your book, trees live coverage of this year's texas book continues shortly. on about books. we delve into the latest news about the publishing industry with interesting insider interviews with publishing industry experts. we'll also give you updates, current nonfiction authors and the latest book reviews. and we'll talk about the current nonfiction books featured c-span spoke tv. and now we want to introduce you to brewster kael. he is the founder of something you might be familiar with. it's called the internet archive. mr. kael. what is the purpose of the internet archive? the archive is a nonprofit research library largely used over the internet by people

trying to dive deeper into wikipedia articles by clicking through on the citations on the bottom and finding themselves on web pages that it might have been disappeared or on the books right at the right page to be able to follow up and learn more. how many unique visitors do you have a day per year? per day. we get about 2 million people coming to the website but about 5 million come and use the internet archive's in one way or another. it's between the 200th and most or 300th most popular website. so actually want a library and is it free? yes, everything is free. the internet archive, we collect web pages, books, music, video and the idea is that this is free public access and yes, you can borrow, you can look at all web pages. it's a it's a library. so when you founded this in

1996, what was your thought behind it? the idea is to build universal access to all knowledge. we go and make the digital library of alexandria, right? could we actually make it that people that are curious enough to want to have access to the published works of humankind, they could get access to it? that was the promise when i was growing up. you walked into a library and they said, we have everything. and if we don't have it here, we'll get it for you. that was the promise of the internet i signed on to in 1980 to try to help build the internet into that. by 96, it was time to build the library and so we've been building this library for the last 27 years. well, there was a recent headline on a website called the converse. it says that the internet archive's library has been founded in breach of copyright. what is this about so what happened is we've been with about a hundred other libraries directly and a couple of hundred libraries have been lending

digitized. books since 2011. so we we try to buy e-books, but it turns out that the big publishers will not sell, which is really strange we should go back into that. but because they will not sell e-books to libraries we're taking the physical books that we have digitizing them often the 20th century, long out of print, and we lend them to one reader at a time. so it's 26 possible readers a year for one of the books that we own. and suddenly became a big for the publisher in the early pandemic the idea that people would be able to check out art and to readers could see a particular book in a year and this they sued the internet archive and at the district court level in new york where they brought even though we're

in california and don't have anything to do with new york, the the district court said that this is not right for us to do for books that are in publishers, e-book collections that licensed to libraries. well, mr. carroll, there's a couple of things we want to break down there. first of all, why won't why can't you get an e-book copy, a digitized copy of a book from a publisher? the internet archive, for years and years has been trying buy e-books. they buy them in the same sense that we would own a physical book. right. what libraries is they buy, preserve and that's what they do. and the publishers are saying in the electronic world, you cannot buy an e-book you cannot preserve an e-book and you cannot lend an e-book that all that is going to be controlled by them and under their terms.

so they won't allow you to buy and and they can take away change electronic books at any time. so what happens if you to your public library and you think you're borrowing book from your public library, an e-book? actually what they're doing is shunting you to their database. the publisher or overdrive which is controlled the publishers and they all the surveillance information about who's reading what and on what page all of that that is not the tradition of library practices. so we've tried to buy e-books. there are a few small publishers that will sell e-books, but very few. so basically of the big libraries, they own nothing in the digital age and that is atrocious. so that's why we've had to go and do the awkward thing of acquiring physical books, storing those permanently. so we have a physical book that isn't circulating digitize it and lend it one reader at a time

using the same protections that the publishers use for their imprint works for a dusty, musty old, sort of not very good scan, but this turns out to be extremely useful to wikipedia users that want to go and do a fact check. what we find is people use these books for about 30 seconds to a minute. couple minutes mostly. they basically go to a page, check it out, and then they're done with it. it's like being standing next to a stacks in a library. that's what we're for. that's what we as a research library, it's not for beach reading, but this is was what the publishers decided to make a massive lawsuit. three years and counting. now it's being appealed. it's extremely expensive to come up against billion dollar as a nonprofit library. how do you digitize the books? what's the process as we acquire the books we own own them.

