IA copyright lawsuit, or “The Wayback Machine is Under Attack”
So, the Internet Archive copyright lawsuit thing is more complicated than it appears. This is a good rundown of the legal questions involved, while this NPR piece describes the reaction to “National Emergency Library” that pushed things to the brink.
TL;DR, the IA provides crucial archiving services (including the Wayback Machine), but they’ve recently started a large-scale illegal lending model that put their other services at risk. This is really disappointing to me and I’m going to write a long, dry post about it.
Essentially, the Internet Archive has historically only allowed books to be “lent out” digitally to as many people as the IA has physical copies stored. So if they have 2 copies of Mary Sue’s new book, only 2 people can be reading their PDF scans at a time. This was enough for many publishers and authors to look the other way (although groups like the Science Fiction Writers of America has been decrying the practice for years, since in many cases they were “lending” books they didn’t have licensing for.)
Because, while this is similar to the system used by libraries, libraries pay for each lending copy of their book (ensuring that the authors, artists, publicists, editors, etc are getting paid). the IA, from many accounts, did not pay for all of these books in the first place. but again, small-scale enough that nobody went after them for it.
Due to the pandemic, they removed the waiting list for these books, arguing it was in the national public interest to have access to knowledge. Great! I respect this ideology. Except that rather than paying ~$0 for two digital copies w/o author permission, they’re now paying ~$0 for unlimited copies w/o author permission. Writers who put years of labor into these books began kicking up a fuss (including Chuck Wendig, who’s receiving death threats because I guess he’s the most recognizable name involved?) and publishers sued.
So nobody’s goal is to get the Archive taken down entirely. Instead, the argument is that the damages claimed in the lawsuit could absolutely be large enough to cripple them. The IA ended the emergency lending program earlier than planned, so we’ll see if the suit goes through after all.
So, why is this complicated?
On the one hand, copyright law sucks right now and many are understandably infuriated at the idea of huge publishing companies suing a free library.
On the other hand, they were not operating as a library, and creators were failing to be paid for their work. with the new lending model, Mary Sue Author (who, as an average author, receives wages below the poverty line) is worried that this change is actively preventing her from making a living. If she’s a new author, an impact to her numbers is enough to ensure that the publisher doesn’t buy her next book.
If Mary Sue is a marginalized author, she’s especially at risk of economic insecurity. If Mary Sue and authors like her cannot afford to write books, writing remains a domain of privilege.
(Also, there’s some legal argument that if Mary Sue fails to actively protect her copyright, she could lose it. I’m not an expert and won’t weigh in on this.)
But wait! (Common Counterarguments swirling on the Twitters):
“Writing should be a hobby anyway. If you care about making money for your art, you’re not a real artist.” Hopefully we are all familiar by now with how shit this argument is; we see it a lot around here flung at visual artists. Pay people for their work! Also, again: this is how you get a bunch of WASP authors and nobody else.
“It’s actually the publishers screwing the authors, so this is a punishment for the publishers.” Except it is…not. It is not. The people most likely to suffer would be the writers, not the publishers.
“Libraries are closed, so what are we supposed to do about it?” This one is tricky right now, but I’d first check to see if your library participates in an e-lending service (many do). check out OverDrive or Audible, which do pay authors. Project Gutenberg has free classics in the public domain. Amazon has its own problems, but Kindle Unlimited allows access to many, many free books where the author is actually seeing payment.
“Okay, but why should the digital library of Alexandria go down because some authors are mad?” I honestly really want to ask this question to whoever was making these lending decisions at the IA, because I also am very pissed about it. I don’t know why they thought publishers would ignore this very blatantly illegal thing (not even “grey area”–just under current copyright law, completely illegal). Regardless of whether copyright law currently sucks ass, it was a weird move! And now bad things are happening.
“Fuck off, everybody mad about this writes YA and science fiction, not real literature. Who cares if those guys get paid?” Seriously. This is a very common rebuttal on Twitter right now. Burn Twitter.
“Honestly you’re right but I just want free shit.” is it weird that this is the response I most respect
In case you skimmed all that, my point isn’t “copyright law is good, actually.” It’s that the issue is more complex than donation drive posts have portrayed it as.
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