 More than 500,000 books have been removed from the Internet Archive's lending library due to the Hachette v. Internet Archive lawsuit, including more than 1,300 banned and challenged titles. ๐ Our patrons have shared powerful stories about how this loss has impacted them, and we need your help to make a change. Sign our open letter to the publishers urging them to restore access to these books. ๐โ๏ธ #LetReadersRead 86 comments
@internetarchive IA, I love you and I use your site. But you done goofed up and I hope you don't do what you did again going forward.
  @internetarchive To be honest, it's not necessarily a bad thing that less people are being induced to run proprietary malware that implements digital handcuffs for the "loan" anti-feature.
If you choose to share a book, it should be shared without handcuffs.   @internetarchive Is there a complete list of every book affected by the ruling? @internetarchive In the meantime, books that are removed from IA may be available at Anna's Archive and Library Genesis.  I see my book is illegally available for download through this site. That is very fucking uncool. I spent a quarter million dollars over 32 years traveling and doing research and interviews and writing in order to bring that book to the world. To see my work fucking openly pirated like this is not fucking cool at all.  @brianstorms with all due respect but copyright doesnt care about you, it cares about the profit of companies you bootlicking the system isn't gonna do shit  @fokker @brianstorms  @fokker @brianstorms it's like people forget libraries exist and allow you to read books for free. Sites like this steal from authors.  @brianstorms @molytov @internetarchive If it helps at all, it has been shown in study after study that copies pirated โ lost sales; only a small minority of those who pirate video games, movies, etc would have spent the money to purchase a copy anyway. @apicultor @molytov @internetarchive Thanks, Cory. ๐ Yeah, no, it doesnโt help at all. Theft is theft. No sugarcoating it. @brianstorms @molytov @internetarchive It is not theft because if someone steals a copy there is not one less copy remaining to be sold. If someone pirates it that would have otherwise paid, that is indeed lost income. But what about all those who never would have paid anyway? Not trying to justify any loss of income for creative folk; just trying to put things in perspective. I will say that I had never heard of your book, but it sounds interesting. Maybe now I'll buy one, thanks to piracy! @apicultor @brianstorms @molytov @internetarchive @PJ_Evans Repeating a statement in all caps doesn't make it any more accurate than before. @molytov @internetarchive @internetarchive the problem with open letters is they are open to just throw them away and not care. We need fundamental change. Corps can embargo works for a century or more under current copyright law. We need a change. Anything more than 50 years should become public domain no matter what it is. To ask for longer is just pure greed. @internetarchive normally i refuse to sign change.org petitions, due to their being hosted on cloudflare
but i'll make an exception this one time , because I support you *that much* #letReadersRead  @internetarchive sound as #torrents and #p2p will thrive, as soon it will be single way to get access to books in general. @angiebaby Due absence of a central server in Usenet, I include it in "p2p" scope too. @internetarchive It fucking sucks. Imagine if the civilization that comes after us can't access a lot of our information and arts because the companies copystriked them before the meteor hit. @vibia  @internetarchive Are these books not available in local libraries? And if any of your books are from living authors, those folk need to pay bills, so how are you addressing that? Local libraries may or may not have them. It's hard to say when the amount is 500k books and libraries around the world vary quite a bit. As for authors needing to pay bills, I don't see how local libraries are any different from the internet archive in this regard. @lio @internetarchive Libraries buy books. If an author gives consent, great; if the author isn't asked for consent, it is theft. @CStamp @internetarchive My local public libraries tend to accept book donations. I'm not sure if they generally ask authors or publishers. I was generally under the impression that libraries just bought books the same way as everyone else did. That said, I've just learned that in Canada, we pay for lending rights on an annual basis (https://publiclendingright.ca/) though this appears to be done a country-wide level rather than the local-level. I'm ignorant on the subject, that's my bad.  @lio @CStamp @internetarchive Generally libraries (at last in parts of Canada) pay a bit extra for books so the author can get at least a bit of compensation to make up for fewer sales of the books. Authors spend months or years working a book -- they need to get compensation for at least some of that time. Royalties don't bring in much for most authors, so when digital copies are stolen, it really hurts the creators/authors. @CStamp @lio @internetarchive You must have missed how the IA library works. Quoting the blog post: > We purchase and acquire booksโyes, physical, paper booksโand make them available for one person at a time to check out and read online.  @rhoot @CStamp @lio @internetarchive The problem is, IA "Library" broke this role intentionally, which caused the lawsuit. @hittitezombie @rhoot @lio @internetarchive They need to actually have an agreement with the copyright owners. "The original lawsuit was filed by the publishers in June 2020 and argued that the Internet Archive had digitized โmillions of print books and [distributed] the resulting bootleg ebooks free of charge from its site, without the consent of the publishers and their authors or the payment of any license fee.โ" @CStamp @rhoot @lio @internetarchive Hachette sued IA when IA started distributing scanned content in an unlimited way, essentially providing online piracy, under the name "National Emergency Library". They were not sued or threathened before this point. @CStamp @rhoot @lio @internetarchive Finally this "500k books banned" malarkey is an outcome of an agreed negotiation. If IA didn't agree on this, they could continue litigation. @CStamp @lio @internetarchive That is *not* a difference, though? @CStamp @mnalis @lio @internetarchive You sound like a tech bro justifying sucking in work of others for AI. Authors depend on sales of their books. If some random person decides to buy one book, scan it, then make it avail be for many others, that is theft, however you want to do mental gymnastics to justify it. @CStamp @lio @internetarchive You keep using that word "theft". I don't think it means what you think it means. