Half Life Opposing Force Internet Archive
Vivien
I call on the executives at Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House to come together with us to help solve the pressing challenges to access to knowledge during this pandemic. Please drop this needless lawsuit.
Wonderful stuff for public domain books from 200 years ago. However, what is the plan to not cut the economic legs out from underneath struggling independent authors and small publishers who actually need the revenue from book sales to put groceries on the table?
Agreed! With tbe Covid-19 pandemic it is difficult and unsafe to go into public libraries. Digital borrowing helps with keeping people that conginue to want to read and may no longer have disposable income safe. A true artist understands this, many of which most likely borrowed a book or two while researching for their own books.
Take piracy, there is actually no law against setting up a blog page where you link to downloads. As long as you are not the one HOSTING the copyrighted material. You could have a system setup to automatically reupload links that were tookdown and update the associated blog pages and still not be violating the law.
If the idea of building libraries were so ill-advised it would have well been aborted decades, if not centuries, ago. Establishments with free books are needed not only for visitors to be allowed to read certain books for free, but because (1) they help new and emerging authors have their works enjoyed, evaluated and acknowledged by a larger community than those who can afford to have their own copies.
Not in the least, the majority of books endorsed to be loaned by the Internet Archive are entries that have actually been withdrawn from its normal lending service at a recognised library. Detailed information for this can be found easily in each ditigised copy that IA owns. They are not works created by new and emerging authors who need to make a living, nor do they remain in print solely by the efforts of fledgling publishers. The use of them in education, research and even journalism cannot at all be condemned for any of the causes presented in the lawsuits against IA.
Exactly. As an a small author I find it so depressing to see the rich folks in Silicon Valley treat us this way. The IA is supported by the big tech companies that are all several orders of magnitude richer and more powerful than any book publisher. And most authors are essentially small businesses.
nemo did you even read the article before this they want all digital copies (650 million ) destroyed amazon and apple and someone else I forget at the moment had a big fight a few years ago over the total control of the selling of digital books.
Digital cannot be a place where there is no room for lending; the public, as well as authors & publishers, are entitled to the same benefits from digital libraries as they are from physical ones. So the question is how to best go about making digital lending work for everyone, the public most of all, at least as well as it works for physical. After literally decades to get their act together, the big-name publishers have come up only extremely lopsided, expensive arrangements with libraries, and everyone else came up with a big fat nothing-burger. CDL is a good-faith compromise offered by the Internet Archive. Thus far, it seems to work really well. But it seems some are not interested in compromise, and are determined to hyperbolically paint all libraries as the enemy, ripping food from the mouths of starving children.
David. Imagine a planet Earth where the primary goal is to enable easy and free access to all information ever created or assimilated. Imagine how much better life on this planet would be if there were no financial restrictions on learning. Instead, we live in a capitalistic world in which education is restricted by cost. And look at the effects. Is the world you live in better off due to the poor having little to no access to information? That is the question you must have for yourself. We must enable a world or system that rewards providers of education and also provides all levels of education to all people. This where we as a global society must unite and determine where we want our taxes to be spent. On military and corruption or on education for all.
The UK Public Lending Right pays authors whose physical books are borrowed from libraries, and I think, but have not checked, that it also applies to Controlled Digital Lending. This provides a continuing income stream for authors fromtheor intellectual property. It ought to be possibel for similar legislation to be iontroduced elsewhere.
Every single book that is lent out by CDL was bought before it was given to the Internet Archive. Your argument, if taken seriously, would call for closing down all public libraries, not only the Internet Archive.
I will note a further advantage of having the Archive during this pandemic: Interlibrary lend between libraries has all but ceased. At this point, I can no longer request a book from a library outside of my consortium. It is essential to have the option of pointing my patrons so a resource they can access online.
If you scroll down after the info about DRM and you will see some FAQ. Very interedyting information, such as how libraries have to pay 2 or 3 times as much as a consumer for their ebooks, only one copy can be lent out at a time, etc.
-research/lauren/libraries-and-ebooks-introduction
I have well over 1,000 ebooks in my Kindle library and more than 500 in my B&N Nook library. What happens to those libraries when I die? Can I leave them to my heirs? Can they be sold by my estate? Or do they just digitally evaporate, along with the money I spent on them? These, I think, are much more important questions that need answering than questions about libraries, digital or otherwise.
The solution is simple. Copyright is broken and should be limited to 20 years like a patent. Originally it was only 14 years anyway and that was when we had hand printing presses and horse and buggy for transportation.
If you believe that having access to books here places untold financial burden on authors, then why in the world do we have libraries where anyone can go in, sit down and read or even borrow and take a book home and repeat the process again and again till he or she is done with the book?
We are in a modern world. Technology is how we must get information and that comes mainly from books.
The libraries are currently shut down as well as schools.
We must continue to let libraries be able to provide these books. I know that many books have a long wait list.
I often go out to buy a book. Please let us continue to have access to library books on line.
You have my total support in defending your rights to lend digitized books and materials in a controlled environment. So often, I have been successful in finding materials on your site that are no longer available for purchase. If not for your service, where would I go to further my research. I commend your service!
Two types of authors who may be harmed by controlled digital lending, come to mind. The first is fiction authors who hope to make a financial killing with a best seller. The other type is the authors of textbooks (they normally enjoy a rather restricted market) that the authors revise periodically and make required texts for classes they teach. Have you seen the prices for textbooks? I have great sympathy for the first category of authors. Perhaps copyright law could stand revision that would limit ownership rights to the lifetime of authors of works of fiction.
As for nonfiction works of possible academic use as required textbooks, the cost of such books can become an additional burden that adds to the huge indebtedness that many students accumulate over four years of university study. Yes, there is a need for some kinds of nonfiction works to be updated as knowledge in various fields of study advances. Perhaps there would be room to urge publishers to provide digital access at a reduced price for bona fide scholars and teachers. As a published author myself of a specialized historical study of very likely limited distribution, I can honestly say that my motives to write and publish were simply the hope to put some ideas before the public on a permanent basis. On the other hand the publisher has certain cost to recover that would be seriously reduced if such works were offered as digital copies.
There is another category of person for whom the cost of books, old and new, creates a serious obstacle. I refer here to people doing serious research. Save for the independently wealthy, the need to travel around the world and set up living arrangements in other countries, just to see and take notes on older specialized works, becomes a financial burden that does two things. It can chill the resolve of the researcher to pursue what may be an important and widely useful topic, simply because of the expense involved. Second, it crowds the ranks of those who seek scholarships or grants to undertake such research. While competition as a means of improving academic excellence is laudable, the severe limitations imposed on granting institutions by travel and residency costs strongly reduces the number of grants that such institutions can award. Making research materials available digitally makes great sense.
Publishers are understandably opposing this, as it decreases their bottom line. This is the ENTIRE reason for libraries, as I see it. I know I am part of a landslide minority thinking KNOWLEDGE is more important than MONEY.
Applying Trump tactics to cow the disseminators of digital books. Perhaps to be expected in these fraught times, but not to be accepted. I support and applaud your stand for the public users of this precious resource. Thank you for your your strength and perseverance in facing down this threat to my, and our, need for digital book access.
Although I am not a lawyer nor a copyright specialist, it is quite obvious to me that the big publishers want to publish public domain materials as new editions and thus place their own copyright on the material. But with free public domain electronic digital books, this would be redundant and profitless. I say screw the publishers. The main driving force here is good old-fashioned American greed which is slowly destroying American society. As an author myself, do you think any of the involved publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House) would publish my original material? Not a chance in Hell. MGM
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