https://www.citationneeded.news/hachette-v-internet-archive/
"I’ve seen quips to the effect of “if public libraries were invented today,
they’d be outlawed.” The joke is increasingly becoming reality, most recently
thanks to a decision in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
Particularly in a country where we’re seeing rapidly intensifying campaigns
against books, libraries, and librarians, I am
extremely concerned by an
outcome that not only imposes further limits on how libraries can provide books
to the people who need them, but seems to view libraries as detrimental to
society.
We must fight to protect our rights to read freely, and fight back
against the censorship, surveillance, and rent-seeking that publishers and book
distribution platforms have been working to not only normalize, but protect by
law.
My beliefs are simple, and hardly radical: Libraries are critical
infrastructure. Access to information is a human right. When you buy a book you
should truly own it. When a library buys a book, they should be able to lend
it. Readers should be able to read without any third parties spying over their
shoulders, or preventing them from accessing the materials they have legally
obtained.
On September 4, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld most of a lower
court’s March 2023 ruling that aspects of the Internet Archive’s digital
booklending program violate copyright law. The case was brought in June 2020 by
four publishing powerhouses: Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random
House. And when I say powerhouses, I mean it — Hachette, HarperCollins, and
Penguin Random House are three of the “big five” publishers who (along with
Macmillan and Simon & Schuster) collectively controlled around 80% of the trade
market for books in the United States as of 2022. Hachette and the other
plaintiff publishers have argued that, by lending out one-to-one digital copies
of books they have legally purchased, the Internet Archive’s Open Library is
infringing upon the publishers’ copyright and damaging their sales. And,
without any evidence of actual harm to the publishers, the Second Circuit went
right along with it. They also went a step further, again without evidence, to
suggest that libraries are
inherently detrimental to society."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
