Comment on Internet Archive forced to remove 500,000 books after publishers’ court win
Akrenion@programming.dev 1 week agoThey became community hubs that offer more than just books. Even ebooks albeit that being weirdly capped by publishers as well.
They do much more than public opinion would make you believe.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
True, but that doesn’t change the fact that specific books can be hard to find. Libraries are great, but they don’t solve the problem IA solves.
Akrenion@programming.dev 1 week ago
We got a nationwide network of specific books. You can order books to your local library if you are a little patient. They might not have a lot of selfpublished books but that is a problem of scale and negotiating power of publishers.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
That’s pretty sweet! I grew up in an area with a county system, so you could get books from anywhere in the system (a dozen or so citires serving >1M people).
My current library is just our city, but I can go to a few other cities to check out books, but I can’t use holds there unless I pay $2-3/item to have it delivered to my library. We have a statewide ebook/audiobook network (serves 3-4M people), so that’s nice.