Author Organizations Allege Copyright Infringement by the Internet Archive

"In the same kind of solidarity they showed in calling for author contract reform from publishers, the United States’ Authors Guild and the United Kingdom’s Society of Authors are making simultaneous demands that the Internet Archive’s Open Library immediately stop lending scanned copies of physical books on their site.

Today (January 18), the Society of Authors in London has issued a media alert to its cease-and-desist open letter to the Internet Archive, and—as in previous instances in which the English-language world’s two largest author trade organizations have teamed up—the eloquence inherent in writers’ work is quickly apparent in how they’re putting across their message.

The Society of Authors refers in its open letter to the one issued by the Authors Guild, and in both cases, these professional bodies, each with some 10,000 members, are calling for their members and supporters to sign and submit the letters to the San Francisco-based Internet Archive.

At issue is what the Authors Guild in New York asserts is an “unauthorized copying, distribution, and display of books” that’s “shameful, unjust, and even inhumane.” ..."

The two organizations oppose the theory that "it is fair use for libraries to scan or obtain scans of physical books that they own and loan those books through e-lending technologies, [even when] they apply certain restrictions akin to physical library loans, such as lending only one copy (either the digital copy or the physical copy) at a time and only for a defined loan period.”