We stood up for the digital rights of all libraries today in court! The Southern District of New York heard oral argument in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the lawsuit against our library and the longstanding library practice of controlled digital lending, brought by 4 of the world’s largest publishers.
We fought hard for libraries today, and we’re proud of how well we were able to represent the value of controlled digital lending to the communities we serve.
Take action!
While we wait for the judge’s decision, here’s how you can show your support:
Join the Battle for Libraries ✊ The internet advocacy group Fight for the Future has launched the Battle for Libraries, an online rally in support of the Internet Archive and digital lending. Visit the action hub to engage with other supporters & share messages with your followers across social media to spread awareness about our fight. Get started now!
Read a book! 📕 Check out a book from Open Library and read it online using the library practice of controlled digital lending.
Brewster Kahle is the founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive. Brewster spoke at the press conference hosted by Internet Archive ahead of oral argument in Hachette v. Internet Archive.
Statement
The Internet is failing us. The Internet Archive has tried, along with hundreds of other libraries, to do something about it.
A ruling in this case ironically can help all libraries, or it can hurt.
The Internet Archive is a library I founded 26 years ago. This library has brought hundreds of years of books to the wikipedia generation, and now 4 massive publishers are suing to stop us.
As the world now looks to their screens for answers, what they find is often not good. People are struggling to figure out what is true and it is getting harder.
Digital learners need access to a library of books, a library at least as deep as the libraries we older people had the privilege to grow up with.
The Internet Archive has worked with hundreds of libraries for decades to provide such a library of books. A library where each of those books can be read by one reader at a time. This is what libraries have always done.
We also work with libraries that are under threat. We work with many libraries that have closed their doors completely– libraries with unique collections: Claremont School of Theology, Marygrove College of Detroit, cooking school of Johnson & Wales Denver, Concordia College of Bronxville NY, Drug Policy Alliance’s library of NYC, the Evangelical Seminary of Pennsylvania. I have looked these librarians in the eye and told them that we are there for them.
They entrust their books to us, as a peer library, to carry forward their mission. Most of the books are not available from the publishers in digital form, and never will be. And as we have seen, students, researchers and the print-disabled continue to use these books for quotations and fact checking. And I think we can all agree we need to be able to do fact checking.
Here’s what’s at stake in this case: hundreds of libraries contributed millions of books to the Internet Archive for preservation in addition to those books we have purchased. Thousands of donors provided the funds to digitize them.
The publishers are now demanding that those millions of digitized books, not only be made inaccessible, but be destroyed.
This is horrendous. Let me say it again– the publishers are demanding that millions of digitized books be destroyed.
And if they succeed in destroying our books or even making many of them inaccessible, there will be a chilling effect on the hundreds of other libraries that lend digitized books as we do.
This could be the burning of the Library of Alexandria moment– millions of books from our community’s libraries – gone.
The dream of the Internet was to democratize access to knowledge, but if the big publishers have their way, excessive corporate control will be the nightmare of the Internet.
That is what is at stake. Will libraries even own and preserve collections that are digital? Will libraries serve our patrons with books as we have done for millennia?
A positive ruling that affirms every library’s right to lend the books they own, would build a better Internet and a better society.
Lawrence Lessig is a professor of law at Harvard Law. Lawrence spoke at the press conference hosted by Internet Archive ahead of oral argument in Hachette v. Internet Archive.
We should all recognize — and celebrate—the importance of commercial publishing, for authors and creators everywhere. Commercial publishing creates the income that authors depend upon to have the freedom to create great new works. Without commercial publishing, much of the greatest that will be won’t be written.
But we must also recognize that culture needs more than commercial publishing. If the business model of commercial publishing controlled our access to our past, then much of who we were, and much of how we learned to be better, would simply disappear.
Think about the extraordinary platform that is Netflix. For a small price each month, subscribers have access to thousands of movies and television shows, far more than at any point in human history. The revenue subscribers provide in turn lets Netflix invest in new creative work. No one who knew television from the 1970s could believe that the quality of television has not improved dramatically over the last 50 years.
