Book Publishers Won’t Stop Until Libraries Are Dead
from the defend-libraries dept
Earlier this week there was finally a hearing in the case brought by the big book publishers to kill off libraries. That, of course, is not how the publishers describe the lawsuit, but it’s absolutely what the lawsuit is about.
We’ll get to some of the details in a moment, but we’ve joked in the past that if libraries were new today there’s no way that book publishers would let them exist. In some ways they’re a legacy holdover from before publishers had that much power. The attack on controlled digital lending (CDL) more or less proves this.
As much as publishers like to claim they “love libraries,” their actions here speak quite clearly that they would destroy them if they could. Controlled digital lending is no different from how a library lends out books today. In both cases, it gets a physical copy of the book (either through purchase or donation), and then proceeds to lend out that copy. With a physical library it’s literally that physical copy. With CDL it’s a scan of that book, but the scan is tied to the physical copy, so that if a digital copy is loaned out, no one else can take out another copy.
Every part of that has been deemed legal. Copyright law already has first sale rights, written directly into the law and allow for the lending or reselling of copyright-covered works without a license or permission. Similarly libraries are given explicit rights to make copies, so long as those collections are made available to the public. On top of that, courts have determined, multiple times, that book scanning itself is fair use for libraries.
So, literally each separate component of what is happening with Controlled Digital Lending has already been deemed to be legal and exactly what we expect libraries to do.
To counter this, publishers (and their supporters, which unfortunately include some authors) argue that (1) this interferes with the market for licensed ebooks, and (2) that there is a real difference in lending out the digital scans: that they don’t deteriorate the way that physical books do.
There are simple answers to both of these. First, (1) is a preposterous argument because (yet again) you could say the exact same thing for regular, existing libraries. The question is not must copyright enable any market. It’s whether or not copyright allows certain behaviors, and here it absolutely does. And that doesn’t even get into the fact that the big publishers have turned licensed ebooks for libraries into an extortionate, nonsense scheme to effectively block libraries from lending ebooks at all. If anything, what’s happened in the market for licensed ebooks to libraries actually helps to prove why we need controlled digital lending in the first place.
As for (2) that argument is also garbage for a number of reasons, most notably that official ebooks are just generally way more useful than the scanned ebooks anyway. The formatting is better, they’re designed to work better on ebook readers which provide additional features. In almost every case, scanned CDL books are a second-best choice compared to what else is available. In other words, it’s most likely only used when other options aren’t readily available.
Update: After this post was written, but before it was published, one of the authors of this book published a post on Facebook saying that the copyright license text discussed below was a mistake and was removed in future copies. I’m leaving the overall text here to note the kind of attitude, but will note that they disclaim it (though their explanation does not make much sense, as I can’t see why a “formatter” would add text, or why its “intention” made any sense either. I have removed the images of used copies for sale at the end of this article, however. Either way, here is the original text which is still representative of how some people view copyright: But, again, the legacy book publishing world is really admitting they hate libraries. Somewhat incredibly-timed, the same day as the hearing in this lawsuit, a tweet went viral highlighting a laughably wrong copyright statement from a “dark fantasy romance series” called “Zodiac Academy.” The verbiage on the copyright page is so over the top that it made me wonder if it was parody:
It reads:
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it wasn’t purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
All rights reserved.
That’s not how any of this works. The very next line says “This is a work of fiction” which is supposed to apply to the book itself, but could accurately be used to describe the “license” claims above it. A license for written works is limited to what the author can claim under copyright law, and as noted above, none of what is claimed here is allowed under copyright law, meaning that this license itself is a form of copyfraud: it attempts to limits a users’ own rights through deception regarding the actual limits of copyright law.
This particular bit of nonsense has shown up on Reddit in the past as well, but went even more viral this time, and at a perfect time to highlight just how much the modern publishing industry absolutely would destroy libraries if given the opportunity.
And that brings us to the hearing. You never quite know how a judge is going to rule, and from the descriptions of the arguments in court it sounds like Judge John Koeltl asked tough questions of both sides. He challenged the publishers to explain if they had any evidence that the Internet Archive’s Open Library caused them any harm (as their own bottom lines grew massively after it was opened).
However, he also questioned whether or not the Internet Archive really has the right to make copies. The answer to that question should be obviously yes, based on the law and the case law on this matter, but you never know how judges will rule. The publishers, for their part, tried to argue away their successful pandemic run by arguing… they should have made even more money:
During this same time, however, the book publishing industry experienced so much demand that revenues rose by 12 percent, amounting to a $3 billion spike in sales by 2021, Publishers Weekly reported. Because publishers profited when the National Emergency Library was made available, Koeltl pushed back on McNamara, asking how to reconcile the surge in profits with allegations of harm caused.
