Readers: Raise Hell

by Maria Bustillos

The following is adapted for publication from a talk delivered at the Internet Archive in San Francisco on October 23, 2024.

I became a writer for the chance to be a part of a literary tradition many centuries old, a literary tradition protected by libraries. I make money by my writing, but I don’t want money that comes at the expense of the values that made me a writer in the first place. Libraries made me a writer. Libraries are my home.

That’s why I am so deeply opposed to the recent ruling in favor of four megapublishers against the Internet Archive.

The Copyright Act is meant to protect society first and profits second, but the appeals court got it backwards. The judges failed to protect society; they chose to protect business instead.

In recent days we’ve seen, in an even more troubling example of the mercenary nature of our times, how wealth has taken over almost everything, everything of real value, every good thing.

But let me tell you something. All is not lost. If the courts can’t be trusted to secure the future of libraries—and right now it seems they can’t—then it falls to people with conscience, and brains, and a sense of history, to rise up to protect libraries. That’s our task now.