Internet Archive Responds To Publishers Lawsuit: Libraries Lend Books, That's What We Do

from the we're-a-freakin'-library dept

Last month, we wrote about the big publishers suing the Internet Archive over its Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) program, as well as its National Emergency Library (NEL). As we've explained over and over again, the Internet Archive is doing exactly what libraries have always done: lending books. The CDL program was structured to mimic exactly how a traditional library works, with a 1-to-1 relationship between physical books owned by the library and digital copies that can be lent out.

While some struggled with the concept of the NEL since it was basically just the CDL, but without the 1-to-1 relationship (and thus, without wait lists), it seemed reasonably defensible: nearly all public libraries at the time had shut down entirely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the NEL was helping people who otherwise would never have had access to the books that were sitting inside libraries, collecting dust on the inaccessible shelves. Indeed, plenty of teachers and schools thanked the Internet Archive for making it possible for students to still read books that were stuck inside locked up classrooms. But, again, this lawsuit wasn't just about the NEL at all, but about the whole CDL program. The publishers have been whining about the CDL for a while, but hadn't sued until now.

Of course, the reality is that the big publishers see digital ebooks as an opportunity to craft a new business model. With traditional books, libraries buy the books, just like anyone else, and then lend them out. But thanks to a strained interpretation of copyright law, when it came to ebooks, the publishers jacked up the price for libraries to insane levels and kept putting more and more conditions on them. For example, Macmillan, for a while, was charging $60 per book -- with a limit of 52 lends or two years of lending, whichever came first. And then you'd have to renew.

Basically, publishers were abusing copyright law to try to jam down an awful and awfully expensive model on libraries -- exposing how much publishers really hate libraries, while pretending otherwise.

Anyway, the Internet Archive has filed its response to the lawsuit, which does the typical thing of effectively denying all of the claims in the lawsuit (though I will admit that I chuckled to see them even "deny" the claim that the Archive's headquarters are in an "exclusive" part of San Francisco (FWIW, I'd probably describe the area more as "not easily accessible by public transit," but that doesn't quite make it exclusive -- or at least not any more exclusive than most of the rest of SF)).

The Internet Archive admits that its headquarters are located in San Francisco, but denies that the corner of Funston and Clement Streets is an “exclusive area.”

The key part, of course, will be the defenses, and as expected the Internet Archive throws everything in starting with fair use, failure to state a claim, first sale, DMCA safe harbor, and statute of limitations and laches. The key ones are going to be fair use and the first sale issue. And the response lays out the basics of how this defense is going to be argued:

The Internet Archive does what libraries have always done: buy, collect, preserve, and share our common culture. In furtherance of that mission, the Internet Archive has received grant funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the federal government’s Institute of Museum and Library Services, among many other sources. Many libraries and archives, including the Library of Congress, Boston Public Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and smaller community libraries like the Allen County Public Library trust the Internet Archive to digitize books and other materials in their collections in order to preserve physical texts and to facilitate public access. The Internet Archive is part of a network of libraries around the world—each of which is using digital technologies to meet the many challenges of serving patrons with diverse needs and differing abilities and to ensure that the growing storehouse of human creativity is not lost because no one has the capacity to preserve it.

Like Plaintiffs, the Internet Archive believes that “[b]ooks are a cornerstone of our culture and system of democratic self-government” and “play a critical role in education.” Accordingly, democratizing access to information, and facilitating access to books in particular, has been a core part of the Internet Archive’s mission for decades. But, for many people, distance, time, cost, or disability pose daunting and sometimes insurmountable barriers to accessing physical books. Digitizing and offering books online for borrowing unlocks them for communities with limited or no access, creating a lifeline to trusted information. Readers in the Internet age need a comprehensive library that meets them where they are—an online space that welcomes everyone to use its resources, while respecting readers’ privacy and dignity.

[....]

