Libraries are only legitimate customers because they have massive public goodwill, and it is probably difficult to assault their position. It doesn&#x27;t sound good to have librarians and educators rallying against you. It&#x27;s probably better to suffer their existence for now.<p>But surely many publishers view libraries as affronts to intellectual property, as libraries buy both software and books and charge their users almost nothing, relying instead on minimal fees, taxes, and donations. Unless libraries are paying royalties or something like that, they have basically appropriated the works of authors and publishers by brute political and social muscle.<p>The fact that it&#x27;s difficult to combat the goodwill credit score of libraries just means that businesses and authors assuage themselves with your magnitude argument: &quot;Well, it&#x27;s not that much profit or control loss. Communities will never learn how to scale their resources, especially in high-population areas where consensus is often difficult in government.&quot;<p>Also, libraries may fuel arguments for the public, forming a slippery slope by which the public continues to take from the private sphere for communal benefit. If libraries didn&#x27;t exist, it would be a lot harder to appeal to the public via, &quot;This website is just like a public library! It is an institution of community learning and knowledge for all.&quot;<p>I think the symbolic threat of libraries means that any attempt to establish a culture of digital libraries should be severely challenged.