library – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Florida College Throws Out A Bunch Of LGBTQ+ Books Just Because

from the licking-Ron-DeSantis'-elfin-boots dept

No doubt encouraged by the governor and state legislature’s hatred of anything not aligned with their hetero-first principles, a Florida college not only shuttered its Gender and Diversity Center, but threw out hundreds of books dealing with, you know, gender and/or diversity.

The Stop WOKE Act is likely to blame here, even if it’s not explicitly referenced by any of the college reps quoted in Steven Walker’s Sarasota Herald-Tribune article. The part of the law that tells private companies what they can and can’t discuss with their employees is completely dead, but the part covering publicly-funded schools is only mostly dead. And the state will continue blowing money defending the unconstitutional law because (1) it’s other people’s money, and (2) it really, really wants any small piece of this law to survive because legislators really, really want to keep making LGBTQ+ feel miserable and unwelcome in the Sunshine State.

The Gender and Diversity Center was shut down shortly after the school board obtained a conservative majority. The hundreds of books owned by the center were considered so valueless they were tossed en masse into the nearest dumpster.

A dumpster in the parking lot of Jane Bancroft Cook Library on the campus of New College overflowed with books and collections from the now-defunct Gender and Diversity Center on Tuesday afternoon. Video captured in the afternoon showed a vehicle driving away with the books before students were notified. In the past, students were given an opportunity to purchase books that were leaving the college’s library collection.

As always, the cruelty is the point. At any point prior to their removal, students, teachers, and other interested parties could have been told these books were going to be removed. But rather than do that, the books were thrown away as quickly and unceremoniously as possible. Some were rescued, but the footage embedded in the Herald-Tribune shows most of the books were hauled off to the nearest dump.

When contacted by the paper, college reps pretended this was just a routine “weeding” of the school library’s shelves. Even if this were true (and it clearly isn’t), the college could have informed students, teachers, and others so these books could find new homes and readers. But the college didn’t want anyone to have any access to content its board no longer considers worth reading.

College spokesperson Nathan March also claimed it was against the law to give away or sell the books to students or other interested parties. Reporter Steven Walker points out the falseness of this claim:

March referenced Florida Statute 273 as the reason books could not be donated or sold. However, FS 273 states that New College could dispose of state-funded personal property by “selling or transferring the property to any other governmental entity … private nonprofit agency … (and) through a sale open to the public.”

That makes it clear it was handled the way the majority of the board wanted it handled: a “weeding” that was anything but routine — one that mainly targeted gender and race-related books, all without giving anyone any notice this purge of unwanted content was going to be happening. It could have been handled in a way that didn’t give the appearance of a bunch of censorial asshats sitting around wishing they could have burnt them instead. But the school and its conservative board wanted to make it clear they thought these works literature were literally nothing more than trash.

Filed Under: book bans, florida, free speech, library, new college of florida, stop woke act

Fifth Circuit Is Going To Take Another Swing At Its Extremely Messy Library Book Removal Decision

from the hopefully,-it-won't-get-worse dept

I supposed the court had no choice, but I’m always a little wary when the Fifth Circuit decides to take another look at some litigation, especially when it involves certain amendments like the First. Or the Fourth.

This case, however, is a mess. It began (as far too many do these days) with a supposedly concerned citizen griping about some books they’d likely never even looked at, much less read. Rather than approach the Llano County library directly, they took their complaints to county judge Ron Cunningham. The judge, unbelievably, ordered the library to remove the books, including the (and I’m quoting directly here) “books about butts and farts.”

Llano County Commissioner Jerry Moss also inserted himself into this mess by telling the library director to comply with the apparently unlawful order from the judge, telling her to “pick her battles” and that refusing to comply with the judge’s request would result in “bad publicity.”

Having succeeded with getting “butts and farts” books off the shelves, another resident took a list written by former Texas state rep Matt Krause of books he considered to be “pornographic filth” to the judge, who then ordered the library director to remove all books that “depict any type of sexual activity or questionable nudity.” (Matt Krause is exactly the sort of person you think he is, even if this is all you know about him at this point.)

While that order did not clear the shelves of dozens of romance novels, it did result in the removal of LGBTQ+ content, as well as two books about racism in the United States (Caste; They Called Themselves K.K.K.). These are the sorts of books being challenged and banned all over the US right now because the Party of Free Speech has collectively decided no one should be allowed to learn about endemic racism and/or sexual identity.