The Internet Archive has made careful efforts to ensure its uses are lawful. The Internet Archive’s CDL program is sheltered by the fair use doctrine, buttressed by traditional library protections. Specifically, the project serves the public interest in preservation, access and research—all classic fair use purposes. Every book in the collection has already been published and most are out of print. Patrons can borrow and read entire volumes, to be sure, but that is what it means to check a book out from a library. As for its effect on the market for the works in question, the books have already been bought and paid for by the libraries that own them. The public derives tremendous benefit from the program, and rights holders will gain nothing if the public is deprived of this resource.

During the early days of the COVID-19 crisis, in response to urgent pleas from teachers and librarians whose students and patrons had been ordered to stay at home, the Internet Archive decided to temporarily permit lending that could have exceeded the one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio. With millions of print books locked away, digital lending was the only practical way to get books to those who needed them. The Internet Archive called this program the “National Emergency Library” and planned to discontinue it once the need had passed. Twelve weeks later, other options had emerged to fill the gap, and the Internet Archive was able to return to the traditional CDL approach.

Contrary to the publishers’ accusations, the Internet Archive and the hundreds of libraries and archives that support it are not pirates or thieves. They are librarians, striving to serve their patrons online just as they have done for centuries in the brick-and-mortar world. Copyright law does not stand in the way of libraries’ right to lend, and patrons’ right to borrow, the books that libraries own.

In a blog post about this, Internet Archive Founder Brewster Kahle notes that beyond trying to kill the CDL, the lawsuit also looks to force the Archive to destroy the digital books it's scanned for so many libraries, and to preserve that history.

These publishers call for the destruction of the 1.5 million digital books that Internet Archive makes available to our patrons. This form of digital book burning is unprecedented and unfairly disadvantages people with print disabilities. For the blind, ebooks are a lifeline, yet less than one in ten exists in accessible formats. Since 2010, Internet Archive has made our lending library available to the blind and print disabled community, in addition to sighted users. If the publishers are successful with their lawsuit, more than a million of those books would be deleted from the Internet’s digital shelves forever.

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.

It really is quite incredible that these publishers are looking to effectively do a digital book burning in the midst of a pandemic.

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Filed Under: books, controlled digital lending, copyright, fair use, library, national emergency library, publishers
Companies: internet archive


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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 31 Jul 2020 @ 11:51am

    Return copyrights to their original length.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 31 Jul 2020 @ 11:54am

    Vexatious-litigious publisher: "If that old publisher Bennie Franklin had realized what harm he was doing to his business model, he'd have never started a library."

    Public: "If that new publisher weren't stupider than dead-and-rotted yeast, he'd have realized how much of his business model is dependent on libraries."

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    Koby (profile), 31 Jul 2020 @ 12:06pm

    Innovation

    Once again, the internet out-innovates a stagnant old industry with a better model. Now the legacy model needs to begin filing lawsuits in the hope that they can "catch up".

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    aerinai (profile), 31 Jul 2020 @ 12:57pm

    NEL -- Make this a 'shared' repo of all copies at all libraries

    Another way to make sure this helps in the future would be to 'pool' resources from all libraries. Buy a physical book, scan it, and have it available within this shared library network. If every library did this, and shared their trove, wait lists would be smaller and more variety could be offered.

    Probably some kinks to work out, but it would be a great business model for IA and let the world benefit.

    Hopefully a win will work and something like this can be done!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. icon
    ECA (profile), 31 Jul 2020 @ 12:59pm

    Story of the internet archive

    https://hoodline.com/2016/07/the-internet-archive-a-digital-library-with-roots-in-the-richmond

    Every book, magazine, Comic, graphical comic, All the paper works that are out there DO have purpose.

    Allot of people Dont realize it, but your phone/tablet has a battery and it only lasts so long. Esp if you are on the cell system to look/read/download, and wifi, and BT, all take up TONS of power.