if it's a modern book make sure that we don't it already, right? so we try basically just do this once so. there's only one book that gets gets digitized and the book is photographed. so a person turns, the page, each page goes to click, turns, the page raises and, lowers glass. so that's a nice image and click, click, click petals through a book and then they just the disk to make sure the page numbers in there. nothing's fuzzy it costs tens of dollars per book to go and digitize books. then the physical book is preserved forever, which is an expensive and the books are worth it. and then we take the digital file and we make it available to the blind dyslexic. so the major use of these books is to the blind, dyslexic and

then we make other uses available. all that we're allowed to do forensic since interlibrary loan of a chapter or control digital lending until this whole fight came up with what's going on for ten years, everybody was happy with it. it seemed like it all was working. and so this is the ways that we are using these as well as machine learning. people are going and trying to find the first uses of words and phrases and things like that. research purposes, all the flowers in shakespeare, that kind type of research. how did women and blacks be portrayed in early century fiction, those types of research questions are the types of things that people are using. the internet archive book collections for. so use the number 26. and what is what is that reference. that's two weeks. so if somebody wants to read a book more than just a couple of

pages where they sort of do it and then they hand it back, which is by far and away what happens. but you want to go and compare it to something like going and borrowing a book from a public library that you're to read, then you can check out a book for up to four, up to two weeks, and then you can try to renew it. but it means there's basically 26 readers maximum per per book. and turns out there are many, many, many, many, many because we're dealing dusty, musty, we're dealing with the 20th century, we're dealing with the long tail of books. we never even put up the most recent five years of books just to stay away from the the publisher's and to try not attract their ire, but their ire in the early pandemic came to so. brewster carl, do you consider the internet archive to a community lending library in a sense, i think of it as a research library, so there are

different kinds of libraries and it's not so much a lending library in the sense that people would go and take and then read the whole book. that's just not it's not how we see people use internet archive's collections. it's a research library that if you wanted to go and do some fact on a wikipedia, so for instance, wikipedians, if there's a wrestle behind every web page to go and say what fact or assertion makes it into the and the way that that tussle is going goes on is are do you have a good citation. can you click on it and if we want a strong wikipedia which in this age of disinformation you to go and make it so that people can click and see and reference the the claim so that it will stand up in wikipedia otherwise it will just be on whatever blog posts you can get a hold of and we know that that's being

actively poisoned by very well institutions such as so so that's that's what the internet archive is a research library so brewster carl if i've been on wikipedia and i click one of the citations chances are i've used the internet archive. well, also fixed 17 million broken links in wikipedia. yes, you'll probably have used the wayback machine. so go over all wikipedia, try to find the links, see which ones are either changed or deleted and we fix 17 million broken links and we have now a million links in wikipedia that go to over 250,000 books. which foundations and and individual funded us to go and acquire those books and digitize them and weave them back into wikipedia to make wikipedia stronger. but it's not all just wikipedia, right? we have a tremendous of theological information and

because seminaries are largely becoming decentralized, things are going out of business. and so they donated a lot of theological materials, a lot of historic material, a lot of things that are used by genealogists and, the like. so that's the type of use that we tend to see how you monetize this. we don't at all. zero, none. so we are a nonprofit. we do accept. so there's a little part on our archive dot and about 110,000 people go and go and contribute us and actually more are contributing now because we're being attacked by these large scale publishers and trolls. so, you know, libraries are really under attack everywhere. so we have politicians

advocating book bans, we have legislatures now going and defunding libraries. we have these large scale publisher corp corporation, these billion dollar mega-corporations are suing not just the internet archive, but they sued maryland state for going and having the audacity to to pass a law saying that publishers have to go and give reasonable license deals to libraries. that was so they sued maryland and they're suing the internet archive. and so we're libraries under attack and what's happening is we now have a digital world and. if you just have one copy on library on publishers servers, they can change and delete it at any time. and that's what's happening. it's actively happening. they've changed. agatha christie, jane woodhouse, their other books that, you know, are famous have been changed. but thousands books from wiley

were just taken of academic bookshelves that teachers were teaching with. so we basically have a level of that we just have never seen in the real book, you know, real book industry, it's e-book world where it's basically netflix of books and will tend towards just greatest hits and it's not what libraries are designed and funded for. brewster carroll this is a statement by terrence hart, the general counsel, the association of american publishers quote. there is simply legal support for the that internet archive. a library may convert millions e-books from print books to public for public distribution and without the consent of compensation to the and publishers. copyright right not infringement is. the engine of creativity that

serves the public interest interest. so don't think he's right. i mean, libraries been doing have been buying publishers forever as long as there have been publishers and even before there are publishers, libraries built, collections and lent them out. this is the same thing in the digital world. it's very constrained. it's only one copy that is available to everyone. so it's an extremely constrain kind of world that has been going on now for ten years by hundreds of libraries and especially in the beginning of the pandemic when all the libraries closed, we had all of this investment not able to be seen in the physical form. so going and digitizing these and them available is not only fair use, it's good public policy. it's along the tradition of what libraries do and how libraries have support and publishers and

