[dredmorbius]

$5.25 per month for a typical U.S. household, or an 0.1% income tax basis (say, rolled into your broadband access fee), would provide compensation equal to all current book sales, and avoid both the deadweight losses of information access denial of the present system as well as the Federal Crime of Giving People Books.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33647625>

Criminalisation of digital distribution was only legislated in 2008 (again in the U.S.):

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33643398>