Yesterday, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul vetoed A5837, the eBook lending bill, which is almost identical to bills in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maryland. The Maryland law, set to take effect on the first of the new year, triggered litigation by the American Association of Publishers (AAP), primarily on the basis that these bills are unconstitutional, preempted by federal ...
During a recent scan of the Authors Guild discussion boards, where I look for copyright related comments, I noticed a couple of authors mentioning how dismayed they were to hear the NPR show 1A host a one-sided conversation about the Internet Archive being sued by several major publishers. The program, which aired on December 7, hosted Internet Archive founder Brewster ...
Recently, the New York and Maryland state legislatures passed nearly identical eBook licensing bills (and Rhode Island had a sister bill in the works) responding to complaints of inequity by various library associations. Couched in the rhetoric of seeking “reasonable terms” on behalf of readers, and claiming to be neither anti-publisher nor anti-author, what the libraries have in fact advocated ...
