Internet Archive is ending its program of offering free, unrestricted copies of e-books because of a lawsuit from publishers, which said lending out books without compensation for authors or publishing houses was “willful mass copyright infringement.”
Since March, Internet Archive, a nonprofit, has made more than 1.3 million books available online without restriction, calling them a National Emergency Library. It said the program was in place “to serve the nation’s displaced learners” during the coronavirus pandemic, and that it would keep the library open until June 30 or the end of the U.S. national emergency, whichever came later.
In a blog post published on Wednesday, however, it said it would close the library next week. It said that the “vast majority” of people used the e-books for a very short period of time, so could be served under the organization’s normal restrictions, which included limiting checkouts to 14 days.
The lawsuit, filed June 1, does not just object to the National Emergency Library but to the way Internet Archive has long operated. Traditional libraries pay publishers licensing fees, and agree to terms that restrict how many times they can lend an e-book. Internet Archive, by contrast, takes books that have been donated or purchased, scans them and posts them online.
RoyOfCon on June 14th, 2020 at 14:49 UTC »
Here is another article that explains it if you don’t want to go through the NYT
https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/12/internet-archive-ends-free-e-book-program-following-publisher-suit/
rhinocerosmonkey on June 14th, 2020 at 14:26 UTC »
What about the Open Library, where you return it after 2 weeks?
Road_Journey on June 14th, 2020 at 14:19 UTC »
I wasn't able to read the linked article because I didn't want to create a NYTimes account. However after a little googling what I found out is that this is only the emergency ebook program which was set to end on June 30th, now it will end on June 15th due to the lawsuit, not as big of a deal as I originally thought.