It’s a bad movie that we don’t want to see playing in local theatres any time soon. Authors in the U.K. are mobilizing to stop the government from making cuts to the national Public Lending Right, which provides authors with a payment of six pence each time one of their books is checked out from a U.K. library. Many prominent writers have added their names to a petition requesting that the government keep PLR, which they say “gives effect to a legal right and is not a subsidy,” intact. Crime writer Penny Grubb says in The Guardian  that a looming funding review will be a “dog fight,” but called for action to ensure that PLR money remains untouched: “With average earnings for writers so low, and with such a short shelf life for books in shops these days, PLR income for many writers is a vital part of their take-home pay.” There’s more where that came from, but some of the ill-informed comments on the article are . . . disheartening.