International Authors Forum (IAF) member New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) has called for action to request support both for the New Zealand publishing industry and for maintaining the integrity of the international copyright framework that underpins publishing worldwide.
The National Library of New Zealand has signed a Donation Agreement which will see over 600,000 books from the library’s Overseas Published Collection (OPC) exported to a private organisation in the US known as Internet Archive. The purpose of the Donation Agreement is to enable the digitisation of the 600,000+ books by Internet Archive. The digitised books will then be made available for free download from the Internet Archive website to readers throughout the world. Under the terms of the agreement Internet Archive pays for the shipping and the digitisation.
In recent years leading authors from New Zealand, including Catherine Chidgey, Keri Hulme, Elizabeth Knox and Damien Wilkins, have had their books illegally distributed online for free by the Internet Archive, forcing publishers and authors to repeatedly spend time and money taking enforcement action.
You can read the full press release here.
IAF supports the call to action by NZSA and calls for its membership and colleagues to support the request. IAF urges its members to reach out to authors to ensure they are aware of the possibility that their works are being used in this way, and to offer advice on how authors can have their works taken off this website. NZSA and Publishers Association of New Zealand (PANZ) ask authors and publishers with in-copyright books and imprints in the OPC to contact the National Library (rachel.esson@dia.govt.nz) to insist these titles are removed and to lodge an objection against this intended copyright infringement.
Please contact athanasios.venitsanopoulos@internationalauthors.org to express your interest in supporting their request.