Japan's Book Battle.

Japanese publishers say they are getting clobbered by an unlikely upstart: the local public library. It was not until the 1970s that public libraries first appeared in Japan, and while still relatively rare in remote areas, they are growing fast. The number of books libraries lend out doubled to 546 million in the past decade, and libraries all over the country are packed, particularly on weekends. Supported by taxpayers' money, free library books have an obvious appeal in a nation suffering a chronic economic slump. Money-management gurus on TV often advise viewers to save money by borrowing books, and consumers like Sachiko Hiraishi, mother of two preschoolers, take the tips to heart. "I don't want to buy books kids will grow out of while we find all the wonderful ones at the library," she says.

As the publishers tell it, the library boom now amounts to unfair competition that is helping to kill their business. Book sales in 2001 amounted to only 946 billion ($7.9 billion), down 13 percent from 1996, according to Tokyo's Research Institute of Publications. After years of blaming their troubles on the rising popularity of videogames, mobile phones, music CDs and successful used bookstore chains like Bookoff Corporation, publishers and authors began looking for ways to get some of their money back. Now the publishers are asking libraries not to lend out popular new titles for a period of six months, and for authors to get paid for the books the libraries loan. Outraged librarians have called the proposal a commercial assault on an ancient sanctuary of free information and learning.

The libraries appear likely to lose. Publishers point out that Japan is, along with the United States, one of the few developed nations that has not fully adopted the idea of public lending rights. Based on the British system, these require the government to set up a fund that compensates authors for each time their work is borrowed from the library. In Britain, the rate per loan is a little more than seven cents, and the most an author can earn in one year is capped at $9,800. More than 17,000 British authors received pay under the plan last year. More than a year ago, famous Japanese authors like novelist Masahiro Mita began advocating for the British system, saying the current situation is "antidemocratic" and violates writers' copyrights. Now Tokyo is signaling its willingness to rewrite the copyright laws.

It's not quite clear how public lending rights would help the publishers, since the money goes to authors. And the ...