The Dream Was Universal Access to Knowledge. The Result Was a Fiasco.

The latest battle between free and expensive information started with a charitable gesture. Brewster Kahle runs the Internet Archive, a venerable tech nonprofit. In that miserable, frightening first month of the Covid pandemic, he had the notion to try to help students, researchers and general readers. He unveiled the National Emergency Library, a vast trove of digital books mostly unavailable elsewhere, and made access to it a breeze. This good deed backfired spectacularly. Four publishers claimed “willful mass copyright infringement” and sued. They won. On Aug 11, the publishers said that they had negotiated a deal with the archive that would remove all their copyright books from the site. The archive had a muted response, saying that it expected there would be changes to its lending program but that their full scope was unknown. There is also an undisclosed financial payment if the archive loses on appeal. The case has generated a great deal of bitterness, and the deal, which requires court approval, is likely to generate more. Each side accuses the other of bad faith, and calls its opponents well-funded zealots who won’t listen to reason and want to destroy the culture. In the middle of this mess are writers, whose job is to produce the books that contain much of the world’s best information. Despite that central role, they are largely powerless.