- [Dale] You remember Napster a number of years ago,
and a lot of the controversy that surrounded a lot of people
that were downloading music 100% free,
which is going absolutely wild.
In fact actually Lars Ulrich of Metallica
was at the forefront of someone
that was actually arguing against Napster,
and you fast forward some years later,
Napster of course is no longer around,
And you've got other platforms in its place
that are a little bit more legit.
Well, we've got a little bit of a situation
here in the publishing community as a whole,
and it's regarding the Internet Archive Library.
Is the Internet Archive Library pirating your book?
We'll find out in today's video.
Imagine winning $5,000 for your self published book,
get more details from our sponsors,
the North Street book prize competition later in this video.
Hey, what's up, it's Dale here today
and I am going to be talking
a little bit about the Internet Archive
and something of a dumpster fire
that they've created over the past year.
It's fairly interesting and if you're probably wondering
what is the Internet Archive?
It's actually a 501(C)(3) organization,
another word for nonprofit organization,
that essentially is like a digital library
of sites and cultural artifacts
that are turned into digital form.
If you've ever heard of the Wayback Machine,
that's another concoction of theirs,
that you're able to go back and see some things
that we're used to on the internet, but are no longer there.
They were able to kind of go back
and just store some of this information.
You know Internet Archives is not all that bad,
but it just, it's kind of shocking
in what they're doing more recently,
and this is essentially bootlegging books.
I'm gonna give you just a little bit of opinions
inside this video here,
but some of it is...
Quite a bit of it is facts.
And so the fact is this,
this has been an issue that's been brewing
over the past year,
Something regarding their policy
for what they call Controlled Digital Lending.
This is a fairly interesting concept that they have here.
What they're doing is they're scanning
print copies of books,
and they're making it available through ebook
and through five distribution channels.
And this includes downloadable eBooks
through OPENLIBRARY.ORG, audio books,
and now the audio books are done
through a text to speech program,
page images on OPENLIBRARY.ORG, page images and ARCHIVE.ORG
and APIs is for automated downloads of page images.
All that to say this,
that, they're essentially taking print books
that someone just bought once,
and then they're distributing them as eBooks
with no permission in advance.
And now it's really, coming under intense scrutiny
because they've now launched this initiative
called the National Emergency Library,
And as some of you know,
the state of the world that we're in right now in 2020,
(buzzing sound)
sorry for the brief interruption here,
but this is Dale from the future.
Oddly enough when I recorded this video
it was about a week and a half ago,
but as of today the National Emergency Library
has been completely shut down.
However, the Internet Archive
continues to use Control Digital Lending.
I wanna make sure that you're up to speed,
So that way you knew that National Emergency Library
is no more.
Take it away Dale, from the past.
(buzzing sound)
The pandemic has caused a lot of upheaval,
and a lot of unrest throughout the world,
and some need for some, you know,
necessities like this.
And so what they thought was,
Oh, you know what?
We're just going to go ahead and we're going to double down
on this whole Controlled Digital Lending thing.
And they're allowing a catalog
of about one and a half million eBooks
that they've done
through this Controlled Digital Lending program,
and they're allowing people to borrow
these titles, simultaneously.
So unlike a regular library,
when they say there's one copy,
and the person has to wait until it comes back,
they're allowing people to just get the same copy
all at the same time, and it's just like a free for all,
and all you can eat buffet for digital books
that should not be available anyways.
And why is that there has been zero permission
and zero compensation for all of this?
Here's what the internet archive claims,
and what they've said is,
if the books are over 10 years old,
and so they're also claiming
that they're just doing a few pages of content (inauible),
that's all well and good
but again, what you're dealing with
is permission of a copyright.
And this isn't just a simple thing
of me going over to my neighbor and saying,
"Oh, you can borrow a few pages of this book
and send it back."
No, they're allowing the entire world,
to take one of their copies
and just distribute it willy-nilly.
And here's the crazy part,
It's not like internet archive is working on this alone
in fact, they actually have other "signatories"
as they put it,
people that are in behind them on this,
including the likes of Authors Alliance
which is an advocate for authors,
which is the oddest thing that I've heard,
that they would get into a corner such as this.
