Mek here, program lead for OpenLibrary.org at the Internet Archive.
Over the last several months, readers have felt the devastating impact of more than 500,000 books being removed from the Internet Archive's lending library, as a result of Hachette v. Internet Archive https://help.archive.org/help/why-are-so-many-books-listed-a...
In less than two weeks, on June 28th, the courts will hear the oral argument for the Internet Archive's appeal.
What's at stake is the fundamental ability for library patrons to continue borrowing and reading the books the Internet Archive owns, like any other library.
Please consider signing the Open Letter to urge publishers to restore access to the 500,000 books they’ve caused to be removed from the Internet Archive’s lending library and let readers read.
I'd love to see the stats about how many books purchases happen on Amazon because they're referred to from openlibrary.org (which has Amazon links on all pages).
I think the 1 hour loan available for so many books on IA feels pretty similar to standing in a bookstore and reading for a little while. You get an idea if the book is worth your time and if you really like it you'll probably want to buy it somewhere that you can easily annotate it and maybe even pass it on to the friend.
when this happens, it signifigantly raises the bar for authors and producers to deliver a desired quality rather than a spiffy promotional campaign for a pulp piece.
A bar that the book industry always seemed happy with. The romantic view of "traditional publishing" contains a value chain that starts with a publisher selecting the best drafts sent to them, spending lots of time in a back and forth between editor and author to polish that draft, and ends with a bookseller who is an avid reader and can give personalized recommendations to every shopper.
Of course in today's reality we have largely anonymous book stores, "bestseller" lists that are systematically manipulated, and publishers that lower their standards in the face of competition from self-publishing (both with cheaper book printing and online publishing). But providing books that are worth your time still seems to be one of the large selling-points of publishers.
Send a Sample from amazon and other eBook suppliers is usually 10% of the book. Another unfortunate metric for modern authors as they now have to make something interesting happen in the first 10% rather than a slow character and plot build up.
10% of the book is like, literally, one tenth of a book. There should be something happening in that span, at the very least some interesting buildup - otherwise, what's all this space used on?
Reading the article, it seems that this relates not to the internet archive, that is privacy preserving, but to another public library (that aparently was leaking or selling data -- I did not read it entirely)
In fact, the article sugests it was a third party, for-profit DRM service, such as OverDrive, which publishers force libraries to use to lend audio and e-books, who sold the patron's data to advertisers. Perhaps this is what the GP comment intended to point out.
The point is that the Archive highlights the risk of surveillance over library patrons, and I highlighted that instances of said risk have been reported.
Isn’t the whole reason the lawsuit started because the Internet Archive went above an own-to-loan ratio of 1? This blog post completely leaves this detail out and makes it seem they were always only doing 1 physical copy to 1 digital copy which is not true.
>Isn’t the whole reason the lawsuit started because the Internet Archive went above an own-to-loan ratio of 1?
No. The lawsuit was about CDL as a whole, and there's plenty of evidence showing publishers were preparing for it even without the COVID emergency library. If the lawsuit was just over the emergency library, I doubt IA would still be fighting.
Am I the only one who feels embarrassed when I see something like this?
I'm just a nerd. I'm not involved with ebook publishing. But I know for a fact that I'm the 1%. 99% of the people can't use a computer as well as I'm able to. So this is my 1%. And when my 1% creates a digital version of a product that is inferior to the physical version of the product, and then tells the 99% it's the better way but it turns out they just didn't consider everything, and they don't even seem to care, and it just keeps making things worse for a lot of people, I just feel embarrassed. It wasn't supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be a total victory, better in every conceivable way. If it's not for the smell and texture of paper, then I don't want to hear "but physical books are better because..." This isn't even a complicated technology. It's just text.
How can an industry that can't figure out how to make a book digital handle something like artificial intelligence?
Honestly, I don't understand why they're picking a fight with publishers. These lawsuits endanger the future of the Internet Archive which does a lot of really unique and irreplaceable work in digital preservation.
There are plenty of other groups with deeper pockets and bigger institutional backing that preserve and share books. Let someone else fight this battle.