Yet Netflix’ archive is not endless. And each year, the site culls titles from its collection and removes them from its library. Netflix does this for many reasons — for example, the content could be licensed from third parties, and the term of that license has expired, or the site may see that demand for the title is meager, so bearing the costs of carrying it no longer makes sense. Regardless of the reason, the decision is an economic one for Netflix — Netflix makes available only those titles that it continues to make economic sense to make available. Such is the business model of a commercial publisher.
But culture needs a different business model. We need access to our past, not just the part of our past that continues to be commercially viable. We need libraries that assure we can see everything our parents or grandparents saw, so we can understand why they were as they were, and how they got better. Great libraries preserve access to as much as they physically can — not based on which titles continue to earn revenue. The past is just one more competitor for a commercial publisher; but for a library, the past is a gift that is to be nurtured and protected, regardless of its commercial value.
We are at a critical moment in the history of culture. The lawsuit that the Internet Archive faces will determine whether the business model of culture is the commercial model alone, or whether there will continue to be a place for libraries, and therefore, continue to be a practice of assuring as much access to our past as is possible. The particular fight in this lawsuit is important; the general fight is critical: Is the past that we have access to just the past that continues to pay? Or is the past we can have reliable access to the past that libraries strive to make available — not for profit, but for the love of culture and for the truth that that access to all of culture continues to assure.
Heather Joseph is the executive director of SPARC. She spoke at the press conference hosted by Internet Archive ahead of oral argument in Hachette v. Internet Archive.
Statement
Access to knowledge is a fundamental human right.
We depend on being able to freely share knowledge each and every day. It’s foundational to how we navigate the world – from how we learn to how we work, to how we share our culture and understand our collective history. It’s also the lifeblood of how we advance discovery, and attack the biggest challenges that we face as a society. From cancer breakthroughs to climate justice, we rely on being able to access, build on and benefit from the knowledge generated by those around us.
We take for granted that knowledge is just – there, and that ANYONE can get it when and if they need it. But the reality is that too often, this simply isn’t the case. Especially in the world of scientific research, knowledge is treated as a commodity, and often carries a price tag that makes it unaffordable to all but the wealthiest individuals and institutions.
This is never more evident than in times of crises. From the avian flu to the global COVID 19 pandemic, we’ve seen the same pattern play out over and over again. When a health crisis looms, one of the very first thing that happens is that scientists, the public and policymakers have to plead with publishers to lower their paywalls and make sure that those who desperately need access to knowledge can get it. Whether it’s access to develop treatments and cures, or to make sure students can continue to learn, knowledge shouldn’t be kept locked behind glass that can only be broken in the event of an emergency. It should be readily available to all.
Libraries play a critical role in making this happen. They are designed to empower everyone – regardless of who you are, where you live, or your economic or political status – to access and use knowledge. Whether you walk into a physical library like the New York Public Library, or log into a digital one like the Internet Archive, you don’t need a PhD or a billion-dollar bank account to access the knowledge they hold.
We depend on libraries to do the crucial things they have done for centuries. Libraries collect. They preserve. And libraries lend. They collect materials to ensure access to the broadest range of ideas and facts. They preserve these materials for the long haul, because access to knowledge should not be ephemeral. Stable, consistent, long-term access is how we promote continuity and ultimately understand truth. Lending – one copy of a physical or digital object to one person at time is the bedrock process that libraries use to ensure free, fair and equitable knowledge sharing.
Libraries like the Internet Archive exist to ensure the universal sharing of knowledge. Sharing knowledge is a fundamental human right. Nothing could be more important to protect than that.
Catherine Stihler is the chief executive officer of Creative Commons. Catherine spoke at the press conference hosted by Internet Archive ahead of oral argument in Hachette v. Internet Archive.
Statement
My name is Catherine Stihler, and I’m the CEO of Creative Commons.
As a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the sharing and reuse of creativity and knowledge, we strongly support the Internet Archive in its defense of Controlled Digital Lending. Free, equitable, and open access to all knowledge stimulates creativity, is essential for research and learning, and constitutes a bedrock principle of free and democratic societies.
