The comments posted so far seem to miss both the ambition and innovation of the Internet Archive's efforts in recent years and the boldness of their new initiative. They developed a way to make in-copyright books available for free to anyone who wants to read them online: by keeping a physical copy of each book they scan, they can justify "lending" it to one person at a time online for a limited period. Their collection of scanned in-copyright books has been growing rapidly. Try searching at the Open Library for some popular book you enjoyed reading when you were younger—mystery, Western, young adult, science fiction—and they're likely to have a copy that you can "check out" and read in your browser. You even get to enjoy the yellowing of old paperback pages without the stench of the decaying paper.
The new initiative is bold both because it meets an urgent, unprecedented need—providing books to millions of people who are locked down and cannot go to libraries—and because it seems to be taking significant legal risks for the greater good. The announcement at archive.org links to a document [1] that in turn links to some attempts at legal justifications for the move. I'll let others weigh the merits of those arguments. I suspect, though, that if major publishers and other deep-pocketed copyright holders tried to contest it the Archive would have a difficult case on its hands.
Chris Bourg, Director of MIT Libraries, has a lot of nerve to make this statement in the article:
“Ubiquitous access to open digital content has long been an important goal for MIT and MIT Libraries. Learning and research depend on it.”
Maybe Bourg should recall back in 2012 how his library aided and abetted the Secret Service's plan to have Aaron Swartz inappropriately charged under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
As many readers of hacker news will recall, rather than serve time in a federal penitentiary for his brave act of civil disobedience, Swartz sadly chose in January 2013 to take his own life instead.
Swartz then became a martyr for the cause of "ubiquitous open access to digital content" ... rather than just "ubiquitous access to [already] open digital content." As a result, he would have been a much better spokesperson for the cause of "ubiquitous access" than a phony like Chris Bourg.
Swartz is today rightly regarded as one of the heroes of the 21st century civil rights movement. Bourg, on the other hand, is just another overpaid university administrator who collects a large (and largely undeserved) salary that has helped put millions of American college students into several trillion dollars worth of student debt ... which several presidential candidates now want taxpayers to bail out!
Bourg should also check in with MIT police to find out how often they are called into the library (post Swartz' arrest) to threaten members of the general public with arrest for the crime of using his library computer terminals "for more than hour."
Thankfully, those of us who are not on the academic dole now have libgen and scihub for our "learning and research."
I understood. So it's basically getting a book with some code that will invalidate the content after x days. Another probably stupid question: can an infinite number of people borrow the same book? Or do they have a limited number of "copies" to give out?
> During the waitlist suspension, users will be able to borrow books from the National Emergency Library without joining a waitlist
Normally, digital libraries have a limited number of "copies" (I suppose that's what they mean by "waitlist"). In this case, it seems like they suspended the limitation.
That depends on the publisher and the specific license.
Since ebooks are licensed, and not transferable, ebook publishers set arbitrary license requirements and prices depending on whom they're selling to and for what purpose.
Some publishers will sell libraries the same book, under multiple license options/restrictions, charging different prices for different options.
Ebooks sold to libraries can be much more expensive than the same ebook sold on amazon or kobo.
The license criteria can also state that the book can only be lent out X times before the book must be re-purchased or re-licensed.
The argument is that physical books degrade and are not infinitely lendable, so these measures are intended to level the playing field.
That is an issue, but it exposes the flawed underpinnings of the capitalist copyright system as it interacts with the socialist library system.
Specifically, the result is that which books you have access to through libraries depends on where you live, whether you have access to a good university's libraries or whether you're in NYC or Seattle or Los Angeles. Sometimes it's completely random and some obscure library has stocked an ebook, it's just a matter of where someone's requested it and where that request has gotten to the top of the list somehow. This is absurd in the 21st century.
So, libraries are dying as a source of books. A lot of people who are into books have migrated to pirate ebook sites, or have ebook clubs or friends who share books among themselves. Libraries stock all the major popular fiction and nonfiction books, at least as ebooks, but they tend to have ridiculous wait lists. They can't buy enough copies initially, and then if the popularity ever dies down that's a sign that it's not worth reading anyway. Only popular books destined to become classics eventually stabilize at a point where they're worth reading and the waitlist isn't too bad... if you wait the months or years for it to get to that point. I don't know why anyone would put up with it except for pure entertainment reading (for instance, unless you're reading it for a book club, it doesn't matter if you wait for a year or two before you read the latest Oprah book club recommendation). And that's a small portion of a library's holdings; the vast majority are obscure books that aren't really that great, whether fiction or non-fiction. They just have them because of random requests. Popular books and unpopular fillers both crowd out obscure but potentially valuable books.
That’s a fantastic resource, thanks a ton. Will link to their download pages instead of trying to make my own files.
I’m looking more at reading online directly, having the book read to you, choosing your own fonts etc, and ultimately helping people write their own books.
Libgen is incredible if you need a chapter or two each from a whole bunch of books that’d qualify as obscure outside of a university library. Or if you want the TOCs and indices from a huge number of books of that sort so you can figure out which ones you even need, and when. Massive time saver.
I mean it’s great for other things too but for that kind of dragnet research—damn is it nice.
[edit] oh and for when you’re just getting started and just need the introduction and sources from a representative work on a topic so you can track down the foundational works. Beats the hell out of waiting on inter-library loan when you just need to skim a few pages.
I'm interested in what triggered this... is this just distributing the ebooks that various textbook publishers are offering free access to for the semester? It seems weird to me that they wouldn't have been doing this sooner if they had the rights, or that they would be doing it at all if they didn't.
From the FAQs, it looks like normally the Internet Archive uses DRM to limit the number of borrowed copies to the number of physical copies they have. Instead, they are now temporarily allowing more digital copies of the book to be borrowed than physical copies exist. There still will be DRM, requiring you to "re-borrow" the book every 14 days, but under the temporary system you will get the book again right away (instead of having to go to the back of a line, and waiting for other people to get their 14-day turns).
The collection is more than just textbooks; I saw at least one work of fiction. (Note that you might want such books for, say, an English class.)
You can either use Amazon's email-to-kindle service, or just plug your Kindle into your computer with a USB cable. It should show up as a drive, and you can just copy the file over.
The new initiative is bold both because it meets an urgent, unprecedented need—providing books to millions of people who are locked down and cannot go to libraries—and because it seems to be taking significant legal risks for the greater good. The announcement at archive.org links to a document [1] that in turn links to some attempts at legal justifications for the move. I'll let others weigh the merits of those arguments. I suspect, though, that if major publishers and other deep-pocketed copyright holders tried to contest it the Archive would have a difficult case on its hands.
[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vkl3RX4CzpRTQsoG1tsdHC0f...