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The argument that is made in this article on behalf of IA that millions of books are locked up in libraries during the pandemic won’t hold. Almost all libraries

The argument that is made in this article on behalf of IA that millions of books are locked up in libraries during the pandemic won’t hold. Almost all libraries during the pandemic have dramatically increased access to digital lending. Library usage has increased with many books fully checked out at libraries. Meaning these locked up copies are in use. IA rocks, yet this new program hurts authors. Not just publishers.

deleted 6y ago
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jawns 6y ago
Even if the library books were _entirely_ inaccessible during the pandemic, that doesn't mean that they temporarily become the property of IA to disseminate as it wishes. I can understand if IA were to make the argument, "Because libraries are closed, we are buying more copies of books so we can make them accessible via Controlled Digital Lending." But IA's argument has been, "Because libraries are closed, we now have the authority to pretend that those inaccessible physical copies belong to us, and we're merely lending them out." Full disclosure: I'm an author, and at least one of my recent books has ended up in IA's emergency library. I'm all for copyright reform, but I'm not for an all-out end to copyright, which is what would need to happen for IA's scheme to be legal.
- martimarkov 6y ago
  IA haven’t come out with an official argument so there is no need to put words in their mouths. Also if the IA scheme becomes legal it would certainly not be a an all out end to copyright. Just the realisation that limiting an unlimited digital asset is stupid and copyright in the digital age should be defined in a new way. Ppl still would not be able to use your work for free. Edit: Like back when we only had physical things it made sense. There was a physical limitation. Now we are trying to apply the same concept in a very different world. I just think that doesn’t hold and we should just have a new definition. E.g: there is no reason to own a physical copy to lend a digital one as the medium should not hold the copyright. Maybe charge a fee for access and then if you want the physical book you only pay for the medium but if you want the digital one there is no additional fee. My point is more the fact that the medium limitation is something that never really gets the focus and that is a very broken part of copyright in the digital age.
  - jawns 6y ago
    Their official argument is: > [Readers] don’t have access to the books that only exist in paper, sitting inaccessible on their library shelves. That’s where our collection fits in — we offer digital access to books, many of which are otherwise unavailable to the public while our schools and libraries are closed http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-emergency-library-to-provide-digitized-books-to-students-and-the-public/ http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-eme... They make explicit reference to these inaccessible books to justify why they are distributing more copies than they own. I agree with your point about digital media being intrinsically different than physical media, especially when it comes to marginal costs of publication/dissemination. Ownership and possession of a physical copy of a book is a good proxy for a license to use the book, and copyright law was largely built around that premise. Controlled Digital Lending seems to be a good way to adopt the same principles for the digital age. IA was using CDL prior to its emergency library, and I had no problem with that. I also don't think lenders need to have a physical copy sitting around somewhere to be able to lend a digital copy. Publishers' onerous licensing terms for digital content have been met with deserved criticism. A CDL system that permits ownership of either physical or digital copies seems like the right approach.
    - pgalvin 6y ago
      In fairness, I think that line of defense is more a moral, rather than legal, argument.
  - neaden 6y ago
    " Like back when we only had physical things it made sense. There was a physical limitation. Now we are trying to apply the same concept in a very different world. I just think that doesn’t hold and we should just have a new definition." I don't think is true historically though. The idea of copyright for books is that another publisher can't start printing copies of a book someone else wrote and start selling them. This doesn't involve physically taking any of the author's property, and indeed they probably had to buy a copy first before they could make their own copies. I don't see how what the IA is fundamentally different from this, and it seem pretty clear that copyright law was created to stop this sort of thing.
mcguire 6y ago
"Almost all libraries during the pandemic have dramatically increased access to digital lending. Library usage has increased with many books fully checked out at libraries." Do you have a source for that? My understanding was that digital lending and physical lending came out of different pools (in fact most digital lending is through something like Rakuten OverDrive); using a library's physical inventory would likely violate it's digital license.
- zerocrates 6y ago
  Yeah, I'm not aware of any "normal" libraries going the CDL route, all the digital lending I've seen takes the form of licensing ebooks and using Overdrive or something like it, and those ebooks are totally separate from the physical holdings (and they're also, from the library's perspective, priced totally differently, with significant restrictions on usage and total number of lendings and things like that).
- neaden 6y ago
  Anecdote but my local library uses Hoopla for digital loaning, and they went from 10 loans a month to something like 30 or 40.
- patrickhogan1 6y ago
  Source: https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/public-library-association-survey-coronavirus-resources/575978 https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/public-library-associat... Hope this helps. The main point I was trying to raise raise was in response to the article where an advocate of IA argued that IA was justified because books are "locked up" during pandemic. Yet libraries are putting their licenses of those works to use.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jawns 6y ago

