[leephillips]

This is not a complaint about libraries or library patrons. I love and use libraries. Authors love to see their books in libraries, including their ebooks. The details matter. Scanning a book and putting it on the internet without the right to do so is not what a library does.

[dorchadas]

I think there might be some misunderstanding. There was a good comment on Reddit [1] about how all this was legal. From what I gathered, libraries scanned books that didn't have digital copies already made, and offered them to patrons to "check out". They used software to make sure that they only checked out a total combined digital/print number equal to the number of print copies they had bought, with software to make sure they couldn't be copied. That seems fair, to me (and is, apparently, legal). The National Emergency Library basically opens that up to anyone now, however, with no limits on how many times a book can be checked out at once.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/fpsqm0/the_internet_...

[leephillips]

I don't think there is a misunderstanding. In fact, your informative comment explains the crucial difference between what a legitimate, copyright-respecting library does and what the "Emergency Library" is doing. This is, in fact, why authors, who never complained about real libraries, are complaining about this.

[justinclift]

Didn't Google do that too a few years ago, and get away with it?

[leephillips]

No, they didn't get away with it, which is why they only display short excerpts from books in search results.