Chicago Public Library Debuts Initiative Offering Ebooks to the City’s Visitors During Special Events; Library Journal, August 23, 2024

Matt Enis, Library Journal; Chicago Public Library Debuts Initiative Offering Ebooks to the City’s Visitors During Special Events

"“Access to knowledge and information is the foundation of a thriving, equitable, and democratic city,” Mayor Johnson said in an announcement. “Thanks to Chicago Public Library and our dedicated librarians, we’re making this powerful initiative possible, ensuring that everyone in Chicago has the opportunity to learn, grow, and connect through universal access to literature.”"

The Dream Was Universal Access to Knowledge. The Result Was a Fiasco.; The New York Times, August 13, 2023

 David Streitfeld, The New York Times; The Dream Was Universal Access to Knowledge. The Result Was a Fiasco.

"In the middle of this mess are writers, whose job is to produce the books that contain much of the world’s best information. Despite that central role, they are largely powerless — a familiar position for most writers. Emotions are running high...

It’s rarely this nasty, but free vs. expensive is a struggle that plays out continuously against all forms of media and entertainment. Neither side has the upper hand forever, even if it sometimes seems it might.

“The more information is free, the more opportunities for it to be collected, refined, packaged and made expensive,” said Stewart Brand, the technology visionary who first developed the formulation. “The more it is expensive, the more workarounds to make it free. It’s a paradox. Each side makes the other true.”"

Internet Archive to Publishers: Drop ‘Needless’ Copyright Lawsuit and Work with Us; Publishers Weekly, July 23, 2020

Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly; Internet Archive to Publishers: Drop ‘Needless’ Copyright Lawsuit and Work with Us

"During a 30-minute Zoom press conference on July 22, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle urged the four major publishers suing over the organization’s book scanning efforts to consider settling the dispute in the boardroom rather than the courtroom.

“Librarians, publishers, authors, all of us should be working together during this pandemic to help teachers, parents, and especially students,” Kahle implored. “I call on the executives of Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House to come together with us to help solve the challenging problems of access to knowledge during this pandemic, and to please drop this needless lawsuit.”

Kahle’s remarks came as part of a panel, which featured a range of speakers explaining and defending the practice of Controlled Digital Lending (CDL), the legal theory under which the Internet Archive has scanned and is making available for borrowing a library of some 1.4 million mostly 20th century books."