Writers union joins protest against ‘controlled digital lending’
The National Writers Union (NWU) in the US has joined a number of authors’ associations in condemning the practice of ‘controlled digital lending’ (CDL), reports Publishers Weekly.
The NWU has released a statement titled ‘An appeal to readers and librarians from the victims of CDL’, which describes CDL—whereby a library or other organisation scans a print book and makes it available for loan as an ebook, which is then copied for each reader—as ‘a flagrant violation of copyright and authors’ rights’.
‘Well-meaning librarians, archivists, and readers, who don’t intend to deprive authors of their livelihoods, are being misled by false claims from proponents of CDL,’ writes the NWU. ‘We appeal for a dialogue among writers, authors, publishers, and librarians on how to enable and create the digital libraries we all want, in ways that fully respect authors’ rights.’
The appeal is co-signed by 36 author and publisher organisations from around the world.
As previously reported by Books+Publishing, the Society of Authors in the UK and the Authors Guild in the US have demanded that the Internet Archive’s Open Library stops lending scanned books under the ‘faulty legal argument’ of CDL.
Tags: Controlled digital lendingInternet ArchiveNational Writers UnionOpen Library
Category: Library news International
