Stealing my Creativity

A few weeks ago I received a request from the Author’s Guild to sign a letter demanding that the Internet Archives Open Library stop scanning books and making them available online FREE.

What and who is the Internet Archives Open Library?  It is basically an online library with the noble purpose of making every book ever published available from one webpage.  If a book is not in the public domain and in digital formal the site provides links to where it can be purchased or borrowed.  Fair enough.
HOWEVER, last year Internet Archive began scanning books and making them available through e-lending without the author’s permission or knowledge.  Internet Archive believes they can this practice is legal because of the Controlled Digital Lending.  Never heard of that theory?  The theory is that a book can be scanned and made available as long as a few restrictions apply mainly that only one copy of the scanned book can be loaned out at a time.  This is called fair use.

Fair to whom?

In Capital Records vs. ReDigi the federal Second Circuit Court held that reselling a digital file without the copyright holder’s permission IS NOT FAIR USE because the resales competed with the legitimate copyright holder’s sales.  Even with this clear decision the practice of stealing our creativity continues.
Authors Guild encourages all authors to visit the Controlled Digital Lending site and check if any books are there.  I checked.  I’m safe.

Please go to: https://controlleddigitallending.org/ and check if your creativity has been stolen.
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For readers – please don’t use Controlled Digital Learning – you are reading stolen material.