Internet Archive being sued

[aimeeandbeatles]

Four commercial publishers (Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House) have filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive due to their Open Library project, alleging copyright infringement.

There's some court PDFs available here. Somebody doesn't like James Patterson:

(I actually have bought legitimate eBook copies of books after reading them initially on the OL. But I'll make sure not to buy any more from those four publishers.)

The Open Library takes physical copies of books, scans them, and then makes them available to borrow. There's restrictions placed on it—users can only borrow the book for two weeks, only one copy can be loaned at a time. Using Adobe Digital Editions, you can even load the books onto an ereader, although the ePub copies are terribly-formatted (they just OCR'd them) and the PDFs can be glitchy.

At least until a few months ago. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and all the public libraries closing down (making the books inaccessible), the OL decided to dispense with the waitlist and make unlimited copies available. (Though from my own experiences, it might not have been for every book.) That's one of the angles that the plaintiffs seem to be going for in the court.

Worst-case scenario? This could bankrupt the entire Internet Archive and put everything else they worked for at risk. Even if it doesn't, it's possible that the Open Library will shut down and there will be no more digital copies of many, many books that are no longer in print.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

The Internet Archive is one of the greatest things the internet has ever produced and has enabled millions of people without the financial means to do research or access media for pleasure. it would be tremendously sad if this shut them down. I use the site fairly frequently, too , and think the open library was a great cause. Hopefully they can find some funding to keep going.

 

[Lexicus]

crickets from right-wing freeze peach advocates. I guess freeze peach only matters when some guy yells the n-word at a bunch of black students or whatever

 

[Gorbles]

There's a lot of complication around this (and social media has muddied the waters), but the specific issue from memory (rushed on time right now) is the fact that they decided to make access to the copies unlimited. I believe this predates the pandemic. This impacts libraries and therefore authors, because libraries actually pay for the books, right? Money goes back to the authors (however criminally little authors in general get from books. Even massively famous and successful authors like JK Rowling got a lot of her money from the film licensing and merchandise - not the books themselves).

I'll try and find more. Treat this as anecdotal, but it's definitely more complicated than "plucky free service underdog lashes out at restrictive publishers".

 

[yung.carl.jung]

crickets from right-wing freeze peach advocates. I guess freeze peach only matters when some guy yells the n-word at a bunch of black students or whatever

then again those people aren't known to read books or value a plurality in points of view. the thought of all the out-of-print books going down the ... really hurts me.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

There's a lot of complication around this (and social media has muddied the waters), but the specific issue from memory (rushed on time right now) is the fact that they decided to make access to the copies unlimited. I believe this predates the pandemic.

The National Emergency Library was launched on March 24, 2020:

To address our unprecedented global and immediate need for access to reading and research materials, as of today, March 24, 2020, the Internet Archive will suspend waitlists for the 1.4 million (and growing) books in our lending library by creating a National Emergency Library to serve the nation’s displaced learners. This suspension will run through June 30, 2020, or the end of the US national emergency, whichever is later.

Previously there was only one digital copy circulating for each book they had (the physical copies were taken out of circulation), and the waitlists on popular books could be months.

 

[Synobun]

This impacts libraries and therefore authors, because libraries actually pay for the books, right? Money goes back to the authors (however criminally little authors in general get from books. Even massively famous and successful authors like JK Rowling got a lot of her money from the film licensing and merchandise - not the books themselves).

Yes. Real libraries pay for each copy, and then pay authors for each borrow.

 

[Gorbles]

The National Emergency Library was launched on March 24, 2020:

Not disputing that. What I'm remembering predates that entirely, but it was the Internet Archive and it was about allowing unrestricted access to books. Maybe it didn't predate it. Time's a bit wibbly-wobbly for me at the moment. On March the 24th some countries had barely gone into lockdown. My own country hadn't. Anyhow, still in the process of searching things up, but appreciate the link!

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Not disputing that. What I'm remembering predates that entirely, but it was the Internet Archive and it was about allowing unrestricted access to books. Maybe it didn't predate it. Time's a bit wibbly-wobbly for me at the moment. On March the 24th some countries had barely gone into lockdown. My own country hadn't. Anyhow, still in the process of searching things up, but appreciate the link!

Could this be what you're thinking of? https://blog.archive.org/2019/10/31...-takes-center-stage-at-library-leaders-forum/

 

[Gorbles]

Could this be what you're thinking of? https://blog.archive.org/2019/10/31...-takes-center-stage-at-library-leaders-forum/

No, turns out you were right with the first link. Timey-wimey, etc. I'm not very well read on it, but this beats scrolling through three months of pandemic-affected Twitter:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...sed-of-using-covid-19-as-an-excuse-for-piracy
https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/4/...rnet-archive-controversy-coronavirus-pandemic

The impact on authors cannot be understated. Does that mean I support publishers? Not really, no. They're half the reason authors get as little as they do from books. But I can't see how this move from the Internet Archive is helping them, either.

 

[innonimatu]

Yes. Real libraries pay for each copy, and then pay authors for each borrow.

Pay authors for each borrow? Didn't knew that was a thing, it's absurd.
But the whole notion of the artificial restriction of "copyright" is absurd.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Obviously the massive publishers (like Penguin) care about their own revenue, not the author's.

 

[FriendlyFire]

This is kind of a grey area, but internet archive should at least purchase the copies of books that they loan out

I also had no idea that public Libraries paid out a small fee to the loan out books. It looks like 60c per book is paid out. Its not an unreasonable arrangement between the authors and public sharing. I'd imagine that as Ebooks become more popular that new rules will eventually be worked out to benefit everyone.

I personally like owning paper books though, but Ebooks do have their own advantages

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

This is kind of a grey area, but internet archive should at least purchase the copies of books that they loan out

AFAIK a lot of their books are purchased, or given to them by other libraries after they're taken out of circulation.

 

[Hygro]

Death to publishers

 

[yung.carl.jung]

..and the republishing party!

 

[H4run]

The Research Pirates of the Dark Web

"In 2012, during a large-scale academic boycott of Elsevier, even well-endowed Harvard University announced it was having trouble paying large publishers’ annual fees. “We faculty do the research, write the papers, referee papers by other researchers, serve on editorial boards, all of it for free … and then we buy back the results of our labour at outrageous prices,” the former director of the university’s library told The Guardian. Well-organized boycotts and open-access movements continue to flourish in academia."

Giving literature piracy a second glance, is it all bad? or contextual?.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I think textbook companies also pull some dumb crap like changing 2 words, swapping some chapters around, and calling it a 'new edition' to discourage people from buying used copies.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

https://blog.archive.org/2020/06/10...ng-to-traditional-controlled-digital-lending/

Today we are announcing the National Emergency Library will close on June 16th, rather than June 30th, returning to traditional controlled digital lending. We have learned that the vast majority of people use digitized books on the Internet Archive for a very short time. Even with the closure of the NEL, we will be able to serve most patrons through controlled digital lending, in part because of the good work of the non-profit HathiTrust Digital Library. HathiTrust’s new Emergency Temporary Access Service features a short-term access model that we plan to follow.

We moved up our schedule because, last Monday, four commercial publishers chose to sue Internet Archive during a global pandemic. However, this lawsuit is not just about the temporary National Emergency Library. The complaint attacks the concept of any library owning and lending digital books, challenging the very idea of what a library is in the digital world. This lawsuit stands in contrast to some academic publishers who initially expressed concerns about the NEL, but ultimately decided to work with us to provide access to people cut off from their physical schools and libraries. We hope that similar cooperation is possible here, and the publishers call off their costly assault.

 

[Goodfella]

Yes. Real libraries pay for each copy, and then pay authors for each borrow.

Pay authors for each borrow? Didn't knew that was a thing, it's absurd.
But the whole notion of the artificial restriction of "copyright" is absurd.

I do not believe this is true in the United States. Since at least 1908, US libraries have operated under the "First Sale Doctrine," which was first a Supreme Court holding and later codified under the Copyright Act of 1976. The doctrine holds that an owner of a copy of a copyrighted work can resell or lend or give away that copy without permission of the copyright owner and without any royalties to the copyright owner.