Library Futures: “…I am stepping down because I believe that publishers and their affiliated trade associations are more interested in undermining that mission and the NISO process than they are in finding a solution for CDL that respects the rights of libraries, authors, publishers, and readers. The Working Group’s proposed standard, which offers best practice recommendations for libraries implementing digital lending programs, was drafted by eighteen library, technology, and publishing professionals following the standard NISO consensus process beginning in September 2021. This included approval of a work plan for publication by NISO’s topic committee made up of publishers and libraries in May 2023. The Working Group spent the past two and a half years presenting the draft proposals in public at conferences, in webinars, and in blog posts, providing updates on our work in a variety of fora. Publishers and their trade associations elected not to engage with the process during the public development of the technical standard. Instead, on the final day of open public comment on the standard’s draft, about a dozen trade associations and large publishers submitted a slew of negative, out-of-scope comments revealing their objections to the NISO work for the first time, which led to a crisis within NISO’s consensus process. After an open meeting in which publishing trade associations and lawyers refused to engage in productive dialogue with the Working Group, publication of the final standard is in a stalemate. It is stuck between a consensus-driven organization that wishes to engage with its members and a small group of vocal trade associations that are intent on blocking any productive movement. These groups waited until the end of the process to declare that the entire concept of digital lending is unacceptable to them. This is not the behavior of parties with a good faith interest in finding a collaborative solution…”

See also Courthouse News Service: “Internet Archive fights to preserve digital libraries in Second Circuit hearing. Friday’s arguments stem from a 2020 copyright suit in which four major U.S. publishers claimed that Internet Archive was illegally lending digital copies of their books.

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