The Internet Archive is leading the fight for establishing permanent access to historical collections that exist in digital format. With Controlled Digital Lending, libraries like the Internet Archive can lend one copy of digitized material from their collection to one borrower for a limited time, just like they would a physical book.
This isn’t a position that we just came to on our own; instead, it came from working hand in hand with cultural and knowledge institutions across the world. Like Communia’s policy recommendations state: “libraries should be enabled to fulfill their mission in the digital environment.” As libraries modernize their services, we need to protect the legal frameworks that support their digital lending practices.
Permitting and protecting Controlled Digital Lending is a key way to help ensure copyright is fit for the modern age. Guided by our strong belief in better sharing, CC will continue to support the Internet Archive’s crucial efforts to ensure the public can access knowledge and culture on a global level.
John Chrastka is the executive director of EveryLibrary. John spoke at the press conference hosted by Internet Archive ahead of oral argument in Hachette v. Internet Archive.
Statement
My organization, the EveryLibrary Institute, is a public policy and tax policy research organization focusing on issues affecting the future of libraries in the United States and abroad.
Alongside our colleagues at ReadersFirst, we joined an Amicus brief written by the Library Futures Institute, to ask the court to uphold a library digital loaning practice known as Controlled Digital Lending – or “CDL”. CDL uses technology to enable a library to acquire, preserve, and provide access to digital versions books for library patrons.
Simply put, CDL is a different way of utilizing the centuries-old method by which libraries have loaned the books on their shelves for the public to read.
Controlled Digital Lending – as is commonly used in libraries like the Internet Archive – does not replace ebook licenses, and is a reasonable practice for the current moment. For more than a century, Copyright law has allowed libraries to legally lend books and other materials they own. This practice of library lending is essential in ensuring public access to information, particularly books – and has numerous social benefits. With the growth of digital delivery, libraries have adapted by lending materials using new technologies and formats.
However, this lawsuit seeks to outlaw digital library lending unless they dictate how, where, to whom, and at what price it occurs. This would significantly alter how libraries work and their relationships with their patrons and collections in the digital age.
I’d like to take a moment to remind the court about the context of the “Emergency Lending Library” and to ask it to consider the context under which the Internet Archive, as a library, was responding to need. From the launch of the Emergency Lending Library on March 24, 2020 to June 16, 2020, essentially every school district in the United States was closed to in-person learning. The Philadelphia school district was completely shut down with no substantial instruction happening. The school district of Washington, DC shifted part of their instructions to Television. According to Georgetown University’s analysis of MAP tests, Chicago Public School students lost the equivalent of 21 weeks of learning in the year following these shutdowns.
The “Emergency Lending Library” from the Internet Archive provided a unique, important, and necessary service to Americans in this context. It was an exemplar moment for libraries which mitigated the harm of these shutdowns for students and their families.
The plaintiffs’ narrow interpretation of the Copyright Act ignores the broader common law doctrine, policy objectives, and history of copyright. Both Congress and the Supreme Court have historically balanced the interests of copyright holders and owners.
The court should not rewrite more than a century of copyright law about libraries. Doing so will make it nearly impossible for libraries to fulfill their mission – especially in times of grave need and crisis – in the digital environment.
Ashton Applewhite is one of more than 1,000 authors who spoke out in opposition to the publishers’ lawsuit. Ashton spoke at the press conference hosted by Internet Archive ahead of oral argument in Hachette v. Internet Archive.
Statement
My name is Ashton Applewhite, and I’m recording this in New York City on March 16, 2023. For over 40 years I have supported myself and my family by writing books for Random House, Harper Collins, Macmillan and other major publishing houses.
These publishers have served me well, but I am completely opposed to their lawsuit against the Internet Archive.
It will have a chilling effect on the efforts of all libraries to adapt as print culture migrates online, and it will also devastate the Internet Archive, which, as we hurtle into this digital unknown, is the single most important repository of human knowledge. No other organization is preserving and providing online access at this scale.
The Wayback Machine alone has archived 800 billion pages, millions of books, tens of thousands of hours of TV and radio news. And on and on. Humanity’s collective history, digitized, thank Heavens!