Even if the library books were _entirely_ inaccessible during the pandemic, that doesn't mean that they temporarily become the property of IA to disseminate as it wishes. I can understand if IA were to make the argument, "Because libraries are closed, we are buying more copies of books so we can make them accessible via Controlled Digital Lending." But IA's argument has been, "Because libraries are closed, we now have the authority to pretend that those inaccessible physical copies belong to us, and we're merely lending them out." Full disclosure: I'm an author, and at least one of my recent books has ended up in IA's emergency library. I'm all for copyright reform, but I'm not for an all-out end to copyright, which is what would need to happen for IA's scheme to be legal.

martimarkov 6y ago
IA haven’t come out with an official argument so there is no need to put words in their mouths. Also if the IA scheme becomes legal it would certainly not be a an all out end to copyright. Just the realisation that limiting an unlimited digital asset is stupid and copyright in the digital age should be defined in a new way. Ppl still would not be able to use your work for free. Edit: Like back when we only had physical things it made sense. There was a physical limitation. Now we are trying to apply the same concept in a very different world. I just think that doesn’t hold and we should just have a new definition. E.g: there is no reason to own a physical copy to lend a digital one as the medium should not hold the copyright. Maybe charge a fee for access and then if you want the physical book you only pay for the medium but if you want the digital one there is no additional fee. My point is more the fact that the medium limitation is something that never really gets the focus and that is a very broken part of copyright in the digital age.
- jawns 6y ago
  Their official argument is: > [Readers] don’t have access to the books that only exist in paper, sitting inaccessible on their library shelves. That’s where our collection fits in — we offer digital access to books, many of which are otherwise unavailable to the public while our schools and libraries are closed http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-emergency-library-to-provide-digitized-books-to-students-and-the-public/ http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-eme... They make explicit reference to these inaccessible books to justify why they are distributing more copies than they own. I agree with your point about digital media being intrinsically different than physical media, especially when it comes to marginal costs of publication/dissemination. Ownership and possession of a physical copy of a book is a good proxy for a license to use the book, and copyright law was largely built around that premise. Controlled Digital Lending seems to be a good way to adopt the same principles for the digital age. IA was using CDL prior to its emergency library, and I had no problem with that. I also don't think lenders need to have a physical copy sitting around somewhere to be able to lend a digital copy. Publishers' onerous licensing terms for digital content have been met with deserved criticism. A CDL system that permits ownership of either physical or digital copies seems like the right approach.
  - pgalvin 6y ago
    In fairness, I think that line of defense is more a moral, rather than legal, argument.
- neaden 6y ago
  " Like back when we only had physical things it made sense. There was a physical limitation. Now we are trying to apply the same concept in a very different world. I just think that doesn’t hold and we should just have a new definition." I don't think is true historically though. The idea of copyright for books is that another publisher can't start printing copies of a book someone else wrote and start selling them. This doesn't involve physically taking any of the author's property, and indeed they probably had to buy a copy first before they could make their own copies. I don't see how what the IA is fundamentally different from this, and it seem pretty clear that copyright law was created to stop this sort of thing.

mcguire 6y ago

"Almost all libraries during the pandemic have dramatically increased access to digital lending. Library usage has increased with many books fully checked out at libraries." Do you have a source for that? My understanding was that digital lending and physical lending came out of different pools (in fact most digital lending is through something like Rakuten OverDrive); using a library's physical inventory would likely violate it's digital license.

zerocrates 6y ago
Yeah, I'm not aware of any "normal" libraries going the CDL route, all the digital lending I've seen takes the form of licensing ebooks and using Overdrive or something like it, and those ebooks are totally separate from the physical holdings (and they're also, from the library's perspective, priced totally differently, with significant restrictions on usage and total number of lendings and things like that).
neaden 6y ago
Anecdote but my local library uses Hoopla for digital loaning, and they went from 10 loans a month to something like 30 or 40.
patrickhogan1 6y ago
Source: https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/public-library-association-survey-coronavirus-resources/575978 https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/public-library-associat... Hope this helps. The main point I was trying to raise raise was in response to the article where an advocate of IA argued that IA was justified because books are "locked up" during pandemic. Yet libraries are putting their licenses of those works to use.