McNamara seemed to suggest that publishers would have been further enriched if not for IA providing unprecedented free, unlimited e-books access. She also told Koeltl that publishers suing—Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley—are concerned that there are already some libraries avoiding paying e-book licensing fees by partnering with IA and making their own copies. If the court sanctioned IA’s digitization practices and thousands of libraries started digitizing the books in their collections, the entire e-book licensing market would collapse, McNamara suggested.
But, uh, the same argument could be easily made against existing libraries. And yet, we treasure them and they’ve done nothing to destroy the book market (and much to help it!). The lawyer for the publishers also trotted out this debunked nonsense:
“Free is an insurmountable competitor,” the publishers’ complaint said.
I mean, we’ve been hearing that stupid line for ages, and it’s never been true. As I noted nearly two decades ago, saying you can’t compete with free, is actually an admission that you can’t compete at all. As noted above, there is a qualitative difference between scanned ebooks and licensed ones, but the publishers don’t even seem to recognize this, which is incredible.
There’s also this nonsense from former Copyright Office boss, now publisher top lobbyist, Maria Pallante (who Ars bizarrely describes as “a chief executive” rather than the chief executive):
A chief executive of the Association of American Publishers, Maria Pallante, told The Wall Street Journal that if IA’s conduct “is normalized, there would be no point to the Copyright Act.”
That’s utter nonsense. Again, apply that same reasoning to libraries. What the Internet Archive is doing here is not only blessed by the Copyright Act, it’s no different than what libraries already do.
Either way, now we wait. Whatever outcome in this case, it will surely be appealed, and that’s where the real battle will happen. Hopefully Judge Koeltl starts things off on the right foot.
Filed Under: controlled digital lending, copyright, ebooks, fair use, first sale doctrine, lending, libraries, licenses
Companies: association of american publishers, internet archive
Comments on “Book Publishers Won’t Stop Until Libraries Are Dead”
Copyright protection is all but dead for those who’d truly need it. Like if you remove police protection from a neighborhood business just won’t set up there.
Re:
I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Do you mean people, other than those backed by huge companies, have given up on producing copyrightable works due to the lack of “protection”? It seems to me like regular people produce and distribute more art and hold more copyrights than at any other time in history. One popular site holds 400,000 works of Harry Potter fan fiction alone. None of those authors are in practice “protected” by copyright, as their work can’t realistically be sold and could be taken down at the whim of a madwoman; nevertheless, they’ve “set up business”, so to speak.
the sign of a Serious Publisher
2-digit book number is isbn
Yes, but if your argument is “we could have made more money if not for people being able to live without sending us all their money” then be warned: I would argue to the courts (If I was asked): “All Americans could be greatly enriched if we executed publisher, seized their property, distributed some of it as scholarships, and made their actual book production devices and technologies even more publicly available”
Of course I wouldn’t expect anyone to do that (in fact I recommend they do not)… But my argument is the same logic the publisher are arguing… except that it benefits all Americans (sans the publishers, but they are the minority). Where as the publishers are arguing for harming the majority… for their own enrichment.
Re:
Funny how that’s the place his mind goes, rather than the more realistic “if free books weren’t available, a lot of people wouldn’t pick up reading as a hobby at all and they’d spend their money of music/movies/videogames instead”.
this is as true a statement as you could get! the only problem is that it isn’t just publishers that are in a battle, but every section of the entertainments industry is as well! and why is there this situation? because courts, through ‘encouragement’ from these industries properly screwed the people for a ‘handful of silver’, ensuring that we had no power over money making/money distributing industries and the government did absolutely fuck all except do exactly as the courts did, starting with the Sony versus other O/S trial, and again screw the people in favor of those who enhanced the coffers!!
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What the studios, labels, and publisher are really fighting for is to reestablish their almost total control over what gets published. The Internet archive is one of the centers for self published works, and allows authors and other creators to attract fans who send them money without the publishers seeing the larger cut of that money. To that extent, the legacy industry needs to make significant changes to compete with free, such as selling editorial services without requiring copyright assignment.
Re: Re: ???
“The Internet archive is one of the centers for self published works, and allows authors and other creators to attract fans who send them money without the publishers seeing the larger cut of that money.”
No it isn’t, and no it doesn’t.
Re:
The (rescinded) statement on “The Awakening” comes from a self-published book, not a traditionally published one.
While this makes it no less illustrative of the anti-library attitude of many traditional publishers, it’s worth noting that fact.
Can't compete with free, eh?
I almost would not like to be a fly on the wall every time the Board of Directors for Microsoft hears that one – the laughter would be incalculably loud, I’m sure.
