The publishers' lawsuit against the Internet Archive (Hachette v. Internet Archive) has resulted in the removal of more than 500,000 books from our lending library, including over 1,300 banned and challenged titles. We are actively appealing this decision to restore access for all our patrons.
We want to hear from you! How has losing access to these books affected your reading or research? What does it mean to you that these 500,000+ books are no longer available? Please share your story below.
Your feedback may be featured in our blog posts and other communications to highlight the impact of this significant loss on our library community.
The linked article is specifically asking what impacts me. I am responding by explaining what impacts me.
Yes, IA has more than just the Wayback Machine. I’m not sure what your point is though. All of that is threatened by these lawsuits. Maybe if preserving that data is important IA should focus on preserving that data. Giving out unlimited copies to everyone is an unrelated secondary goal to preserving archives, so if a big company with a strong legal case comes along and says “stop giving out unlimited copies or we’ll destroy you” then maybe stop giving out unlimited copies.
That’s not “digital book burning.” The opposite, in fact. It’s acting to preserve digital books.
They don’t care about your story of how losing their library of books doesn’t impact you. I’m not sure why that wasn’t obvious to you.
They asked:
There’s no asterisk on that specifying “only answers that favor our lawsuit are desired.”
Yes, thank you Captain Literal. I think it’s very obvious to most people that they don’t want stories that won’t help them.
I think its an incredibly fair view point. If IA loses, and the way back machine goes down, because they keep losing these lawsuits, then it has absolutely affected this person.
To be quite honest, I even agree. The IA should be for preservation, not for piracy. Right now they’re boarding that line of piracy, and tbh, I disagree with that as well. Id rather go to a pirate website to pirate my books, and go to the IA to see what has been preserved.
Lending and renting stuff is not piracy! Many corporate suits want people to start believing this. but i remember going to the library and renting books, movies and games. it was not piracy back then, and it wont be now.
Does IA have the right to lend and rent stuff? I believe that is the true issue here. At the moment they aren’t doing anything different then say what a piracy website would do. The right way would by making said links expire, not allowing infinite copies, and an actual “lending” system would do them more good then harm.
Please go to archive.org > Books > Books to Borrow
Select any book which strikes your fancy. You will see a reading excerpt, like flicking through pages in a library. if you have a free account, you can lend it for 1h at a time.
Or look at this video https://dn720701.ca.archive.org/0/items/openlibrary-tour-2020/openlibrary.mp4
So is the Internet Archive a library, or a preservation place? I feel like you’re advocating for them to be both, which isn’t how the law views them.
Edit: I for one would prefer they not waste money on a losing battle, and stick to preserving things. Id hate to see them lose on trying to be a library, and then all of their efforts wasted.
There actually is an asterisk and most of us can see. Does this happen in your life often?