The publishers' lawsuit against the Internet Archive (Hachette v. Internet Archive) has resulted in the removal of more than 500,000 books from our lending library, including over 1,300 banned and challenged titles. We are actively appealing this decision to restore access for all our patrons.
We want to hear from you! How has losing access to these books affected your reading or research? What does it mean to you that these 500,000+ books are no longer available? Please share your story below.
Your feedback may be featured in our blog posts and other communications to highlight the impact of this significant loss on our library community.
Lending and renting stuff is not piracy! Many corporate suits want people to start believing this. but i remember going to the library and renting books, movies and games. it was not piracy back then, and it wont be now.
Does IA have the right to lend and rent stuff? I believe that is the true issue here. At the moment they aren’t doing anything different then say what a piracy website would do. The right way would by making said links expire, not allowing infinite copies, and an actual “lending” system would do them more good then harm.
Please go to archive.org > Books > Books to Borrow
Select any book which strikes your fancy. You will see a reading excerpt, like flicking through pages in a library. if you have a free account, you can lend it for 1h at a time.
Or look at this video https://dn720701.ca.archive.org/0/items/openlibrary-tour-2020/openlibrary.mp4
So is the Internet Archive a library, or a preservation place? I feel like you’re advocating for them to be both, which isn’t how the law views them.
Edit: I for one would prefer they not waste money on a losing battle, and stick to preserving things. Id hate to see them lose on trying to be a library, and then all of their efforts wasted.
I’ll admit that I do like that they’re trying to scurt the law by doing what you’ve said, but it clearly isn’t enough.