The Internet Archive exists. We need to be able to say that 100 years from now.
Laura Gibbs is an author and educator. She spoke at the press conference hosted by Internet Archive ahead of oral argument in Hachette v. Internet Archive.
Statement
My name is Laura Gibbs, and for many years I taught mythology and folklore courses at the University of Oklahoma. Since I retired two years ago, I’ve been doing bibliography work at the Internet Archive, looking for the best mythology and folklore books that readers can borrow from the Archive’s library with Controlled Digital Lending. Last year, I published A Reader’s Guide to African Folktales at the Internet Archive, which is an annotated bibliography of 200 books available at the Archive, beautiful books of folktales, myths, fables, legends, games, songs, riddles, and proverbs from all over the African continent. Some of the books come from African publishers and are hard to find in any library, but there they are: digitized and ready to read at the Internet Archive.
This year, I’ll be publishing a follow-up volume, A Reader’s Guide to African Diaspora Folktales, with another 200 books of folktales, this time from African American and Caribbean storytellers, books that teachers, students, scholars, parents, people anywhere in the world can read online at the Archive.
In the year 2023, we should NOT have to be limited just to the books available to us in our local libraries. We need a positive ruling in this case so that the Internet Archive can keep building their digital library AND so that other libraries can also make their resources available online, connecting more people with more books than ever before. The readers, writers, and researchers of the world need the Internet Archive, and we need Controlled Digital Lending.
UPDATE (3/16/23): In researching this post, Internet Archive librarians discovered that this book came to the Internet Archive through our literacy partnership with Better World Books, originating from a library in the UK. This story further highlights the value of our partnership in preserving books & cultural heritage for generations to come.
Brad Bigelow first became fascinated with obscure authors while perusing the vast library stacks at the University of Washington when he was an undergraduate in the late ‘70s.
“I would take down books I didn’t know anything about, just out of curiosity. As I read these books, I quickly realized that the only difference between the writers who get remembered and the ones that get forgotten is luck. It’s not talent or merit,” said Bigelow, noting some just had bad timing, lacked connections or didn’t have enough sales. “There are many good writers who deserve to be remembered.”
In 2006, Bigelow started the website Neglected Books, reviewing lesser-known books in hopes of giving the authors belated exposure for their work and sparking broader interest. Sometimes it can be a challenge to find information about writers and get copies of their often out-of-print books, said Bigelow, of Missoula, Montana, who runs the website as a hobby.
The Internet Archive is his trusted resource, providing access to information anytime, anywhere, he said.
“It’s a world asset. It’s just phenomenal,” said Bigelow. He uses the Archives’ search tools to learn more about authors (through back issues of Publishers’ Weekly and The Bookman magazines, for example) and the digital collection to borrow rare books unavailable elsewhere.
It was on the Internet Archive that Bigelow recently found a copy of “Makeshift,” by Sarah Campion, a 1940 novel about a bright, young Jewish woman’s flight from Nazi Germany. Bigelow published a blog post about “Makeshift” on Neglected Books and then promoted the post on social media, highlighting the rarity of the work. “There are just 19 copies of this book in libraries worldwide. Even Campion’s son doesn’t have a copy. But fortunately, it’s available on the Internet Archive.” Bigelow tweeted about his discovery.
For independent scholars and individuals, access to key resources in the research process such as back issues of old magazines can be limited. Bigelow said he is grateful for the Internet Archive, which offers an alternative to those not affiliated with a college or university, and donates regularly since he relies on its resources for his writing.
On Neglected Books, Bigelow said he enjoys shedding new light on unknown authors. “I don’t think my thoughts are original enough to have anything new to say about Virginia Woolf, James Joyce or Shakespeare,” he said. However, unearthing little-known books that have been all but lost to history is satisfying.
Bigelow appreciates the Internet Archive for protecting cultural artifacts that have disappeared from physical library shelves and making them available to the public. “Information that is not passed on is useless,” he said.
