NinthFeather's Meta Archive

Okay, I'm writing this because I am tired. Because I've seen several people, including ones I genuinely respect, twist this issue in ways that are irresponsible. Don't get me wrong. Most people either think they know what they're talking about or have a significant enough investment in the issue that providing a balanced assessment of the issue is not safe for them. Fortunately, neither of these things describe me!

So, the Internet Archive (IA) is a digital library that operates as a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Up until very recently, you were probably most familiar with their work as a result of The Wayback Machine, which is the most reliable and largest source of archived webpages on the internet. However, they also function in ways closer to a traditional library, supplying users with digital texts through the Open Library site. TL;DR, they do a lot of things and most of them are focused on preserving and sharing knowledge, you know, like a library.

The difference between Internet Archive's existing Open Library site and the "National Emergency Library" program seems fiddly and stupid at first. This is probably where I'm gonna lose some of you, but I'm asking you to hang in there for like a paragraph. Basically, IA got rid of lending limits on these books and let anyone download them.

For anyone who isn't aware of how libraries work behind-the-scenes, that is *radically* nonstandard. The problem with e-books, for publishers, is that a library could potentially buy one and then just...never need to replace it. Please keep in mind that selling (and re-selling) books to libraries is a major source of income for publishers. So, in 2019, several e-book publishers, including a number of those involved in suing the IA, switched from selling libraries perpetual licences to their books to selling ones that only lasted 2 years at a time. Currently, libraries have to buy multiple copies of a book if they want to lend more than one copy at a time. Some of the publishers also raised the prices they charged for the e-books compared to how much they charged non-library customers (we're talking charging $60 for a standard novel). If you're thinking, "Wow, that sounds like taking advantage of the libraries," I'd say you're right.

"Okay, but what about the authors?" You might ask. "Aren't the the innocent ones, just trying to protect their copyright?" Yes and no? Okay, so what IA did to them is essentially what that one Russian site, Fanfics.me, did to a lot of fanfic authors. It took their work, distributed it in a way that they hadn't consented to without asking their permission, and in doing so, it took away from their potential readership. Now, the difference here is that the roles are reversed--in the fanfic.me situation, the thief was for-profit and the victims were largely non-profit, while in the IA situation the thief is non-profit and the victims are for-profit. There was an actual loss of profit, even if it's difficult to know how large that loss was (I tend to think it's much smaller than it's perceived to be, since most people during the worst of the pandemic were not in a financial position to buy a lot of e-books, even if they wanted to be). So, like, the authors have a right to be angry. I'm not arguing that. Authors told the IA they didn't like their books being offered in that way, and the IA didn't stop, and that was pretty terrible of them.

However, I want to emphasize that the "people" who are suing, and the "people" who will benefit from this lawsuit, are not the authors but the publishers. Specifically, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins and Penguin Random House, three of the five biggest publishers in the English language. They will tell you that they are doing this on the behalf of the smaller publishers and the authors who cannot afford to sue. They are the reason that the smaller publishers and the authors cannot afford to sue. The reason that these companies are threatened is that they have lost access to a small portion of the millions of dollars in profit they make each year, and that kind of ticks them off, so they want it to stop. The authors should maybe get paid too, they guess?

Similarly, the Author's Guild has been an outspoken critic of the National Emergency Library program and the IA. It may interest you to know that the AG has, since the inception of e-books, been uncomfortable with the entire concept, since they make it harder for authors to retain that good, good copyright, and protecting copyright is higher on the AG's legislative priorities than, you know, improving pay for authors or making sure they get healthcare. If you are an author and aren't on the NYT Bestseller list, there are other writer's guilds and unions you can join with more...down-to-earth priorities. 

What the IA did was poorly thought out and had consequences for authors. In particular, authors with popular books have probably missed out on some sales. However, those sales would've likely been mediated through the already broken system used to sell libraries digital media. I can't say for sure how aware they were of that or how much that factored into their decision. But it's definitely factoring into my opinion on the situation.

Yes, authors are underpaid. Yes, authors should be paid more. No, that's not the fault of people who (participated in the National Emergency Library program thinking it was aboveboard/downloaded an ebook illegally for whatever reason/bought their book used/etc.). A thousand of us buying their book can't fix the fact that publishers are underpaying them. I've seen authors go down this road before, and it's always a little embarrassing. The readers are poor too; we're all in the same boat, my friend. 

In the meantime, I'm not about to let a multi-million-dollar corporation tear down the internet, but i'm not gonna let them hide behind some opinionated dude who wrote a Star Wars novel once while doing it either.

TL;DR

• The National Emergency Library was in fact kinda sketchy legally, but that's because how digital libraries normally work is a mess
• The IA basically did things with a bunch of people's writing without their permission and if you've ever posted a fanfic you should get why so many writers got so worked up about it
• The ones suing the Internet Archive are the publishers not Chuck Wendig/your fave author
• Protecting copyright won't fix how much authors are paid, fixing how much authors are paid will do that

Sources:

• https://archive.org/about/
• https://openlibrary.org/help/faq
• https://archive.org/details/nationalemergencylibrary
• https://www.npr.org/2020/06/03/868861704/publishers-sue-internet-archive-for-mass-copyright-infringement
• https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dzg8n/archiving-the-internet-archive-sued-by-publishers
• https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/internet-archive-ends-emergency-library-early-to-appease-publishers/
• https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/26/821925073/national-emergency-library-lends-a-hand-and-lots-of-books-during-pandemic
• https://www.authorsguild.org/where-we-stand/our-top-legislative-priorities-116th-congress/
• https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=publishers-change-ebook-and-audiobook-models-libraries-look-for-answers 
• http://www.daytonmetrolibrary.org/news/3505-proposed-changes-to-ebook-and-eaudiobook-access?fbclid=IwAR308bbCi9D_r_Fap83ekqNnzTJoYfl3iYn0-plgNKErhmU6Git-51RDNos 
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_plc

Hi! I'm NinthFeather. As Tumblr proceeds to do an impression of LJ during Strikethrough, I thought it was best to make sure that all my important text posts were backed up before the site went down completely. However, I don't really want to archive my meta and translations on AO3--I like restricting that site to fic and fic alone. So, over the next few days/weeks, I'm going to be moving a massive amount of material from Tumblr over to here. I'll do my best to keep it tagged and organized!  

Please be patient with me, and feel free to...uh, do you follow Dreamwidths? Do whatever you do to receive updates from this site. Just know that they will be frequent, because I'm uploading several years of writing from Tumblr as quickly as I can manage.