Further to the scenario above where an AC posited “if I were asked by the court”…. I’d quietly arrange a display showing a graph comparing Microsoft’s market share of desktop OS’s versus the share held by all of the Linux variants. The graph would be comprehensive over time, like since 1991 or thereabouts.
Then I’d ask a simple “Any questions about non-free being unable to compete with free?”
p.s. Throwing in Chrome OS and/or Apple’s offerings won’t budge the needle – free is still lagging far behind non-free, no matter how you look at it. Witness this reference:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-share-of-windows-7/
Re:
That is slightly misleading,as Linux actually runs om more processors than windows due to it dominating the server farms and super computing space, along with being the OS on many routers, Internet cameras, etc. Linus has also beaten windows to Mars, sue to it being the OS for the first human built helicopter to fly above a planer other than Earth.
Re: Re: Competing with free
I’m not sure I’d agree that Microsoft “competed” with Linux, except by abusing its preexisting market dominance. But never mind…
Red Hat Linux competed with ‘free’ very well indeed. Some server farms ran Debian Linux (free in both senses) or other $free versions of Linux.
There were even competing versions of Red Hat, sold or given away without the Red Hat branding and trademarks, etc, either licensed and supported for less (eg. CentOS), or free as in “go ahead — download and use it however you please” free (eg. Fedora). And yet Red Hat was the first “Linux company” to break a $billion in annual revenues (then two, then three…).
The same corporations that would use Red Hat because it was cheaper and more reliable than Windows, would also choose to pay Red Hat rather than use $free Linux alternatives — because Red Hat knew how to compete with free. Actually, Red Hat even found ways to obtain practical benefits for its own business by cooperating with the existence of free alternatives (esp. Fedora).
IBM finally bought Red Hat for thirty-something $billion.
Competing with free is not only possible, in can be a highly successful, winning strategy.
Re: Re: Re:
Just ask Epic Games about how they did it with Fortnite.
Re: Re: Re:2
On one hand, Fortnite at least allows poeple to buy stuff from past campaigns.
On the other hand, it also uses the same sort of psychological manipulation most mobile games use.
I’d rather take the Red Hat way of competing with free.
Re: Re: Re: Competing with free
I used to work for a company that used licensed RHEL on all the servers providing its customer facing services. This had arisen from an audit requirement to show it had credible software support available for the software running on its mission-critical customer facing services. RHEL had replaced Slackware, for which an audit-satisfactory software support service wasn’t so readily available.
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I mean LBR Microsoft succeeded in the desktop market by pulling a bunch of shady, anticompetitive shit in the ’80s and ’90s.
They didn’t do so well “competing with free” when it came to the cell phone market. But of course you knew that; that’s why you specified “desktop OS”.
Re: Re:
Microsoft won the most market share for the same reason VHS beat Beta: licensing. You had to pay to be an Apple developer but you could make software to run on Windows and MS-DOS for free. So there were more developers, thus more products, thus more users choosing it. Linux didn’t exist as a serious offering at the time Microsoft won the desktop war. Yeah there was s shady stuff but it wasn’t the most important.
Re: Re: Re:
“Microsoft won the most market share
for the same reason VHS beat Beta: licensingbecause you didn’t need Microsoft hardware to run Microsoft software.”FIFY
The answer to this is obvious! All ebooks need to be scanned as a series of Jpegs, rather than using any kind of OCR. That way, after a set number of people have rented the book, they can recompress the scans with a lower quality setting to make them look worse. After having been recompressed enough times, the scans will be unreadable and the library will have to make new ones, literally making a new ebook. Problem solved!
Re:
that’s a fucking horrible idea 🙁
Re: Fading fonts
This is an interesting idea. I once wondered about a font that fades or degrades over time, although it wasn’t for a publisher’s copyright. I was more curious in an academic exercise about aging electronic data/artifacts over time, like their corresponding real artifacts age and degrade over time.
Re:
You’re being satirical, but I’d still like to point out four sins of your suggestion should publishers coerce libraries into adopting it.
Re:
That’s a pretty interesting Modest Proposal.
Somewhere, Jonathan Swift is smiling.
And yet no one’s pointed out the utter ridiculousness of the concept of “renting” something that can be infinitely reproduced with ease.
As a librarian myself, stuff like this just makes me so angry given all the crap we already have to deal with to appease these ghouls.
“Intellectual property” is a concept that needs to be entirely discarded.
Re: Cory Doctorow on "Intellectual Property"
Cory Doctorow once wrote that “the words ‘intellectual property’ are winning the argument before it starts, because ‘people who get their property stolen’ are more sympathetic in the public eye than ‘big businesses who get the contours of their monopolies infringed upon'” (I’m paraphrasing from memory, but that’s exactly the gist of what he was saying).
