotten its people.
The publishers are not against libraries per se
If they could force you to pay a royalty every time you so much as thought of a book you once read, they’d do it in a heartbeat.
In case anyone was wondering what TorrentFreak thinks of this whole thing: https://torrentfreak.com/you-cant-defend-public-libraries-and-oppose-file-sharing-150510/
Public libraries started appearing in the mid-1800s. At the time, publishers went absolutely berserk: they had been lobbying for the lending of books to become illegal, as reading a book without paying anything first was “stealing”, they argued. As a consequence, they considered private libraries at the time to be hotbeds of crime and robbery. (Those libraries were so-called “subscription libraries”, so they were argued to be for-profit, too.)
British Parliament at the time, unlike today’s politicians, wisely disagreed with the publishing industry lobby – the copyright industry of the time. Instead, they saw the economic value in an educated and cultural populace, and passed a law allowing free public libraries in 1850, so that local libraries were built throughout Britain, where the public could take part of knowledge and culture for free.
