Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

Since 18th century and pre-Constitution America, libraries have been a public space, a central repository where books could be borrowed, read and returned—a long defended democratic ideal of the public library. The nonprofit Internet Archive, founded in 1996, was built to be both the library of the Internet and the library on the Internet—a grand repository of knowledge. Its mission: universal access to all knowledge through the networked reach of the Internet, which allows the Archive to serve as a loc­­­al library for users with a browser anywhere. During the global COVID pandemic closures of public libraries and schools in 2020, the Internet Archive created the  National Emergency Library  to provide digitized books to students and the public. This changed the one book/one person model of lending. Subsequent lawsuits and responses have led to current federal court cases, led by major publishers, contending that controlled digital lending means “willful mass copyright infringement.” Countersuits filed and c