Internet Archive

I am very interested in this situation as I am a believer in open access and education for all.

So am I.

I am believer that people who spend a lot of time researching and producing a book, such as this book, https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/978026 ... n-artist-and-illustrator/, should not find it available to download for free from archive.org.

What is the point of these excellent books being created if the authors are not rewarded by people purchasing their books? Why would they bother in future?

Trotter wrote:
So am I.

I am believer that people who spend a lot of time researching and producing a book, such as this book, https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/978026 ... n-artist-and-illustrator/, should not find it available to download for free from archive.org.

What is the point of these excellent books being created if the authors are not rewarded by people purchasing their books? Why would they bother in future?

I agree Trotter. These book should not be available to download on archive but accessible I believe is acceptable.

Where I have a real problem is academic articles that are primarily funded by tax payers and are then restricted to academics alone and the general public are trapped behind pay walls. That is entirely wrong. There is no moral or intellectual/copyright basis for agreeing with it.

This website is so useful for research purposes, though--especially when you want to search for a particular word or phrase in a given secondary source--a book about Tolkien.

Most of the books have to be "checked out," and you only have access to these books for 14 days before the next patron on the waiting list gets the book. If there is no one on the waiting list, you can check it in and then out again.

Couldn't agree more, Jlong.

It appears that the Internet Archive has lost the court case, though I guess that they can appeal.

In an emphatic 47-page opinion, federal judge John G. Koeltl found the Internet Archive infringed the copyrights of four plaintiff publishers by scanning and lending their books under a legally contested practice known as CDL (controlled digital lending). And after three years of contentious legal wrangling, the case wasn’t even close.

“At bottom, IA’s fair use defense rests on the notion that lawfully acquiring a copyrighted print book entitles the recipient to make an unauthorized copy and distribute it in place of the print book, so long as it does not simultaneously lend the print book,” Koeltl wrote in a March 24 opinion granting the publisher plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and denying the Internet Archive’s cross-motion. “But no case or legal principle supports that notion. Every authority points in the other direction.”

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by ... -and-lending-program.html

The judge rules against Internet Archive's noncommercial defense, as

IA uses its Website to attract new members, solicit donations, and bolster its standing in the library community. Better World Books also pays IA whenever a patron buys a used book from BWB after clicking on the “Purchase at Better World Books” button that appears on the top of webpages for ebooks on the Website. IA receives these benefits as a direct result of offering the Publishers’ books in ebook form without obtaining a license. Although it does not make a monetary profit, IA still gains “an advantage or benefit from its distribution and use of” the Works in Suit “without having to account to the copyright holder[s],” the Publishers.

I like IA, and part of me wanted them to win this latest suit, but their defence is flawed on too many fronts. Arguing 'fair use' is a rather slippery defence as in no way is this fair use. but this judgment could harm millions of disabled users, remote users, from accessing books that are not digitized elsewhere. Of course IA will continue to offer books as this is just another round in a long fight.

But as much as I like the platform, it has to refocus, and change the way it fills its digital repository. I hope Carl does not mind me mentioning this here, a while back I messaged him as his incredible book The Nature of Middle-earth had made its way onto IA and rather than being available as a loan, it was (and remains) available to download freely (what looks like the eBook version), as well as a scanned version of the hardcover, available as a 14 day loan. [I will not link to either here.] IA have to accept the reality of their situation, this amounts to piracy, and that will only harm the publishers, but more importantly the authors. Users there appear to be able to choose what category a book is stored in, and that can have a detrimental effect on how a book becomes accessible through their site.

EDIT: The scanned NoME is for print disabled users and can't be borrowed by normal users.

There is certainly an unfortunate subset of documents that has been uploaded to Internet Archive by community members, something which should never have been enabled without some form of oversight. Those uploads should certainly be cleared out, as they certainly violate copyright. Yet the corpus of Internet Archive itself comprises digitized collections of their own acquired volumes, including those of a number of now-defunct libraries, the physical volumes of which they possess. These in-copyright works are viewable—not downloadable—through their library system, with borrowing limited to the number of physical copies held: if there is only one physical copy in their collection, only one copy can be checked out at a time. Their limited lending on in-copyright works is certainly 'fair use' and in accord with that of all libraries. Their in-copyright volumes are absolutely not downloadable, only viewable: they are merely borrowed.

It needs also to be said that there is a glaring issue with the initial lower court judgment against Internet Archive. The judge's ruling that the Internet Archive is not transformative in lacking a database component in comparison with Google Books and Hathi Trust is incorrect: all three include comparable database components which assist in finding texts through searches by author, title, date, etc. With that database component explicitly stated by the court as a criterion definitive of transformative use, this puzzling judgment is plainly incorrect. They are absolutely right to appeal, and, of course, have every right to do so.

Aside from the above lending-related issues, the loss of Internet Archive would be—without hyperbole—a loss of historical proportions. There is no comparable archive of the web anywhere else. Its loss would be the loss of the sole archive of many millions of web pages collected over the past three decades. To expect any judgment against Internet Archive to somehow preserve that data along with the millions of images of pages of books out of copyright would be naive: all of it will be lost. That comprises far more information than was ever contained in the Library of Alexandria. Such may be an overly dramatic way of putting it, but it's a fact of the numbers involved, whether by count of letter, word, or work. The plaintiffs will be excoriated—as in certain circles they already are—in histories of our time if that loss comes to pass. It is already not a good look. History will depict this case—as commentators are already doing—as greedy corporations targeting a priceless library. I doubt very much that they've thought through that image aspect at all. In any case, the damage is already done.