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Originally posted by: MeBeJedi
^ Agreed. ^
"the "public library"? There really is no difference here in regard to the concept itself....A library buys a book or a movie and the whole city can read or see it for free."
Did you forget the part about the library "buying" the book? How many libraries do you know of that make thousands of copies of the book available for people to take home and keep?
There are quite a number of differences.
There are no differences in the concept. If I buy a movie, I can not then set up a site to stream it for free to people, even if I only allow one person to stream it at a time. I also can not have a public showing of the movie without specifically paying for that right. In both cases, the people who got to see the movie for free didn't [necessarily] end up owning a copy and in both cases the copy was originally paid for. It is no different than what a library does. BTW, libraries don't pay extra for their copies of books; in fact, they get a discount typically. They can also accept book or movie donations, which can then be read or viewed by as many who want to, for free.
About movie rental places and movie theaters as mentioned by someone else in the post, the rights to distribute or show publically in the manner that they do are paid for via license fees; though I don't know of all the details, never having been in the movie rental or theater business or anything.