But, more importantly, the characterization of libraries as something that actually hurts publishers and writers, as implied by writing that CDL would hurt publishers "no more" than ordinary lending, is something I feel compelled to oppose.
Libraries, and lending of some form has been part of society since likely even before anything we would call a book were first written.
While it is true that some of the first libraries were not exactly public, and that you probably wouldn't be allowed to carry the book home from most, but this doesn't take away from the fact that libraries as part of society owes nothing to publishers. If anything, it's the other way around.
If the absurd idea that seems prevalent in digital publishing that one book would only be allowed one reader had been around when the first books were written, it's fairly likely almost no books would have been written.
While publishers might feel lending is inconvenient, if they continue trying to get rid of lending, they are no wiser than a runner in a headwind wishing for the air to go away.
I'm not saying authors shouldn't get paid, but I am saying that pinning any loss of income on libraries is devaluing libraries and lendings role in history - and society - immensely.
Sure.
But the basic idea of law is that the contract between us now and us in the future is relatively fixed. Otherwise, there is no difference between a system of written law and judges deciding cases at their whims.
> But, more importantly, the characterization of libraries as something that actually hurts publishers and writers, as implied by writing that CDL would hurt publishers "no more" than ordinary lending, is something I feel compelled to oppose.
> ... [bunch of text that does not actually oppose the previous statement]
I think most reasonable people can recognize that:
1. Libraries are a good and useful component of modern society
2. Their lending may economically hurt authors and publishers
Right, and no party has the ability to change that contract unilaterally, crisis or otherwise. You can renegotiate the contract, but the contract as it exists does exist.
Yes, there's an argument that people are in particular need of books now that physical libraries are closed. It's a reasonable argument and well worth suspending the normal rules for, somehow.
But there's also an argument that people are in particular need of being paid for their work now that everything is closed. Any modification by a reasonably-representative governing body would take this into account too and try to avoid actions that put authors in an even more financially precarious position than usual.
Neither side has the moral (or legal) right to make things go entirely the way they want them go to. Publishers don't get the right to say that the doctrine of first sale doesn't apply during a crisis because they need to make money, either.
(One thing we could have done is passed an emergency compulsory/statutory licensing regime for e-books, analogous to the statutory licenses for music, saying that the Archive can give people e-books if they arrange for the rightsholder to be paid a certain small but non-zero royalty for each copy. They could sell the books, they could run a fundraiser, they could work with local libraries who are presumably no longer buying new books quite as much, etc. There's no real mechanical reason that couldn't have been implemented quickly, but it does require some competence from the government. If the underlying problem here is that we don't expect the government to be competent, well... that is a problem, but I'm not sure that saying people can disregard the law at their discretion is the answer.)
I don't think you understood me correctly.
I'm not saying that I personally believe libraries hurt publishers and writers. I'm saying, "Here's how to rebut publisher's concerns about CDL."
Publishers have already made their peace with libraries with regard to the lending of physical books. The first-sale doctrine protects what libraries do. Publishers already know there's nothing they can do about that, even if some of them might think it hurts sales. And so the argument for CDL is that it mirrors physical lending and thus puts them in no worse position than if the digital books were physical books.
Again, to reiterate, I'm not saying that libraries are bad for publishers or authors. I'm saying that if you're trying to address publisher's concerns about CDL, then pointing out that it's no worse than physical lending is an effective way to argue your case.
Publishers would prefer to instead license ebooks and pretend first sale doesn't apply at all for digital books. I understand why that irritates a lot of people.
The Internet Archive, on the flip side, is pretending that copyright infringement doesn't apply during a pandemic and that the first sale doctrine is much more expansive than it actually is.
My hope is that both sides will come to accept CDL as a compromise system. It hurts publishers and authors no more than print lending does, and it's on much more solid legal ground than the IA's uncontrolled lending.