Battle for Libraries

The Internet Archive has been scanning millions of print books that they own, and loaning them out to anyone around the world, for free. Other libraries like the Boston Public Library are using the same process to make digital books too.

This is happening because major publishers offer no option for libraries to permanently purchase digital books and carry out their traditional roles of preservation and protecting patrons’ human right to privacy. 

Instead, libraries are forced to pay high licensing fees to “rent” books from big tech vendors that regard patron privacy as a premium feature (or disregard it entirely, seeking to profit from patron data). Such licensed books are also uniquely vulnerable to censorship from book banners and erasure. 25+ major civil and human rights organizations including the Athena Coalition, Color of Change, Reproaction, MediaJustice, UltraViolet, Presente.org, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, The Greenlining Institute, Woodhull Freedom Fund, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, and more recently called for a federal investigation into the harms of these practices. Library ownership of digital books is a principled and important value for the future of reading.

It is clear that under today’s regime, major publishers act as malicious gatekeepers, preventing the free flow of information and undermining libraries’ ability to serve their patrons. They do this in the name of their authors, who increasingly disagree with the premise of the lawsuit as they watch record publishing profits translate into more money for shareholders and CEOs—and less for authors and publishing workers.

Major publishers know it would look bad to sue the Boston Public Library. So instead, they’re attacking a groundbreaking nonprofit via a lawsuit with clear repercussions for every library in the US. On March 24, 2023, a lower court judge issued a (frankly terrible) ruling that stated the profits of big media companies are more important than the right of libraries to preserve our history and ensure it’s available to the world. Then, in a copyright troll move for the ages, the same attorney representing Big Publishing filed a second absurd lawsuit against the Internet Archive for its research library of old music recordings.

Nevertheless, the Internet Archive is appealing to a higher court and will keep fighting for the digital rights of libraries and readers in oral arguments on Thursday, June 28, 2024.

It is just as important to preserve digital books as paper books, especially given the rising popularity of digital books and the fact that many local and diverse voices are not published in print at all. 

Today, most digital books can only be licensed, meaning there is effectively only one copy of a digital book and it can be edited or deleted at any time with zero transparency. In this scenario, profit-motivated big publishing shareholders for companies like Newscorp, Amazon, and Disney are in control of whether a book is censored or not. 

But big publishers wouldn’t walk into a library and steal books off the shelves, and they also wouldn’t hack into a library’s computers and delete books. This is why it’s important that libraries actually own digital books, so that thousands of librarians all over are independently preserving the files of important books. This kind of decentralized curation makes books more resilient to censorship, keeping them available to the public and unaltered.

Increasingly, big publishing is turning into big tech, and seeking to make data on readers, students, and library patrons their next big product. Today, in order to loan digital books, libraries are forced to use third party tech vendors like Overdrive’s Libby, Elsevier’s ScienceDirect, or Hoopla. Often, these tech vendors spy on readers.

Libraries are legally forbidden from choosing a surveillance-free loan system for digital books because they don’t own the files they’re loaning. Without ownership, libraries will always be subject to the whims of big publishing and big tech, and get bullied into trading away the safety of their patrons for access to digital books.

Libraries have historically defended the right of their patrons to read without being spied on—a right that is increasingly important today as privacy rights are rolled back nationwide in the US, and asserting one’s bodily autonomy is criminalized in many states. Allowing tech corporations (and everyone who buys data from them, such as advertisers, law enforcement, and vigilantes) to harvest the names and locations of anyone who reads a book on reproductive or gender-affirming care is, at its core, a betrayal of the library’s promise to give readers of all kinds a safe place to learn.

Publishers are arguing that it is not okay to scan a copyrighted book, keep the paper copy in storage, and loan out the digital file in a one-to-one ratio just like any library loans any other kind of book. This practice is called Controlled Digital Lending. In 2023, a New York judge sided with them, putting profits before fair use and the rights of libraries.

On June 28, 2024, oral arguments will be heard in the Internet Archive’s appeal of that decision. In the weeks or months to come after the oral arguments, the appeals court will issue a new decision.

The Internet Archive legally can’t disclose any information about what’s happened behind closed doors so far, but we do know that over half a million books in their collection aren’t available to the general public anymore.

Thankfully, the battle isn’t over. Both sides seem ready to take this fight over the right to own digital books all the way to the Supreme Court.

For a while, many authors were confused about what’s happening and what it means. Big publishing lobbies have told them many…interesting…things. But as the implications for libraries’ rights become clear, more and more authors are now condemning this lawsuit and other anti-library actions from publishers. 

It’s understandable for authors to be confused, after all, publishing lobbyists spend millions every year to try and pull the wool over all our eyes. But there are still some good people in publishing, including Neil Gaiman, Hanif Abdurraqib, Chuck Wendig, Naomi Klein, and 1000+ more authors who are deeply done with drinking publishing lobbyists’ kool-aid.

You can read the letter to big publishers from 1000+ authors at https://www.fightforthefuture.org/Authors-For-Libraries

Most people know the Internet Archive because of the Wayback Machine, which is essential infrastructure of the internet. It’s an archive of the history of the internet with 700 billion pages.

In a similar way, the Internet Archive’s library provides an archive of out-of-print, midlist, local, and diverse texts in addition to popular books. 37 million of them. And anyone with an internet connection can check out whatever they’d like to read.

This initiative is similar to the Brooklyn Public Library’s youth censorship circumvention efforts—but the Internet Archive’s library is accessible to everyone around the world, not just youth in the US. The Internet Archive’s digital books also are used for citations on Wikipedia, underpinning yet another core digital public good.

Fight for the Future is a feisty, queer women led digital rights organization. Our work resisting censorship, advocating for free speech and expression, demanding big tech accountability, and promoting antitrust legislation speaks for itself, so feel free to check it out.

We’re here because this has gotten scary. The folks over at the Internet Archive are nerdy librarians and archivists working at a small nonprofit. They’re so far from the Big Tech “mouthpieces” that high-paid publishing lobbyists want you to think they are. And it’s time someone stood up for the totally essential and badass work they’re doing, as well as the future of all libraries. So, here we are.