And there's a number of digital public libraries
including the Digital Public Library of America,
as well as about a dozen U.S. libraries
that are getting behind this initiative,
And they're allowing some of these print books
to be scanned, turned into eBooks,
and distributed five different ways,
without any compensation or permission.
According to them,
Content Digital Lending
is not intended to act as a substitute
for existing electronic licensing services
offered by publishers.
Indeed, one significant advantage of CDL
is addressing the 20th-Century problem of older books
still under copyright but unlikely to ever be offered
digitally by commercial services.
So essentially what they're saying is,
Oh, it's 10 years old, so there's no likelihood
that anybody's gonna go back and put that into ebook form.
They've pretty much put an expiration date
on some titles that are 10 years old.
So if you've got a book that's 10 years old,
well, good luck to you,
because they've just now deemed it
pretty much dead on arrival
for anything that is for ebook or audio books.
So if you've waited this long, guess what?
They've jumped the gun,
and they're putting out your books this way,
without your permission,
and without any compensation whatsoever.
Even public domain books,
have a shelf life of some sort,
but it's way longer than what you're dealing with,
with a 10 year shelf life,
because public domain books,
they don't become public domain,
until 70 years after the author's death.
That means it's not available to the public to use
and creative comments, until that author
is 70 years removed from their death.
So they're taking books of authors that are alive and well,
(beep) you can look inside their library,
they're using Stephen King's book
and he's live last I knew it.
So what happens now?
I'm gonna discuss that in just a moment,
but before we do get to that very final point
about what happens now. I wanna bring to your attention,
if you are an author and you're looking for a way
to get some accolades and praise,
might I recommend the sixth annual
North Street book prize competition.
It's underway currently right now,
and actually open up to self-published authors only
in about six different categories,
and the nice thing is they have over $12,500 in prizes
for the winners and the grand prize is $5,000.
What would you do with an extra $5,000?
And the beautiful part about this is,
they actually are a recommended competition
by the Alliance of Independent Authors.
Big kudos Obviously,
the deadline for this year is June 30th, 2020.
If you want to go ahead and get more details,
head over to WINNINGWRITERS.COM/DALE
and get your book into the contest as soon as possible.
Lemme know of course, if you win.
So dumpster fire is all a blaze,
this has been going on for the past year,
and you know the funny thing is,
traditional publishing companies don't take too kindly
when you reach into their bank accounts and steal from them.
And that's essentially what's happening is,
actually a number of trade publishing companies,
filed suit on June 1st of 2020.
This concludes the Hachette Book Group,
HarperCollins, penguin Random House, and John Wiley & Sons.
And they've put a lawsuit together,
against the Internet Archive.
And, you know, I certainly hope
that there's some kind of closure to this,
and something like Napster that it goes away,
but also create some type of a change
that helps out authors both traditionally published
and self published to avoid instances like this,
because in reality, it's much like Internet Archive,
is going into a McDonald's,
you know and just walking behind the counter,
and serving themselves,
creating their own burgers and such like that,
and then they're surprised,
when the McDonald's management comes up to them and says,
"Hey, what are you doing?"
And they're going, "Oh no, no, don't sweat it,
I'm just, I'm making a burger for myself,
but you know, I'm only gonna use like this right here,
no I don't want the top of this bun,
I'll take a tomato and some ketchup here,
And it's totally cool,
because it serves the good for everybody."
It doesn't work that way.
We're in a compliance society
and taking from what you're taking from,
is you're just stealing from people
that are hardworking people.
And I've got to tell you,
vast majority of authors out there,
that can barely make it by as it is,
and now you're wanting to reach into their pockets deeper,
and just give freely to everybody,
It just does not work that way.
What exactly do you think about this situation?
Is internet archive completely justified
in allowing that to the open public,
without any kind of permission
or compensation for the authors?
I definitely would love to hear from you
and hey, if you enjoyed this content,
make sure of course, you wanna learn more,
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Hit the subscribe button, ring the bell notification icon
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Plagiarism is running a faul
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