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Comment by sambeau | Hacker News Reader

Here in the UK you break the law when you lend a book without the author's permission.

http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright...

  Restricted acts
  It is an offence to perform any of the following acts
  without the consent of the owner:
    Copy the work.
    Rent, lend or issue copies of the work to the public.
    Perform, broadcast or show the work in public.
    Adapt the work.

The UK govenment have to pay for the right to lend books in public libraries:

http://www.la-sofia.org/sofia/droit-de-pret-anglais.jsp

  The payment per loan is 5.98 p

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I just had a moment of confusion and bafflement. I didn't know how to process this information. I've always thought of the US and UK as sorta, kinda, similar...and imagined that the UK would have libraries like the US. But given this fundamental difference, it seems obvious that our libraries would be vastly different (and vastly better) than those in the UK, all other things being equal. Of course, all other things are not equal, but I do recall a couple of visitors from other countries being amazed at my local library...perhaps this is part of the reason why. At some point in US history, public good was deemed more important than the ability of rights holders to receive recurring revenue from books in libraries; or maybe the question never came up because the majority of rights holders were overseas in the beginning when our libraries were being created and had no feasible way to fight for more rights. Whatever the reason, as a published author, I wouldn't take that trade...I'd rather have an amazing library, where resources go to acquiring new books rather than maintaining payments on old ones.

I often think RMS is a bit of an extremist...but, when I really think things through, I often end up agreeing with him, at least on the core issues.

I wouldn't read too much into what the UK law says - it's mostly totally ignored in this respect:everybody passes books on and we still have a thriving second-hand book market (albeit one mostly funded by the sale of coffee).

I've seen no evidence that the US has vastly superior public libraries to the UK: all UK cities have a large, comprehensive (non-lending) public library often built by Carnegie. Our local lending Libraries, however, are struggling here due to cuts in government funding - nothing to do with these copyright laws as far as I can tell.

Our local lending Libraries, however, are struggling here due to cuts in government funding - nothing to do with these copyright laws as far as I can tell.

5.9p per loan aggregated over millions of loaned books a year is a sizable chunk of change. Funding wouldn't need to be as large without those fees (which is why I suggested "all other things being equal. Of course all other things are not equal"). I'm just saying that without those fees, UK libraries would almost certainly be better. How much better? I dunno. Depends on how much the culture values libraries. US culture, despite having an anti-intellectualism bias in many areas, takes its libraries pretty darned seriously and tends to fund them reasonably well (though I'm sure more would be welcome, and many small towns don't have sufficient library resources), and most rights holders don't get to view libraries as a recurring revenue stream.

5.9p per loan aggregated over millions of loaned books a year is a sizable chunk of change

£7.6 million according to the article.

(interesting to note that as the U.S. is not a member of the PLR club, American authors will get none of it)

By comparison the British Library (the UK's biggest public library)'s budget is £142million.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Library

The law says you break the law when you lend a book to the public. That phrasing could imply you can still lend it to people you know personally. (That's how it works in Poland.)

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