This resulted in a lawsuit to void the judge’s order and return these books to the shelves. The lower court agreed with the plaintiffs and ordered the books to be made available again. The county appealed and the Fifth Circuit went to work making a mess of it.

The majority partly agreed with the plaintiffs. It said eight of the 17 pulled books needed to go back on the shelves. A concurring opinion pretty much agreed, but said the majority allowed too many books to be reinstated, taking issue with any of “butts and farts” books due to their (alleged) lack of artistic merit.

I disagree, first, because not all of the books express an “idea” or “viewpoint” in the sense required by the caselaw. I am referring to the items we have needed to label for clarity as the “butt and fart books.” Viewpoints and ideas are few in number in a book titled “Gary the Goose and His Gas on the Loose” — only juvenile, flatulent humor. Perhaps a librarian selected the book believing the juvenile content would encourage juveniles to read. Even if that is so, I do not find those books were removed on the basis of a dislike for the ideas within them when it has not been shown the books contain any ideas with which to disagree.

A longer dissent made better points, even if it didn’t really offer a clear path to victory for either party. It said the majority opinion was unworkable, because it applied subjective standards for book placement/removal that wouldn’t have prevented what happened here. Instead, it would make curation almost impossible and, quite possibly, deprive librarians of any control over book selection.

It also pointed out that removing the subjective standards wasn’t much better, which meant librarians could be forced to carry racist content just as surely as it would require them to carry books detailing racism in the United States. The final call, via the dissent, was this: curating public library content is government speech and, as such, the First Amendment standards do not apply. If we want libraries to do the best they can to serve their communities, librarians must be allowed the discretion to select books and decide which books they’d rather not have on their shelves.

The Associated Press is calling this a victory for Llano County officials, even though it’s nothing more than a short order informing the public this case is going to be reheard.

The decision to rehear the case was a victory for Llano County, whose lawyers argued that there were numerous errors in the June 6 opinion, including the incorrect claim that the books had not been returned the shelves pending appeals.

As much as I dread the Fifth taking another swing at this, it kind of has to. The decision it handed down raised at least as many questions as it answered. The underlying problem — a cadre of close-minded individuals intent on ridding libraries of content they don’t personally like — isn’t going to be addressed, no matter what the en banc court decides.

But the least the court can do on the second pass is take a closer look at the directives issued by the county judge, which has nothing to do with discretion and curation, and everything to do with one branch of the government acting as a censor for a different branch of the government. That’s the bigger issue here. Librarians should be allowed to curate content and they should be responsive to complaints from library patrons. But these patrons didn’t talk to the library director. They went straight to a judge and got the judge to issue orders that overrode the discretion of librarians. And unless that gets addressed, this will become a favorite tool for people who think they should get to decide what content everyone has access to.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 5th circuit, book ban, free speech, jerry moss, library, llano county, ron cunningham, texas

As Big Book Publishers Look To Kill The Internet Archive, It Introduces ‘Democracy’s Library’

from the protecting-human-knowledge dept

Last week the Internet Archive announced a new project: “Democracy’s Library.” This hits on a bunch of important topics for us here at Techdirt. First, it’s a travesty that government-funded research and publications are often hidden away, locked up and impossible to access, despite the fact that they were paid for by us, the public. Second, democracy is legitimately under threat across the globe, and getting more access to quality information out to the public is more important than ever before. While I know that some people have been turning their backs on this idea of late, it’s more important than ever that quality information and data is more accessible to more people. Third, as we’ve seen, previous attempts by dedicated activists and individuals to make government data public have unfortunately ended in tragedy, so having strong backing is key here. And… finally, this is all happening at the same time that the largest book publishers in the world, who should be supporting access to knowledge, are literally trying to destroy the Internet Archive.

Let’s break each of these down.

We’ve written for years about how the big academic publishers are responsible for abusing copyright law to lock up important publicly funded knowledge. We’ve seen increasing pushback on this, including just a few months ago when the Biden administration made moves towards requiring all publicly funded research to be immediately available to the public. There’s still a way to go before making that a reality, but it’s a huge, huge step in the right direction. But, if those works are just published randomly here or there, it’s not much use. Having a tool and a place in which to find and sort through all of that knowledge and research is key, and that’s part of what’s so exciting about Democracy’s Library.

Second, anyone who’s been paying attention to, well, everything, has seen that democracy is under threat at home and abroad. And a key tool for authoritarian, anti-democratic forces is to control the distribution of information. Democracy’s Library is a method of getting around that. It’s actually quite fun to just look around and skim what’s already there (and the project is just getting started). I mean, there are tens of thousands of Congressional hearings that are just fascinating, and hopefully will enable even greater research into how democracy works (and, well, doesn’t always work).