Re: Re:
I’ve been saying the same about “pirate” and “piracy”, but it seems to be a losing battle on Techdirt: Mike et al. seem quite committed to referring to people (possibly) infringing copyright as “pirates”.
(Certainly the big copyright cartels have done more to earn the title than any small-time file-sharer, though I wouldn’t use it for them either.)
Re: Re: Re:
“small-time filesharer”
Hah. You’re vastly underplaying the sheer volume of stuff most of these people share. We’re talking terabytes of material on average.
However, they are also not a reachable market. It’s a waste of time trying to stop them, and always rebounds on anyone trying. A lot of them don’t even use what they grab. It’s a game to them.
Exploitation of small creators by big commercial outfits is a much greater issue and one you should care about.
Re: Re: Re:2
Yeah, and…? “Terabytes” has been small-time for a good 15 years. One can now occasionally get 20 of them for $270 at Best Buy. Search for “PetaBox” to see what today’s non-small-time storage looks like, or here’s what Netflix’s version looked like 10 years ago.
Re: Re: Re:3
your point?
Re: Re: Re:4
The point is that your point is irrelevant and that if they are sharing only terabytes, they are small-time.
Re: Re: Re:5
The number of ebooks you can store in a terabyte would literally run into the tens of thousands.
Even songs in that volume would run to a similar number,
It really depends on what you’re downloading. But a terabyte of downloads is a lot of pirated material.
And your point is irrelevant to my point.
Re: Re: Re:
For years I refused to use “piracy,” “pirate,” or “intellectual property,” but there’s a point at which the battle is lost and you have to admit that the world has chosen what those words mean. I do still avoid them if there are better words, but often there are not.
Re:
How to say “I don’t create content” without actually saying “I don’t create content”.
I would love it if people could try and wrap their minds about the idea that people who made content that other people consume have a right to control how that content is consumed ARE NOT THE SAME as the industries which have grown up to market and package that content.
If you blog, and found that someone had collected all your blog entries into a book and was (a) claiming them as their own work and (b) making bank on it, on what basis would you stop that happening without the concept of “intellectual property”
For “blog entries”, substitute “fan fiction”, “art”, “code”, “research” etc, and the same thing applies.
You have the right to give your stuff away for free should you choose (and the majority of creators do for the sheer love of creating) but no one else has – because “intellectual property” rights allow you that control.
The worst thing about science publishing right now is that the people who do the work have to give away those rights to publishers just to be published for academic purposes – and those publishers then abuse the privilege by charging exorbitant fees.
If that was made illegal or unenforceable, the world and academia would be a much better place.
Re: Re:
Fanfiction is a rather bad example there given the history…
Re: Re: Re:
oh? Do tell.
I hope you’re not going to claim fanfiction is copyright theft. Not after mein host Mike Masnick was so adamant in the defence of transformative works.
Re: Re: Re:2
Eh… More so the long history of either creators of the original work being hostile towards the idea of fanfiction, or fanfiction communities being worried about their fanfiction (if not the entire site it’s on) being deleted in mass due to copyright or other factors.
Be it copyright or other reasons… It can and has happened before.
Personally from the fandom communities I’ve seen/been in, People strongly dislike the idea of for profit fanfiction. Partly due to ethical reasons, and more often than not due to the idea of it potentially swaying judgment against a fair use should the site it’s on be sued.
Effectively people get worried it would topple the metaphorical Jenga tower for everyone.
Re: Re: Re:3
“Effectively people get worried it would topple the metaphorical Jenga tower for everyone.”
All the more reason for important voices to get behind enforcing the rules on transformative works.
Re: Re:
I think you’re making excessive assumptions about a single-line comment which is admittedly vague. My interpretation of “intellectual property” is something like “those who make a copyrightable work should have an assumed right to control who uses it and how people use it”.
By divorcing copyright from the concept of “intellectual property” and returning to treating copyright as a compromise between authors’ financial needs and the general public’s (including authors’) need for continually-evolving cultural material. By treating copyright as a means to practical ends instead of making intellectual property and thus copyright the ends. At minimum, that means shortening the copyright term, allowing for more derivative works which don’t substitute for the original works, and establishing meaningful penalties for false/abusive (“forget” to check fair use, etc.) copyright claims.
“Intellectual property” frames the public domain as a loss rather than as a gain. The same applies to fair use. Without the concept of “intellectual property”, justifying absurd terms such as life + 70 years would be much more difficult. The core of copyright enforcement – suing in courts and optionally delegating enforcement to third-parties such as publishers – can stay the same in a copyright system which rejects “intellectual property”.
