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A couple people have now asked me what I think about the Internet Archive/Free Library drama, and since I've now seen a lot of screaming on all sides of the issue, I too am going to drop my Hot Take here!
Background, in case you somehow missed the drama:
a.) The Internet Archive, which holds a large collection of digital books scanned from in-print copies at libraries around the country and usually lets people check them out one at a time for fourteen days, has decided that for pandemic times it's going to let lots of copies be checked out one at a time for fourteen days instead of keeping people on a wait list, in an initiative they're calling the National Emergency Library
b.) The Author's Guild promptly put out a statement saying that this was more or less piracy and taking money out of the mouths of hard-working authors by making their books available for free, In These Times More Than Ever
c.) authors and librarians/archivists on Twitter have as a result spent the past few days shouting at each other about this from respective perceived moral high grounds!
I'll start out by saying that, as an archivist, my opinion generally is that the copyright laws in our country are too strong/too restrictive, and often prevent fair access and reuse to the detriment of the public good; if I were to have the power to reframe copyright law entirely, I would probably reel it back in to a relatively short term limit of 15-20 years after which the author/creator would have to deliberately make the choice to re-up copyright and officially register it, or else the thing goes into the public domain. Also, my day job as a moving image archivist often involves stretching copyright law to the limits of its ability to allow us to a.) preserve content and b.) make it at all accessible, so please take my words with as many grains of salt based on that fact as you need to.
So a thing that I haven't seen mentioned much in this case is the fact that the Author's Guild v. Internet Archive debate about digitizing old books is one that's been ongoing for some time, and as is often the case, there's more nuance than either side is presenting. The Internet Archive has, for a long time, been actively involved in the broader fight to make available quote-unquote orphan works -- things that are technically in copyright, but there's not enough information about the author or copyright owner to bring them back into print or make them available any other way, so without some kind of demi-law-breaking they're unlikely to ever become available again. For backstory on this project, it's worth reading about the Author's Guild v. HathiTrust, a battle which I think stands behind a lot of the current positioning wherein the Internet Archive is like "YES, digitization and access CATEGORICALLY GOOD!" and the Author's Guild is like "NO, digitization of in-copyright books is CATEGORICALLY BAD!"
Ideologically, I generally agree more with the Internet Archive here. I think the problem of access to orphan works and out-of-print books is one that needs to be solved, and the Author's Guild is, as always, far more interested in obstructing all solutions to that problem than in finding actual solutions. I also think the Author's Guild has a tendency to drastically scaremonger in a counter-productive attempt to lock down all access that's not Actual Sales To One Single Person (a difficult model to enforce in the digital era), and that a library making books available on a loaner basis for fourteen days, even making books available to a lot of people on a loaner basis for fourteen days, is not in fact the same thing as wholesale internet piracy. So that's why I'm annoyed at the Author's Guild.
HOWEVER. The Internet Archive also definitely has a tendency to go too far, and ignore not just laws but things that I would consider as archival ethics, when it's convenient to them (for example, in the kind of web archive sweeps that they do which often do not ask permission and sort of run roughshod over people's privacy.) Good practice for digital libraries is to a.) try not to step too hard on copyright toes to the best of your ability to judge via metadata and b.) have really good, visible, clear takedown procedures in case you are actually harming someone's livelihood and inviting a lawsuit by putting something up. The Internet Archive has in fact put takedown procedures in their FAQs, but, like, it's in a Google doc rather than part of their main searchable page, it's not super easy to find, they don't have much of a team dedicated to it so they're likely to become rapidly overwhelmed, and if they were going to do something like this there should absolutely be a button on EVERY PAGE that lets you file to take the content on that page down. Basically, it feels to me like an initiative that's not particularly well-designed and that's somewhat intended to be antagonistic and escalate the fight in ways that are not helpful to the things I think are important: securing digital access to orphan works and in-copyright-but-out-of-print-and-otherwise-inaccessible books. So that's why I'm annoyed at the Internet Archive.
