Call to Action: Share Your Feedback on Controlled Digital Lending
Authors Alliance is gathering feedback from authors about Controlled Digital Lending ("CDL") in order to strengthen our advocacy work and better represent your
interests.
Several of our members have already shared their views on how CDL helps authors and researchers, and we are now asking you to add your voice by completing
this short form.
Under the CDL digitize-and-lend model, libraries make digital copies of scanned books from their collections available to patrons, subject
to limitations. Like physical books, the scanned copies are loaned to one person at a time and are subject to limited check-out periods. In addition, the hard copy is not available for lending while the digital copy is checked out, and vice versa. In short,
a library can only circulate the number of copies that it owned before digitization. Here's
a helpful video explainer of how CDL works.
Authors Alliance supports CDL because the practice is not only supported by
a good faith interpretation of fair use, it helps authors share their creations with readers, promotes the ongoing progress of knowledge, and advances the public good—objectives that are consistent with the mission of Authors Alliance and the purposes of
copyright law. CDL is particularly beneficial for authors whose works are out-of-print or otherwise commercially unavailable: In the absence of digitizing and lending these books, many would simply be inaccessible to readers. The CDL model is a boon to the
authors of these and other books, allowing them to find new audiences online.
In June 2020, a group of
commercial publishers filed suit against the Internet Archive, arguing in part that making electronic copies of books available using CDL through Open Library constitutes copyright infringement. Authors Alliance supports CDL and believes the attempt to
challenge it in the courts is without merit. We look forward to hearing
your thoughts.
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