Industry & Advocacy News
April 9, 2020
In a letter to Internet Archive’s Brewster Kahle, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), chair of the Senate Intellectual Property Subcommittee, criticized Internet Archive for taking the law into its own hands and unilaterally declaring a national “emergency” to justify giving away others’ books for free. Echoing the Authors Guild’s concerns about the so-called “National Emergency Library,” Mr. Tillis wrote that he was “not aware of any measure under copyright law that permits a user of copyrighted works to unilaterally create an emergency copyright act.” He stated that he was “deeply concerned” that Internet Archive had put thousands of copyrighted books online without restrictions for free, and that in doing so, it was “operating outside of the boundaries of the copyright law.” Mr. Tillis ended his letter with a quote from AG President Doug Preston’s New York Times op-ed to draw attention to the difficulties facing authors during this crisis.
You can read the letter in its entirety here.
