[HN Gopher] The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette...
___________________________________________________________________
The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet
Archive
Author : Signez
Score : 116 points
Date : 2024-09-04 16:41 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (storage.courtlistener.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (storage.courtlistener.com)
| ranger_danger wrote:
| >Four major book publishers again thwarted the online
| repository's defense that its one-to-one lending practices
| mirrored those of traditional libraries
|
| How does it not? I don't get it... why are physical libraries in
| the clear if it's still a 1:1 borrow?
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Seems like most of this hinges of precedent. The courts have
| upheld that if you buy a book and loan out an audio recording
| of that book, it's not protected. Or something like that.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Traditional libraries lend out the physical copies they bought.
| For ebooks, they have an agreement with publisher to lend out a
| certain number of copies.
|
| Owners are allowed to make digital copies for personal and
| archival use. They aren't allowed to transfer copies. The
| rights of digital ebook are in the license and most prohibit
| transfers. The rights of physical book are attached to the
| book.
|
| Nobody notices or cares when done on personal scale. But
| publishers care when Internet Archive did it on large scale.
| majorchord wrote:
| As far as I know, IA owns the physical books they scanned, so
| why shouldn't they be allowed to lend them out 1-to-1
| digitally the same as a physical library?
| uxp100 wrote:
| I thought the person you were responding too was saying
| that isn't what physical libraries do.
|
| Also, as far as I know that isn't what physical libraries
| do. They buy licenses to share e-books. And don't
| physically scan anything.
| majorchord wrote:
| I meant that digitally lending the books out that IA owns
| 1-to-1 in the same way a real library lends out physical
| books should legally be treated the same, regardless of
| any ebook-specific licensing.
| choo-t wrote:
| There was a ruling in Europe (UFC against Valve [1])
| citing that, as neither e-book nor video-game deteriorate
| with use, the customer doesn't have a right to sell it on
| the second hand market as it would affect the copyright
| holder interest :
|
| > To entrench its position, the CJEU first mentioned that
| dematerialized digital copies, unlike books on a material
| medium, do not deteriorate with use and are perfect
| substitutes for new copies.
|
| > Furthermore, the CJEU added to its reasoning that
| exchanging such copies requires neither additional effort
| nor additional cost. A parallel second-hand market would
| likely affect the interest of the copyright holder -
| contrary to the objective of the directive and the
| intention of the EU legislator.
|
| 1 : https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=77bb25
| 01-995c...
| criddell wrote:
| As I understand it, as soon as the IA makes the digital
| copy they want to lend (digitally or physically), they
| now have two copies of the book and have committed
| copyright infringement. As soon as they lend a copy,
| there are now three copies in existence (unless they
| delete their copy as part of the loan) which is another
| count of infringement.
| jandrese wrote:
| If they had a system where every page of the original was
| burned as it was scanned, and when you "checked out" a
| book it literally deleted the original on the server as
| it was sending it and the person returning the book also
| transferred the bytes back it would be quite a show.
|
| I'm about 95% sure a scheme like that would still find
| them shut down. Remember the Aereo decision? They went
| through similar contortions, including building an
| antenna farm with thousands of tiny individual antennas,
| and were immediately killed off by the courts because it
| was seen as a legal hack. Such a scheme might threaten
| cable TV income if it were allowed to stand. Protecting
| incumbents from competition is a vital role of the
| courts.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Owning the physical book lets libraries lend out the
| physical books. Libraries can't lend out digital copies
| of physical books. They lend out digital copies that they
| have purchased.
|
| Owning object is different that copyright. Copyright
| owner is only one that can license making copies. Owning
| a book gives no rights to make copies, with the exception
| of making personal copies.
| jandrese wrote:
| It wouldn't matter if they scanned the books. As soon as
| it enters the digital realm the laws change. Doing it "on
| a computer" means the publisher owns the rights.
