I mean, dude literally just tweeted that his books being available for free = piracy. That’s it. Which is ridiculous. I know, I know, Twitter isn’t the place you go for nuance or qualified statements.
As an aside, I believe John M. Ford’s stuff is currently scheduled to be reprinted by Tor. Not sure if it’s the complete list or more likely only those books that Macmillan already had rights to.
Yes, and I’ll be all over them when they do, trust me. He’s an amazing writer. But like I say, at the very least I’m guessing those Trek books will stay out of print because that’s an additional licensor to deal with and they’re for classic Trek and wildly out of tone with the rest of the franchise.
Here is Chuck’s actual quote on libraries:
https://twitter.com/ChuckWendig/status/1244091329967202304?s=20
Therefore, I am interpreting his comments on free to be specific to IA.
I had hoped he felt that way, seeing as I love his books and he seems like a pretty right-headed sort of guy in general. But that context was lacking. That said… you can’t go get it from the actual library right now because they’re closed. That’s kind of the point of the Emergency Library.
These are digital versions. I am going to go out on a massive limb and assume that people “borrowing” the books can read them on a screen. My library still offers ebooks even though they are closed. Most libraries are letting you get a card via a web site. I live in a fairly rural area and Overdrive lets me get a library card with my library though them. I don’t need a physical Kindle to read them. The Overdrive/Libby app can be used as a reader.
They called it the National Emergency Library to give it a cutesy name.
Yeah, sure, many libraries have like, one or two copies of a given ebook, if that. That does one person good. Everyone else can just lump it, I guess.
Don’t get me wrong, I get Wendig being upset about it. I don’t think the Archive’s handled it particularly well. (Honestly, my girlfriend used to work there and quit sometime mid-last year and from the way she talks about it they’ve not been that great at handling things in general.) But I also don’t agree with his conclusions, or the idea that the library system as it currently stands can remotely sate the need while closed. They are still much more about the physical location and loaning physical books than electronic materials, and a substantial part of that is how restrictive publishers are being about digital versions.
(Edit: I’m annoyed at people vowing to boycott his stuff just because he has a perfectly understandable reaction to this so I went ahead and bought the latest Miriam Black to do my small part in supporting authors I love.)
Yeah, the ebook library thing needs some work, but it’s also not one I expect the publishers to make much allowance on. I also kinda get it. If my local library could loan unlimited copies of the latest bestseller, that would make a serious dent in their ebook sales. Part of getting a taxpayer-funded ebook means sometimes I may need to wait to get it. I can live with that.
My library lets me put a hold on an ebook and wait in line. When it’s my turn I get a notification and can then check it out. Seems like a good system to me. All I have to do is wait.
If the ebook is something critical to my life and I feel like I can’t wait, I can purchase it.
A book being out of print is another matter. Not sure how I feel like a pirated version being made available.
If the only way something is available is via the used market, in a general sense I don’t have a problem with it being on something like the internet archive. There are probably some specific edge cases that it woudn’t be cool, but I can’t think of one off the top of my head.
Here is a quote from the New Yorker on this
" Is this legal? All this falls under fair use, at least for the duration, is the thinking here. As the copyright lawyer Kyle Courtney has pointed out, libraries have copyright superpowers that they can use in an emergency like this one."
Here is the article: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-national-emergency-library-is-a-gift-to-readers-everywhere
As they are not selling these and it has a limited time frame, my thinking is the authors while within their rights to bitch, should support this. Im not sure that the optics are in their favor. Either way, it appears that this is not definitively piracy, so I am leaving the link with a disclaimer.
I guess for me, it’s the provenance of the obtained copy. If I’ve legally obtained 1.4 million books and want to resell, or loan them, or whatever, I can under the first-sale doctrine.
Now, while ebooks and the like are a whole different weirdness, let’s just keep rolling with this. If the Internet Archive said, “Yep, I got this used copy of The Hobbit from the Boston Public Library, we scanned it in, and the original is sitting in a Raiders of the Lost Arc style warehouse,” it is in an interesting gray area, but one I could see them lifting a “one-copy, one-loan” policy during the pandemic.
FWIW, I remember seeing stuff about this back in 2011 and if the publishers didn’t gather the torches and pitchforks then, this is their battle, not mine.
Anyway, I still recommend people either buy the books or use their local libraries. Most libraries have a ton of stuff ready for borrowing; just probably not the new releases.
I certainly recommend people use their local libraries if the thing they want is available in ebook form (as in right now, no waitlist) or is somehow still open for physical checkout. I suspect that won’t be the case for most people. And while I always recommend people support creators whose work they enjoy by buying said work if they can (and/or any other way they can manage), there are a loooot of people out of work right now for whom that is probably not a wise expense.
This is an ugly moment for creators too, though. Undermining their income at a time like this is, frankly, cruel.
A project like this to get free books to those that can’t afford them at the moment is a fantastic idea, but it’s got to be opt in for the authors.
Ideally, yes. Practically, opt out is far more manageable.
We’ll see how practical it is when the suits get filed.
I have my doubts on the veracity of their claims of ownership of source materials. They have paid lip service to donations, etc. I did search the BPL for the one book I saw with their tags, and it shows as Available. Mainly for my own curiosity, after it opens up again and I am in the area I am going to look and see if it is there.
If they own the books, for real, my vague understanding of the general copyright laws is scanning and loaning out a book isn’t a violation of anyone’s copyright. The First Sale doctrine is pretty much that once a book is sold, you can do what you want with it (I will get into that more in a bit). So, if I buy the book, scan it in, and let you read an encrypted time-limited copy of that book while I double-pinky swear that the original version sits in a locked vault and no one else – including me – touches it, there isn’t anything anyone can do about that.
I believe the original version of the IA did a version of that: a single book is loaned out a single time for a specified period and is encrypted. Now, the Adobe and Kindle DRM is trivial to bypass, but let’s work on the original “one book; one loan” method and call it legal.
As I said earlier, if there was a warehouse full of 1.4 million books sitting there locked up, I wouldn’t have much of a problem, even with them opening it up to no-limit lending during the pandemic. I do think these books are scanned in from books in circulation, and the originals aren’t in their control.
Also, there is nothing authors and the like can do about people scanning, lending, and reselling their books. I get them being upset about this, but if I buy a copy of Chuck’s book and loan it out to eveyone I work with, I can.
Edit about the First Sale Doctrine: Of course that doesn’t mean I can scan it and post it on the Bay.
Yeah, my understanding is that previously they operated on a one “copy”, one loan basis and the “emergency library” was removing the loan quantity limit. So, given that the Internet Archive has a pretty limited actual staff (and from what my girlfriend was telling me, apparently laid off about half of them earlier this year), and the time sensitive nature of the need, I think it’s pretty straightforward why they took the above approach (which most likely requires a one time edit to their back end) and set up a process for authors to contact them to have material removed, rather than proactively contacting the undoubtedly tens if not hundreds of thousands of individual copyright holders (assuming they could be identified) and waiting on the go/no go for all of them before going ahead.
They’ll probably claim the same protections YouTube relies on. The burden is on content owners to send takedown requests. Have any of these authors actually sent a DMCA takedown notice?