A basic example of what the concept of intellectual property means: A book author should be allowed to prohibit others from making fanfiction that the original book author doesn’t like. Getting rid of the “intellectual property” would enable the social possibility of passing a law to declare fanfiction with a minimum level of distinct expression not infringement.
Re: Re: Re:
“A book author should be allowed to prohibit others from making fanfiction that the original book author doesn’t like”
No. It’s impossible anyway. The most I would agree with is the author should be able to limit the sale of fanfiction that directly harms the reputation or value of their own work. In practice, that would be almost impossible to prove.
Under current US/Australian law, it should be enough that the fanfiction does not purport to be by the original author, doesn’t simply reproduce that author’s words in very slightly altered form, and is genuinely a new work, albeit using some version of the author’s characters.
Almost all fanfiction, and certainly every piece I’ve ever read or written, would easily pass that test.
And most sensible authors find fanfiction either a tolerable nuisance they easily ignore, or something they actively tolerate and encourage.
There was a reason that Anne Rice’s death was met with less than sorrow in fannish communitie, even those devoted to her characters.
Re: Re: Re:2
I disagree with “hardly matters” in the first sentence. The way I see it, “intellectual property” allows copyright maximalists to shift the Overton window away from consentless yet creative derivative works. More on that later.
Judging harm to “reputation” is tricky in principle, not just in practice. Suppose that a fandom around an original work gains a bad reputation because of certain fanfiction works which are extremely vulgar in subject matter (however you define vulgar). The fandom’s reputation turns off people to the original work. People who know little about the original work decide to avoid it specifically because of the fandom’s reputation. Should the authors of the fanfiction have to compensate the author of the original work for this kind of reputational harm? I don’t think so. Fanfic authors choose what they make, but not how well-known/influential their fanfics are.
But I digress. In my first reply I was posing an example of why the term “intellectual property” matters, and fanfiction came to my mind first. Someone could be the most honest person who never makes mistakes when driving and borrowing things. Suppose that they’ll be able to save a dying patient I’ve never met in the next town over only if I temporarily lend my car, which I didn’t plan on using during that window of time anyway. I can still refuse, because the car is my property. Now what happens when I think of a story I wrote as my “intellectual property”? Can I can stop someone from writing a fanfic I don’t like? Maybe the fanfic has bad spelling. Maybe it has a poor story. Maybe it has subject matter most people dislike. Or maybe there’s nothing wrong with the fanfic at all, and I simply don’t want people to make derivative works. Should I be able to ban the fan from continuing to publish the fanfic? “Intellectual property” tells me “yes”. My answer is “no”.
Maybe your understanding of “intellectual property” isn’t as cynical as mine, so you would reach different answers. But after reading the rest of your comment I’m not sure what you mean by “control the use of” in “the right of creators to derive income from and control the use of their own work”.
I like your standard, but I’m not very optimistic that future case law will support it unless Congress explicitly adds more exceptions to copyright law or expands fair use (17 USC 107). The 2009 case of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye looked to be going in the opposite direction until the plaintiff died, and the parody vs. satire standard established in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. disfavors derivative works which don’t comment on the original works.
Goodwill remains more or less alive and well, though whenever I read my favorite ongoing fanfics I remember that the authors of the original works “probably don’t mind” or the fanfic writers will “probably get away with it”. I wish fanfic writers didn’t have to “probably get away with” their hobby.
Re: Re:
I create content and I entirely agree with the above poster.
“If you blog, and found that someone had collected all your blog entries into a book and was (a) claiming them as their own work and (b) making bank on it, on what basis would you stop that happening without the concept of “intellectual property””
I would not post things publicly like this and expect them to not be copied freely, as posting publicly allows them to be.
Re: Re: Re:
“posting publicly allows them to be.”
That is so not how copyright works. For fuck’s sake.
Sheet music
The Internet Archive library is a wonderful resource for finding sheet music, some of which is long forgotten anywhere else.
I get a kick out of being able to download and play music that may not have been heard by anyone else in the past hundred years.
Re:
The extreme and ridiculous length of copyright over music literally contributed to a member of Men At Work committing suicide
That case was an abominable abuse of copyright extension.
Re: Re:
I have not found any reference indicating Ham’s death was a suicide. You’re right about that copyright case though.
Please do more research
If you had bothered to do the slightest research, you would know that the viral image was from an old copyright page that was accidentally added to the print books (without author approval) in an attempt to dissuade ebook piracy. That particular wording is commonly used in the self-publishing ebook world because authors oppose readers stripping DRM and sharing epub files (something that is fairly easy to do if you bother googling). The authors corrected and explained the mistake years ago, but yet are still being unfairly criticized today. The connection to legacy publishing is also irrelevant considering Zodiac Academy is a self-published series.
https://www.facebook.com/100063768668342/posts/pfbid02WRJwn8DqHxSRTu18LkSHd1dSkTG3QWD99xJ3xHSzM2Uja8htQfgTo5WMuuwL2PyQl/?mibextid=cr9u03
Please read the author’s comments and add the context to your post.
