covering the week's top tech stories
with a slight linux bias several of the
world's largest publishers have sued the
internet archive for its emergency
library of 1.3 million
books claiming the organization is
engaging in willful digital piracy
on an industrial scale last week the
hatchet book group
harper collins publishers john wiley and
sons and penguin random house
sued the nonprofit better known for its
wayback machine archive
of web pages for copyright infringement
infringement they argued is intentional
and systematic
we understand that publishers hope to
shut down the dot org
the internet archive invited the ire of
publishers and authors back in march
when it decided to lift restrictions on
the digital copies of
library books it has acquired and
scanned
anyone that registers with the site can
take out any of 1.3 million books
the complaint states although the
internet archive claims the real figure
is 1.4 million
the internet archive is registered as a
library but has asserted an untested
theory called control
digital lending that argues libraries
are not infringing on
copyright when they make digital copies
of books they possess
publishers and authors have been unhappy
about this approach but held fire while
the internet archive restricted the
number of e-books
it would make available at any given
time to the number of physical books it
possessed
that restriction went out of the window
in march however when the internet
archive decided that due to the
coronavirus
it would make all its e-books available
without a waiting list
the author's guild said the organization
has no rights whatsoever to these books
much less to give them away
indiscriminately without consent of the
publisher or author
and the association of american
publishers called the move the height of
hypocrisy
and a cynical play to undermine
copyright
the lawsuit filed in new york calls the
electronic copies of the books of the
internet archive
that the inter internet archive has made
digital bootlegs it goes on the internet
archive not only acts entirely outside
any legal framework it does so
flagrantly and fraudulently
and it proceeds despite actual notice
that its actions constitute infringement
in response the internet archives
founder brewster kale
has posted a brief blog post in which he
notes that
the organization is disappointed by the
lawsuit and claims to be supporting
publishers authors and
readers he says publishers suing
libraries for lending books in this case
protected digitized
versions and while schools and libraries
are closed
is not in anyone's interest
[Music]
you