LOOSE CHANGE: MARCH 26, 2023

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V26 2023 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 26, Number 13, March 26, 2023, Article 33

For the first time as a monarch, King Charles III will travel to York to hand out Maundy money in the ancient ritual. -Editor

Charles and the Queen Consort will attend the Royal Maundy Service in York Minister on April 6.

During the Maundy Thursday event, the King will present 74 men and 74 women with specially-minted silver coins to the value of 74p – signifying Charles's age – to thank the pensioners for their service in local communities.

Charles and Camilla at the Royal Maundy service in 2022

Last year, Charles, as the Prince of Wales, stepped in to carry out the custom for the first time, acting on the late Queen's behalf after she experienced mobility problems and could not attend.

He handed out coins to the value of 96p – to represent his mother's age – in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

This year will be the first Maundy service since the death of Elizabeth II in September and the start of the Carolean age.

Back in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic the Internet Archive rolled the dice and opened up its digitized copyrighted works to the world via its controlled digital lending infrastructure, triggering a lawsuit from publishers. While provoking a test case may have been the goal, they've lost the first round and now plan an appeal.

Controlled digital lending could be a nice way for institutional libraries such as those at the American Numismatic Association and American Numismatic Society to enable their members to remotely access copies of books they physically own, but the judge and copyright owners reject the claim that such lending would fall under the "Fair Use" doctrine. Stay tuned for the next round. -Editor

A federal judge has ruled against the Internet Archive in its high-profile case against a group of four US publishers led by Hachette Book Group. Per Reuters, Judge John G. Koeltl declared on Friday the nonprofit had infringed on the group's copyrights by lending out digitally scanned copies of their books.

The lawsuit originated from the Internet Archive's decision to launch the National Emergency Library during the early days of the pandemic. The program saw the organization offer more than 1.4 million free ebooks, including copyrighted works, in response to libraries worldwide closing their doors due to coronavirus lockdown measures.

Before March 2020, the Internet Archive's Open Library program operated under what's known as a controlled digital lending system, meaning there was often a waitlist to borrow a book from its collection. When the pandemic hit, the Internet Archive lifted those restrictions to make it easier for people to access reading material while stuck at home. The Copyright Alliance was quick to take issue with the effort.

... Judge Koeltl rejected the Internet Archive's stance, declaring there is nothing transformative about lending unauthorized copies of books. "Although [the Internet Archive] has the right to lend print books it lawfully acquired, it does not have the right to scan those books and lend the digital copies en masse," he wrote.

We've heard of horse thieves and book thieves, but a manuscript thief? Len Augsburger passed along this New York Times article about the man who hoodwinked prominent authors into giving him their unpublished manuscripts. -Editor

Filippo Bernardini, a former publishing employee who pleaded guilty in a fraud case in which the government accused him of stealing more than 1,000 manuscripts, avoided prison on Thursday but was ordered to be deported.

He was also ordered to pay $88,000 in restitution to the biggest name in publishing, Penguin Random House, to reimburse the company for legal and expert fees it paid as a result of the scheme.

For more than five years, Mr. Bernardini impersonated publishing professionals in the pursuit of unpublished manuscripts. He would pretend to be a specific editor, for example, and would email that person's authors to ask for their latest drafts. The government said he impersonated hundreds of people.

In a letter this month to Judge Colleen McMahon of Federal District Court in Manhattan, Mr. Bernardini said he had stolen the manuscripts because he wanted to read them.

I never wanted to and I never leaked these manuscripts, he wrote. I wanted to keep them closely to my chest and be one of the fewest to cherish them before anyone else, before they ended up in bookshops. There were times where I read the manuscripts and I felt a special and unique connection with the author, almost like I was the editor of that book.

To read the complete article, see:
No Prison Time for Book Thief (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/23/books/filippo-bernardini-unpublished-manuscripts-deported.html)