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National Emergency Library

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Re: National Emergency Library

#41

Post by shakna »

leephillips wrote: post #19
shakna wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pointing out that this will make it harder for them to eat and pay rent during the isolation period. Which makes very little sense. Royalties on books already pay out very little, and at very inconvenient timespans. It is probably not going to make any impact for most authors.

Thanks for deciding for authors whether they have a right to be paid for their labor.

Might want to tone down the snark just a tad. I am an authour, with around about twenty books on the market at the moment.

However, a legal process that barely touches on the edges of (the relatively thin) margins is in fact unlikely to have a direct and immediate impact on anyone. That has no emotion attached to the statement.

Re: National Emergency Library

#42

Post by philipps »

leephillips wrote: post #20
michaelmrose wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will someone who always works remotely be financially impacted by isolation orders?

If you steal my book from the "Emergency Library" instead of buying an electronic copy, I get financially impacted.

You assume that everyone reading a copy of the book, would also be willing (or able) to purchase it. That’s not the case.

Re: National Emergency Library

#43

Post by EamonnMR »

On the one hand, I love the IA and really hate to see them burn Bridges/risk getting shut down.

On the other hand, this crisis is going to require bold action and moving faster than the speed of money and negotiation. I was hoping to see 'screw it, everything is free' from hospitals or someone knocking off ventilator designs but hey, this is a start.

Re: National Emergency Library

#44

Post by DanBC »

8bitsrule wrote: post #12
leephillips wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not. They are violating copyright law, and stealing from writers and publishers. Twitter is full of complaints by writers who discovered their illegally scanned books here, pointing out that this will make it harder for them to eat and pay rent during the isolation period.

In my whole life, I've never heard of a significant author who complained about one of their books being in a library, or about library patrons as 'thieves'. IA has deals with countless libraries, and since the libraries are closed, and the online schools are open, I very much doubt that IA will keep up with the temporary loss of the libraries or the needs of schools. "Public support for this emergency measure has co…

> I've never heard of a significant author who complained about one of their books being in a library, or about library patrons as 'thieves'.

Libraries have had their day: Horrible Histories author: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/feb/13/libraries-horr...

Horrible Histories is a significant set of books, now also tv programmes, in the UK.

Re: National Emergency Library

#45

Post by thanksforfish »

shakna wrote: post #13
leephillips wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not. They are violating copyright law, and stealing from writers and publishers. Twitter is full of complaints by writers who discovered their illegally scanned books here, pointing out that this will make it harder for them to eat and pay rent during the isolation period.

> pointing out that this will make it harder for them to eat and pay rent during the isolation period. Which makes very little sense. Royalties on books already pay out very little, and at very inconvenient timespans. It is probably not going to make any impact for most authors.

I'll try a less snarky rebuttal because I think there is a point here.

Why does IA get to make that decision? I get why this has populist support, but that's not an excuse to commit piracy. I get that IA is popular, but I'd also be annoyed if a less popular company did this.

If this was a government level decision to nationalize bookstores, to waive library checkout limits, then I'd understand a little more. But some random company taking copyrighted material they don't own and distributing it without the consent or payment is something very different.

I'd further point out that publishers, copyright holders, etc also need money to operate. I get that they can be less of a sympathetic group than author, but they have rights and they have bills to pay.

Theres lots of public domain books, books from libraries, free online content, etc. Theres no reason we need this sort of piracy to get through the pandemic.

Re: National Emergency Library

#46

Post by acdha »

philipps wrote: post #42
leephillips wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you steal my book from the "Emergency Library" instead of buying an electronic copy, I get financially impacted.

You assume that everyone reading a copy of the book, would also be willing (or able) to purchase it. That’s not the case.

That’s too absolute: nobody is arguing that there’d be a 100% purchase rate but it seems highly unlikely that there will be no sales impact from having free copies available from a reputable source with very high search-engine ranking.

Re: National Emergency Library

#47

Post by sp332 »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #8

Does anyone know how they're legally able to do this, when publishers make my local library buy a license for every concurrent copy of an ebook that someone checks out?

All digital lending has been legally dubious since the ReDigi case decided that sending someone a digital file counted as making a new copy. So far, the whole idea of lending exists in a gray area where publishers have simply decided not to sue. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/internet-archive...

Re: National Emergency Library

#50

Post by Kye »

dannyw wrote: post #32
8bitsrule wrote: post #7

If you go to the site and click the 'Views' sort-by, you'll see the most popular titles. For some reason, #1 at the moment, by a factor of 3, is Sylvia Brown's 2008 End of Days . Go figure. Brown was 'a medium with psychic abilities.' Yep, that's where we're at. Viewed 20 times more than 'You Can Negotiate Anything'.

The specific quote from the book: "In around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments. Almost more baffling than the illness itself will be the fact that it will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrived, attack again ten years later, and then disappear completely." I think it's complete bullshit, but also no s…

Make enough predictions and one is bound to land. It's not even the first coronavirus outbreak "around 2020."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus#Outbreaks_of_coron...

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