It’s the classic librarian’s dilemma: Because no library has unlimited storage, every library has to carefully manage its physical collection, and that means removing books to make space for new ones. On one hand, it’s exciting to bring in fresh voices, new stories and modern research, but on the other, a library’s main goal is to preserve information over time. So how can librarians manage their physical collections with an eye towards preservation?
Since forming a global literacy partnership in 2019, Better World Books (BWB) and the Internet Archive have offered a unique pathway for libraries to ensure that the books they no longer need in their collections can be preserved and made accessible for generations to come.
The service that BWB provides is an important one for libraries. BWB collects used books from libraries, booksellers, colleges, and universities in six countries, which are then either resold online, donated or recycled. To date, Better World Books has donated over 35 million books worldwide, has raised close to $34 million for libraries and literacy, and has saved more than 450 million books from landfills. Through the partnership with the Internet Archive, BWB has donated more than one million books each year for preservation and digitization, totaling 4 million books to date.
“What we’ve seen is the lifecycle of books become more complete,” says Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle. Once books are received from BWB, the Internet Archive digitizes them for patrons with print disabilities, offering readers like Pastor Doug Wilson, who has declining vision, access to books in digital form that are otherwise inaccessible. Then a subset of those books are used for digital lending, interlibrary loan and machine learning.
Dustin Holland, president and chief executive officer of BWB, says the arrangement allows these books to live on and to be put to the best use possible.
“Our goal has always been to maximize the value of the book,” says Holland. “To have a partner to which BWB may donate books that originate from thousands of libraries across multiple countries is a huge win for us, for the Internet Archive, and for our libraries. At the end of the day, it’s also beneficial for humanity, because there will always be access to these books.”
Supporting Ukrainian students
In May of 2022, BWB partnered with the Internet Archive to help support Ukrainian students and scholars. Customers were invited to contribute $1 with each BWB purchase, raising $17,200 to support the sourcing and digitizing of materials to preserve Ukrainian culture and heritage. This included more than 900 books that will become connected citations on the Ukrainian language Wikipedia page, in addition to more than 17,000 titles that the Internet Archive has already connected through its existing relationship with the Wikipedia community.
Helping libraries manage their collections
Wolfgram Memorial Library, Widener University-Chester
Since its dedication in 1970, the Wolfgram Memorial Library on the campus of Widener University-Chester in Pennsylvania has actively built a collection of more than 180,000 volumes. Three years ago Roz Goldstein, head of technical services and automated systems, undertook a collection management project to review the library’s holdings and determine which books no longer fit the library’s collection priorities.
The library packed up the older, underutilized books in boxes provided by BWB, which also paid for the shipping. Over the past two years, the library has contributed about 13,000 books to BWB, covering a wide variety of subjects, mostly non-fiction. Goldstein says the library’s main priority was managing collection space, but knowing some will see a broader audience is an added benefit.
“I was thrilled to find out that 600 of our titles have been sent to the Internet Archive to be digitized,” says Goldstein, who has shared her experience with other library colleagues and encouraged them to partner with BWB.
At the SEO Service Center, a branch of the State Library of Ohio, Jay Miley works with 98 libraries as the customer service and library systems manager. In January, he started sifting through 120,000 volumes stored in a central library building to see what no longer fit their collection development priorities. About 20,000 books were moved to local branches due to demand within the system for physical access. Then Miley began to look into options for some lesser-used books — not wanting them to end up in landfill.
Miley discovered BWB was a popular option among other state libraries, and he began to pack up boxes. So far, Ohio has shipped about 12,000 items to BWB and another 38,000 are queued for processing. Recently, he learned that 1,200 of the books that came from his library have been digitized and made available through the Internet Archive. “I think it’s awesome,” he says. “I immediately told my team, my boss and the state librarian.”
A growing impact
Over the past three years, the relationship between Better World Books and the Internet Archive has only grown stronger. BWB has streamlined the logistics of getting materials to the Internet Archive, Holland says, and the impact continues to grow. “The biggest thing we need to do is to educate and shout from the rooftops—to tell more people what we’re doing and how valuable this is for society.”
If your library is interested in learning more about the services that Better World Books provides to libraries, please check out the BWB Services page.