Oh, well, I guess I hope they win their appeal because it's too late to unring that bell. When I read about it, it seemed like a very open-and-shut infringement case, though. It seems like their only chance will be drawing some activist judges who want to make new law.
So you mean: "they could have avoided the fight by avoiding lending". The reply would very probably be that they thought they did what was Right... Many of us agree. A proper online library: yes this is one of the greatest ideas and values.
"In this country?" The US deserves it's share of blame for pushing coyright via trade agreements but the berne convention isn't just the US and the situation isn't exactly better in other western countries. At least the US in theory recognizes copyright as an infringement on our rights that is only justified in order to ensure the production of creative works. As flawed and untested as that logic is, it is still much better than the inherent author rights that are more common in e.g. the EU.
For those who don't know, the case against archive.org is pretty rock solid and justifiable. They had been operating a lending library of ebooks, where you could 'check out' an ebook file and they wouldn't let anyone else read it until you had 'put it back'. They had many options for evading DRM and told you to delete the file when you 'put it back' on the honor system, so this was already legally shaky, but during the pandemic they disabled the limits and let anyone 'check out' anything they wanted without waiting for a copy to become available - AKA hosting a pirate site for downloading unauthorized ebook copies, just with 'library' branding. That is what they got sued for.
It is not. The judge ruled the CDL, their original system, was illegal, and the only mention of the period where they removed the limits was saying basically "as controlled digital lending was already illegal, the pandemic actions were also illegal."
This is cope and ex post facto butt-covering. pie_flavor's point is that OpenLibrary's "emergency library" made IA legally vulnerable. Whether CDL being affected is a side effect or not of the lawsuit is beside the point.
> OpenLibrary's "emergency library" made IA legally vulnerable
According to the plaintiffs and the judge who agreed with them, controlled digital lending was always illegal and they always had grounds to sue. So it did not make them "legally vulnerable."
I could see it argued that it made them "rhetorically vulnerable" and that's why the publishers took this particular moment to sue, but your statement is in contradiction with the plaintiffs and judge.
This is nonsense. Publishers had been building up to attack CDL for years, and your argument that "as you committed this illegal act, this other legal act is now a crime for everybody" makes absolutely zero sense.
The emergency library made them legally vulnerable over that act, this lawsuit is not about that act.
IMHO the Internet Archive was always going to get sued because they were treating ebooks like physical books and that's contrary to the copyright maximalism that is law around ebooks. The COVID change didn't really make a difference, they publishers were never going to allow some random people on the internet undo all of the work they put into adding restrictions on digital media.
They're never ever going to allow something like the doctrine of first sale to happen again. That's why you can't have an regular library with ebooks. The publishers will not settle for anything less than charging libraries per-read and requiring negotiation for every title offered. The old library model doesn't maximize shareholder value for the publisher. Also to blame is our elected representatives who could legislate a better system for the people, but are too beholden to corporate interests to ever do so.
>IMHO the Internet Archive was always going to get sued because they were treating ebooks like physical books and that's contrary to the copyright maximalism that is law around ebooks.
No, IA was not sued before the "emergency library" because OpenLibrary treated physical books like physical books. OpenLibrary had been around for years before 2020.[0]
>They're never ever going to allow something like the doctrine of first sale to happen again.
Ah yes, the oft-touted warning that "they" (meaning publishers) hate the first sale doctrine and somehow will magically abolish it.[1] The principle that one you own something tangible, you can do whatever you want with it (sell it, lend it, gift it, destroy it) is a longstanding one, with books being only one application. Lending libraries predate the concept of a free public library and, yet, publishers somehow did not go around to every paid library and mechanics' institute demanding a cut of membership fees.
>That's why you can't have an regular library with ebooks.
I said "tangible" above for a reason. I don't have a good answer for how and whether to treat ebooks differently, but am not convinced that the only right and proper one is to treat them exactly the same way as physical books.
>The publishers will not settle for anything less than charging libraries per-read and requiring negotiation for every title offered.
