Post #3214943

2025-07-02 03:20 UTC

@ehasbrouck@urbanists.social @Yuvalne@433.world Thank you - although that's the same link, and the unlimited-numbers-of-copies part in your first message relates only to a short period during the pandemic. The part to which I can understand authors objecting (and even then IA is not the real cultural enemy) is the business about IA sharing scans for in-copyright books without paying the higher fee that libraries do for sharing copies. Do you have any figures for what fraction of in-copyright books appear in IA? Pretty much everything I access is either out of copyright or else provided by the publishers/authors for public-good reasons. And the ones that I've seen loaned seem only to have minimal sample pages otherwise accessible (far fewer pages than e.g. a typical Amazon sample view). For example, is IA sharing copies of the books you've authored? Can you provide some concrete examples of books which illustrate the harm? Thanks.

Replies (2)

@ehasbrouck@urbanists.social 2025-07-02 03:25

@dhobern@scicomm.xyz @Yuvalne@433.world -"unlimited-numbers-of-copies part in your first message relates only to a short period during the pandemic." No. IA is *still* distributing unlimited numbers of unrestricted copies through unique URL for each page scan on Archive.org. IA does not identity copyright status of books it has scanned, but vast majority appear to be in copyright and unauthorized. See examples in the link and walkthrough I provided earlier: https://nwu.org/what-is-the-internet-archive-doing-with-our-books/

Open ##3214944
@ehasbrouck@urbanists.social 2025-07-02 03:28

@dhobern@scicomm.xyz @Yuvalne@433.world - Multiple editions fo my in-copyright books were scanned. Some were taken down after years and many ignored demands, then new copies of same books were again scanned and put back online. I have to keep checking back periodically for yet more newly-scanned copies of my books. Copyright isn't supposed to work that way.

Open ##3214949