From: Maria Bustillos <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2024 12:01:27 +0000

SO well said, Jim. What a spectacular note, thank you.

Some positive steps for the 'civilizational strategy' you propose might include
  • publicly-funded repositories for born-digital works written (and curated) by human beings, for permanent purchase by libraries
  • clearly codified terms for the purchase (and reversion!) of rights for publishers, distributors and rights holders, so people understand what they're signing
  • a rock-solid means of ensuring that current library rights (including the right of first sale) are preserved for digital works
I hope there may yet be a way to rescue much of the 20th century from oblivion. For now, there are a lot of writers out here who, like me, are way more interested in cultural posterity and the future of libraries than we are in maximizing our own royalties. My colleagues and I are working right now to ensure that authors and other rights holders like ourselves will be able to *choose* to sell permanent copies of our digital works to libraries, where they can be loaned out to patrons in the traditional way.

best to all

Maria

Founding editor, Flaming Hydra, Popula and The Brick House
on Mastodon @[log in to unmask]
mariabustillos.com
she/her/hers

On Tue, Mar 19, 2024 at 3:05 AM LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2024 17:24:14 -0700

The case of Hachette et al. v. Internet Archive lumbers on.  It is mostly impossible to comment on this case without getting into the partisan weeds, and not much point to doing that.  This is the kind of case that will have its life independent of what the enlightened general reader thinks or expects and will end where it ends.  For the latest:


But I will allow myself what feels like a non-partisan set of observations.  

1.  The future of intellectual property is bound up with accessibility, use, and reuse.  A book or article that is not accessible in the space of intelligent consumption -- a digitally dominated space -- will disappear forever, like an ancient poet who never managed to get copied into the newfangled codex technology and lies today in the sands of Egypt hoping, for the most part in vain, that some archaeologist may yet dig up his papyrus roll.  When (not if) humankind outsources much of what we now call reading to bots and agents and other Ai interventions yet unborn, the inaccessible intellectual object will simply no longer have a meaningful existence.  

2.  It is equally unmistakable that we do not yet have a civilizational strategy for rescuing much of our heritage from inaccessibility.  A book that has not entered the public domain depends utterly for its future on the wishes of the owner of its copyright and the owner's ability to find a medium of dissemination that suits their needs.  Many such books are trapped in the estates of dead authors who have no resourceful heirs to ensure propagation of the work.  That way lies oblivion.

How shall we rescue our past, that is ourselves, from this dilemma?  Controlled digital lending has been introduced as one hypothetical path forward, with many advantages and of course disadvantages.  If the only reasonable reaction to its strategy is outraged suppressive litigation, then the only reasonable question to ask of the outraged parties is:  so what do we do instead?  How do we rescue the past?  I may have missed something, of course, but I've not yet heard a coherent and realistic answer to that question.

Jim O'Donnell
ASU