But this has not been the case in practice. Amazon and other retailers sell ebooks with permanent licenses.[2] Libraries use both CloudLibrary's per-borrow model and Overdrive as providers; while I prefer the latter as a Kindle e-paper reader, there is an argument to be made for either approach from a logistical perspective. In my experience Overdrive has the largest market share, so libraries seem to prefer its approach.[3]
[0] I'm quite certain that my IA/OL account is older than yours.
[1] As amazing as it may seem, publishing companies' employees also grew up borrowing books at the library.
[2] Yes, I know about the 1984 example
[3] And before you say "Overdrive books shouldn't expire after 52 borrows!", that seems like a reasonable compromise given that ebooks don't fall apart after repeated use the way pretty much any physical book would after that many borrows. Again, paid-for ebooks from Amazon and elsewhere don't expire.
> They had been operating a lending library of ebooks, where you could 'check out' an ebook file and they wouldn't let anyone else read it until you had 'put it back'. They had many options for evading DRM and told you to delete the file when you 'put it back' on the honor system
This is basically how checking out ebooks from my "regular" library works. Not only is the DRM relatively easy to remove (even for non-technical users), returning the books is also on the honor system (to wit: on a Kindle, you retain access to books indefinitely so long as you're in airplane mode; on a Kobo, so long as you keep the book open and avoid returning to the home screen; these tricks are both easily discovered and, IME, routinely shared among people with ereaders). It's possible IA should've avoided poking the bear by removing these nominal restrictions during the pandemic, but framing their normal operation as substantially different from that of more traditional libraries is rather disingenuous.
1. There's a difference between a weak DRM format, and a "download as PDF" option.
2. "Poking the bear by removing these nominal restrictions" is the "branding" I was talking about. Their "emergency library" was a pirate site, plain and simple. You can describe it as a procedural difference from what they were doing before, but that doesn't stop it from being piracy.
> There's a difference between a weak DRM format, and a "download as PDF" option.
Can you direct me to a book available to borrow in the IA, which both requires copyright protection, and is available to download as a DRM-free PDF? My understanding is that no such book currently exists, nor did it exist in the pre-pandemic regime.
> "Poking the bear by removing these nominal restrictions" is the "branding" I was talking about. Their "emergency library" was a pirate site, plain and simple. You can describe it as a procedural difference from what they were doing before, but that doesn't stop it from being piracy.
I don't think there's any great contradiction in the ideas that a) the barriers the IA had prior to the pandemic (and still has, to my knowledge) against piracy are perfunctory and largely ineffective, b) they are the same barriers that any US-based library with an ebook rental program uses, and c) even slightly weakening those barriers caused the IA to be de facto facilitating piracy in a legal sense, regardless of their intentions.
Vacuous labels. A library provides access to texts; the idea of lending single texts serially just comes from the physical restrictions of physical books, which loses meaning with the electronic format.
A library lends books. There is little difference if the queue is respected when such queue is artificial.
No, it comes from the legal restrictions of copyright, which forbid making and distributing copies without the permission of the copyright holder. "Library" is not a magic word that exempts you from all copyright restrictions.
And in fact the copyright holder has no power about its product, when published, not being acquired by key libraries. It was so for example under Ptolemy III Euergetes (who mandated that every found book be copied for the Museum in Alexandria), and it is so today. Libraries are there for collection of and access to recorded knowledge.
The modalities of accession had a form with the physical book, and may lose meaning with current new formats (there is no natural exclusive access to a single token). So, labelling "piracy" simultaneous access may easily be just vacuous technicality.
'Vacuous' is a good word to describe comments about Ptolemy and tokens, when copyright law forbids making and distributing copies without permission from the copyright holder, and that is exactly what IA was doing.
Reference to the traditional historical intention about having libraries and to relation between codified law and practicalities will remain vacuous to you in meaning for as long as you will refuse to see the communicated point about a clash between principles, which makes the copyright laws you mention, as part of a dialectic, even weaker than normal positive law.
As does Adobe, Amazon… There's no need for me to go through the list alphabetically. There's fundamentally no such thing as a technological protection measure, not in a world where the compact digital camera exists.
Equating physical property (subject to scarcity) and digital property is what ends up destroying the foundation of freedom in computing. Can we not perpetuate this way of thinking and instead find better ways to support creators?
