don’t claim to know what will happen about the “Internet” archive of books. If you have not used them, why? While in general the scanning of old books, magazines, and manuals isn’t perfect and doesn’t match directly to e-book quality, as a research resource, it is invaluable.
In general, the website at archive.org is a bewildering archive or digital landfill of stuff. Everything in my life is somehow and somewhere on there to be found. As the archive has grown, finding things has become harder and harder. That said, when looking for something specific with the details of that specific thing, title, author, publisher, ISBN, etc., it is still relatively easy.
The Internet Archive this month lost an appeal in the Hachette v. Internet Archive copyright case. It involved the scanning and lending of printed books. Brewster Kahle, founder and archivist/librarian of the Internet Archive, set his stall out in this October 2020 blog post.
Following the court judgment this week, “Publishers Weekly” wrote this among other “learned” opinions. Other opinions are available 😉 Among other things, it says:
“This appeal presents the following question: Is it ‘fair use’ for a nonprofit organization to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety, and distribute those digital copies online, in full, for free, subject to a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio between its print copies and the digital copies it makes available at any given time, all without authorization from the copyright-holding publishers or authors? Applying the relevant provisions of the Copyright Act as well as binding Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedent, we conclude the answer is no,” the decision states.
Andrew Albanese |
Sep 04, 2024 – Publishers Weekly
What About Libraries?
Many of the books that are out of print are either not available in libraries or at least not available locally. Some university research libraries have them. I’m lucky to live close to both Denver and Boulder, which both have good libraries and research departments.
Worldcat is an awesome way to find out if you can borrow a book from an actual library. I use it a lot. I have yet to have an immediate need that requires me to go to the library; rather, I use inter-library loans to have the book sent to my local library and then either read or check out the book from there. It’s an awesomely useful service.
From home, you can pretty much order a book from anywhere in the USA for free using your library’s website or app. You can often find the books are available as e-books and sometimes audiobooks. If you take the WorldCat link above, it will show you libraries that have the book. WorldCat can also lead you to this audio version of the book, available via the American Archive project, a collaboration between the Library of Congress and GBH—in this case, GBH is the venerable broadcaster WGBH of Boston [1]https://americanarchive.org/participating-orgs/1784.2.
The problem is that relatively, very few books are available this way. Worldcat for example has some 4,122,042 items in its catalog. By comparison, the Internet Archive has 42-million books. Yes, many are duplicates so they can lend out more than one book at a time.
Any Other Options?
When there is no other option, I look on eBay. I’ve stopped using the eBay interface as I find it much quicker to use picclick. I’ve bought dozens of books and hundreds of issues of music and especially jazz magazines over the past 5 years.
The question really is, why is buying a used book from an online seller legal, when borrowing it is not? In both cases, the author and publisher get nothing. Yes, I know, but the law says one is legal, selling a physical book, and the other, borrowing a copy of the book, is not. Aside from the “law is an ass” – the publishers challenged the first and lost, and the second and won.
Barnes & Noble – One of the largest book retailers in the country, with a dwindling number locations nationwide.
BAM! Books, Toys & More | Books-A-Million Online Book Store (booksamillion.com)
AbeBooks – Specializes in new, used, rare, and out-of-print books3.
Better World Books – The Internet Archive’s for sale repository at betterworldbooks.com/
Book Depository – more than 20 million titles and offer free delivery worldwide to over 170 countries
Goodwill also has a surprisingly affordable and large collection of books and records that you can purchase online through goodwillbooks.com
Obviously Amazon, ebooks.com and the library service have a good supply of ebooks, but these rarely contain historic books.
Copy Right Or Wrong?
Many consider this a rightful victory. That legally the Internet Archive had no justification for lending out books that are still in copyright.
That is, though, millions of books. Perhaps millions of millions of books. The vast majority of those books will never, ever get reissued. They won’t be available in print, as new, and definitely won’t be available for digital reading. I can only estimate how many of the books will ever get reprinted after 15 years; probably not more than 20%.
Most people do not understand quite how restrictive copyright laws are in the USA. Here is a brief summary as it applies to books. In the United States, the copyright protection for printed books depends on several factors, including the date of publication and the author’s life.
- Works Published Before 1923: Generally, works published in the U.S. before 1923 are in the public domain.
- Works Published Between 1923 and 1977: These works are protected for 95 years from the date of publication.
- Works Published After 1978: The copyright term is the life of the author plus 70 years. If the work is made for hire, anonymous, or under a pseudonym, the term is 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.
Copyright Works?
One UK contact quoted George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” as a useful example of copyright working effectively [2]https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20231106-the-one-thing-george-orwells-1984-got-wrong. Its copyright expired on New Year’s Day 2021. It was subsequently adapted and republished by at least a couple of people including Adam Biles, author of “Beasts of England” [3]https://search.worldcat.org/title/1376773430.
The problem with this as a line of argument is that Orwell died when he was just 46 years old. Under UK law, copyright expires 70 years after the end of the calendar year of the author’s death; Orwell died in 1950—copyright ended in 2021. Adam Biles was born in 1983, making him 41 years old in 2024. The average UK life expectancy is 78 years.
If Orwell had lived to 78 years old, he would have died in 1981, just before Adam Biles was born. The copyright for “Animal Farm” would have thus expired in 2051, when Adam Biles would have been 68 years old. Will he live that long? Would he have written the same book age-68? We shouldn’t be dependent on authors dying young to get access to their forgotten legacy.
If you have not tried the Internet Archive for books, try it here. Not all the “Mark Cathcart” entries are me, but quite a few are. A few of my regular readers, Gabe and Phil, will be at least pleased to see one book.
What Next?
The Internet Archive has created a change.org petition “Let Readers Read: An Open Letter to the Publishers in Hachette v. Internet Archive”. The page also includes some excellent links to articles about the decision. They are also soliciting impact stories which anyone can add to via Google Forms. They have also added a copy of the official verdict in “Appellate Opinion in Hachette v. Internet Archive” to the Internet Archive.
Does anything prevent duplicating a borrowed electronic copy of a book still in copyright? If not, nothing enforces “one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio between its print copies and the digital copies it makes available at any given time”. If not, any popular/valuable work is at risk of infinite piracy. That seems counter to copyright rationale of balancing encouraging creativity with protecting creative works.
agreed, almost anything can be copied. The issue here is no longer active works. For example, the REXX Handbook. Being able to duplicate and distribute when it was still published, bad. Copyright should protect. Being able to borrow now to refer to some arcane code design and program calls, some 30-years after it was published, good.
Of course, if the language had kept evolving and the book republished then copyright should protect it. Obviously if the book was in demand in either physical of ebook format then McGraw hill would withing their rights.
Copyright though would require that the book is hope fully otherwise not available until the end of the century.
(Obviously your comment came through!)