Third, as we saw with the horrific prosecution of Aaron Swartz and the ridiculous civil cases against Carl Malamud, both of which were around their activist attempts to make sure the public had access to publicly funded works, this simple concept of having access to things our tax dollars pay for is way, way, way more controversial than it should be. Indeed, part of the Democracy’s Library announcement was the Internet Archive’s Brewster Kahle giving Malamud an award for all of his efforts over the years.

And, of course, for all this to work, these kinds of efforts need to be both sustainable and resilient, so it’s good to also see that Filecoin Foundation is working with the Internet Archive on this project. I know that it’s become trendy to mock absolutely everything related to cryptocurrency, but there are so many important use cases, and building Democracy’s Library in a manner that is resilient to threats against the Internet Archive’s very existence is key to this sort of thing actually lasting long into the future.

Finally, that takes us to the fact that these threats against the Archive’s existence are not theoretical at all. As we’ve been discussing, the major US book publishers have all been suing the Archive, and demanding millions in damages, that could shut down the entire organization. This is a real threat to this kind of important information sharing.

No matter what, this is an exciting project, and it’s good to see these kinds of positive, beneficial programs happening, even in such troubled times.

Filed Under: access to information, access to knowledge, democracy, democracy's library, government funded works, library, research
Companies: filecoin foundation, internet archive

Freaking Out About Nazi Content On The Internet Archive Is Totally Missing The Point

from the moral-panics dept

The moral panics around anyone finding “bad” content online are getting out of control. The latest is a truly silly article in the San Francisco Chronicle whining about the fact that there is Nazi content available on the Internet Archive, written by the executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, Steven Stalinsky, who is quite perturbed that his own personal content moderation desires are not how the Internet Archive moderates.

For the past decade, Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) research has been exposing the Internet Archive’s enabling of Al-Qaeda, ISIS and other jihadi propaganda efforts and its function as a database for their distribution of materials, recruitment campaigns, incitement of violence, fundraising and even daily radio programs. We wrote that ISIS liked the platform because there was no way to flag objectionable content for review and removal ? unlike on other platforms such as YouTube. Today, the Internet Archive enables neo-Nazis and white supremacists in the same ways, and its terms of use still deny responsibility for content uploaded to it.

Right, so let’s stop right there. Yes, for over a decade, we’ve written about ongoing complaints among the pearl clutching crew that you could find terrorist content online, along with their demands that websites pull it down, leading to social media sites shutting down the accounts of human rights groups who were documenting war crimes committed by terrorist organizations.

There’s a key point in this: just because this information is available does not mean it is only used for nefarious purposes. Indeed, it is often used for important and valuable purposes — such as documenting crimes. Or creating historical archives that show truly horrific crimes and ignorant thinking. Deleting that and sweeping it under the rug is not a reasonable approach either. But this entire article by Stalinsky seems premised on the idea that every bit of evidence of Nazi-ism should disappear. That seems incredibly counterproductive.

A recent two-year study I co-authored reviews the massive amount of content being uploaded, downloaded and shared by these groups on the Internet Archive and how it is used for recruitment and radicalization. This includes historical Nazi content such as copies of Der Sturmer, the virulently antisemitic Nazi-era propaganda newspaper, and speeches and writings by Adolph Hitler, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and other Nazi figures.

This historical material is interspersed with neo-Nazi content, including tens of thousands of pages with titles such as “Adolf Hitler: The Ultimate Red Pill,” “666 Adolf Hitler Quotes” and “Joseph Goebbels, Master of Propaganda, Heil Hitler,” and videos and writings by convicted Holocaust deniers.

And the answer to this content is… to set it all on fire? Like that won’t come back to bite you?

Extremist works are available on the platform for download ? and for radicalization ? including seminal white supremacist books, training manuals for carrying out attacks, recruitment videos and several manifestos of white supremacist mass shooters.

And it’s also available for activists, journalists, researchers and more to study it and figure out how to counter it.

Yes, these are serious issues and I can understand the concerns about how this information could be misused (though, despite an attention grabbing headline about how the website is a “favorite” for “neo-Nazis”, the actual article supplies little to no evidence to support that claim). But simply hiding the information doesn’t make it go away–nor does it deal with any of the underlying reasons such information might be appealing to some ignorant people. It is brushing a serious issue under the rug, and doing so in a way that can have seriously bad consequences — as we’ve seen with social media sites deleting evidence of war crimes.