    A book? Newpaper? May take up abit of space, but has easy recall to the PLACE YOU WERE reading/watching/displaying.
    They arnt easy to BREAK either. And you dont need to SQUINT, to read it, or move the page back and forth, because you NEED LARGER PRINT..
    Anyone ever Play AD&D?? isnt it a wonder that its still in print and past version 5. And the books are $15-25 each, and easy to GRAB the one you need and look up info. Basically you need at least 4 of the books to get started. And its PORTABLE, dont need power, can use a candle to read in the dark, Can drop it and bash it and not break it.

    WOW, what a selling campaign.. And news papers work good to potty train animals...

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 31 Jul 2020 @ 1:07pm

    We've reached the point in late stage capitalism that it's not enough to make a lot of money, a company must make all the money possible. Too much is never enough. E-books aren't even a product at this point, they're just a type of rent seeking.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. icon
    That One Guy (profile), 31 Jul 2020 @ 2:54pm

    Nice time-saver that

    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.

    Well that's handy, now I know which publishers to never, ever buy from.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. icon
    fairuse (profile), 31 Jul 2020 @ 2:54pm

    The trend - PayPerView for books

    After reading all the comments in IA blog post I noticed the view of royalty payments to the author for every barrow (Canada, UK). Not sure what that does. The publishers pay the author for his work, every sale on amazon is recorded by publisher. Percentage of sale to author per publisher contract is sent to author.

    Library is not Amazon retail but deal directly with publishers. The books are bought and lending is done. Publishers want to have all use of digital to be a lease contract controlled by them.

    I have shifted to audio format of hardbound fiction already boxes (stacks of paperback also) and love it. Already I have to buy ebook + audio on Amazon. That is a publisher demand as far as I can tell. Retail so I deal with it. If a library is forced into PPV model, meaning every borrow is fee based then digital lend becomes to expensive.

    Just a thought as I am only reader not a specialist.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. icon
    Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 31 Jul 2020 @ 3:44pm

    Re: The trend - PayPerView for books

    Their view of PPV, unfortunately, will become if you read one chapter tonight, and another tomorrow another payment will be due.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 31 Jul 2020 @ 5:42pm

    Basically, publishers were abusing copyright law to try to jam down an awful and awfully expensive model on libraries -- exposing how much publishers really hate libraries, while pretending otherwise.

    And the Internet Archive is using an unwritten interpretation of copyright law to jam down abusive software on their patrons. 20 years ago, libraries were not actively trying to prevent their patrons from copying information—actually, they usually had photocopiers right there, and many would waive the per-page fees for people in need.

    The more we make things digital, the more it reveals how absurd and harmful the laws and business models are. Once, copyright was merely an industrial regulation for a handful of publishers. Now, it restricts every person. The concept of "borrowing" data makes no sense whatsoever, and we shouldn't pretend it's acceptable as long as there's DRM. If spreading knowledge is something we value, we need to accept (at the very least) all non-profit copying as fair use.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 31 Jul 2020 @ 6:07pm

    If I had to choose between doing without publishers, or doing without online and local libraries--I know where a used-book-store is, and I'm not afraid to use it.

    POD won't go away no matter what the wiley hatchet-man says, and that random whistling noise is penguins roasting over an open fire. Reality callin', and there ain't no harps where y'all are goin'.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. icon
    GHB (profile), 2 Aug 2020 @ 10:58am

    They try to make books, even ones you bought physically, treated like you've licensed under contract law. This applies retroactively. Because the publishers are going digital, they also wanted their older books to also follow this trend. Essentially, they wanted to rewrite history that physical books you have are automatically “agreed” to the licensing agreement.

    Combine with this: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191108/23524343352/giant-publisher-macmillan-goes-to-war-against -libraries.shtml

    Especially this:
    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110226/12443313275/harpercollins-wants-to-limit-library-eb ook-lending-to-protect-authors-libraries.shtml (yes, harpercollins, the same as one of the 4 suing the IA)

    Tells me that they're “EA, book edition”. This is another example of going towards “subscription license” with many software (adobe creative cloud) over purchase.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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