Libraries already have a tough time with ebook purchases and sharing them with our patrons. This new lawsuit could have implications for libraries and our lending.
Check out this article excerpt below, and read the whole thing here.
The fight between authors and librarians tearing book lovers apart
Major publishers are suing the Internet Archive over an online book lending program. But the case has morphed into a bigger debate that could limit the ways libraries lend books online.
“At the start of the pandemic, teachers and librarians pleaded with a prominent nonprofit to make it easier for kids at home to check out books from its digital library.
The organization, called the Internet Archive, agreed. While it traditionally lent out its more than a million digital books one at a time to the public and through partnerships with libraries, it dropped that limit in what it described as a “National Emergency Library.”
Roughly two months later, major book publishers including HarperCollins sued the Internet Archive for copyright infringement — saying its digital library initiative “grossly exceed” what libraries are allowed to do. A few months later, it reinstated lending limits, court documents show.
The fight, which the publishers and the Internet Archive asked a federal court to end earlier this month, has triggered a larger ideological debate about the application of copyright law when it comes to digital copies of books, pitting publishers and authors against librarians. At stake is the future of how libraries are allowed to buy and lend out digital books to the public, which advocates say is core to a functioning democracy as technology takes over.
The rise in technology and the pandemic resulted in a surge in demand for eBooks. Libraries have tried to keep up with the changing landscape, and have turned to a number of digital book lending platforms, such as Overdrive and Libby. But this has been costly, and a point of contention for librarians, many of whom believe that digital book lending should work similar to physical books, allowing them to purchase copies outright and loan them out.
“Libraries regularly pay four to five times what consumers pay for the same eBooks and then are forced to rebuy the same titles every year,” said Ellen Paul, the executive director of Connecticut’s library consortium, in a statement earlier this year responding to a state bill aimed at bolstering state library budgets so they could afford to keep up with the rise in digital books.
“[It’s] costing taxpayers thousands of dollars over the life of a single eBook and making a robust eBook collection out of reach for many libraries,” she said.”
You can read the whole thing here.