Everyone seems to think that content moderation is easy — just do what I would do — without ever thinking through the actual trade-offs and challenges of having to actually make these decisions. The article here seems to be written in incredibly bad faith, assuming that removing these historical documents is the only possible and acceptable solution, without bothering to grapple with the serious difficulties and trade-offs involved in making such decisions. Are there ways that the Internet Archive could better handle this content? Probably! Will being scolded as a “favorite” of “neo-Nazis” help make that work better? That seems unlikely.

Filed Under: archive, content moderation, library, nazi content, steven stalinsky, terrorist content, user generated content
Companies: internet archive

Filecoin Foundation Donates $10 Million Worth Of Filecoin To Internet Archive

from the huge-news dept

Some really fantastic news if you believe in (1) the wonderful work the Internet Archive does and (2) the future of a more decentralized internet (and, for what it’s worth, you should believe in both of those things). The Filecoin Foundation has donated 50,000 FIL to the Internet Archive. This is approximately $10 million worth of Filecoin, which represents the largest single donation to the organization. Obviously, by the amount alone, this is a big deal and hugely important for an Internet Archive that is currently facing an existential legal attack by publishers who hate the very idea of libraries.

But it’s doubly interesting, because Filecoin is a key component that many are hoping will empower a new more distributed web. And it appears that the Internet Archive is looking to take advantage of this aspect as well (as it should):

?Holy Crow! This is a big deal,? said Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive?s founder. ?And what are we going to do with it? We?re going to invest it in making the Internet Archive more decentralized, so that our digital history is available from thousands of computers, not just a few. The idea is to make a robust and private Internet that has a history that will persist over decades and maybe centuries.?

This is amazing news and exciting for both the future of the Internet Archive and a more distributed internet, not under the control of any single big internet giant.

Filed Under: distributed web, filecoin, library, support
Companies: filecoin foundation, internet archive

Internet Archive Responds To Publishers Lawsuit: Libraries Lend Books, That's What We Do

from the we're-a-freakin'-library dept

Last month, we wrote about the big publishers suing the Internet Archive over its Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) program, as well as its National Emergency Library (NEL). As we’ve explained over and over again, the Internet Archive is doing exactly what libraries have always done: lending books. The CDL program was structured to mimic exactly how a traditional library works, with a 1-to-1 relationship between physical books owned by the library and digital copies that can be lent out.

While some struggled with the concept of the NEL since it was basically just the CDL, but without the 1-to-1 relationship (and thus, without wait lists), it seemed reasonably defensible: nearly all public libraries at the time had shut down entirely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the NEL was helping people who otherwise would never have had access to the books that were sitting inside libraries, collecting dust on the inaccessible shelves. Indeed, plenty of teachers and schools thanked the Internet Archive for making it possible for students to still read books that were stuck inside locked up classrooms. But, again, this lawsuit wasn’t just about the NEL at all, but about the whole CDL program. The publishers have been whining about the CDL for a while, but hadn’t sued until now.

Of course, the reality is that the big publishers see digital ebooks as an opportunity to craft a new business model. With traditional books, libraries buy the books, just like anyone else, and then lend them out. But thanks to a strained interpretation of copyright law, when it came to ebooks, the publishers jacked up the price for libraries to insane levels and kept putting more and more conditions on them. For example, Macmillan, for a while, was charging $60 per book — with a limit of 52 lends or two years of lending, whichever came first. And then you’d have to renew.

Basically, publishers were abusing copyright law to try to jam down an awful and awfully expensive model on libraries — exposing how much publishers really hate libraries, while pretending otherwise.

Anyway, the Internet Archive has filed its response to the lawsuit, which does the typical thing of effectively denying all of the claims in the lawsuit (though I will admit that I chuckled to see them even “deny” the claim that the Archive’s headquarters are in an “exclusive” part of San Francisco (FWIW, I’d probably describe the area more as “not easily accessible by public transit,” but that doesn’t quite make it exclusive — or at least not any more exclusive than most of the rest of SF)).

The Internet Archive admits that its headquarters are located in San Francisco, but denies that the corner of Funston and Clement Streets is an ?exclusive area.?

