From The Verge:
Book publishers and the Internet Archive will face off today in a hearing that could determine the future of library ebooks — deciding whether libraries must rely on the often temporary digital licenses that publishers offer or whether they can scan and lend copies of their own tomes.
Ebook Burning: Will The Internet Archive Survive?
They’ll do everything in their power to make the internet as boring as real life.
At 1PM ET, a New York federal court will hear oral arguments in Hachette v. Internet Archive, a lawsuit over the archive’s Open Library program. The court will consider whether the Open Library violated copyright law by letting users “check out” digitized copies of physical books, an assertion several major publishers made in their 2020 suit. The case will be broadcast over teleconference, with the phone number available here.
One of the greatest modern innovations is the internet archive. A website where you can find anything and everything, A country that valued the quality of it’s citizens would funnel as much money as possible into this project. Instead it’s threatened to be taken offline every few months. Book publishers make their money from bulk deals anyway and consumers love blowing their money on something to make them look smarter. They’re not hurting as bad as they make it out to look.
I use the internet archive for like 65% of the content on this website. It should be clear I don’t value copywrite laws much. It’s understandable for creators to make money off the work they’ve made. The archive is a library though, how are you going to argue to not have your books in a library? This is just ridiculous and would be incredibly harmful to society if the book publishers win.
