Hello,

The internet archive has a collection of opensource books and papers on Physics:
https://archive.org/search.php?quer...iatype:"texts"&and[]=languageSorter:"English"

Bertus

 

What happened to opensource books? No longer available?

 

What happened to opensource books? No longer available?

What do you mean by "opensource books"? There are lots of books that are open source. The link @bertus provided back in 2019 still works.

 

What do you mean by "opensource books"? There are lots of books that are open source. The link @bertus provided back in 2019 still works.

I tried to open a book that i was reading and it will not open.

 

I tried to open a book that i was reading and it will not open.

the link works, but click on a book and it no longer opens. Message says ask publishers to release 500,000 books. ??

 

Hello,

It looks the preview does not work for many books.
It seems you can still download the pdf version when you scroll down the page.

Bertus

 

the link works, but click on a book and it no longer opens. Message says ask publishers to release 500,000 books. ??

Ah, I see what you are saying. It appears that there is a lawsuit (Hatchette v. Internet Archive) that has forced this. I haven't followed the lawsuit, so I don't know much about it. Nor do I know much about how the Internet Archive operated before the lawsuit. From what I understand of how they obtain their digital lending versions, there are some real issues.

If I buy a physical book, I can lend it to anyone I want and this is perfectly legal. This is how physical libraries work and they typically pay significantly less than retail price for physical books (and often for sturdier library-grade editions, too) and can lend out that book indefinitely without restrictions, because they own it. What they cannot do is make a copy of it and make that copy available to the public. They can make a copy for preservation, or to make it searchable, or to make it accessible to people that have a disability related to using printed matter. It is currently up for debate whether a library can lend a digital copy of a book they own and have digitized on a one-at-a-time lending model using digital controls. This seems to be at the heart of the situation with the Internet Archive's legal battle.

It's probably important to note that the price that a library pays for a digital book that they are authorized to loan to the public is generally considerably higher than the price you and I would pay for that same book for personal use. This is not a new thing. Back in the days of everyone, including grocery stores, renting out VHS tapes I had a dog that destroyed one and I had to replace it. I had assumed that this meant I would have to pay the store what I would normally have paid to buy the tape myself. Nope, it was $80 (back in the 1990 time frame, that's $200 today) because they had to replace it with a copy that was licensed for rental purposes.

 

Ah, I see what you are saying. It appears that there is a lawsuit (Hatchette v. Internet Archive) that has forced this. I haven't followed the lawsuit, so I don't know much about it. Nor do I know much about how the Internet Archive operated before the lawsuit. From what I understand of how they obtain their digital lending versions, there are some real issues.

If I buy a physical book, I can lend it to anyone I want and this is perfectly legal. This is how physical libraries work and they typically pay significantly less than retail price for physical books (and often for sturdier library-grade editions, too) and can lend out that book indefinitely without restrictions, because they own it. What they cannot do is make a copy of it and make that copy available to the public. They can make a copy for preservation, or to make it searchable, or to make it accessible to people that have a disability related to using printed matter. It is currently up for debate whether a library can lend a digital copy of a book they own and have digitized on a one-at-a-time lending model using digital controls. This seems to be at the heart of the situation with the Internet Archive's legal battle.

It's probably important to note that the price that a library pays for a digital book that they are authorized to loan to the public is generally considerably higher than the price you and I would pay for that same book for personal use. This is not a new thing. Back in the days of everyone, including grocery stores, renting out VHS tapes I had a dog that destroyed one and I had to replace it. I had assumed that this meant I would have to pay the store what I would normally have paid to buy the tape myself. Nope, it was $80 (back in the 1990 time frame, that's $200 today) because they had to replace it with a copy that was licensed for rental purposes.

The resource is working today, so Maby they reached an agreement.