The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) joined with partner organizations, the U.S. Authors Guild (AG), the U.K.’s Society of Authors (SoA), and the International Authors Forum (IAF) in strongly condemning the unauthorized lending of books scanned for the website Internet Archive. This interesting news came to us from The Digital Reader in their article, “The Writers’ Union of Canada Condemns The Internet Archive’s Pirate Site, “The Open Library”.”
Believing the Open Library to contain unauthorized scans and loans, the groups are strongly against this type of access. Web users around the world are able to access and borrow scanned books from the Open Library site. All that is required is a free membership in the online Open Library. This is seen as incalculable harm to the e-book market, and to genuine library sales.
There are others who see it as a solution to the problem of mid-20th century books that are out of print and may never be re-released.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
