Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
> We moved up our schedule because, last Monday, four commercial publishers chose to sue Internet Archive during a global pandemic.Did this come as a surprise? Did Internet Archive not expect publishers to sue?The Archive launched the emergency library during a global pandemic. Lots of people, myself included, said that this was a risky move because they would obviously get sued and it would put not only the Archive but the existing idea of Controlled Digital Lending - which hasn't been clearly established as legal in caselaw - at risk.They're trying to imply that the publishers are somehow bad people for suing in a pandemic, and sure, the publishers may very well be bad people in general, but IA launched this effort on the grounds that, more or less, the law doesn't matter any more in a pandemic.> However, this lawsuit is not just about the temporary National Emergency Library. The complaint attacks the concept of any library owning and lending digital books, challenging the very idea of what a library is in the digital world.That's precisely why we said they shouldn't have done this.Controlled Digital Lending matches the existing operations of a physical library - there is one paid physical copy per loaned title. Publishers and authors alike like physical libraries because when more people check out books from libraries, more copies get purchased. It stands to reason that they shouldn't mind digital libraries that follow the same principle.Internet Archive said, the same legal analysis that makes Controlled Digital Lending permissible also makes uncontrolled lending permissible when we decide the world needs it. We can give people unlimited electronic copies of books for one physical copy. The more people who read our books, the fewer purchases happen.That challenges the very idea of what a library is in the digital world - it breaks the balance that has historically governed how physical libraries work. If I go to my local library and the librarian says "Actually don't bother checking this out, I'll just photocopy the whole book for you and you can keep it," I'm not sure I'd call that a library. It's a useful service for me, of course, at least provided I figure out some way to make sure that the people who write the books I want to read keep getting paid, but it's now something entirely different from a library.