| ndiddy wrote:
| The decision covers that point:
|
| "IA maintains that it delivers each Work "only to one
| already entitled to view [it]"--i.e., the one person who
| would be entitled to check out the physical copy of each
| Work. But this characterization confuses IA's practices
| with traditional library lending of print books. IA does
| not perform the traditional functions of a library; it
| prepares derivatives of Publishers' Works and delivers
| those derivatives to its users in full. That Section 108
| allows libraries to make a small number of copies for
| preservation and replacement purposes does not mean that IA
| can prepare and distribute derivative works en masse and
| assert that it is simply performing the traditional
| functions of a library. 17 U.S.C. SS 108; see also, e.g.,
| ReDigi, 910 F.3d at 658 ("We are not free to disregard the
| terms of the statute merely because the entity performing
| an unauthorized reproduction makes efforts to nullify its
| consequences by the counterbalancing destruction of the
| preexisting phonorecords.")."
|
| This is really an issue that has to be fixed legislatively
| rather than in the courts.
| Aachen wrote:
| In short, it sounds like the answer to the "why" question
| at the top of this thread
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41447904) is: the
| scan is a derivative and copyright law lets you lend
| books, not derivative works thereof
|
| Which seems like a nitpicky distinction to me when it's
| the same words on the same page and they're not shown to
| anyone else at the same time... but such is a judge's job
| as opposed to a legislator
| jandrese wrote:
| No, because digital works aren't "sold", they're licensed.
| Even if the IA did the scanning themselves, the laws are
| written such that a scan isn't like a physical object. You
| can only own a revokeable license to view it and aren't
| allowed to do anything else. No transformative works. No
| transfer of the works. No fair use.
|
| This is why local libraries are getting bled by their
| e-book subscriptions. They end up paying through the nose
| for people to check out e-books.
| skyyler wrote:
| Can you imagine, if public libraries weren't already a thing,
| convincing some Americans to build one in 2024?
| leotravis10 wrote:
| Nope. Surely the copyright holders won't allow a library to
| be created today.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Once upon a time (when libraries were born), the community
| (actually the State) ruled over the lobbies.
| TMWNN wrote:
| The First Sale doctrine long precedes public libraries.
| jandrese wrote:
| Because when the rules for electronic delivery were being
| written in congress and later legislated in the courts the
| publishers make damn sure to close the "library loophole" and
| that pesky "doctrine of first sale". The public didn't really
| have a seat at the table so the laws were written with a heavy
| deference towards the interests of the publishers. There wasn't
| a partisan divide either, lawmakers came together to perfect
| harmony to allow publishers to bend the public over and take
| them without lube. If you are a congressman the last people you
| want to anger are the ones who own the newspapers and TV
| stations.
| Devasta wrote:
| Awful news.
|
| Seems like this is the publishers planned approach going forward,
| nonstop lawsuits to henpeck the IA to death.
| leotravis10 wrote:
| Yep. Not just publishers, almost every copyright holder.
|
| From five months ago, still relevant:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1bswhdj/if_the...
|
| Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39908676
| hexage1814 wrote:
| Why not going the sci hub route?
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't think this took much henpecking. IA basically didn't
| have a case, took it to federal court, appealed it, and won
| themselves the following 2nd Circuit precedent:
|
| _" [I]s it "fair use" for a nonprofit organization to scan
| copyright-protected print books in their entirety and
| distribute those digital copies online, in full, for free,
| subject to a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio between its print
| copies and the digital copies it makes available at any given
| time, all without authorization from the copyright-holding
| publishers or authors? Applying the relevant provisions of the
| Copyright Act as well as binding Supreme Court and Second
| Circuit precedent, we conclude the answer is no"_
|
| This may be a broad setback to all controlled digital lending.
| As the saying goes, "play stupid games...".
| TMWNN wrote:
| >This may be a broad setback to all controlled digital
| lending. As the saying goes, "play stupid games...".
|
| When I made this criticism before of IA, I was told that that
| was ridiculous since the publishers had it out for IA before
| the COVID-19 emergency library. That may or may not have been
| true, but the publishers did not sue IA despite OpenLibrary
| existing for years before COVID-19. Publishers didn't pull
| the trigger because they were afraid of losing. It was a MAD
| situation, and IA unnecessarily triggered a nuclear war that
| they lost.
| warmcompress wrote:
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca2.609...
