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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday April 02 2020, @08:28AM   Printer-friendly
from the writers-gotta-eat dept.

Authors fume as online library "lends" unlimited free books:

For almost a decade, the Internet Archive, an online library best known for its Internet Wayback Machine, has let users "borrow" scanned digital copies of books held in its warehouse. Until recently, users could only check out as many copies as the organization had physical copies. But last week, The Internet Archive announced it was eliminating that restriction, allowing an unlimited number of users to check out a book simultaneously. The Internet Archive calls this the National Emergency Library.

Initial media coverage of the service was strongly positive. The New Yorker declared it a "gift to readers everywhere." But as word of the new service spread, it triggered a backlash from authors and publishers.

"As a reminder, there is no author bailout, booksellers bailout, or publisher bailout," author Alexander Chee tweeted on Friday. "The Internet Archive's 'emergency' copyrights grab endangers many already in terrible danger."

"It is a tarted-up piracy site," wrote author James Gleick.

Previously:

Internet Archive Suspends E-Book Lending "Waiting Lists" During U.S. National Emergency


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2020, @02:19PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2020, @02:19PM (#978298)

    Except that the world isn't going to shit. It's just on "pause" for awhile. With any luck at all there will be a vaccine next year and things will get back to normal.

    See, for example, how polio affected the world before the vaccine was invented. The vaccine took longer but once it was available the scourge of polio was (mostly) a thing for history books.

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday April 02 2020, @04:56PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 02 2020, @04:56PM (#978362) Journal

    Anti-Vaxxers tend to fix that. Measles was mostly for the history books as well. But: anti-vaxxers. Because they believed in a hoax about autism dreamed up by a single person.

    Sort of like birthers who believed Trump's hoax that will never die.

    It is amazing the world we live in where one person can make something up and a significant number of people accept and propagate it as truth.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2020, @05:29PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 02 2020, @05:29PM (#978387)

    Somewhere a new one might be born from the ashes, with some amount of blood spilled in the birthing process as usual. Somewhere the corpse of what they had before will sustain the populace for some time, and what comes then is better not be thought about.