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft If you think something is copyright infringement, then please say that instead (and if possible provide references why you think so). For example, in my little part of the world (#Croatia in #EU), the right of public libraries is enshrined in #Copyright law and does not require any consent of the copyright holders (much less authors). 1/n @mnalis @lio @internetarchive It is stealing someone's livelihood to take a book, scan it, then make it available to masses of people. @CStamp @lio @internetarchive Any yes, we are taxed for that privilege, and those taxes are supposedly being used to support the said artists. I don't know the situation in Internet Archives jurisdiction, but would like to learn -- without being called names. (and if possible, by someone knowledgeable providing links to back up their claims. If you're interested in my references for #Croatia it's at https://www.zakon.hr/z/106/Zakon-o-autorskom-pravu-i-srodnim-pravima ฤlanak 34.) 2/2 @CStamp @CStamp @lio @internetarchive Every book in library circulation was bought, not stolen. @CStamp @lio @internetarchive  @CStamp @internetarchive It'd have to be a big library to have 500k books. I'd be surprised if our local library has 1% of that (and it's due to be demolished anyway). @tony @internetarchive Libraries have online presences. Consent is important. No consent, theft. @CStamp @internetarchive The internet archive is an online library, which you seem to object to. Most libraries do not have online presences (beyond 'opening times').  @tony @CStamp @internetarchive pretty much all libraries where I live have an online presence with ebooks, audiobooks , and magazines @wiredfire @tony @CStamp @internetarchive And the libraries pay for the books -- in many places a bit more than the cover price so authors can get some compensation. As it is, authors are paid already paid poorly, so anyone stealing digital copies hurts them even more. (If the authors give permission, then fine). @AskPippa @tony @CStamp @internetarchive agreed - just adding that contrary to the post above me online presences are in fact quite common for libraries. Authors should have the opportunity to get paid, of course, though the impact of piracy is a lot more nuanced than one pirated copy = one lost sale. Which is not a justification, but 500 chars probably isnโt enough to expand the point properly!  @CStamp@mastodon.social @internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org The Internet Archive is a library that buys books before lending them out. The same way the local libraries you pretend to support do.  @CStamp @internetarchive you could make the same argument against brick and mortar libraries. Are you anti libraries in general or only when they're online and provide challenged books to marginalized people? @internetarchive There is so much variety in the thing we call "book" and what is covered (uniformly) by (c). In the Google Books project, many academic authors stated they wanted their books to be available, even for free. And in some instances, factual books have been shown to warrant less protection than fiction. We need a revision of (c) that is more realistic and also that actually promotes science and the useful arts. @kcoyle @internetarchive @PJ_Evans @internetarchive I also want to point out that scanned books are a much poorer reading experience than e-books - it's just a photograph of book pages, with maybe some un-reviewed OCR text behind it. Fine perhaps for some searching, discovery of a proper noun in a large amount of text, but we can't promote careful reading with this technology. I hope that someone is working on a way to turn these images into actual book text. @kcoyle @internetarchive @PJ_Evans @internetarchive The text can be really garbled. Note that it is offered to the visually impaired and I would like to hear how well it is working for them. When I look at it, it's a mess for things like tables of contents; plain text renders better, but there are still errors. Could something be set up where the text could be corrected by humans? @internetarchive Server's having a bad hair day - takes a couple tries, but I got'er. ๐ @internetarchive Ah, that may be why I couldn't manage to source a pdf of Dworkin's Intercourse which I was trying to track down today.    @internetarchive Iโm sorry, but the Lending Library itself goes against the best spirit of IA. These are hundreds-year-old books in the PD. @internetarchive I've signed and donated. As an author, I'm VERY concerned about preserving access to the vast body of work (including out-of-print and public-domain books) that is in danger of becoming unfindable. I'm MUCH LESS concerned that having my own works be available in a nonprofit online library like the Internet Archive could somehow cost me sales or hurt my bottom line. With all respect, I believe the publishers' lawsuit is wrong, and contrary to the values we share. @internetarchive if you want to read one of those book, check it out from a library that actually paid the author for the book, or buy it. Authors don't write books as a charity project and deserve to be paid for their work unless they give it away for free.  @internetarchive @paninid They will only care when it is more profitable for them to behave that way. Cries and pleading to the contrary will land on deaf ears. They are in it for a profit. Nothing else will do. If it doesnโt stroke their greed, they have zero interest. @internetarchive Iโll say again that the LL goes against the best spirit of IA. A library holding on to PD works and titrating access to them serves the same function as museums who make Wikipedia afraid to use 200-yo portraits in bios of famous people.  @internetarchive @joncamfield But if people start reading books they could start thinking. If current events show us anything, it is that no one wants people to think. @internetarchive @internetarchive I appreciate the effort to appeal to publishers, but wouldn't it be better to lobby Congress to amend copyright law to give libraries permission to engage in CDL? |
Gregory's Server
@internetarchive change domicile and reupload?