The key part, of course, will be the defenses, and as expected the Internet Archive throws everything in starting with fair use, failure to state a claim, first sale, DMCA safe harbor, and statute of limitations and laches. The key ones are going to be fair use and the first sale issue. And the response lays out the basics of how this defense is going to be argued:

The Internet Archive does what libraries have always done: buy, collect, preserve, and share our common culture. In furtherance of that mission, the Internet Archive has received grant funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the federal government?s Institute of Museum and Library Services, among many other sources. Many libraries and archives, including the Library of Congress, Boston Public Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and smaller community libraries like the Allen County Public Library trust the Internet Archive to digitize books and other materials in their collections in order to preserve physical texts and to facilitate public access. The Internet Archive is part of a network of libraries around the world?each of which is using digital technologies to meet the many challenges of serving patrons with diverse needs and differing abilities and to ensure that the growing storehouse of human creativity is not lost because no one has the capacity to preserve it.

Like Plaintiffs, the Internet Archive believes that ?[b]ooks are a cornerstone of our culture and system of democratic self-government? and ?play a critical role in education.? Accordingly, democratizing access to information, and facilitating access to books in particular, has been a core part of the Internet Archive?s mission for decades. But, for many people, distance, time, cost, or disability pose daunting and sometimes insurmountable barriers to accessing physical books. Digitizing and offering books online for borrowing unlocks them for communities with limited or no access, creating a lifeline to trusted information. Readers in the Internet age need a comprehensive library that meets them where they are?an online space that welcomes everyone to use its resources, while respecting readers? privacy and dignity.

[….]

The Internet Archive has made careful efforts to ensure its uses are lawful. The Internet Archive?s CDL program is sheltered by the fair use doctrine, buttressed by traditional library protections. Specifically, the project serves the public interest in preservation, access and research?all classic fair use purposes. Every book in the collection has already been published and most are out of print. Patrons can borrow and read entire volumes, to be sure, but that is what it means to check a book out from a library. As for its effect on the market for the works in question, the books have already been bought and paid for by the libraries that own them. The public derives tremendous benefit from the program, and rights holders will gain nothing if the public is deprived of this resource.

During the early days of the COVID-19 crisis, in response to urgent pleas from teachers and librarians whose students and patrons had been ordered to stay at home, the Internet Archive decided to temporarily permit lending that could have exceeded the one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio. With millions of print books locked away, digital lending was the only practical way to get books to those who needed them. The Internet Archive called this program the ?National Emergency Library? and planned to discontinue it once the need had passed. Twelve weeks later, other options had emerged to fill the gap, and the Internet Archive was able to return to the traditional CDL approach.

Contrary to the publishers? accusations, the Internet Archive and the hundreds of libraries and archives that support it are not pirates or thieves. They are librarians, striving to serve their patrons online just as they have done for centuries in the brick-and-mortar world. Copyright law does not stand in the way of libraries? right to lend, and patrons? right to borrow, the books that libraries own.

In a blog post about this, Internet Archive Founder Brewster Kahle notes that beyond trying to kill the CDL, the lawsuit also looks to force the Archive to destroy the digital books it’s scanned for so many libraries, and to preserve that history.

These publishers call for the destruction of the 1.5 million digital books that Internet Archive makes available to our patrons. This form of digital book burning is unprecedented and unfairly disadvantages people with print disabilities. For the blind, ebooks are a lifeline, yet less than one in ten exists in accessible formats. Since 2010, Internet Archive has made our lending library available to the blind and print disabled community, in addition to sighted users. If the publishers are successful with their lawsuit, more than a million of those books would be deleted from the Internet?s digital shelves forever.

I call on the executives at Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House to come together with us to help solve the pressing challenges to access to knowledge during this pandemic. Please drop this needless lawsuit.

It really is quite incredible that these publishers are looking to effectively do a digital book burning in the midst of a pandemic.

Filed Under: books, controlled digital lending, copyright, fair use, library, national emergency library, publishers
Companies: internet archive

Major Publishers Sue The Internet Archive's Digital Library Program In The Midst Of A Pandemic

from the not-a-good-look-guys dept

For many years, we’ve said that if the public library were invented today, the book publishers would sue it out of existence. It appears that the big book publishers have decided to prove me right, as they have decided to sue the Internet Archive for lending ebooks without a license.

Over the last few months, we’ve discussed why publishers and authors were overreacting in their verbal attack on the Internet Archive’s decision to launch a “National Emergency Library” to help out during a pandemic. While many publishers and authors declared this to be “piracy,” that did not square with reality. The Internet Archive was relying on a variety of precedents regarding the legality of libraries scanning books and lending books, as well as around fair use, to argue that what it was doing was perfectly legal. Indeed, the deeper you looked at the issue, the more it looked like the publishers and authors were upset with the Internet Archive for being a library, since libraries don’t need special licenses to lend out books.

