“Sign up, log on, and
borrow!”
Authors on social media are
angry about the new service ~ the National Emergency Library, from the Internet
Archive. It offers borrowing of 1.4 million books without a waiting list. Some
think it is great.
Others think “allowing
unlimited downloads of books under copyright, for which they have not paid, and
have no legal right, is piracy.” It is not only illegal but also removing a
source of income from authors when they need it most.
The Authors
Guild thinks the Emergency Library uses the coronavirus pandemic as an
excuse to weaken copyright law. The Association of
American Publishers declared itself stunned by the “aggressive,
unlawful, and opportunistic attack on the rights of authors and publishers in
the midst of the pandemic.”
The Internet Archive
maintained that it was doing absolutely nothing predatory or illegal, and that
it was simply stepping up to help the nation’s readers during a national
emergency.
Readers just looking to
access books while also staying home could be confused.
Most public libraries have
shut their doors. You can still access ebooks through their systems, but there
may be a waiting list for the most popular books. Many indie bookstores have
closed their doors. Amazon does not prioritize nonessential packages. So where
can you go to get your book fix?
The Internet Archive argues
that it is doing what public libraries do, only it has eliminated the waiting
list. Authors argue that it is making a rights grab that affects their bottom
line.
Traditional libraries license their ebooks directly from the publisher.
The Emergency Library does not. Libraries license ebooks from publishers and
lend them out to patrons, but they pay substantially more than individual
readers do when they license ebooks. (You never really buy an
ebook — you just buy a license to read it.)
The files that libraries lend out have code embedded that makes it impossible
for them to go to more than one patron at a time — hence those public library
waitlists.
This model allows libraries
to make their books accessible digitally, but it also allows publishers, and by
extension authors, to get paid for their work without losing sales.
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