Tradpub vs libraries part 4

For context, here are parts 1, 2, and 3.

A practical tidbit from Brian Niemeier's Don't Give Money to People Who Hate You is to self-quarantine from the rat race of fandom, nostalgia, and corporate-owned IPs. You have other options. Partake of independently produced art from passionate, unaffiliated creators who don't have an axe to grind. Partake also of the unadulturated classics of the past, much of which are available in the public domain at sites like the Internet Archive.

The entertainment industry rightly sees the public domain as a threat to its existence, which is why you've seen the Internet Archive in the news so much the last few months. It's under attack.

MacMillan, currently being shopped to buyers by the ailing ViacomCBS, may have backed off its threats against the Internet Archive's emergency library in March, but that didn't stop Hachette, Harper Collins, Penguin/Random House, and Wiley from suing to get it shut down. They scored a small victory. The emergency library was set to expire at the end of June, but under pressure from the publishers the Internet Archive shut it down 2 weeks early.

But the real ramifications of the publishers' lawsuit are pending.

The complaint attacks the concept of any library owning and lending digital books, challenging the very idea of what a library is in the digital world. This lawsuit stands in contrast to some academic publishers who initially expressed concerns about the NEL, but ultimately decided to work with us to provide access to people cut off from their physical schools and libraries. We hope that similar cooperation is possible here, and the publishers call off their costly assault.

The first 6 months of 2020 have produced two Black Swan events that exposed the expendability of modern entertainment and the entertainment industry's antagonistic sociocultural alignment. Expect their attacks on alternative media to increase as they stare down the barrel of consecutive years of negative growth.

I'll say it again, you have options. Visit the sites of the writers in the blog roll. Browse indie creators over at IndieGen.xyz. If you like hard sci-fi, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.