In other words, this was yet another attack on property rights. Publishers and some authors were trying to argue that the Internet Archive needed extra licenses to lend out legally made scans of legally obtained books. And to respond to a few common criticisms of the NEL: they were doing this since so many libraries and schools around the world were shuttered due to the pandemic, meaning that millions of books were literally collecting dust on shelves, un-lendable. More importantly, the NEL was not targeting recent releases (all books in the NEL are over 5 years old, and the commercial life of nearly every book is much shorter than that). Finally, contrary to some claims, the books in the NEL are not “bit for bit copies” of high quality ebooks. They are relatively low quality scans. If a more legit version is available, nearly any reasonable person would go for that instead (indeed, I’ve personally purchased multiple books after first borrowing copies from the Open Library before deciding to get a permanent copy). Also, most of the books available in the NEL are simply not available at all in ebook format, meaning that they’re not available at all during the pandemic for many people.

There was some chatter that publishers might choose not to sue the Internet Archive over this, because losing this fight would seriously challenge a bunch of other copyright claims that they rely on. But, come on. These guys are so obsessed with copyright, how could they not sue? So, earlier this week, all the big publisher teamed up to sue the Internet Archive, represented by former RIAA lawyer Matt Oppenheim, who has a long history of being on the bad side of nearly every big copyright case.

Here’s the thing, though: the publishers didn’t just decide to sue over the National Emergency Library: instead they’re also suing over the entire “Controlled Digital Lending” process. That’s the program that the Authors’ Guild has been whining about, which is the underpinning of the NEL. The CDL/Open Library program involves letting libraries lend out digital books if they retain a physical copy of the book on the shelf (so maintaining a one-to-one relationship between books lent out and books that the libraries have in their possession). The NEL took away that limitation, with the argument that this was allowed due to their reading of fair use in the midst of a pandemic with so many books locked up.

While I support the NEL — I can recognize that courts may not buy their fair use arguments. On the CDL/Open Library front, though, that’s just blatantly attacking a very standard library procedure. There can be no argument of “lost revenue” from the CDL, unless you’re attacking the very basis of libraries themselves. And that’s what the lawsuit appears to do.

The scale of IA?s scheme is astonishing: At its ?Open Library,? located at www.openlibrary.org and www.archive.org (together, the ?Website?), IA currently distributes digital scanned copies of over 1.3 million books. And its stated goal is to do so for millions more, essentially distributing free digital copies of every book ever written. Despite the ?Open Library? moniker, IA?s actions grossly exceed legitimate library services, do violence to the Copyright Act, and constitute willful digital piracy on an industrial scale. Consistent with the deplorable nature of piracy, IA?s infringement is intentional and systematic: it produces mirror-image copies of millions of unaltered in-copyright works for which it has no rights and distributes them in their entirety for reading purposes to the public for free, including voluminous numbers of books that are currently commercially available.

Except the identical argument applies to public libraries lending physical copies as well. It does not “grossly exceed legitimate library services.” It makes books it has in its possession available for borrowing. Just like a library. Yes, the books are digitized, but libraries also distribute exact copies of books in their entirety for reading purposes to the public for free. Including voluminous numbers of books that are currently commercially available.

That’s a LIBRARY.

The lawsuit tries to pay lip service to libraries, and to argue that what IA is doing is somehow different than a library, but it doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. Instead, the lawsuit and the Publisher’s Association’s press release about this are filled with nonsense rhetoric about how crucial books are to society and how evil, evil piracy is. From the lawsuit:

Books have long been essential to our society. Fiction and non-fiction alike, they transport us to new worlds, broaden our horizons, provide us with perspective, reflect the evergrowing knowledge of humanity in every field, spark our imaginations and deepen our understanding of the world. Yet, books are not self-generating. They are the product of training and study, talent and grit, perseverance and creativity, investment and risk, and untold hours of work.

That’s right: and for tons of people they way they read those books is from a library. The Association of American Publishers, led by fired former Copyright Register Maria Pallante is spitting fire over this:

Despite the self-serving library branding of its operations, IA?s conduct bears little resemblance to the trusted role that thousands of American libraries play within their communities and as participants in the lawful copyright marketplace. IA scans books from cover to cover, posts complete digital files to its website, and solicits users to access them for free by signing up for Internet Archive Accounts. The sheer scale of IA?s infringement described in the complaint?and its stated objective to enlarge its illegal trove with abandon?appear to make it one of the largest known book pirate sites in the world. IA publicly reports millions of dollars in revenue each year, including financial schemes that support its infringement design.

