No, it's not. There is a practical limit -- and it's a low one -- on how many people can borrow and benefit from a single copy of a book, even if a library buys that copy and then lends it out freely to the public. If everyone wanted to rely on a library model instead of buying their own copies, libraries would have to buy many more copies. Thus the people behind the book would still get compensated, and thus the loop would be closed and there would be a meaningful incentive to create and share books in the first place. This isn't a matter of attitude, it's a matter of practical economics.
> There is a practical limit -- and it's a low one -- on how many people can borrow and benefit from a single copy of a book.
That's what I mean by technology. Book technology is expensive to copy compared to a digital file.
Looking at the big picture of libraries, I can go get a book and read it for free, just the same as downloading a text file. The attitude of libraries is that books should be available to read for free. Libraries are not for profit.
But it's not the same, is it? With a library, you have to wait until the book is in stock, which it won't be if their copy/copies are all on loan to other people. Whatever you consider their attitude to be, the bottom line is that they are still paying the people who make the books for those books, and the more people are going to benefit from the books, the more the people behind the books are going to get paid. The economic incentive to produce the book in the first place is still there, it's just a different guy settling the bill.
With digital files, that isn't the case. The technology doesn't have just a simple, quantitative effect, such as halving the money going to those who make the books for each copy. The change is qualitative, undermining the entire economic model that physical books allowed.