I don't see them winning without changes to copyright law.
Which is perhaps part of the point. As a start, first sale doctrine should apply to ebooks, as should the format shifting exemption (both for libraries and for individuals), and DRM circumvention should be explicitly legalized for non-infringing purposes.
It is probably worth noting that libraries are traditionally State-supported, because the development of internal knowledge is considered crucial for the development of everything else.
The business model is that society wants them and finances them for the improvement of society.
Mek here, program lead for OpenLibrary.org at the Internet Archive.
Over the last several months, readers have felt the devastating impact of more than 500,000 books being removed from the Internet Archive's lending library, as a result of Hachette v. Internet Archive https://help.archive.org/help/why-are-so-many-books-listed-a...
In less than two weeks, on June 28th, the courts will hear the oral argument for the Internet Archive's appeal.
What's at stake is the fundamental ability for library patrons to continue borrowing and reading the books the Internet Archive owns, like any other library.
Please consider signing the Open Letter to urge publishers to restore access to the 500,000 books they’ve caused to be removed from the Internet Archive’s lending library and let readers read.
Let us make this wretched world worth it.
I think the 1 hour loan available for so many books on IA feels pretty similar to standing in a bookstore and reading for a little while. You get an idea if the book is worth your time and if you really like it you'll probably want to buy it somewhere that you can easily annotate it and maybe even pass it on to the friend.
when this happens, it signifigantly raises the bar for authors and producers to deliver a desired quality rather than a spiffy promotional campaign for a pulp piece.
Of course in today's reality we have largely anonymous book stores, "bestseller" lists that are systematically manipulated, and publishers that lower their standards in the face of competition from self-publishing (both with cheaper book printing and online publishing). But providing books that are worth your time still seems to be one of the large selling-points of publishers.
I would like to remind the public of:
# An attorney says she saw her library reading habits reflected in mobile ads. That's not supposed to happen
https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/18/mystery_of_the_target...
Getting out too far ahead of your message is a constant challenge in advocacy.
(And FWIW, I strongly endorse the IA, and AFAICT your own viewpoint here.)
No. The lawsuit was about CDL as a whole, and there's plenty of evidence showing publishers were preparing for it even without the COVID emergency library. If the lawsuit was just over the emergency library, I doubt IA would still be fighting.
I'm just a nerd. I'm not involved with ebook publishing. But I know for a fact that I'm the 1%. 99% of the people can't use a computer as well as I'm able to. So this is my 1%. And when my 1% creates a digital version of a product that is inferior to the physical version of the product, and then tells the 99% it's the better way but it turns out they just didn't consider everything, and they don't even seem to care, and it just keeps making things worse for a lot of people, I just feel embarrassed. It wasn't supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be a total victory, better in every conceivable way. If it's not for the smell and texture of paper, then I don't want to hear "but physical books are better because..." This isn't even a complicated technology. It's just text.
How can an industry that can't figure out how to make a book digital handle something like artificial intelligence?
There are plenty of other groups with deeper pockets and bigger institutional backing that preserve and share books. Let someone else fight this battle.
It is not. The judge ruled the CDL, their original system, was illegal, and the only mention of the period where they removed the limits was saying basically "as controlled digital lending was already illegal, the pandemic actions were also illegal."
According to the plaintiffs and the judge who agreed with them, controlled digital lending was always illegal and they always had grounds to sue. So it did not make them "legally vulnerable."
I could see it argued that it made them "rhetorically vulnerable" and that's why the publishers took this particular moment to sue, but your statement is in contradiction with the plaintiffs and judge.
The emergency library made them legally vulnerable over that act, this lawsuit is not about that act.
They're never ever going to allow something like the doctrine of first sale to happen again. That's why you can't have an regular library with ebooks. The publishers will not settle for anything less than charging libraries per-read and requiring negotiation for every title offered. The old library model doesn't maximize shareholder value for the publisher. Also to blame is our elected representatives who could legislate a better system for the people, but are too beholden to corporate interests to ever do so.
No, IA was not sued before the "emergency library" because OpenLibrary treated physical books like physical books. OpenLibrary had been around for years before 2020.[0]
>They're never ever going to allow something like the doctrine of first sale to happen again.