In willfully ignoring the Copyright Act, IA conflates the separate markets and business models made possible by the statute?s incentives and protections, robbing authors and publishers of their ability to control the manner and timing of communicating their works to the public. IA not only conflates print books and eBooks, it ignores the well-established channels in which publishers do business with bookstores, e-commerce platforms, and libraries, including for print and eBook lending.

Yeah, but that’s kinda the point, isn’t it? The publishers have been chipping away at “libraries” for years. Before ebooks, libraries could buy books and lend them out. They didn’t need a special license. However, in recent years, publishers have rushed into the opportunity created by ebooks to change that, and to require licenses (crazy, expensive licenses) for ebooks. Just last fall we noted how publishing giant Macmillan (which, somewhat oddly, is the one big publishing house that is not a plaintiff) had gone to war with libraries, using its extreme ebook pricing and licensing terms to basically kill the market for ebook library lending.

It’s that very new imbalance that the CDL/Open Library system was designed to fight back against. But, no, the publishers act as if they’ve always been able to block libraries from lending.

And, of course, filing this lawsuit in the midst of a pandemic (not to mention all the social unrest) in which libraries around the globe remain closed is just… crass.

For what it’s worth, in looking down the list of works sued over, and doing a spot sampling, it looks like at least some (though not all) of the works being sued over are no longer available through the National Emergency Library. Since the NEL has always had a simple opt-out system, it does make you wonder why these publishers and authors didn’t just make use of that. But also looking over that list, I see a bunch of books that I know are read in schools — meaning that these publishing houses likely have just screwed over a bunch of teachers and students, many of whom already have physical copies of books, but find them inaccessible for the kids to read while we all still remain under lockdown.

So much for those books being “essential to our society.”

But, of course, this is copyright, and the rule of the land tends to be that when big legacy copyright holders file lawsuits, they tend to win. I’d say there’s a more than even chance that the Internet Archive loses. Not because it should, but because when big old industries scream copyright infringement, we’ve seen the courts buy it over and over again, even when the legal arguments are nonsensical. And, in this case, the Internet Archive’s legal theories are certainly untested. There isn’t real legal precedent to guide this. For its part, the Internet Archive has said that they hope this can be resolved quickly, however, there are very real concerns that this fight could bankrupt the entire Internet Archive.

I do wonder if the authors who spoke out against this really want to shut down such an important institution just so they can sell a couple more books.

Filed Under: controlled digital lending, copyright, covid-19, fair use, libraries, library, national emergency library
Companies: aap, hachette, harper collins, internet archive, john wiley, penguin random house

Routing Around Damage: Censored Reporting Hosted In Custom-Built Minecraft 'Library'

from the finally-a-use-for-all-the-books-in-the-Elder-Scrolls-series dept

As it has always been, the internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it. Reporters Without Borders is ensuring forbidden information is getting into the hands of whoever wants it, no matter what their government feels they should or shouldn’t read.

The nexus point isn’t a website tucked away on the dark web, only accessible via VPN and a Tor connection. It’s right there out in the open, delivered via a platform very few governments have bothered to censor. Here’s Reporters Without Borders’ understated announcement of its damage-dodging info dump:

In many countries, websites, social media and blogs are controlled by oppressive leaders. Young people, in particular, are forced to grow up in systems where their opinion is heavily manipulated by governmental disinformation campaigns.

But even where almost all media is blocked or controlled, the world’s most successful computer game is still accessible. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) uses this loophole to bypass internet censorship to bring back the truth – within Minecraft.

The Minecraft map — designed by Blockworks — provides users in the more than 180 countries where negative information about local governments is being suppressed with access to reporting and other information that may have been buried by those in power.

But it’s not without its risks, as Devin Coldewey reports for TechCrunch:

Of course, this is not secure and private like an end-to-end encrypted chat group. A user accessing the library map might have their nickname, tied to a Minecraft account, be visible to other users, and their logs would reflect the visit. It seems unlikely Microsoft would give up that information to a curious government, but there is a certain risk involved.

The upside is this surreptitious library is being duplicated and local copies being downloaded, mitigating some of the risk and allowing those in repressive countries to engage with the materials offline from the relative safety of their own devices.

