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The Pandemic Is Not an Excuse to Exploit Writers
Internet Archive’s “National Emergency Library” is meant to benefit consumers during the coronavirus crisis. Authors everywhere are losing.
Mr. Preston is the president of The Authors Guild.
Authors have been hit hard by the pandemic, especially emerging writers who have books coming out in the next few months. With bookstores and libraries closed and book tours canceled, they are facing an enormous challenge in connecting with potential readers. It could be a career-destroying time for some authors, many of whom are struggling to make a living.
Enter the “National Emergency Library” to make things even worse. On March 24, Internet Archive, a nonprofit self-described as a “digital library of free and borrowable” content, announced that it was granting itself powers to distribute e-books free to anyone who wants them. Citing the pandemic, it has removed all lending restrictions from its archive until June 30.
Since 1996, Internet Archive has been copying and archiving web pages, and it runs the popular Wayback Machine, which preserves defunct websites. It has also been shipping containers of books to China for scanning, as well as scanning many books in San Francisco. Over the years it has built up a collection of 1.4 million e-books, many of which are still under copyright.
By making a splashy news announcement praising itself for coming to the rescue of homebound students and teachers, Internet Archive managed to snag some favorable press from The New Yorker and NPR, among others, and the endorsement of a number of other prominent institutions. (NPR has since reported on objections to Internet Archive from writers and publishers.)
Let us be clear: The National Emergency Library is not a library. It is a book-piracy website. Internet Archive has not paid a dime for these books, to either authors or publishers; instead, it acquires donations of used books from various sources. After scanning, it stores those books in warehouses, claiming that its ownership of the physical book gives it the legal right to lend out digital copies.
Legitimate libraries also lend e-books free, but there’s a huge difference: They pay expensive licensing fees for those e-books, and a portion of the fees flow to authors as royalties.
Internet Archive claims what it does is legal, so long as it lends only one copy of a book at a time. However, in the case of Capitol Records v. Redigi, the courts ruled that digitally copying music without permission for sale or loan is illegal, even if only one copy is made. (Redigi was a service that allowed users to buy and sell used digital music files.) The court’s opinion established principles of digital copyright infringement that should clearly apply to all copyrighted works, including books.
Furthermore, the National Emergency Library is no longer lending one copy at a time — it has thrown open its digital archive to everyone, allowing an unlimited number of people from anywhere in the world to download the same digital file. This is precisely how book-piracy websites operate.
The Authors Guild, of which I am president, has issued a statement saying we are “appalled” that Internet Archive “is using a global crisis to advance a copyright ideology that violates current federal law and hurts most authors.”
Internet Archive has defended itself by declaring that authors can “opt out” by asking to have their books removed. But the opt-out process doesn’t work well; I’ve opted out twice from the lending program in the past few years, yet some of my books are still on its website. It also claims that most of the books it has scanned do not have e-book equivalents and can’t be found elsewhere, and that they provide rare books that students need for coursework.
But a quick perusal of the site turns up thousands of books that have e-book editions available free from legitimate libraries, from best-sellers by J.K. Rowling and John Grisham to anthologies, works of history and biography.
The National Emergency Library harms authors by depriving them of income at a time when they can least afford it. It deprives bookstores of desperately needed sales. It hurts real libraries, most of which are still operating legitimate e-lending programs and need patrons now more than ever. It undermines the entire publishing ecosystem and all those who depend on it, from publicists and book designers to editors and agents.
Let me close with some interesting facts. Brewster Kahle, the founder of Internet Archive and the architect of the National Emergency Library, is a multimillionaire entrepreneur who created and sold companies to AOL and Amazon. For years he has pushed a radical anti-copyright philosophy that essentially holds that all creative work — books, photographs, music, poetry, drama, films and so forth — should be available free online. Internet Archive is funded in part by the Kahle/Austin Foundation, of which Mr. Kahle is the president, with an endowment of over $100 million.
According to Internet Archive’s legal filings, it also receives major financial support from other foundations, including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Science Foundation. And the higher-ups at Internet Archive appear to be paid very well indeed: Its 2017 nonprofit 990 tax filing, posted at ProPublica, indicates that the top six employees collectively earn over $1 million a year.
The Authors Guild’s 2018 survey of its membership and members of other writers organizations found that the median income of those who identified as a full-time author in the United States was $20,300, well below the federal poverty line for a family of three or more.
Douglas Preston is the president of The Authors Guild.
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