Well to be fair the costs are irrelevant, you can claim the big issue is that Libraries actually getting their copies for free and in many countries actually charge (even if minute) fees for people to be able to borrow books making them more akin to Netflix than to TorrentFreak.<p>But the setup cost is really not the issue especially considering that you can setup a new digital library at little to no costs these days and as a very large portion of the books (I would say probably 99%&gt;) that you would be able to get a hold on in a public library got digital copies than setting up the same exact collection isn&#x27;t that hard.<p>Another argument to be made is actually the &quot;value&quot; of the information shared in libraries vs file sharing sites, while you can argue that even the poorest made film or the buggiest game has some educational value you would be hard pressed to claim that file sharing sites help propagate knowledge on a level that is even in the same order of magnitude as public libraries used too.<p>Yes some people might download a book, even a school book or some documentary (which today they are pretty worthless sadly) but majority of downloads are TV shows, Movies, Porn and Games which sorry claiming that they are akin to a public library is just blasphemous.