Will this library survive and remain a source of otherwise-suppressed info? It’s hard to say. Regimes that want to keep this information out of their citizens’ hands are likely to react badly now that this library’s existence is no longer a secret. But if it’s already being downloaded for offline access and mirrored in places governments won’t think of looking, chances are it will remain viable until a better option presents itself. And it will make authoritarian regimes realize someone will always find an edge not covered by their opacity blanket, and get information that these governments don’t want distributed to the citizens they’re trying to keep in the dark.

Filed Under: censorship, free speech, library, minecraft, uncensored library
Companies: reporters without borders

NY Public Library Embraces The Public Domain Big Time: Releases 180,000 High Resolution Images

from the do-what-you-want-with-them dept

There’s some wonderful news from the NY Public Library, which has released over 180,000 high resolution digital images of public domain works that it found in its collection. We’ve seen too many organizations, mainly museums, try to claim copyright over public domain works, or otherwise limit access. The NY Public Library, on the other hand, is going the other direction. Not only are they releasing these works and making it clear that the works are in the public domain, but they’re releasing them as high resolution images and actively encouraging people to make use of them.

In an interview with the NY Times, there are some fantastic quotes showing how seriously they take this. This isn’t just an “Oh, here, let’s dump some public domain material.” The NYPL is taking this seriously:

?We see digitization as a starting point, not end point,? said Ben Vershbow, the director of NYPL Labs, the in-house technology division that spearheaded the effort. ?We don?t just want to put stuff online and say, ?Here it is,? but rev the engines and encourage reuse.?

And others are noticing as well:

?It?s not just a data dump,? said Dan Cohen, the executive director of the Digital Public Library of America, a consortium that offers one-stop access to digitized holdings from more than 1,300 institutions.

The New York Public has ?really been thinking about how they can get others to use this material,? Mr. Cohen continued. ?It?s a next step that I would like to see more institutions take.?

And part of this is about actually making the damn stuff useful, so they’re creating APIs to do more with the collection as well. And they’ve launched a Remix Residency program to encourage creators to create amazing new works building on all this public domain culture. They also have some cool examples to inspire other ideas, such as Mansion Maniac, an online game letting people explore mansion floor plans from early 20th century New York. More recent plans would be fun too, but sorry kids, those are locked up under copyright. There’s also another example, using images of New York City streets in 1911 and mashing them up with Google’s street view images of today.

There’s lots of fun stuff in the collection as well, including a ton of old maps, and other oddities. For example, playing around, I found what looks like an old “check” written by Thomas Jefferson:

Or how about this menu for breakfast at the Tremont House in July of 1859:

This is a very cool collection and hopefully more libraries will take the hint… and that many people will make useful things out of this collection.

Filed Under: copyright, library, public domain
Companies: ny public library

New Hampshire Library Rejects DHS Fearmongering, Turns Tor Back On

from the congrats! dept

Last week, we posted the story of how the Kilton Public Library in Lebanon, New Hampshire, had been pressured to turn off its Tor relay after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had reached out to the local police department to express concern over the library’s decision, and freaking out because “criminals can use Tor.” After being approached by the police, the library agreed to shut down the relay, while setting up a meeting to discuss if the library should turn it back on. Apparently, last week’s press attention helped bring out lots of folks who very strongly supported turning Tor back on.

Boston librarian Alison Macrina, who runs the Library Freedom Project and helped the library set up Tor in the first place, was tweeting up a storm last night, and it sounded like a lot of people showed up to make it clear that (1) the DHS could go pound sand and (2) the library should turn its Tor node back on:

This is just about my favorite thing ever. pic.twitter.com/7qqSV3snqr

— Alison Macrina (@flexlibris) September 16, 2015

Multiple people apparently spoke about how this is absolutely the kind of project that libraries should support, and that protecting anonymous browsing was an important thing to have in the world. And, in the end, success:

#KiltonLibrary WE'VE DONE IT. THE KILTON LIBRARY WILL TURN THEIR #TOR RELAY BACK ON!!!

— Alison Macrina (@flexlibris) September 15, 2015

This is amazingly good news, and as Macrina noted after: “This was a public referendum about privacy, free speech, and what libraries do.” And all three of those things came out winners.

Oh, and even better: it appears that the publicity around this and the success last night may be inspiring other libraries to set up their own Tor relays as well.

Filed Under: alison macrina, dhs, law enforcement, library, police, tor, tor relay
Companies: kilton public library