This is addressed within the press release.

IA is claiming that they're mostly making available copies of out-of-print books that are hard to find.

But that's not true. Within their "Emergency Library," there are quite a few books that were published relatively recently.

For instance, I'm an author of several books. I found one of my books, from 2014, which is still in print, on their list.

How many views does your book have on IA. Very curious to know if it's actually impacting your sales.

I don't think it's affecting sales of my book, but that's beside the point.

Copyright is about more than sales. It's about the author having the right to determine who gets to distribute and profit from their creative works.

That's why you'll hear about authors and their estates turning down seemingly lucrative deals, such as movie adaptations. If the copyright holder doesn't want their work to be used in that way, they get to say no.

And the Internet Archive's "we presume you've said yes unless you opt out" system flies in the face of those protections.

> Copyright is about more than sales. It's about the author having the right to determine who gets to distribute and profit from their creative works.

This is not sound justification for the existence of copyright. You're asserting that an author is deserved a special personal benefit even if that benefit hurts the general public. What other worker is afforded similar protection?

In the case of the Internet Archive, they've taken a book you've already made money on, and are lending it to one person at a time. And if it's not affecting your sales, you are preventing other people from benefiting from the book for no good reason.

I understand the appeal of controlling your writing, but I don't think we as a society should be giving individual authors an unbridled license to decide how we share and experience works.

Furthermore, the legal (and historical) basis for copyright in the United States is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Copyright is a special monopoly, given only to promote the general welfare.

This is not to say I'm against any use of copyright in principle. But the purpose of granting such a monopoly has to be to provide incentives to create writings are art, not to protect a purported natural right. I hope my message doesn't come off as disparaging to your desire to support yourself or the importance of creative work.

> even if that benefit hurts the general public

Only to the extent that the general public doesn't, for some period of time, get to do whatever they want with a creative work that someone else invested time, effort (and in some cases talent) to make. The general public is no worse off during the copyright term than if the copyright holder had never created the work.

> What other worker is afforded similar protection?

Anyone who owns a patent or a trademark, or really any intellectual property at all.

> In the case of the Internet Archive, they've taken a book you've already made money on, and are lending it to one person at a time.

What you are describing is called Controlled Digital Lending https://controlleddigitallending.org. Under this system of lending, libraries treat digital copies as if they are physical copies -- meaning they can only be lent out to one person at a time. If you purchase or acquire 5 physical books and then digitize them, then under CDL you can lend out 5 digital copies at a time.

But that is NOT what the Internet Archive is doing under its emergency library program. Instead, it is acquiring a single copy of a book and then lending it out simultaneously to an unlimited number of users. It would be as if a public library purchased one copy of a physical book and then made unlimited photocopies of the book and lent those photocopies out simultaneously.

The person I replied to said they didn't affect his sales.

I don't "assume" it, but do you have any evidence to the contrary?