Lawsuit over online book lending could bankrupt Internet Archive

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/publishers-sue-internet-archive-over-massive-digital-lending-program

Four of the nation's leading book publishers have sued the Internet Archive, the online library best known for maintaining the Internet Wayback Machine. The Internet Archive makes scanned copies of books—both public domain and under copyright—available to the public on a site called the Open Library.


#ia #internetarchive #internet #archive #lawsuit #copyright

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/akzeb5/this-senator-is-seemingly-obsessed-with-threatening-the-internet-archive

#InternetArchive

In the wake of a raging pandemic, the Internet Archive has been working overtime to preserve internet history and expand the public’s access to digital library collections. That recently culminated in the creation of a National Emergency Library that made 1.4 million ebooks available to the public at a time when traditional libraries pose a health risk.

Increasingly, the organization’s reward has been a parade of headaches. Both from the entertainment industry and their loyal allies in Congress.

Last week, the archive’s emergency library was forced to dramatically scale back the effort thanks to a publisher lawsuit and political pressure from politicians like North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, who accused the organization of violating the country’s often draconian—and frequently ridiculous—copyright laws.

Now Tillis is taking aim at another Internet Archive effort, the Great 78 Project.

The Great 78 Project is a communal effort geared towards the preservation, research and discovery of the 3 million 78rpm discs produced between 1898 and 1950. Often made from far more fragile shellac than the resin commonly used today, many of these recordings are fragile, and the digitization effort has created a historical archive of some amazing work.