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Books

Internet Archive's 'National Emergency Library' Has Over a Million Books To Read Right Now (cnet.com) 45

The Internet Archive will suspend its waiting lists for digital copies of books, as part of its National Emergency Library, the organization said. From a report: "Users will be able to borrow books from the National Emergency Library without joining a waitlist, ensuring that students will have access to assigned readings and library materials that the Internet Archive has digitized," according to a blog post. The move comes as schools around the country are shut down in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and as it's become more difficult to get goods of all kinds. The post noted that many people can't physically go to their local libraries these days. The waiting lists apply to more than 1.4 million books. The Internet Archive said it would keep the waiting list suspended until June 30, 2020, or "the end of the US national emergency, whichever is later."
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Internet Archive's 'National Emergency Library' Has Over a Million Books To Read Right Now

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  • by ardmhacha ( 192482 ) on Monday March 30, 2020 @11:40AM (#59888306)

    The Authors Guild does not seem too happy

    https://www.authorsguild.org/i... [authorsguild.org]

    "The Authors Guild is appalled by the Internet Archive’s (IA) announcement that it is now making millions of in-copyright books freely available online without restriction on its Open Library site under the guise of a National Emergency Library. IA has no rights whatsoever to these books, much less to give them away indiscriminately without consent of the publisher or author. We are shocked that the Internet Archive would use the Covid-19 epidemic as an excuse to push copyright law further out to the edges, and in doing so, harm authors, many of whom are already struggling. "

    • Before: "You can check out a book for 2 weeks, there may be a waiting list." After: "You can check out a book for 2 weeks. No waiting list." How are you affected, Author's Guild?
    • by darth_borehd ( 644166 ) on Monday March 30, 2020 @12:25PM (#59888496)

      "The Authors Guild is firmly entrenched in our position that our heads are shoved very far up our own rectums."

    • by LocalH ( 28506 ) on Monday March 30, 2020 @01:14PM (#59888704) Homepage

      Fuck the Authorâ(TM)s Guild, and anyone else responsible for the woefully unbalanced clusterfuck that is modern copyright. This pandemic is really showing peopleâ(TM)s true colors better than anything else could have.

      • And fuck Slashdot as well for being unable to properly accept an apostrophe from my iOS device. Itâ(TM)s not 1999 anymore, donâ(TM)t you know?

        • It's your fault for not turning off the insane default. The single quote has been a part of ASCII for a long time. There's no excuse for using curly non-ASCII characters to write plain text.

          • by guruevi ( 827432 )

            UTF-8 and UTF-16 have been long in use and the default for various projects. Some even call it racist and against their COCKKK not to support it.

        • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          Fix your IOS device to send a real apostrophe.

      • by Quirkz ( 1206400 )

        I'm all for copyright reform. Cut it to 28 years, 14 even, that's fine. But unless you're a total anarchist there's got to be some point where people are allowed to try to sell their books with protections that keep others from giving them away, right?

        • But unless you're a total anarchist there's got to be some point where people are allowed to try to sell their books with protections that keep others from giving them away, right?

          Sure. That point occurs when you first provide a copy of the book to someone else. Up till then you can do with it as you please. Keep it all to yourself if you like. Hold out for a big up-front payment. Only let people see it under an NDA. No one can force you to publish. But if you do publish your book to the world (even under NDA) then at some point it's going to end up beyond your control, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. That's the nature of information. What is wrong is the systematic f

          • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

            "Sure. That point occurs when you first provide a copy of the book to someone else. Up till then you can do with it as you please. Keep it all to yourself if you like. Hold out for a big up-front payment. Only let people see it under an NDA. No one can force you to publish."

            Right and the other big factor here its on you to isolate and protect that book. Ideas copy naturally and freely as soon as people are exposed to them. Someone breaks in the house and reads your manuscript he has prison coming for the br

    • Publishers have hated libraries since the days of the "Statute of Anne". That a lord would let his peasants read books is bad enough, but not making them pay for the privileged was beyond the pale!
    • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

      The fair use doctrine is an EXEMPTION to copyright. Copyright isn't actually a right, it's a limited legal privilege we provide to encourage people to write things.

  • by the_skywise ( 189793 ) on Monday March 30, 2020 @11:46AM (#59888332)

    I REALLY don't need a Mr. Bevis Twilight Zone reference right now!
    "But there's time... time enough to read...."

  • How am I gonma find a good one among a *million*?

    Are *any* of them good? For me?

    I don't give a flying fuck about the 200000th historic drama about a small town in a moral struggle.
    And no, we got computers, I will not manuall read into all of them, to know of if they might be good!

  • Direct link (Score:5, Informative)

    by Xenolith0 ( 808358 ) on Monday March 30, 2020 @12:15PM (#59888446)

    To save everyone the trouble of finding the hidden link to the actual library:

    https://archive.org/details/nationalemergencylibrary [archive.org]

  • When is the Internet Archive going to release its emergency supply of toilet paper?!

    • When all the books have finally been scanned, and all the pages have finally been used as wipes, only outlaws will wipe with eReaders.

      Or something like that.

  • Where we give away other people's cars and get lauded as heroes for it?
    • If you have a machine that makes a copy of a car at a negligible energy cost, go ahead!

      • So I won't get in trouble if I give away other people's movies, TV series, applications and games for free? I can make copies of those at negligible energy cost. That would make me a hero too then, right?
  • On my Perry Rhodan and Doc Savage.
  • A lot of these books have been out of print for thirty or forty years. You aren't cost people money if they can't sell them ( except for those who are selling old copies ).
    • by Quirkz ( 1206400 )

      Okay, but a lot of those books *are* recent, so can they complain after all?

      • Randomly searching suggests that it is less then 1/20. Perhaps if they did not include books written in the last ten years from the offerings?
        • by Quirkz ( 1206400 )

          There's no need to randomly search and guess. Toward the top left there's a filter based on year of publication with precise numbers. The last 2 or 3 years are sparse, but they've got 109,000 books from the last 10 years. I don't know why you'd arbitrarily pick 10 years, though, especially when your original argument was that a lot of the books had been *out of print* for 30 or 40 years.

          Even the founding fathers gave copyright 14 + 14 years. Things really ramp up just past 2010, so they've got 243,000 books

  • by Anonymous Coward
    107 - Fair Use - https://www.law.cornell.edu/us... [cornell.edu]

    108 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Reproduction by libraries and archives - https://www.law.cornell.edu/us... [cornell.edu]

    So, screw you "The Authors Guild" !!!! Stop republishing old books with three extra lines at the end to justify a stupid copyright !!!
  • Now it is your time to learn OS/2 Warp https://openlibrary.org/people... [openlibrary.org] and OS/2 development https://openlibrary.org/people... [openlibrary.org]

    I guess this is all the fuss about the "National Emergency Library" :)

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