Four publishers submitted treatment at the Internet Archive, and the agency ended the National Library Emergency program earlier than planned, the agency said in a blog post.
Το πρόγραμμα “έκτακτης ανάγκης” ξεκίνησε τον Μάρτιο, παρέχοντας δωρεάν πρόσβαση σε 1,4 millions βιβλία σε άτομα που δεν μπορούσαν να φτάσουν στις αίθουσες διδασκαλίας ή τις βιβλιοθήκες κατά τη διάρκεια της πανδημίας του κοροναϊού και του lockdown που ακολούθησε.
The Extraordinary Library is part of the Open Libraries initiative, in which the Internet Archive scans library books, allowing digital "check-out" through a waiting list. However, the Emergency Library stopped using the waiting lists and made the scanned books available directly to the public.
The intention was to keep it in mode the Emergency Library until June 30. But on June 1, publishers Hachette, Penguin Random House, Wiley and HarperCollins sued the Internet Archive for copyright infringement. The Authors Guild Reported in March that the Internet Archive was “acting as website piracy" which infringes the rights of authors for their works.
"We stopped our program because last Monday, four publishers chose to sue the Internet Archive during a global pandemic," said Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive.
The Internet Archive does not completely stop the online lending program, but rather returns to the controlled digital lending model with the lists it used before, according to the post in the blog.
It was not known until Sunday whether the closure of the Emergency Library would force publishers to terminate the lawsuit.