|
| On one hand: the court opinion. On the other, a breaking news
| tweet from Publisher's Weekly with hundreds of tedious low effort
| takes ready to melt precious brain cells. Please read the
| opinion.
| realityfactchex wrote:
| Reading and understanding the opinion is the way for this one,
| for a simple reason as I understand it. The judges get to
| basically make up an opinion about the matter, which could be
| anything. And they can support basically any opinion using
| whatever they want, and it can be made to sound ok.
|
| The whole point is that the judges are forming a judgement.
| It's, like, their opinion on the matter. The judges don't have
| to find out mathematically what the law says. They're making
| (case) law, by making an opinion, based on how they feel about
| it all, trying to be well-informed on the matter and its
| background, but really just putting down their feeling on it.
| Here's the most essential thing they wrote IMO:
|
| From Page 2: """Is it "fair use" for a nonprofit organization
| to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety, and
| distribute those digital copies online, in full, for free,
| subject to a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio between its print
| copies and the digital copies it makes available at any given
| time, all without authorization from the copyright-holding
| publishers or authors? Applying the relevant provisions of the
| Copyright Act as well as binding Supreme Court and Second
| Circuit precedent, we conclude the answer is no."""
|
| They justify it in a series of points. We can disagree with the
| points all we want, like whether or not it is transformative,
| or commercial, or all the other things. But at the end of the
| day, these judges said, nah, we're going to say that we don't
| think this is fair.
|
| I mean, I can see their point. But this would have been a
| chance for them to see the point in what the IA was doing and
| to say, "oh, you know what, that is actually fair in our view".
| Only, they didn't, it looks like.
|
| I guess the next step is to see if the Supreme Court is
| interested in weighing in on the topic.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| I still don't see the difference with one-to-one lending vs
| physical libraries as long as the archive owns the books.
| indigovole wrote:
| It is ultimately judgment calls by human beings that make the
| determinations. However, I don't see how you can read this
| opinion and think that the judges are just making their minds
| up on the spot. Every single decision point in this opinion
| goes back to prior cases and either explains why they apply
| or distinguishes this case from them to explain why they
| don't.
|
| - It's not like Campbell/Rose-Acuff (2 Live Crew v Roy
| Orbison, the "Pretty Woman" case) because IA's ebooks are not
| parodies of the original works. They _are_ the original
| works.
|
| - It's not like Sony (the Betamax case in which whole-work
| copying was found fair because it enabled time-shifting),
| because there's no sufficiently different use that's not
| supported by the original copy. You read the book, you read
| the IA scanned copy.
|
| Courts have judgment, but within parameters. The Copyright
| Act itself spells out four factors for evaluating whether a
| use is fair, and both courts found that it failed on every
| factor. The judge can't say, "well, but I still believe that
| the use should be fair anyway"; that would be an instant
| reversal and remand, with instructions amounting to "follow
| what the law says, dummy."
|
| This was never really a close call based on prior cases.
| Transformative use has almost never been "exactly the same
| work used exactly the same way, but digital." Cases that have
| tried to make that argument have failed again and again. The
| "our enforcement ensures that only one person is using the
| copy at a time" has been tried before as well, and has
| consistently failed. Back in 2020, my heart sank when I saw
| IA's announcement that they were doing this, because I was
| certain that they would be sued for it, and that they would
| lose if they were. I can't stress enough how obvious these
| rulings have been if you expect the courts to do what they
| ordinarily do-- find similarly in similar cases.
|
| The Supreme Court can discard all that precedent - they've
| certainly made a habit of that lately - and create new case
| law, along with an explanation of the way that they evaluate
| the factors to find that way. They may in fact do so; they've
| done that a couple of times in recent decades. However, they
| don't take many cases, and this case is so clearly in line
| with past cases that it's hard to see why they would take
| this one.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| >In sum, IA has not met its "burden of proving that the
| secondary use does not compete in the relevant market"
|
| How does this same thing not apply to physical libraries
| then? Even if the scope were limited to books IA itself
| owns (which they still denied anyways), why should one-to-
| one digital lending be any different than physical in-
| person library book lending?
