Inside The Anti-Ownership Ebook Economy; Library Journal, August 3, 2023

 Claire Woodcock  , Library Journal; Inside The Anti-Ownership Ebook Economy

"Most libraries don’t own their own ebooks. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to LJ readers, yet it’s a statement that continues to confound elected officials and administrators who get an astounding amount of say in how much money public and academic libraries are allotted.

This is one of the reasons I, along with my coauthors Sarah Lamdan, Michael Weinberg, and Jason Schultz at the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy at New York University (NYU) Law, published our recent report, The Anti-Ownership Ebook Economy: How Publishers and Platforms Have Reshaped the Way We Read in the Digital Age. In nearly 60 pages, this report takes a hard look at how license agreements dictate what consumers—both individual and institutional—get to do with their digital book collections."

Column: Here’s why you can’t ‘own’ your ebooks; Los Angeles Times, December 8, 2022

 MICHAEL HILTZIK, Los Angeles Times; Column: Here’s why you can’t ‘own’ your ebooks

"What’s really happening here is that everyone involved — publishers, online distributors, authors and readers — is trying to come to terms with the capacity of digital technology to overthrow the traditional models of printing, selling and buying readable content. 

Publishers and authors are predictably, and rightly, fearful that they’ll lose out financially; but it’s also quite possible that, properly managed, the technological revolution will make them more money."

Two Russian Nationals Charged with Running Massive E-Book Piracy Website; Department of Justice U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern District of New York, November 16, 2022

Department of Justice

U.S. Attorney’s Office

Eastern District of New York

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

"Two Russian Nationals Charged with Running Massive E-Book Piracy Website

Defendants Operated Z-Library, Which Offered Free Download of Copyrighted Works

Earlier today, in federal court in Brooklyn, an indictment and a complaint were unsealed charging Russian nationals Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova with criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud and money laundering for operating Z-Library, an online e-book piracy website.  The pair was arrested on November 3, 2022 in Cordoba, Argentina at the request of the United States.  At the same time, Z-Library’s network of online domains was also taken offline and seized by the U.S. government, pursuant to a court order that was also unsealed today.

Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Michael J. Driscoll, Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), announced the arrests and charges.

“As alleged, the defendants profited illegally off work they stole, often uploading works within mere hours of publication, and in the process victimized authors, publishers and booksellers,” stated United States Attorney Peace. “This Office is committed to protecting the intellectual property rights that enable creative and artistic expression, and holding individuals accountable for threatening those rights.”

“The defendants are alleged to have operated a website for over a decade whose central purpose was providing stolen intellectual property, in violation of copyright laws.  Intellectual property theft crimes deprive their victims of both ingenuity and hard-earned revenue. The FBI is determined to ensure those willing to steal and profit from the creativity of others are stopped and made to face the consequences in the criminal justice system,” stated FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Driscoll.

As alleged in the indictment and court filings, Z-Library bills itself as “the world’s largest library” and claims to offer more than 11 million e-books for download.  Z-Library, which has been active since approximately 2009, offers e-book files in a variety of file formats, stripped of their copyright protections, and encourages users to upload and download titles.  Many of the e-books offered by Z-Library are protected intellectual property for which authors hold copyrights and publishers hold exclusive distribution rights, and which Z-Library has no right or license to distribute, and which are available elsewhere only with anti-circumvention measures applied. As such, a central purpose of Z-Library is to allow users to download copyrighted books for free in violation of U.S. law.   In addition to its homepage, Z-Library operates as a complex network of approximately 249 interrelated web domains.  As part of this action, those domains were taken offline and seized by the U.S. government.

The charges in the indictment are allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.  

The government’s case was initiated by the Office’s Cyber Crime Task Force.  Assistant United States Attorney Chand Edwards-Balfour, Alexander Mindlin, Antoinette N. Rangel and Kaitlin Farrell are prosecuting the case.  Brian Morris of the Office’s Asset Recovery Section is handling forfeiture matters.

The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs and Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, the FBI’s Legal Attachés abroad and foreign authorities in multiple countries provided critical assistance in this case.  In particular, the Office extends its appreciation to the Argentine authorities for their assistance in the capture of Napolsky and Ermakova.

Multiple organizations representing the victim authors and publishers also provided critical assistance in this case.  The Office extends its particular appreciation to The Authors Guild in New York and The Publishers Association in London for their assistance.  The Office also extends its appreciation to the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance for its assistance in the domain takedown.     

