Louisiana Voice

Remember Napster?

That was the service where you could download just about any song ever recorded for free.

Until, that is, the peer-to-peer service was sued by the recording industry for copyright infringement and was shut down on July 11, 2001 Lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit were the band Metallica and singer Roy Orbison’s widow, Barbara Orbison.

And why not? After all, it’s only right that artists, like anyone else, be compensated for their works. As essential as food is during the coronavirus quarantine, those truck drivers who deliver our food expect—and deserve—to be paid as do those who stock the shelves and the cashiers who check us out.

Health care is critical but the doctors and nurses still have to get paid.

And while not as crucial to our survival, book authors also deserve to be paid for their labor.

So why is it that the literary equivalent to Napster is allowed to pirate the works of authors so the rest of us can pass the time reading books for free while confined to our homes?

That is precisely what the so-called “NATIONAL EMERGENCY LIBRARY” is doing.

And that’s why the Authors Guild is fighting back—to protect the rights of authors who receive no royalties whenever their books are downloaded from the National Emergency Library, which describes itself as “a temporary collection of books that supports emergency remote teaching, research, independent scholarship, and intellectual stimulation while universities, schools, training centers, and libraries are closed.”

Let’s be clear: Internet Archive’s so-called “National Emergency Library” is not a real library,” reads a LETTER from the Authors Guild to Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive board of directors. “Real libraries license the electronic books they circulate, and authors receive payments from those licenses. Real libraries do not circulate unauthorized copies. Real libraries care about authors as much as they do about promoting knowledge and literacy.

“Let’s be even more clear: Internet Archive’s prior practice of providing access through Open Library to one reader at a time per copy is itself infringing of most in-copyright books—and illegal,” the letter said. “Now, by declaring a spurious ‘copyright emergency’ and making a massive trove of copyrighted books available for free without any restrictions, Internet Archive has demonstrated a shocking disrespect for the rule of law— the cornerstone of our civil, democratic society—at a time when we most need it to prevail. You cloak your illegal scanning and distribution of books behind the pretense of magnanimously giving people access to them. But giving away what is not yours is simply stealing, and there is nothing magnanimous about that. Authors and publishers—the rights owners who legally can give their books away—are already working to provide electronic access to books to libraries and the people who need them. We do not need Internet Archive to give our works away for us.

“Books exist because authors write them, and good books take a good deal of hard work and time. Authors need to earn a living to be able to write, and they deserve to be paid for their work like any other worker. The pandemic is severely impacting authors and booksellers. Bookstores and libraries have closed, and book sales are down. The freelance writing assignments and speaking engagements that many authors rely on to supplement their income are unavailable, and yet authors are not eligible for traditional unemployment. (Indeed, thus far, they have even been excluded from the Pandemic Unemployment Insurance meant to assist freelancers, and the Authors Guild is actively lobbying to correct that.)”

The letter is accompanied by an online PETITION for advocates to sign and send to Kahle and the Internet Archive board.