| Aloisius wrote:
| Physical book lending doesn't involve making copies at
| all, so copyright law doesn't apply.
|
| That said, some libraries do lend scans of materials and
| libraries copying materials on microfilm has been done
| for ages. Interlibrary loans are done frequently with
| copies. Hell, the Library of Congress does it.
| pcaharrier wrote:
| Because (at least under current law) that's not quite the
| same as what libraries are doing as explained here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41448376
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure I see the problem with one-to-one digital
| lending modulo the possibility of the reader potentially
| making copies for essentially free. However, there's a
| ton of legal precedent for lending out purchased physical
| copies of things. Certainly there's no precedent for the
| unlimited lending that triggered the current legal woes.
| Previously a lot of what the IA didn't really have a
| legal foundation but mostly slid under the radar because
| it generally seemed reasonable.
| indigovole wrote:
| The physical object can be passed around without
| copyright coming into play. Copyright law has special
| provision for interlibrary loan, and archival copies.
|
| There is nothing in the law that supports making a
| digital copy and and using technical safeguards to
| transfer it to exactly one person at a time - except
| licensing under the exclusive rights of the rightsholder.
|
| Congress could write something into the law to support
| this kind of digital lending. However, Congress has been
| largely unable to accomplish anything interesting or
| innovative for a long time now, outside of a couple of
| flagship goals for one party or the other. Copyright law
| hasn't seen a substantial revision since the Act of '75,
| and ... a few ... things have happened since then. [DMCA
| added some new provisions for anti-circumvention and for
| safe harbor, but it didn't add new exemptions that most
| people care about, or modify the exclusive rights in any
| way.]
|
| The entertainment/publishing industries have usually
| gotten what they want in past revisions, but by now the
| tech industry is pretty strongly on the opposite side. It
| would be interesting to see what kind of crazy-quilt
| changes got patched together in a significant revision.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| Ok I didn't think about the fact that a digital scan of a
| book is technically a copy. So I guess there isn't a good
| established law on how to handle that, you're right. I
| was wondering why in the ruling they were even referring
| to the scanned books as a copy and it just wasn't
| clicking in my head. Thanks
| Atreiden wrote:
| > This appeal presents the following question: Is it "fair use"
| for a nonprofit organization to scan copyright-protected print
| books in their entirety, and distribute those digital copies
| online, in full, for free, subject to a one-to-one owned-to-
| loaned ratio between its print copies and the digital copies it
| makes available at any given time, all without authorization from
| the copyright-holding publishers or authors? Applying the
| relevant provisions of the Copyright Act as well as binding
| Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedent, we conclude the
| answer is no.
|
| When the conclusion is so obviously incorrect, we should examine
| the underlying precedent that leads us to such an erroneous
| conclusion. This precedent should give us pause. They're
| restricting a NONPROFITs to distribute legally purchased print
| media in a way that the publishers don't want.
|
| And this seems to be the justification:
|
| > In addition to selling traditional print books, Publishers
| collectively invest millions of dollars in developing new formats
| and markets suited for the digital age, including the eBook
| market.
|
| > Here, by contrast, IA's Free Digital Library offers few
| efficiencies beyond those already offered by Publishers' own
| eBooks. IA argues that its use is more efficient because it
| "replace[s] the burdens of physical transportation with the
| benefits of digital technology," but this ignores the fact that
| IA's digital books compete directly with Publishers' eBooks--
| works derivative of the original print books.
|
| This is an assault on free-use, libraries, and collective sharing
| of knowledge. If I buy a physical book, I can give it to anyone I
| want because the laws of yore did not see societal benefit to
| prohibiting this. I'm quite certain that these companies would
| prohibit the practice, if they could. The law is the only thing
| protecting the commons.
|
| The argument here is essentially, "these companies are spending
| millions to distribute their IP digitally, so we should shield
| them from Open standards that would negatively impact their
| profits". "Your work isn't transformative, because we've already
| done a similar transformation". They're wielding a proprietary
| implementation as a hammer to crush open knowledge. The internet
| should be a tool to facilitate knowledge-sharing for the
| betterment of our entire species, not a weapon to stifle
| knowledge for the sake of corporate profits.