The Defendants:

ANTON NAPOLSKY
Age:  33
St. Petersburg, Russia

VALERIIA ERMAKOVA
Age:  27
St. Petersburg, Russia

E.D.N.Y. Docket No. 22-CR-525 (NM)

Attachment(s): 

Download Indictment"

After COVID boom, ebook aggregators face licensing questions from Congress; The Verge, November 18, 2021

Makena Kelly, The Verge ; After COVID boom, ebook aggregators face licensing questions from Congress

"“Many libraries face financial and practical challenges in making e-books available to their patrons, which jeopardizes their ability to fulfill their mission,” the lawmakers wrote. “It is our understanding that these difficulties arise because e-books are typically offered under more expensive and limited licensing agreements, unlike print books that libraries can typically purchase, own, and lend on their own terms.”

In September, Wyden and Eshoo first questioned publishers over the terms they set for ebook licensing. The COVID-19 pandemic forced many public libraries to shut down in-person service, and people began using online services like Overdrive’s Libby app to borrow digital books in lieu of physical copies. “Ensuring that libraries can offer an array of resources, including e-books, is essential to promoting equity in education and access to information,” the lawmakers wrote to Penguin Random House earlier this year."

Want to borrow that e-book from the library? Sorry, Amazon won’t let you.; The Washington Post, March 10, 2021

 Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Washington Post ; Want to borrow that e-book from the library? Sorry, Amazon won’t let you.

 

"Many Americans now recognize that a few tech companies increasingly dominate our lives. But it’s sometimes hard to put your finger on exactly why that’s a problem. The case of the vanishing e-books shows how tech monopolies hurt us not just as consumers, but as citizens...

 

Librarians have been no match for the beast. When authors sign up with a publisher, it decides how to distribute their work... 

 

In testimony to Congress, the American Library Association called digital sales bans like Amazon’s “the worst obstacle for libraries” moving into the 21st century. Lawmakers in New York and Rhode Island have proposed bills that would require Amazon (and everybody else) to sell e-books to libraries with reasonable terms. This week, the Maryland House of Delegates unanimously approved its own library e-book bill, which now heads back to the state Senate... 

 

Libraries losing e-books matters because they serve us as citizens. It’s easy to take for granted, but libraries are among America’s great equalizers."

No, the Internet Has Not Killed the Printed Book. Most People Still Prefer Them.; New York Times, 9/2/16

Daniel Victor, New York Times; No, the Internet Has Not Killed the Printed Book. Most People Still Prefer Them. :

"Even with Facebook, Netflix and other digital distractions increasingly vying for time, Americans’ appetite for reading books — the ones you actually hold in your hands — has not slowed in recent years, according to a study by the Pew Research Center...

Lee Rainie, the director of internet, science and technology research for Pew Research, said the study demonstrated the staying power of physical books.

“I think if you looked back a decade ago, certainly five or six years ago when ebooks were taking off, there were folks who thought the days of the printed book were numbered, and it’s just not so in our data,” he said."

Rousting the Book Pirates From Google; New York Times, 8/29/15

David Segal, New York Times; Rousting the Book Pirates From Google:

"Q. Book piracy has taken a new form. Someone scanned my entire e-book, “Graphic Design Solutions,” created a new cover and is selling it on Google Play. It is the same e-book, verbatim, and inside are the same images, same layout and the same interviews. The only difference is the name of the author. A person named Jazmin Bonilla gets the credit.

My royalties have plummeted, which affects my ability to donate to scholarships for my university students. Both my publisher and I have notified Google, but no action has been taken. Maybe the company will listen to you.

ROBIN LANDA, NEW YORK

A. The Haggler’s first thought: Find Jazmin Bonilla. Call and ask, “Is it a spectacular coincidence that you wrote the exact same book as Robin Landa? Or, are you a fiction invented by an e-book pirate? And if you are a fiction, why do you have a phone?”

Actually, his first thought was that if e-book piracy were a serious issue on Google Play, there would be other examples. There are many. A quick search led the Haggler to a site called The Digital Reader. There, the writer Nate Hoffelder detailed “rampant” e-book piracy, as he put it in a May post, in Google Play. He found that one shop was selling more than 100 pirated versions of best sellers by authors like Malcolm Gladwell, Sidney Sheldon and Ellery Queen.

They cost $2.11 each. But even these oddly priced bargains were kind of a rip-off. Mr. Hoffelder downloaded a few and found they “were clearly inferior copies with missing formatting, generic or outdated covers, and other problems,” he wrote."

