Tag: lawsuit

The fungibility of books

Posted on by jessamyn
two shots of a woman reading books in a library stacks aisle with her mask on, In oe of the shots she is looking at the book, in another she is looking at the camera
COVID-19 safety with mask, gloves by Michael Neubert. Public domain.

I’m on a mailing list where we discuss book issues. There are authors, publishers, industry people, and librarians on this list. Recently we’ve been discussing the Internet Archive’s ongoing legal dispute with the AAP (Association of American Publishers). If you recall the Archive made many copyrighted books available on their website via the National Emergency Library (NEL) during COVID. Publishers did not appreciate this and sued them. There has been a lot of paperwork and blog posts going back and forth. Most recently the Archive requested “comps” or sales data for not only the 127 books that the Archive made available that are the core of this suit, but also similar books to get an idea of what sort of market effect the NEL had on these publishers. The publishers pushed back on this claiming “… since books are not fungible widgets [the request] rests on a false premise…. There is no such thing as a ‘comparable book’—even if ‘comparable’ is defined as some undefined period of sales data. Should Catcher in the Rye have similar sales to a bestselling cookbook, no one could plausibly contend the two works were ‘comparable.” I decided to push back a little on this idea, from a librarian perspective and talk about whether books are fungible….

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what does it mean to call OCLC a monopoly?

Posted on by jessamyn

Karen Coyle has a new blog post detailing what Sky River’s specific allegations against OCLC are.

[O]ne could look on WorldCat as a shared community resource, not the property of OCLC. In fact, OCLC uses this kind of argument in its record use policy, but somehow leads to the conclusion that WorldCat should not be used to foster non-OCLC library services. It seems easy to make the opposite argument, which would be that WorldCat could be the basis for a wide range of services that would benefit libraries, even if they do not come from OCLC.

EFF takes on Google Books privacy issues

Posted on by jessamyn

Normally I’m not much of a joiner, but… “EFF is gathering a group of authors (or their heirs or assigns) who are concerned about the Google Book Search settlement and its effect on the privacy and anonymity of readers. This page provides basic information for authors and publishers who are considering whether to join our group.”

You can join too, if you’d like.

oh Library of Congress, I am sorry you are not leading the way

Posted on by jessamyn

Erica says it better than I can — regarding the discrimination lawsuit the Library of Congress lost because it rescinded a job offer from a hired applicant who disclosed that he was transitioning into becoming a woman — “Hey, Library of Congress. Cut that shit out.” Thanks to the wonders of YouTube you can hear Diane Schroer herself talking about transgender discrimination.