| altruios wrote:
| We should do a Rome thing, rework the legal code at this point,
| now that we have the internet. Copyright needs to be abolished
| or radically altered.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > When the conclusion is so obviously incorrect, we should
| examine the underlying precedent that leads us to such an
| erroneous conclusion. This precedent should give us pause.
| They're restricting a NONPROFITs to distribute legally
| purchased print media in a way that the publishers don't want.
|
| This is nonsense. They are not distributing "legally purchased
| print media", they are VERY literally distributing digital
| copies of the original legally purchased print media.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Wikipedia page for additional context:
| https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844...
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Why are you routing this link through google?
| pcaharrier wrote:
| "Is it 'fair use' for a nonprofit organization to scan copyright-
| protected print books in their entirety, and distribute those
| digital copies online, in full, for free, subject to a one-to-one
| owned-to-loaned ratio between its print copies and the digital
| copies it makes available at any given time, all without
| authorization from the copyright-holding publishers or authors?
| Applying the relevant provisions of the Copyright Act as well as
| binding Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedent, we conclude
| the answer is no."
| Yawrehto wrote:
| I hope this doesn't bankrupt the Internet Archive (either the
| legal fees or the case - I don't recall what they're asking for).
| It would be bad if the Wayback Machine, the biggest internet
| archivist around, went under, and also all the books, software,
| et cetera that the Archive hosts. I wonder if there's any way to
| archive all of the Wayback Machine (82.3 petabytes), or, better
| yet, all of the Internet Archive (which is, by my count, around
| 120 petabytes?) Who would have the capability/interest in doing
| so, ideally without charge?
| pcaharrier wrote:
| Shutting down IA altogether seems unlikely at this point (even
| if legal fees are substantial). They've written before about
| what the decision means (this appellate court affirmed what the
| district court did last year) and it doesn't touch things like
| the Wayback Machine: https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/17/what-
| the-hachette-v-inte...
| airhangerf15 wrote:
| Honestly the dumbest possible move by Internet Archive. IA has
| gotten more and more ideological as well, and it's been censoring
| content it doesn't like. I'm not sure if they're in the
| Wikipedia/Mozilla boat of screwed up political spending, but if
| they are, this decision should at least temper that down.
|
| I'm sure they'll be able to raise the money needed to pay off
| this lawsuit. It's true the Archive has a lot of amazing things
| not found elsewhere. Still, I've been hesitant to give them any
| money for years.
|
| The replies in that thread are dumb too. I don't think people
| understand the legal complexities here, what a huge advantage it
| was for IA to even be able to lend out digital books in the way
| it was doing, and how dumb it was for them to think they could
| create new legal/copyright theory in the wake of the mass-
| hysteria of 2020.
|
| It does show the two tiered system. Amazon, big tech and others
| massively got away with absorbing huge amounts of money in 2020.
| This non-profit tried to do equally shady things and it bit them
| in the ass. You clearly see where the system is tilted towards.
| pcaharrier wrote:
| I think there actually does need to be some re-evaluation of
| some of the copyright/fair use issues raised by this case, but
| the NEL thing they did in 2020 was a totally unnecessary risk.
| room4 wrote:
| > how dumb it was for them to think they could create new
| legal/copyright theory in the wake of the mass-hysteria of
| 2020.
|
| I haven't followed the details of this case, but as a general
| notion, that sounds kinda reasonable to me?
|
| Copyright law and enforcement is terribly broken in the USA,
| with a handful of giant publishers wielding massive, abusive
| power and the average American being harmed by losing their
| fair use rights and independent creators being bullied and
| abused by the giants behind the copyright cartel.
|
| 2020 upended society in many ways and created opportunities to
| fix various dysfunctional parts of society. It changed things
| as diverse as work-from-home norms to laws around takeaway
| alcohol from restaurants. The possibility to also improve
| copyright restrictions seems reasonable.
| pcaharrier wrote:
| "IA lifted its one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio, allowing its
| digital books to be checked out by up to 10,000 users at a
| time, without regard to the corresponding number of physical
| books in storage or in partner libraries' possession--a
| practice IA acknowledges was a 'deviat[ion] from controlled
| digital lending.'"