Re: transcription for Zuck-haters
Since this is on Facebook, I’ll transcribe what they have written:
Mike, I think you made an honest mistake here.
Re:
I have edited the post to reflect the content of the Facebook statement, but it was not a lack of research. This post was written BEFORE that Facebook post showed up, though published after it. I actually did a fair bit of research on it, and found 3 reddit posts, and 3 viral twitter threads (most of them from a year ago, but the one on Monday went more viral) all about it, with no statement that I saw from her until this Facebook post.
I also don’t understand why a “formatter” would add such a bizarre copyright license rather than the standard one that everyone uses. Or even how it is an “anti-piracy” statement, because that makes no sense.
Re: Re: Recantation
I recant what I have written about Mike making an honest mistake.
“This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.”
Er, this is the notice I put on my ebooks.
Never seen it on a physical book. That’s insane, and contrary to everything I believe about book ownership.
Ebooks are different because you are never transferring the original copy of the book when you ‘give’ it away or sell it to someone else.
However, sensible authors like me license sales to libraries for one purchase, and unlimited lending*. Anything else is just a pain in the arse for libraries, and counterproductive. People who borrow from libraries, unlike most e-pirates, love books, love reading, and aren’t just grabbing them because they’re free. Whether they go on to buy books from the author or not is immaterial – at least to me.
*I think Australia has some kind of fee they pay to authors per loan, but I’ve never had it or asked for it. I don’t even know how it works.
Re:
So you deny the right of first sale to purchasers of ebooks?
Re: Re:
Did you even read the comment you’re replying to?
I try not to financially support people trying to stab me, crazy I know
She also told Koeltl that publishers suing—Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley,
Well, there’s four publishers I will be striving to never give so much as a cent to due to their hatred of the library system, nice of them to clear that up for everyone like this.
Re:
Wiley also attempted to get rid of first sale in Wiley v. Kirtsaeng, so I would say they’re the absolute worst of the bunch.
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Unfortunately, with the continuing consolidation of publishers into megacorps, that will become a very difficult exercise 🙁
Especially if you need non-fiction. You can find plenty of readable fiction outside the big publishers, but getting stuff for study, research and reference limits your choices severely.
Re:
HarperCollins is also a News Corp subsidiary.
I am legit conflicted because they also help feed academic authors I happen to like, though for at least one of them (Bart Ehrman), they are moving away from the publishing bullshit…
Give book publishers credit
One thing about copyright lawyers. They’re very friendly with judges. My dad was a judge and paramount pictures lawyers bought my dad a new car, new stereo set, new shower. They know how to please judges which is my my dad would always rules that fair use will not buy you a new car or new shower. Goodbye internet archieve Non profit never bought my dad a car or refrigerator. Just saying
Another thing about the argument of books deteriorate unlike digital
Digital books require software and hardware to be up to date in order to be readable. Because according to this: https://blog.archive.org/2022/11/15/digital-books-wear-out-faster-than-physical-books/ There’s constantly new ebook reader software, and file formats the ebooks are stored, which may result ebook reader not be compatible with legacy file formats. The storage medium also needs upgrading as technology advances. Because of the rapid pace of technology changing, they can actually last shorter than physical books, before becoming unreadable with the most recent ebook reader software.
Re:
“There’s constantly new ebook reader software, and file formats the ebooks are stored”
Not entirely correct. Even Amazon’s Kindle format is just epub with a DRM wrapper. It’s the wrapper on these things that changes, not the book itself.
“they can actually last shorter than physical books”
Um. I have ebooks which are a lot older than 15 years. If I’d been reading a paperback – or even a hardback – once a week for that long, it would be in pieces by now.
Re: Not necessarily
There’s constantly new ebook reader software, and file formats the ebooks are stored, which may result ebook reader not be compatible with legacy file formats.
So long as the file’s not infected with DRM I can’t imagine it would be that hard to whip up a bit of code to translate one format to another, I’ve format shifted a bunch of ebooks with my ebook management program of choice(Calibre) when it comes to ones I’ve bought where the available format didn’t match what I needed/wanted.
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Maybe “constantly” isn’t quite appropriate, but the formats and corresponding software have changed and will change again. Pointing out that DRM-free ebooks exist is important to do but dances around the following problems of DRM and DMCA 1201 (17 USC 1201):
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That format-shifting is just illegal by copyright laws. The activity is not transformative enough to qualify for fair use, so your only chance is to get a permission from copyright holder.