Imagining a Swap Meet for E-Books and Music; New York Times, 3/7/13

David Streitfeld, New York Times; Imagining a Swap Meet for E-Books and Music: "On Thursday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office published Apple’s application for its own patent for a digital marketplace. Apple’s application outlines a system for allowing users to sell or give e-books, music, movies and software to each other by transferring files rather than reproducing them. Such a system would permit only one user to have a copy at any one time. Meanwhile, a New York court is poised to rule on whether a start-up that created a way for people to buy and sell iTunes songs is breaking copyright law. A victory for the company would mean that consumers would not need either Apple’s or Amazon’s exchange to resell their digital items... Libraries, though, welcome the possibility of loosened restrictions on digital material. “The vast majority of e-books are not available in your public library,” said Brandon Butler, director of public policy initiatives for the Association of Research Libraries. “That’s pathetic.” He said that 60 percent of what the association’s 125 members buy was electronic, which meant sharp restrictions on use."

The Wrong War Over eBooks: Publishers Vs. Libraries; Forbes.com, 12/11/12

David Vinjamuri, Forbes.com; The Wrong War Over eBooks: Publishers Vs. Libraries: "In a society where bookstores disappear every day while the number of books available to read has swelled exponentially, libraries will play an ever more crucial role. Even more than in the past, we will depend on libraries of the future to help discover and curate great books...For publishers, the library will be the showroom of the future. Ensuring that libraries have continuing access to published titles gives them a chance to meet this role, but an important obstacle remains: how eBooks are obtained by libraries. This column is the first in a two-part series about libraries and their role in the marketing and readership of books...The solution to the current pricing problem lies in understanding that the argument publishers and libraries are having is the wrong argument."

The Bruce Willis dilemma? In the digital era, we own nothing; Guardian, 9/3/12

Dan Gillmor, Guardian; The Bruce Willis dilemma? In the digital era, we own nothing: "The entertainment industry is rapidly steering us all toward a stream-from-the-cloud model, in which we buy the right to watch or listen or read, but where the rights are limited in time and device. This pay-per-view world would make even Willis's dilemma moot, because he'd never own anything – which makes it the most dangerous model of all for users of digital content. I use some cloud services, but I buy and back up (legally or not) the things I want to keep. Since the publishers, record labels and movie studios are unlikely to permit sanity in the digital marketplace, and given lawmakers' propensity for following the industry's dictates in passing increasingly draconian copyright laws, it's up to the rest of us to come up with solutions."

Survey Shows Growing Strength of E-Books; New York Times, 7/18/12

Julie Bosman, New York Times; Survey Shows Growing Strength of E-Books:

"E-books continued their surge in 2011, surpassing hardcover books and paperbacks to become the dominant format for adult fiction last year, according to a new survey of publishers released Wednesday...

Over all, digital books kept up their explosive growth in 2011, the survey confirmed. Publishers’ net revenue from sales of e-books more than doubled last year, reaching $2.07 billion, up from $869 million in 2010. E-books accounted for 15.5 percent of publishers’ revenues."

E-Books, Shmee-Books: Readers Return to the Stores; New York Times, 12/12/11

Julie Bosman, New York Times; E-Books, Shmee-Books: Readers Return to the Stores:

"Facing economic gloom and competition from cheap e-readers, brick-and-mortar booksellers entered this holiday season with the humblest of expectations.

But the initial weeks of Christmas shopping, a boom time for the book business, have yielded surprisingly strong sales for many bookstores, which report that they have been lifted by an unusually vibrant selection; customers who seem undeterred by pricier titles; and new business from people who used to shop at Borders, the chain that went out of business this year."

Looking at the cloud from both sides now; Los Angeles Times, 12/28/10

Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times; Looking at the cloud from both sides now:

"I recognize that one can't "own" a Kindle book any more than one can own a cat. One can only "license" the book — on terms that are part of a 2,000-word user agreement. The agreement allows a licensee to keep a permanent copy of the book and view it an unlimited number of times. But it also encrusts every book with restrictions on what else can be done with it, including how many reading devices it can be installed on at a time.

These restrictions only proliferate. In a famous example, the terms of use of a digital version of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" included: "This book cannot be read aloud." The digital publisher also tried to limit how many pages of the text a user could print in a given time period. The author's copyright on "Alice," it should be noted, expired in 1907."

Pat Conroy and the e-book future; Associated Press via YahooNews.com, 8/10/10

Hillel Italie, Associated Press via YahooNews.com; Pat Conroy and the e-book future:

"Conroy is a good example of the divided state of electronic books. With standard contracts now including digital rights, e-editions of his recent works — from "South of Broad" to a memoir out this fall, "My Reading Life" — are handled by Random House, Inc., which also releases the bound versions. Meanwhile, rights to his older books have shifted among outside companies."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100810/ap_en_ot/us_books_pat_conroy