Raymond Carver signing books, New York City, 1988
Does an author have the right to prevent people from copying their book(s) for free? Should authors have this right? Does it matter?
Does Copyright Matter? by Tim Parks | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books.
Anniversary of the opening of the Panama Canal
August 15, 1914
After 10 years of construction and much multi-nation diplomacy, the Panama Canal opened for operation which connected the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Come join us at the Todd Library and check out books concerning the history of this famous endeavor of man against nature.
The Internet Archive has partnered with BitTorrent to publish over 1,000,000 of its books, music and movies as legal torrents.
From the Internet Archive’s blog:
BitTorrent is the now fastest way to download items from the Archive, because the BitTorrent client downloads simultaneously from two different Archive servers located in two different datacenters, and from other Archive users who have downloaded these Torrents already. The distributed nature of BitTorrent swarms and their ability to retrieve Torrents from local peers may be of particular value to patrons with slower access to the Archive, for example those outside the United States or inside institutions with slow connections.
Internet Archive adds 1,000,000 legal files to the world’s store of BitTorrents – Boing Boing.
Roxane Gay on writers of color:
We are many. We are everywhere. The world of letters is far more diverse than the publishing climate would lead us to believe. You only need to open your eyes and open your mind.
Did you know that Google Books, Web Archive and BBC are the three most commonly used sources on the English Wikipedia?