authors forever. in the united states, where $12 billion industry are low library system, about three or $4 billion of that goes to publishers products. it's basically a social support structure for about 20% of the trade books distributed in the united states. is what the library system is, if crush the library system and say you can't anything and you can't go and make your old even out of print works make those available, we see what's going on which people will turn on the libraries. they'll become de-funded more and more and libraries which support the long tail of authors. right? we everything. how do we go and have that support if the publishers have their way, which is basically just a netflix of brewster kael, you use the term fair use what that mean when it comes to

copyright law. fair use a part of the american copyright doctrine. i'm not a lawyer that basically says that yes there are copyright, there are exemptions that are fair use. there are okay to do so for. instance, when these same publishers went and sued google over their process, the judge said it's fair use their digitize these books, making them available snippets as searchable snippets. that's a fair use. there's lots of different of fair use of court cases. it's one of the escape valves on the sort of absurdly too control that was put in place in the united states in 1976. before that the copyright of ben franklin is you had copyright for 14 years renewable once and derivative works no problem. so we had a long tradition in this country. it was sort of really screwed

down in 1976 and fair use and specific exemptions for libraries to be able offer instance, lend. those are written into copyright law and are now being challenged in the courts by these billion dollar. i've learned a lot about what happens when $1,000,000,000 corporations go after small non. it is a very tilted environment. i think we've all read about sort of what happens if you're poor or you're a minority, but the same kind of tilt of the the system comes into play if you're a small nonprofit. so you mentioned you are not a lawyer, is your background. i'm a librarian. so i started out as a computer scientist and i'll learn the technology. but the idea that i saw as the opportunity that the internet would become is the library that we'd been promised for a long

time. vannevar bush or, the library of congress on your desk. ted nelson, xanadu or what became a tim berners-lee vision of, the world wide web. we could actually make that come true with this technology. so went to library school, took us there and got no actually honorary degrees. i'm kind of happy about that. specifically in the library but then really went to build this the internet into a library that can make it so that anybody anywhere can learn if they're curious enough to want to have access. this is not what the publishers are trying to have happen, but that's what libraries are for. we have an archive moment now is go and make it so that that dream of public education could be made more broadly to people in disabilities that didn't have access to to libraries or just wanted to have access digitally.

we do that fairly without impacting the publishers during whole lawsuit. they never even claimed there was a financial problem for them at i mean, 26 readers a year of a book. is that really going to cause damage? i actually often actually helps, but it's 26 readers a year, so they never claimed any damage. and so it's just sort the quirk of the united states. copyright law that has been influenced heavily these billion dollar corporations the course of decades to make it so that they can stomp on libraries. brewster kael, how do you store your physical books that you've acquired? those are carefully contained. they're not on shelves accessible, but we know where is in in a physical archive building. it's filled with boxes of books and now millions of them because

libraries are deaccessioning. so it's like you can just go back to your library and some of these books because people want the space back for having meetings or maker labs or 3d or things like that. and so libraries are deaccessioning and they deaccession often to a nonprofit bookstore called better world books, and then they donate to us and to. ban books for africa, other places and or they go directly donate those books to the internet archive. and fortunately we have the funding to be able to go and preserve these physical books for decades. and we have been it's working. so going and keeping funding into the library system and making these treasures that are what people have spent their lives writing available. somebody right, even if it's just 26 readers a year, that i think is a worthwhile investment

and it's turned out to be very useful especially for research purposes. brewster cahill is the founder and the librarian of internet archive archive.org is the website. mr. thank you for your time. thank you very much. in the past five years, book tv has been on the air over 1300 weekends, covered nearly hundred book festivals and featured 22,000 authors, including this event. you know, i just had an appearance on on charlie rose and know he was asking me, how does how does the book connect with your politics? and it's very clear to me that there is a direct between the subject matter that's contained in dreams from father and the type of politics that i aspire to because. essentially what this story is about is a boy born to a father from kenya and a mother from

kansas in hawaii with an unusual name who traveled to indonesia came back found himself in chicago working in some of the lowest income in the country. and then travels back to africa and somehow able to weave together a workable meaning for his life as an african american, as an american and as somebody part of the broader human family and that was not an easy task. it wasn't an easy task, not because i did not have some enormous love from. my family. i did. it wasn't because i didn't have people helping me every step of the way. i had that help. but it was because i found

