Internet Archive Responds to Senator's Concern Over National Emergency Library - Publishers Weekly

Panzer hasn't been to the Publishers Weekly site for a few days, so he decided to stop in there today. With a little digging in the posts our illustrious kitty found one about the Internet Archive.

All a pirate site has to do is call itself a library.

According to Andrew Albanese, the Internet Archive (IA) founder Brewster Kahle is still trying to justify IA's use of scanned books in his National Emergency Library. U.S. Senator Thom Tillis expressed his concerns over IA's scanning books which are still under copyright. In response Mr. Kahle sent a letter explaining why his National Emergency Library is responsible for providing teachers, school classes and students with the digital textbooks they need. According to him, instead of getting the books from school and giving them to the students at home, it's easier to just scan a book and let all the students use the same copy. This is, he says, brought about by the closing of libraries making textbooks unavailable to students. He doesn't, however, explain why his "library" is scanning authors' fiction books (some bestsellers) that in no way could be called textbooks. He does say he wants to engage with the Senate to change the copyright laws to make it legal for his "library" to use authors' and publishers' copyrighted books for his own purposes. This is an ongoing argument between Brewster Kahle on one side and authors, authors' groups, publishers and publishers' groups on the other side about copyright infringement.

Panzer says, "If you believe that stuff, I've got some ocean front property in Nevada for sale real cheap."

Note: This is a l-o-n-g post. Bring a cup of tea and two muffins for today's reading selection.

To read the post tootle over to Internet Archive
To read a previous post about the Internet Archive tootle over to copyright violation
To read another previous post about the Internet Archive tootle over to online library