[HN Gopher] Ars: "Book publishers with surging profits struggle ...
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Ars: "Book publishers with surging profits struggle to prove IA
hurt sales"
Author : geephroh
Score : 39 points
Date : 2023-03-20 21:31 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| endisneigh wrote:
| I don't see anyone can defend the internet archive. They decided
| to loan out digital assets without any regard to the backed
| licenses available.
|
| The Union of people's thoughts on the matter is very amusing,
| though. People don't want ads, or drm, or to pay. It should be
| totally free, effort be damned.
|
| Personally my main criticism is that in schools certain editions
| of text are required. Ideally all problem sets and answers would
| be provided without having to buy a given text, and you can
| consult any resource that teachers the relevant material as a
| supplement, rather than an issued textbook.
|
| Assuming the IA wins, though. It would be curious to setup a
| website where people can donate physical copies of a book and you
| download the ebook and can loan it out in accordance to the
| amount you have physically. Yes, this is a library, however
| unlike a regular library it'd be interesting to push this to the
| limit. Even per page checkout on demand.
| caractacus wrote:
| The IA are trying to drum up support by stating that the
| publishers want to destroy libraries, which obviously makes
| them sound really awful. But publishers just want the IA to
| stop offering their copyrighted works for free to anyone at all
| times without paying any kind of license fee, which is not how
| a library works.
| jcranmer wrote:
| It is how a library works if the books are printed on paper.
| Or parchment or papyrus, I guess.
|
| But if the books are digital, suddenly it becomes magically
| illegal to do anything without consent of the publisher
| because it now violates copyright to give your copy to
| somebody else. And the publisher is arguing that it's morally
| reprehensible for someone to attempt to build a digital
| equivalent to lending for physical books.
| RustyRussell wrote:
| You keep saying this, but it's not true: they only allow one
| borrower of any work at a time.
|
| This really does mirror the Library model, but on the
| internet.
| ZekeSulastin wrote:
| I thought this whole lawsuit stemmed from the brief window
| of time where the IA removed that restriction.
| jfengel wrote:
| I am not a lawyer, but I wouldn't have thought that was relevant.
| This isn't like libel, where you have to show damages.
|
| As I understand it, if I wrote a manuscript that I didn't want
| published at all, my rights would still be violated if you
| published it. I didn't lose any money; I just wanted to assert my
| right to control it.
|
| I could imagine this being an issue in the penalty phase, but
| they're not there yet. Can a lawyer explain why this is relevant
| here?
| thebooktocome wrote:
| This is answered in the article. Plaintiffs are alleging that
| they were damaged; judge pointed out their revenues spiked
| during the period in question. IA is sticking to a fair use
| defense, so showing damage was caused would hurt their defense.
| [deleted]
| jchw wrote:
| IANAL but I do believe one of the factors of Fair Use is
| whether you are competing with the owner of the copyrighted
| work(s) in question; "the effects on the potential market." So
| if they're trying to make a case for or against IA's use of the
| copyrighted material constituting fair use, this seems
| relevant.
| jcranmer wrote:
| At its core, this case comes down to "is this fair use"
| (there's no claims that it's not copyright infringement, IIRC).
| And while fair use analysis considers the four factors, in
| actual practice, the four factors are merely a way to explain
| the reasoning behind the gut decision, which usually boils down
| to "did the copyright owner deserve to get paid?"
|
| The fourth factor is "the effect of the use upon the potential
| market for or value of the copyrighted work," which is where
| the monetary aspect is going to be considered. If the judge is
| pointing out that the publishers actually saw market growth as
| the Internet Archive expanded its lending, that could signal
| that they are going to find the fourth factor in favor of the
| Internet Archive--and that would utterly destroy the
| publishers' case here.
| taeric wrote:
| Book publishers are notorious for being very whiny. One need only
| look into the history of paperback books to see how interesting
| their arguments can be. That they would want to squash lending
| comes as no real surprise. I swear, if they could remove second
| hand sales, they would.
|
| I'll also note I amusingly mixed up IA with AI, such that I was
| very confused on how the story was relevant to the headline here.
| :D
| throwanem wrote:
| > I swear, if they could remove second hand sales, they would.
|
| You don't need to swear. Textbook publishers already have done.
| I'm sure conventional publishers would too, if they imagined
| for a moment they could get away with it.
|
| https://www.universitystar.com/opinions/opinion-textbook-acc...
| caractacus wrote:
| They don't want to 'squash lending'. They are delighted with
| public libraries who license books and lend out a discrete
| number of copies at any one time for a limited period of time.
| They don't like the Internet Archive version which is 'we shall
| upload any book we find and allow anyone to download it and
| keep it, forever'.
|
| The publishers would like the IA to stop doing that. If the IA
| wants to keep offering things which are out of copyright or
| which the copyright owners aren't going to challenge, great. Go
| for it. This isn't an assault on the concept of a library which
| is what the IA is trying to pretend. It's a challenge on the
| IA's pretense that they are a library and not a stock of
| pirated books, amongst other items.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| > They don't like the Internet Archive version which is 'we
| shall upload any book we find and allow anyone to download it
| and keep it, forever'.
|
| This was only true for a twelve-week period at the height of
| the pandemic, it hasn't been true since then.
| throwanem wrote:
| The "keep" part was never true. Those "Adobe Digital
| Editions" expire.
| blowski wrote:
| > They are delighted with public libraries
|
| I dispute that. I did some work with a large book publisher
| in the UK. They hated libraries and had all sorts of tactics
| to work against them.
| zerocrates wrote:
| It's hard to imagine the Internet Archive winning... just CDL on
| its own is on pretty shaky ground, and the Archive's brief
| "uncontrolled" version even more so.
|
| Pushing the boundaries is kind of their thing but I think they
| went too far here.
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