It’s true that the activity is not difficult technically, but legal issues are completely different matter.
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In the United States, format shifting is allowed as long as you don’t break DRM to do it. And That One Guy specified “So long as the file’s not infected with DRM”.
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Oh? I’ve never had any problems converting e-books I buy into a format I like. Just use Calibre.
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Last time I tried, Calibre wouldn’t work with the latest Amazon DRM.
Or perhaps, it could work with it, but the developer didn’t feel like being sued.
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I usually try to avoid buying e-books from Amazon, if an author have a recommended store I usually use those instead because I know they’ll get more of the money even though it usually inflates the price a bit.
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Samesies. I have an iPhone and a Barnes & Noble Nook. Both use the EPUB format and a DRM-free EPUB means I can put it on both devices without paying extra. Amazon is extra-insidious because in my experience they put DRM on books the author explicitly authorized not to, such as the Techdirt Working Futures book, so I have to remove the DRM, which is against the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision. Just like with Hachette v. Internet Archive, the ones breaking copyright law are the ones who are acting neither ethically nor morally.
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Oops, I realized I made a mistake, it should be:
Alternately...
We could also title this “Authors Won’t Stop Using Book Publishers Until They Kill Libraries”. Or maybe “Even If They Kill Libraries”.
Even the authors who bitch about publishers still use those same publishers. Who’s more well-positioned than Cory Doctorow to bypass these behemoths, or has written more negative stories about them? But when they said they’d no longer publish anything under Creative Commons licenses, Cory apparently said “okay”, ’cause the stories are now coming from the same publisher but under restrictive copyright. (They are, at least, the only “big five” publisher not part of the current Internet Archive lawsuit.)
The fans, including heavy library users, don’t seem inclined to stop supporting the publishers either. So why’s anything gonna change?
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“Even the authors who bitch about publishers still use those same publishers. ”
Not all of them.
And also, plenty of times an author starts with one publisher, which ends being bought by another company.
And also, sometimes, authors who write for a living have to eat their principles. People talk about the freemium model or using Patreon, but they have no idea how big a difference there is between the income from those models, and book advances are.
I mean, do you ever use Google to search for something? OR Amazon? Or Facebook? Or any of their subsidiary companies?
Are you sure you haven’t?
I boycott Nestlé. Have done since I was a teenager. But I’ve still bought their products unknowingly because of corporate buyouts etc.
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Well, with both models most authors need day jobs, a few make enough to live on, and the jackpot winners make a reasonable to large fortune. However, the connect with fans can mean an author receives extra support to cover an emergency situation.
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“an author receives extra support to cover an emergency situation.”
You mean, they can beg for help, instead of just earning money through rightful sales.
Patreon etc works for some authors with the right kind of personalities. They don’t work for the shy, the curmudgeonly, or the proud.
Yet all those kinds of authors can and do write really good books that deserve to be sold honestly.
I really dislike the Patreon model, and only partly because I couldn’t get fans to donate a smack in the kisser, let alone a hundred bucks to save a dying cat.
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Did you miss the part about authors requiring day jobs, whether using a publisher or going through Patreon. I don’t see publishers stepping up to help a author through a problem or togh spot, but fans will whee there are a means of direct support.
Neither does traditional publishing which now expects an author to promote their works through social media, and add to them the burden of book signings. Whatever means a creator uses to publish their works, they have to work at building and keeping a fanbase. Writing a book is only part of making money as an author, especially now that publishing it is so easy. Using social media/ the Internet to build a fan base is as important a skill as writing, and for those with interesting things to say, but needing to develop writing skills, can often find readers who will help them develop by offering constructive criticism and advice.
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Two things:
1. Cory’s back catalogue of CC-licensed books are still CC-licensed. That’s not going to change.
2. Even though his books from now on are copyrighted, they’ll still be DRM-free. If DRM didn’t matter to Cory, he wouldn’t be on his third Kickstarter campaign to fund sales of an audiobook that he refuses to sell on a platform that has 90% of the market share on account of it forcing its DRM on your books as a condition of selling them thereon. Cory Doctorow may have compromised his Creative Commons principles, but he sure didn’t compromise his anti-DRM principles (and to be honest, I would understand him if he would; he would fund his child’s college education if he sold out, but he stuck to his principles).
“Suppose that a fandom around an original work gains a bad reputation because of certain fanfiction works which are extremely vulgar in subject matter (however you define vulgar). The fandom’s reputation turns off people to the original work.”