myself born astride a nation, a world that is so often divided, divided along lines of race, divided along lines of class, divided along the lines of religion. and so we have this enormous tragic history that of us confront from whatever our backgrounds are, whether we're white, black, asian, whether we're -- or christian. the notion that, in fact, in the words of a great writer who happened to win a nobel prize, william faulkner, he said the past is never dead and buried isn't even past. and i think that all of us are confronting constantly our history at work, confronting the history and stain of slavery in this country. we're confronting the history

and problems that arose as a kinds of colonialism. we're confronting those those scars of violence and oppression and struggle and and hope not only on the larger canvas of history, but also within our own families. and for me. it was not entirely obvious how fact i was going to be able to integrate and pull together all different strands in my life. so part of my challenge up was to figure out how do i function as someone who is black, but also has white blood in me? how do i function as who is america and takes pride and understands the enormous blessings that come with being an american, but is also able to

recognize that i'm part of something larger, just a nation state? how do i embrace my faith now as a christian also recognizing that i have people within my own family who have a different faith and how do i describe the fact that all have different paths ultimately to a same source, a same place that we come from, to which ultimately we will all up? how do we do that? what kind of language do we come up with? how do we expose and a sense of empathy and allow and every one of us to be able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see the world through their eyes and as a consequence, see ourselves in other people. because it strikes me that the that's the only way that we're going to survive as a planet.

and so that was in very abstract terms, what the theme of this book is about. did you know that all 92,000 plus hours of book tv programing is available online? just visit book tv dot org to watch full program on your favorite authors. recently, stacy schiff was guest on book tv's author interview program in depth. she has chronicled the lives of cleopatra, benjamin franklin, and others during her appearance. schiff recounted the salem witch trials benjamin franklin's life in paris and discussed her most recent about samuel adams. want to read a quote from your 2015 book, the witches america's tiny of terror. salem represents one of the rare moments in our enlightened past when the candles knocked out and everyone seems to be groping about in the dark. the place where all good stories begin. easy to caricature.

it is the only tragedy that has acquired its own and you will unrelated holiday. it is more difficult to comprehend what happened. which one would you like me to start with? anywhere you want to start. i think halloween seems to be our theme today. actually. what happened is that? early in 1692, in january of 1692, two little girls, one nine and 111 in a minister's house begin to exhibit signs which, begin to writhe and grimace and bark and yelp and and are alternate be paralyzed, unable to speak and alternately speaking in what appear to be nonsensical terms and throwing into fireplaces and falling down wells. and no one can quite figure out what these symptoms are really meant to convey. medicine in 1692, massachusetts was fairly primitive. epilepsy was known about as not

epileptic symptoms. no one jumps to any conclusions, but there had been a few years earlier an outbreak of witchcraft which had been very well described by new england minister in a bestselling book. and those symptoms and these symptoms were identical. so fairly soon thereafter, no one rushes to an immediate diagnosis. but several weeks after these girls begin to exhibit these signs and after they have spread to another household, a diagnosis of witchcraft is made. and this is in the house of a minister. so it's particularly difficult for people to comprehend this, particularly important that it's in the household of a minister. the girls obviously would have felt even more on display as the minister's daughter and niece. and at once, a diagnosis of witchcraft is suggested, then obviously a witch needs be found and somehow in the subsequent weeks fingers are pointed in three people, three women are named as potential suspects, and

that's january to february of 60, 92. very quickly, those three women are deposed. two of them say, they have no idea they're an innocent. this was obviously not of their doing. they are, i should say, the three most likely suspects. one is a local beggar woman who was known for coming by people's houses. that was sarah. good. that's sarah. sarah. good. exactly. and being quite with them, if they didn't give her what she wanted, been turned out of other people's. so a sort of vagrant. even turned out of other people's because they feared she was going to burn down their barn. she's out somewhat. she's she's married, but she's on lousy terms with husband. the two of them are known to fight with each other. she has a small child with her and she had recently paid a visit to the girls of the at the parsonage, seemingly terrified them. the second was sarah osborne, who was a very litigious woman who had been disputing a will for some time, so had also made herself somewhat unwelcome in the community. and the third and we don't have

an explanation for why the third woman is named is tituba, who was the probably indian slave in the paris household. and the minister's household who would have known these girls intimately, who would have prayed with these girls and eaten with these girls and probably slept in the same room as these girls? and she's the third person who was named as a potential suspect when the when sarah osborne and sarah, we are sarah osborne sarah good deny all intimacy with witchcraft. tituba will offer an extraordinary kaleidoscopic immensely colorful confession. and of course, as soon as someone has confessed to witchcraft, then it witchcraft trial is set in place and fingers begin to point and right. watch the full program online at book tv dot org. just search in depth or stacy schiff. and now more live of the texas book festival