One of the two publishers with which I work, Orca Publishing, sent out their usual newsletter to authors yesterday and the lead off article was something rather disturbing.
It seems a website called Internet Archive makes books available online at no charge, operating as sort of a lending library has some of my books. Right now, because of the coronavirus situation, they’ve made their entire collection available all the time. Normally, only one person can be reading a book at a time. Now, it’s wide open.
The issue is that they have not obtained permission for using these books in this way, nor paid any money for them. I found five of my books in the collection. Looking more closely, I found the books have all been bulk-scanned from print copies. Some of the books appear to have been originally part of a library collection – which is disturbing in itself – while others might have been donated by individuals.
At this time, all libraries are closed in most of Canada, and probably in the US and elsewhere. I haven’t checked with the Toronto Library to see if one can “withdraw” books using the internet, but certainly smaller libraries would be unlike to be able to offer this feature. Libraries have to work out a payment schedule with publishers for the use of e-books that does offer some recompense, but Internet Archive has not done this.
Which brings me to the conundrum. Should I just look the other way at the moment in order to help out people who cannot get fresh reading material, or should I contact Internet Archive right now, establish my right as the author of these works – and holder of the copyright – and demand they be removed or paid for in some way? (I know what the answer to that last part will be!)
I’ve done a lot of thinking about this overnight and cannot decide what to do.
Help me out, folks! Any thoughts?