Ah yes, the oft-touted warning that "they" (meaning publishers) hate the first sale doctrine and somehow will magically abolish it.[1] The principle that one you own something tangible, you can do whatever you want with it (sell it, lend it, gift it, destroy it) is a longstanding one, with books being only one application. Lending libraries predate the concept of a free public library and, yet, publishers somehow did not go around to every paid library and mechanics' institute demanding a cut of membership fees.
>That's why you can't have an regular library with ebooks.
I said "tangible" above for a reason. I don't have a good answer for how and whether to treat ebooks differently, but am not convinced that the only right and proper one is to treat them exactly the same way as physical books.
>The publishers will not settle for anything less than charging libraries per-read and requiring negotiation for every title offered.
But this has not been the case in practice. Amazon and other retailers sell ebooks with permanent licenses.[2] Libraries use both CloudLibrary's per-borrow model and Overdrive as providers; while I prefer the latter as a Kindle e-paper reader, there is an argument to be made for either approach from a logistical perspective. In my experience Overdrive has the largest market share, so libraries seem to prefer its approach.[3]
[0] I'm quite certain that my IA/OL account is older than yours.
[1] As amazing as it may seem, publishing companies' employees also grew up borrowing books at the library.
[2] Yes, I know about the 1984 example
[3] And before you say "Overdrive books shouldn't expire after 52 borrows!", that seems like a reasonable compromise given that ebooks don't fall apart after repeated use the way pretty much any physical book would after that many borrows. Again, paid-for ebooks from Amazon and elsewhere don't expire.
This is basically how checking out ebooks from my "regular" library works. Not only is the DRM relatively easy to remove (even for non-technical users), returning the books is also on the honor system (to wit: on a Kindle, you retain access to books indefinitely so long as you're in airplane mode; on a Kobo, so long as you keep the book open and avoid returning to the home screen; these tricks are both easily discovered and, IME, routinely shared among people with ereaders). It's possible IA should've avoided poking the bear by removing these nominal restrictions during the pandemic, but framing their normal operation as substantially different from that of more traditional libraries is rather disingenuous.
2. "Poking the bear by removing these nominal restrictions" is the "branding" I was talking about. Their "emergency library" was a pirate site, plain and simple. You can describe it as a procedural difference from what they were doing before, but that doesn't stop it from being piracy.
Can you direct me to a book available to borrow in the IA, which both requires copyright protection, and is available to download as a DRM-free PDF? My understanding is that no such book currently exists, nor did it exist in the pre-pandemic regime.
> "Poking the bear by removing these nominal restrictions" is the "branding" I was talking about. Their "emergency library" was a pirate site, plain and simple. You can describe it as a procedural difference from what they were doing before, but that doesn't stop it from being piracy.
I don't think there's any great contradiction in the ideas that a) the barriers the IA had prior to the pandemic (and still has, to my knowledge) against piracy are perfunctory and largely ineffective, b) they are the same barriers that any US-based library with an ebook rental program uses, and c) even slightly weakening those barriers caused the IA to be de facto facilitating piracy in a legal sense, regardless of their intentions.
Vacuous labels. A library provides access to texts; the idea of lending single texts serially just comes from the physical restrictions of physical books, which loses meaning with the electronic format.
A library lends books. There is little difference if the queue is respected when such queue is artificial.
The modalities of accession had a form with the physical book, and may lose meaning with current new formats (there is no natural exclusive access to a single token). So, labelling "piracy" simultaneous access may easily be just vacuous technicality.
As does Adobe, Amazon… There's no need for me to go through the list alphabetically. There's fundamentally no such thing as a technological protection measure, not in a world where the compact digital camera exists.
Every time I've borrowed a book on there, it's used Adobe DRM just like when I buy an ebook.
Example: https://archive.org/details/introducingpytho0000luba
Which is perhaps part of the point. As a start, first sale doctrine should apply to ebooks, as should the format shifting exemption (both for libraries and for individuals), and DRM circumvention should be explicitly legalized for non-infringing purposes.
The business model is that society wants them and finances them for the improvement of society.