Let libraries buy e-books and keep and lend them, just like paper books
In short
- Libraries can buy e-books and own them, instead of borrowing them for a limited time.
- Each copy a library buys can be lent to one person at a time, just like a paper book.
- The law stops e-books from disappearing after a set number of loans or years.
- Publishers can no longer refuse to sell to libraries without a good reason.
If this comes true
A retired fisherman who goes to the only small library on his island borrows the e-book of a statistics textbook used at a university on the mainland, and he reads on through the later volumes that the paper copies never brought to the island.
Perhaps
Sales may drop by as much as people now read for free at libraries, and a writer who has just published a first book might not be able to publish a second.
Water so far 💧 0
The proposal in detail
This covers e-books sold to the general public, and audiobooks. The law would give public libraries, and school and university libraries, the right to buy and keep these works just as ordinary customers do. Each title a library buys can be lent to only one user at a time, as with a paper book, and when it is returned it can be lent to the next person. It would be banned to make books vanish automatically after a set number of loans or years, to charge libraries extremely high prices, or to refuse to sell to libraries without a good reason. Libraries would be responsible for preventing copying, using technology that automatically returns a book from the user's device when the loan period ends. Libraries would also have the right to store the books they bought on their own systems, so that they can keep offering them even if a publisher goes bankrupt or ends its service. Publishers would set the prices, but they would have to keep them within a reasonable range compared with the general price, and a public body would decide any disputes. On top of that, a system would be set up, or extended to e-book lending if one already exists, in which public funds pay writers and publishers compensation based on how many times their books are lent by libraries. Publishers would still be allowed to delay offering a book to libraries for a set period right after its release.
BenefitsLibraries stay a foundation for learning in the digital age too
The heart of this proposal is bringing back to e-books the relationship that was taken for granted with paper books: what a library buys belongs to the library. If a book that has been bought no longer disappears, libraries can keep a wider variety of books for longer on the same budget. Money that used to vanish buying popular books over and over each year can go to specialized books, foreign books, and learning books for children, so adults who want to learn again can find books they could not get at a bookstore. Because books remain even after a publisher's service ends, libraries can do their real job of protecting books for readers decades from now, with e-books too. People who live far from a library, people with physical disabilities, and working people who only have time at night can borrow from home, and the gap in chances to learn gets smaller. Because each copy is lent to one person at a time, libraries are not handing out unlimited copies, and the same restraint as with paper books is kept. With compensation based on the number of loans, writers can see being read at libraries as income rather than a loss, and libraries and writers can stay partners in growing readers together.
DrawbacksWriters and publishers earn less, and fewer books come out
With paper books, the trouble of going to the library and the wear on the books were a natural brake. E-books have no such trouble. If people can read for free at home whenever they like, as long as they wait their turn, the number of people who buy books will surely fall. If one e-book is lent thousands of times over decades without wearing out, the publisher and the writer receive only the payment for the first sale. For small publishers and for writers who live on their book income, this could be a blow that threatens their survival. Even if a compensation system is created, the amount depends on the government budget and does not necessarily make up for the lost sales. If publishers sharply raise prices for libraries or hold back from releasing e-book editions at all, e-books could even become harder to get. Taking away from publishers the freedom to decide whom to sell to and at what price also means changing the root of the system that protects creative works. And if people who feel they cannot make a living by writing stop writing, the new books on library shelves will themselves grow fewer.
Learn the background
For a long time, libraries have been places where anyone, however little money they have and whatever their age, can read and keep learning. What supported this was a simple rule: when a library buys a book, it keeps that book and can lend it as many times as it likes. But when books became digital, this rule disappeared. E-books are treated not as something sold but as a right to use that is rented out, and publishers can set prices and terms freely in their contracts with libraries. Libraries have to pay prices many times higher than the general public pays, for books that vanish after a certain number of loans or years, and they have to buy them again and again. Some books are not sold to them at all, and if a publisher's service ends, all the books they collected can no longer be read. Their limited budgets run out quickly, readers wait in long lines for popular books, and specialized or older books are not stocked in the first place. E-books are most useful to people who live far from a library and to people who want larger type or to listen to audio, yet that path stays narrow. Publishers worry that books read for free will stop selling, copyright law still follows the thinking of the paper age, and libraries have no bargaining power to change it.
Choose them ready to accept their drawbacks too (up to 5)
It helps pay for the server and the AI's planting
This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-23b) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes