Name: Four commercial publishers filed a complaint about the Internet Archive’s lending of digitized books - Internet Archive Blogs
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Four commercial publishers filed a complaint about the Internet Archive’s lending of digitized books - Internet Archive Blogs

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This morning, we were disappointed to read that four commercial publishers are suing the Internet Archive.As a library, the Internet Archive acquires books and lends them, as libraries have always done. This supports publishing, authors and readers. Publishers suing libraries for lending books, in this case protected digitized versions, and while schools and libraries are closed, is not in anyone’s interest.&nbsp;We hope this can be resolved quickly.Lawfare is being waged on many digital platforms..Get your seat belt on Brewster, we have a lot of turbulence to go thru before we land.Thanks again, a Billion BrewsterPingback:Could you please let us know which publishers are suing so we can, you know, act accordingly?Thanks!MattGREED – I hope this will never affect the Grateful Dead collection.The complaint is available atContent warning: contains atrocious rhetoric.I understand what the authors are thinking, but during this crisis we need to help each other and make our works available, especially to underserved communities. Brewster you are a saint, and me and all my students have your back!!! So sorry it has come to thisIn this day and age author earnings are dropping precipitously and piracy is rampant. You may be well heeled enough to get by during these times, but the 25% of Americans who have become recently unemployed, and 80% who were living paycheck to paycheck even before COVID are not.For the love of God make the survival of the Internet Archive your priority, even if that means discontinuing the National Emergency Library, it’s still worth it if they can bring in billions in copyright infringements damages. An Internet without IA is an internet not worth living, I would definitely completely pull the plug from the Internet without the IA.I am unfortunately not surprised at the listing of publishers…they are mammoth &amp; ruthless. I also understand things from BOTH points of view here. You are all correct to point out that we NEED these resources during this historical and devastating pandemic which has completely changed the world as we know it. I am FULLY supportive of the resources during “normal” times too—those of us who are poor &amp; disabled cannot always just buy stuff from Amazon or rummage through the library/book store (do they exist anymore?)/used book store. Internet sources, especially FREE ones, are invaluable &amp; change lives. As a photographer, I also understand how hard hit publishing houses have been by the internet, &amp; how “piracy” (not that IA should be categorized as such) has essentially ended any potential career opportunities for many artists out there. But I’ve just learned to roll with it…I figure that the wealth of knowledge of EVERYTHING that I’ve gained from the internet FAR exceeds any income I could ever hope to earn as an artist. So I 100%*** support IA &amp; the extraordinary efforts you have made to make all knowledge available to the WORLD, and I am eternally grateful to your ENTIRE team, board, and volunteers for the countless hours of work you’ve put in for everyone, everywhere—and ME. 🙂 Thank you and if there is ANYTHING *we*, the public, can do to support you (petitions? Letter writing?), please do not hesitate to let us know!!Could you please let us know which publishers are suing so we can, you know, act accordingly?Thanks!P.KI wonder if some libraries that are closed can temporarily assign ownership or loan their copies of books to the internet archive, thus legally covering some of the lending that took place.@Brewster Kahle. As a scientist who depends on the IA for research materials, I’m horrified, but I just want to know the worst case scenario so I can be prepared. Do they just want the National Emergency Library of unlimited checkouts be closed? Are they targeting ALL your book-lending operations? Are they trying to sue the entire site into bankruptcy? Are there any contingency plans if you lose the lawsuit, or can’t settle?I really hope this issue is resolved quickly too. It would be a MAJOR DISASTER if the internet archive goes bankrupt. Digital content saved or uploaded onto the internet archive could be “extinct in the wild”. Meaning that things like software, images, web-pages etc. don’t exist elsewhere and will be gone forever from the internet if the IA was shut down.Wikipedia’s sources uses the internet archive when a link rot occurs. Without the internet archive (which is the biggest web-archiving tool on the internet), links to dead pages will completely be permanently broken with no backup, which worsens the problem with citation links no longer working.I’ve emailed to the publishers about this, hopefully I get a reply.It’s worth noting that most of these books are out of print, so I don’t see how anyone is losing out if I borrow an obscure 1970s novel or a pulp magazine from the 30s, neither of which the publisher has been making any money off of in the first place. If they don’t want people borrowing books, then maybe they should stop keeping them out of print. I would buy them if they were available. More evidence that copyright is broken. Honestly, I believe that it is inherently immoral to keep information unavailable (perhaps a requirement for copyright to be valid could be that the copyrighted material must be kept in print in order to retain its status, but that’s just one millennial’s idealistic fantasies).Comments are closed.Archives

This morning, we were disappointed to read that four commercial publishers are suing the Internet Archive.As a library, the Internet Archive acquires books and lends them, as libraries have always done. This supports publishing, authors and readers. Publishers suing libraries for lending books, in this case protected digitized versions, and while schools and libraries are closed, is not in anyone’s interest.&nbsp;We hope this can be resolved quickly.Lawfare is being waged on many digital platforms..Get your seat belt on Brewster, we have a lot of turbulence to go thru before we land.Thanks...

Four commercial publishers filed a complaint about the Internet Archive’s lending of digitized books - Internet Archive Blogs

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