Free Access to Copyrighted e-Books

Starting today, the non-profit digital library Internet Archive will give the public access to over a million public domain books and thousands of contemporary copyrighted e-books. Copyright questions abound. “To read the books, borrowers around the world can download and read them for free on computers or e-reading gadgets. Software renders the books inaccessible once the loan period ends. Two-thirds of American libraries offered e-book loans in 2009…The Internet Archive project, dubbed Openlibrary.org, goes a step further by opening up some access to the sorts of books that may have otherwise gathered dust on library shelves—mainly those published in the past 90 years, but of less popular interest.”