From National Public Radio:
Last week, when the Internet Archive announced its “National Emergency Library,” expanding access to more than a million digitized works, the group explained the move as a goodwill gesture in the time of coronavirus.
With so many brick-and-mortar libraries forced to close their doors, in other words, the group was opening up its lending program: Now, instead of its usual policy of just one digital copy per reader for a 14-day period, many frustrated readers could borrow copies of the same book during the same time — and could do so through the end of June or the end of the global pandemic, whichever came sooner.
But there’s one major issue that several media outlets, including NPR, failed to mention in covering the decision: Many writers and publishers say the website, even before the creation of this National Emergency Library, has been sharing full digital copies of their books without their permission.
“With mean writing incomes of only $20,300 a year prior to the crisis, authors, like others, are now struggling all the more — from cancelled book tours and loss of freelance work, income supplementing jobs, and speaking engagements,” the Authors Guild, a professional group that provides legal assistance to writers, said in a statement released Friday.
“And now they are supposed to swallow this new pill, which robs them of their rights to introduce their books to digital formats as many hundreds of midlist authors do when their books go out of print, and which all but guarantees that author incomes and publisher revenues will decline even further.”
The guild said that last year alone it sent the organization hundreds of takedown notices on behalf of the writers it represents, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The 1998 law lays a framework for preventing users from creating digital copies of copyrighted material and circulating it without the copyright holder’s permission.
“Acting as a piracy site — of which there already are too many — the Internet Archive tramples on authors’ rights by giving away their books to the world,” the guild added.
The Science Fiction Writers of America has previously objected to the Internet Archive’s “infringement.” And the Association of American Publishers, in a statement of its own Friday, condemned the move as “a cynical play to undermine copyright, and all the scientific, creative, and economic opportunity that it supports.”
Link to the rest at National Public Radio
The OP says that The Internet Archive does seem to respond to DMCA Takedown Notices.
Sadly, I think the Internet Archive is on rocky ground indeed. Their rationale for lending a single copy at once (either print or digital) is grounded in fair use, untested and in my view likely to fail. It is also, again in my view, what the law should be. I’m a bit puzzled by this move which abandons even that rationale. If they are expecting goodwill from publishers then I think they are sadly deluded.
I also note with interest that, as usual, the damage is said to be to authors. Of course, if there is any damage, it will usually be chiefly to publishers, with authors suffering little or even none of it.