I literally can’t imagine fanfic vulgar enough to do that 🙂 (and I know from vulgar!) Mr Spock and Captain Kirk have been making hot, wild Vulcan/human love to each other for 60 years now in fanfic, and it’s obviously had a dreadful effect on the franchise, which is now dead.
Oh, wait 🙂
“I wish fanfic writers didn’t have to “probably get away with” their hobby.”
Ditto.
I think the law might go in our favour if enough authors threw their weight behind it. I think fanfic has become mainstream enough that it’s possible they will.
But it’s America, and so many of the courts have lost their collective minds, so who can say? 🙁
If it interferes with profit and share prices then it must be crushed out of existence.
UK library book repair binder limits
I recall seeing in UK published books that a book could only be lent out as originally bound. You could not rebind/repair damaged books due to wear and tear. Is that interdiction still on the copyright page of UK books?
“Free is an insurmountable competitor”
Which is why bottled water never makes any money.
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Drinkable water is scarce, and producing bottled water isn’t free. Maybe you’re referring to public streams and springs, but not everyone lives right next to them.
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Millions of people with access to perfectly good water buy bottled water. They aren’t making money off people who can’t get potable water.
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They don’t have household taps/faucets in your neck of the woods?
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I didn’t get the analogy at first because tap water counts toward the water bill, but now I remember that the amount of water I drink is very little compared to the water I use for other purposes in daily life
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Cities like New York City, Portland (the one in Oregon), and San Francisco have crisp, clean, drinkable tap water, and yet bottled water still sells here.
Yes, you can compete with free.
With Audible/Amazon leading the way...
I have been complaining about this for years in the audiobook space. Audible was early in the downloadable audiobook space and deserves credit for working to expand it. But since their acquisition by Amazon, they have increasingly locked down audiobooks under their own monopoly, and let the digital lending systems have few if any of the titles they own.
You will regularly find that one or two books of a series are available to download through your library on Overdrive/Libby or one of the other services, but not the rest, which are all behind the Audible paywall.
In addition, and most outrageously, they have made many titles and recordings which used to be available for libraries to loan on physical media inaccessible. Since libraries are mostly eliminating their books on CD (and long since have got rid of their tapes), that means that audiobooks that have been available to check out for decades are NO LONGER available except to purchase on Amazon/Audible.
It distresses me, though it does not surprise me, to hear that the publishers are now twisting the screws on the e-book side, too.
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Here are two DRM-free audiobook vendors (in the US of A):
If you want an audiobook in the US public domain, there’s
I hope this helps!
Excellent take.
I came from hackernews. This post is featured there (i.e make it to the front page there) and there’s a beautiful, insightful discussion about it there.
I saw the drama of book lending that revolved about the Internet Archive in covid time. I took the internet archive and offline/online libraries side then. and I took their side now.
And not long time ago we see the drama in court about S&S and PRH merge and suddenly we became aware of the inside of publishing industry. No one sane liked what he saw.
The conclusion I have now is that we need global laws regulating the copyright/lending issues not national-wide laws only.
Overblown
It’s a common digital/ebook disclaimer a small/indie/self published author accidently put in the print copy. A quick search would reveal this. It’s word for word what Smashwords suggests as disclaimer in ebooks. As ebooks aren’t a physical product.
Make sure you post all the facts! This book series was self published by 2 authors who used a third part company to do the formatting, and this copyright clause, which can’t be held in a court of law, was added without their knowledge.
They released a formal statement apologizing and said that they didn’t agree with that added statement.
As a df published author myself, it can be really hard to self publish and you don’t always realize everything you need to triple check. Especially when a legitimate agency is claiming to get everything ready.
OMG
Masnick getting yet another thing wrong about copyright. What else is new?
The difference between his fever dream and reality is that this case was about the Internet Archive scanning one book under copyright, making an unlimited number of copies of that book and lending them all out to an infinite number of people all at the same time. First sale rights don’t apply when you make a digital copy and sell it 2,000 times at once. This is something they tried to pull during the Covid lockdown, claiming a book emergency. The Internet Archive ultimately lost, because you can’t pirate books by spitting out highly misleading press releases saying libraries are being attacked when you are just acting like a garden variety Napster clone. Either the Internet Archive made a very stupid move or it was calculated that way knowing they’d get sued and could turn that into increased donations by pretending to be the victim. Either way, he lost, he deserved to lose, and Masnick gets to cry some more. Everybody wins.
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No. While that was one part of the case, the ruling was on the CDL setup, not just the NEL (which was more of legal gray area). Under CDL they did not “lend them all out to an infinite number of people all at the same time.”
Since you don’t seem to know the details of the case, please educate yourself before making a further fool of yourself.
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Who is this “everybody” you claim to have won?
Are authors going to write more if access to the Internet Archive is restricted or banned?