The #InternetArchive #library is being sued by 4 #corporate publishers who want to stop them from lending books.

Statement: Major Decision on Libraries’ Digital Rights A Step Closer on March 20

"Judge John G. Koeltl of the Southern District of New York has set March 20, 2023 as the date for oral arguments in four major publishers’ lawsuit against the Internet Archive’s digital library.

"The following statement can be attributed to Lia Holland (they/she), Campaigns and Communications Director at Fight for the Future:

"We’re eagerly awaiting the Internet Archive’s opportunity to have their day in court and speak up for the digital rights and future of all libraries in the US. This suit from major publishers has broad implications for libraries’ abilities to circulate digital books—namely, whether or not they are allowed to own and preserve digital books at all.

"Currently, major publishers offer no option for libraries to permanently purchase digital books and carry out their traditional role of #preservation. It is just as important to preserve digital books as paper books, given especially the rising popularity of digital books and the fact that many local and #diverse voices are not published in print. We want a future where libraries are free to preserve digital book files and ensure they remain accessible to the public as well unaltered. Instead, libraries are forced to pay high licensing fees that regard patron privacy as a premium feature, and the third-party vendors like Overdrive that offer such licenses are vulnerable to censorship from book banners. Under this regime, publishers act as malicious gatekeepers, preventing the free flow of information and undermining libraries’ ability to serve their patrons.

"This untenable situation is the direct consequence of shareholder #greed at Big Publishing #monopolies. Libraries owning and preserving books is not the reason that most authors are being paid ever less amid the past few years’ record publishing profits. The publishers’ suit against the Internet Archive’s library must be recognized for what it is: an attack on all libraries, conveniently aimed at a groundbreaking nonprofit that Big Publishing’s highly-paid lobbyists aggressively mischaracterize as a for-profit Big Tech company.

"With a similar preservationist ethos to the Wayback Machine, another Internet Archive project considered essential infrastructure for our digital lives, the Internet Archive’s library provides access to and preservation of out-of-print, midlist, local, and diverse voices in addition to popular books. In many ways, this initiative is similar to the Brooklyn Public Library’s youth censorship circumvention efforts—but the Internet Archive’s library is accessible to everyone around the world, not just youth in the US. The Internet Archive’s digital books also are used for citations on #Wikipedia, underpinning yet another core digital public good.

"We hope that on March 20th Judge Koeltl will resoundingly free this robust and beloved institution from the greedy maw of Big Publishing."

#BigPublishing #Censorship #FairUse #Libraries #Archives #WaybackMachine #Archiving #DigitalWorld #OpenContent #Capitalism #EmpoweringLibraries #FightForTheFuture

Source: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2023-02-23-statement-major-decision-on-libraries-digital-rights-a-step-closer-on-march-20

Below is a link to a PDF of the #InternetArchive's final brief.

Arguements include:

- Internet Archive’s Digital Lending Is a Lawful Fair Use.

- The Internet Archive’s digital lending program is noncommercial.

- The Internet Archive’s digital lending program is transformative.

- Digital lending would still be fair use even if it were not transformative.

- Plaintiffs [book publishers] present no evidence of market harm beyond the unquantified suppositions of their executives and high-level observations about economic theory.

#Censorship #FairUse #Libraries #Archives #WaybackMachine #Archiving #DigitalWorld #OpenContent

https://www.publishersweekly.com/binary-data/ARTICLE_ATTACHMENT/file/000/006/6074-1.pdf

Oral Argument Set in #InternetArchive #Copyright Case
By Andrew Albanese |
Feb 21, 2023

"Months after a final round of reply briefs was filed, a federal judge is now ready to hear oral arguments for summary judgment in a closely watched copyright case filed by four major publishers against the Internet Archive over its program to scan and lend library books.

"In their final brief, attorneys for the Internet Archive counter that the IA’s 'controlled' scanning and lending of library books is protected by fair use, and that the evidence will show no harm to the publishers' marketplace."
#Censorship #FairUse #Libraries #Archives #WaybackMachine #Archiving #DigitalWorld #OpenContent

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/91587-oral-argument-set-in-internet-archive-copyright-case.html

Have been feeling inspired after doing some work assembling communities that I'm really interested in - thought I'd do a tag dump for some of the areas that I'm looking into, as well as have already found super interesting, have been following and am boosting... (not in alphabetical order and probably too broad but for my own future reference also!)

#Tag heap:

#Abolition #ACAB #ADHD #Affect #AffectStudies #AntiImperialism #AntiColonialism #AntiRacism #Archiving #Archives #Art #BlackLivesMatter #BLM #Boardgames #ClimateChange #Coffee #Commons #CriticalTheory #CinemaStudies #Communities #CulturalStudies #Decolonisation #Design #Disabled #DigitalCommons #DigitalCulture #DigitalCultures #DigitalHumanities #DigitalTechnologies #DigiModernism #Diversity #EDI #EnglishLiterature #Feminism #Feministsts #FilmStudies #FreeSoftware #Games #Gaming #Geopolitics #Geography #Hauntology #HCI #HumanComputerInteraction
#HigherEd #HigherEducation #History #Histodians #Incarceration #Inclusion #InfrastructureStudies #InternetStudies #London #LowTech #Media #MediaStudies #Museum #Museums #Musicals #OpenPedagogy #ParticipatoryDesign #Pedagogy #PoliceAbolition #Philosophy #Photography #Praxis #Prisons #PrisonAbolition #Preservation #Progressive #Politics #Postmodernism #PublicEducation
#Running #ScienceAndTechnologyStudies #SocialInclusion #SocialMobility #SocialTheory #Socialism #SocialJustice #Sociology #Sociodon #Sociodons #Solidarity #SoftwareStudies #SoundScapes #Skeuomorphism #SpeculativeFiction #STS #Technology #Trans #UK #VanLife #VideoGames #University #Zines

Also I suppose really this is a second #Introduction after the #TwitterMigration as I'm still relatively #NewHere so... Hi again! Feel free to follow or boost if this sounds like your areas of interest also

@SuitedUpDev I'm sure you're seeing it already but you're gonna get a lot of pushback around an opt-out model for @threadunroller. I think it's a very useful service and I've used similar tools on twitter but there are lots of people who don't share my perspective and have really strong feelings about #search, #indexing, and #archiving

I outlined some thoughts here: https://kolektiva.social/@AnarchoDoggo/109353686595441142

But wanted to mention one other thought...I think a way to alleviate any opt-in / opt-out concerns would be to only trigger your bot if the person tagging the the thread is the OP. That way if ppl want to read a thread in longform or save for later they can just ask OP to tag; and only include posts from that user's handle. If people feel strongly enough to instance block, this seems like a way to alleviate any concerns.