Techdirt wants you to know that British author Terry Deary, who writes the Horrible Histories series of books for children, has a bone to pick with libraries.

I'm not attacking libraries, I'm attacking the concept behind libraries, which is no longer relevant...[I]t's been 150 years, we've got this idea that we've got an entitlement to read books for free, at the expense of authors, publishers and council tax payers. This is not the Victorian age, when we wanted to allow the impoverished access to literature. We pay for compulsory schooling to do that.

Deary does go on, saying that "People will happily buy a cinema ticket to see Roald Dahl's Matilda, and expect to get the book for free," and concluding that "Books aren't public property." Frankly, I'm astonished that I don't come across this line of thinking from authors more often. I would've thought for sure that by now Tom Clancy or some other American conservative novelist would be railing against libraries as basically a federally funded torrent site.

There's so much more of Deary's rant over at Techdirt, including the incredible allegation that the car industry would fall apart if there were car libraries that loaned out Porsches. It's a really incredible example of a clueless entitled man erupting from his comfortable echo chamber into the public discourse. Let's hope this dipshit doesn't give any politicians ideas.