Recently-published books as are not in public-domain used to be available on the Internet Archive. The publisher Hachette - whose name I'd first heard, in a tiff with Amazon - has taken 500k of these books off this platform.
You can read the Archive's case, on the petition they want us to sign. I'm interested in #2; my underlines:
Equity and Accessibility: The Internet Archive democratizes access to knowledge. By restricting access to these books, you have made it harder for the most vulnerable people in our society to read and learn. Not everyone has a local library, can afford to travel to one, feels safe accessing the information they need in public, or can ignore the potentially life-altering repercussions when tech platforms collect data on their reading habits. Your removal of more than 500,000 books from public access is a serious blow to lower-income families, people with disabilities, rural communities, and LGBTQ+ people, among many others.
It is a "tell" that this petition is on change.org; which has an editorial bias of its own. Would it host a petition on Hachette's side?
I suspect that "tech platforms" will, exactly, be "collecting data" anyway - where in service to Equity, in alliance with the Internet Archive. If you trust the Internet Archive otherwise, good luck to you. One might observe that the Internet Archive's position is to facilitate the next Audrey Hales. That way, such atomised souls lacking supervision would be finding this stuff on their 'phones.
Since change.org and Internet Archive won't tell you, I will: Hachette would say it is protecting publishers and authors. As well as, you know... kids.
In sum, I won't join this latest change.org SIGN NOW OR YOU'RE WEIRD! bandwagon. Furthermore, this blog and any other online content associated had not, up to now, taken a side on Hachette's disputes; now I have to assume Hachette are the Good Guys, unless and until I'm shown otherwise.
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