And that is my hot take! I'm irritated at everybody here! Thank you for coming!
Background, in case you somehow missed the drama:
a.) The Internet Archive, which holds a large collection of digital books scanned from in-print copies at libraries around the country and usually lets people check them out one at a time for fourteen days, has decided that for pandemic times it's going to let lots of copies be checked out one at a time for fourteen days instead of keeping people on a wait list, in an initiative they're calling the National Emergency Library
b.) The Author's Guild promptly put out a statement saying that this was more or less piracy and taking money out of the mouths of hard-working authors by making their books available for free, In These Times More Than Ever
c.) authors and librarians/archivists on Twitter have as a result spent the past few days shouting at each other about this from respective perceived moral high grounds!
I'll start out by saying that, as an archivist, my opinion generally is that the copyright laws in our country are too strong/too restrictive, and often prevent fair access and reuse to the detriment of the public good; if I were to have the power to reframe copyright law entirely, I would probably reel it back in to a relatively short term limit of 15-20 years after which the author/creator would have to deliberately make the choice to re-up copyright and officially register it, or else the thing goes into the public domain. Also, my day job as a moving image archivist often involves stretching copyright law to the limits of its ability to allow us to a.) preserve content and b.) make it at all accessible, so please take my words with as many grains of salt based on that fact as you need to.
So a thing that I haven't seen mentioned much in this case is the fact that the Author's Guild v. Internet Archive debate about digitizing old books is one that's been ongoing for some time, and as is often the case, there's more nuance than either side is presenting. The Internet Archive has, for a long time, been actively involved in the broader fight to make available quote-unquote orphan works -- things that are technically in copyright, but there's not enough information about the author or copyright owner to bring them back into print or make them available any other way, so without some kind of demi-law-breaking they're unlikely to ever become available again. For backstory on this project, it's worth reading about the Author's Guild v. HathiTrust, a battle which I think stands behind a lot of the current positioning wherein the Internet Archive is like "YES, digitization and access CATEGORICALLY GOOD!" and the Author's Guild is like "NO, digitization of in-copyright books is CATEGORICALLY BAD!"
Ideologically, I generally agree more with the Internet Archive here. I think the problem of access to orphan works and out-of-print books is one that needs to be solved, and the Author's Guild is, as always, far more interested in obstructing all solutions to that problem than in finding actual solutions. I also think the Author's Guild has a tendency to drastically scaremonger in a counter-productive attempt to lock down all access that's not Actual Sales To One Single Person (a difficult model to enforce in the digital era), and that a library making books available on a loaner basis for fourteen days, even making books available to a lot of people on a loaner basis for fourteen days, is not in fact the same thing as wholesale internet piracy. So that's why I'm annoyed at the Author's Guild.
HOWEVER. The Internet Archive also definitely has a tendency to go too far, and ignore not just laws but things that I would consider as archival ethics, when it's convenient to them (for example, in the kind of web archive sweeps that they do which often do not ask permission and sort of run roughshod over people's privacy.) Good practice for digital libraries is to a.) try not to step too hard on copyright toes to the best of your ability to judge via metadata and b.) have really good, visible, clear takedown procedures in case you are actually harming someone's livelihood and inviting a lawsuit by putting something up. The Internet Archive has in fact put takedown procedures in their FAQs, but, like, it's in a Google doc rather than part of their main searchable page, it's not super easy to find, they don't have much of a team dedicated to it so they're likely to become rapidly overwhelmed, and if they were going to do something like this there should absolutely be a button on EVERY PAGE that lets you file to take the content on that page down. Basically, it feels to me like an initiative that's not particularly well-designed and that's somewhat intended to be antagonistic and escalate the fight in ways that are not helpful to the things I think are important: securing digital access to orphan works and in-copyright-but-out-of-print-and-otherwise-inaccessible books. So that's why I'm annoyed at the Internet Archive.
And that is my hot take! I'm irritated at everybody here! Thank you for coming!
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