Roughly two weeks ago, the popular e-book lending site LendInk was taken offline thanks to a group of terrified authors who couldn’t be bothered to read the fine print. LendInk was a website dedicated to helping book lovers lend books to each other through features implemented by Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The site’s only purpose was to serve as a front end — it hosted no e-book files, linked no torrents, and never directed users to a file locker.

All LendInk did was bring readers together under terms the content creators had previously agreed to, even if they didn’t bother to read the fine print or understand how their work was being used. Amazon’s lending terms preserve the limitations of physicality; books can be lent once, for 14 days, and the original owner cannot read the text during the duration of the loan. In the wake of this triple-facepalm episode, a number of authors have apologized for their role in destroying LendInk. The fact that the pile-on happened at all, however, speaks to a larger problem: A huge number of authors don’t understand digital distribution, current copyright law, or the Terms and Conditions they signed in order to publish their own work. They’re terrified of piracy, despite having only a minimal understanding of what piracy actually is.

In a now-deleted post, blogger Shawn Lamb wrote “I was made aware of a pirate site illegally displaying all my e-books, Kindle and Nook, for unlimited borrowing… The only way to have our books on their site was through piracy. Readers were also upset, for such sites reflect badly upon honest people who want to support authors. A course of action was set, and an unrelenting broadside of determined authors and readers scuttled the pirate in less than 12 hours.” Shawn goes on to claim that the website she meant for everyone to attack was LendLnk.com, not LendInk.com — but since LendLnk.com didn’t exist until August 6, claiming otherwise is nothing but a poorly designed CYA maneuver against people with a superior understanding of technology.

Part of the problem is that it’s apparently possible for book distributors to re-enable lending, even if the author sets the “Do Not Lend” flag themselves and isn’t charging a high enough royalty to be automatically locked into the Available to Lend category. Part of it, however, is linked to the way publishers and official author organizations, like the Authors Guild, have treated emerging digital technologies.

Various posts at the AG website describe Amazon’s “predatory ways,” and claim that its actions are “undermining the ecosystem on which book publishers and most new authors depend.” Publishers are outraged at the idea that the DOJ might find them guilty of collusion with Apple. Barnes and Noble is the favored child; Google Books, a caricatured villain. Virtually every story at the Authors Guild website is a treatise on how the government, Amazon, and Google want to destroy publishers and writers.

The AG clearly doesn’t speak for all authors, but the tone and nature of its statements perfectly match the firestorm that engulfed LendInk. Authors defiantly held forth on their anti-piracy efforts, with one person writing that LendInk was “in breech [sic?] of copyright and deserved to be shut down. Am I proud they have been shut down? Am I proud to have stood up for my legal rights as author? You betcha!”

This isn’t an isolated incident or one-off event. The writers who stormed LendInk’s digital Bastille to protect their imaginary rights are responsible for their actions, but publishers and the Authors Guild have done everything they possibly could to paint Google, Amazon, and online distribution as attempts to destroy authors and authors’ communities. It’s not enough to say that the writers should have read the relevant FAQ — we need to ask the question of why so many people jumped to the conclusion that their rights were under attack.

Does the Authors Guild care about writers? Absolutely — just as much as the RIAA cares about musicians. The entire e-book issue is a war over who should have the final say in product pricing, distribution, and licensing. Attacking websites doing legal things may slow the growth of e-books, but it won’t stop it. The damage to individual writers, however, could be enormous — already several sites have targeted specific authors for boycotts thanks to their prominent role as witch hunters in the LendInk fiasco.

It’s time for publishers and the Authors Guild to stop spreading FUD and start teaching reality. The knee-jerk reactions that created this mess have damaged the lives of real people. Google, Amazon, and other companies aren’t the enemy, and painting them in a consistently negative light only increases the chance that this sorry episode will repeat itself.

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