|
| No argument from me that copyright and fair use is broken
| (and exclusively in ways that inure to the benefit of
| enormous publishing houses), but the "National Emergency
| Library" thing was never going to fly, even if they had found
| a judge willing to stretch existing copyright law at the
| edges.
| ghaff wrote:
| They were getting away with something because it seemed
| kind of reasonable. They were effectively letting one
| person effectively remotely view a physical book they
| owned.
|
| But NEL threw all that out the window. And COVID was a
| pretty translucent fig leaf. It's not like there is any
| shortage of public domain works "for the children" out
| there even if copyright terms should be shorter.
| Filligree wrote:
| You want to show century-old works to children?
|
| Most of those are straight up racist. A work being public
| domain is a good a sign that it's awful.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| Copyright law is broken in the US, but that doesn't mean that
| Internet Archive was going to legally get away with what they
| were doing and escape legal trouble, even if it arguably
| wasn't morally wrong.
| fsckboy wrote:
| "appeal to morality" is how Internet Archive, Wikipedia,
| Mozilla, and Google etc. have lost their way in the first
| place.
| wahern wrote:
| > I'm sure they'll be able to raise the money needed to pay off
| this lawsuit.
|
| 1) The relevant statute actually remits statutory damages for
| libraries.[1] Though this exception went untested because...
|
| 2) The parties negotiated a damages settlement between
| themselves before the trial court heard evidence and arguments
| on damages, but they agreed to let the summary judgment appeal
| go forth to establish firmer precedent.
|
| [1] It's a qualified exception, but the IA was in a much better
| position in this regard than on the merits. And undoubtedly
| this limitation on damages figured into their original decision
| to test the waters.
| penteract wrote:
| Does "remits" mean reduces here, along the lines of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remittitur? It was an
| unfamiliar term to me and I'm not sure I've found the right
| meaning.
| wahern wrote:
| It means to refrain from exacting, which is one of the
| Merriam-Webster dictionary definitions. Here's the usage in
| context:
|
| > [...] The court shall remit statutory damages in any case
| where an infringer believed and had reasonable grounds for
| believing that his or her use of the copyrighted work was a
| fair use under section 107, if the infringer was: (i) an
| employee or agent of a nonprofit educational institution,
| library, or archives acting within the scope of his or her
| employment who, or such institution, library, or archives
| itself, which infringed by reproducing the work in copies
| or phonorecords
|
| -- 17 U.S. Code SS 504(c)(2)
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/504
| Aachen wrote:
| What content censoring have they been doing, what could I
| search on to read more about it? When typing "internet archive
| censoring" into DDG, it just comes up with articles about this
| case that never even mention the word censoring
| dpedu wrote:
| I couldn't think of anything off the top of my head either,
| but a google search found this:
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/7/23341051/kiwi-farms-
| intern...
|
| Edit: HN discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32743325
| Aachen wrote:
| > citing an "immediate threat to human life" due to threats
| and potential criminal actions from Kiwi Farms users [...]
| Kiwi Farms is known for collecting and publicizing personal
| details about targets it holds in contempt, many of whom
| are transgender women
|
| Sounds sensible. I also wouldn't want to host such content
| tbh, similar to CSAM or pirated movies or so, hosting this
| material sounds somewhere between being a dick and a
| shortcut to getting the whole site taken down
|
| I could see the point of keeping it around for research and
| law enforcement purposes but not the general public
|
| I'm glad to hear this is not about censoring for a
| political agenda, that would have been a huge blow to how I
| value and trust the IA with what I've come to find a very
| useful function on the internet
| kmeisthax wrote:
| You're writing this as if the National Emergency Library was
| something way out of left field but Controlled Digital Lending
| was settled law. It was not: CDL and NEL were both _exactly_
| the same amount of out-of-left-field fringe copyright theory.
| In fact, there was already legal rulings against a digital
| resale scheme called ReDigi. The law is actually fairly clear
| that first sale only applies to transferring physical property,
| you cannot resell or lend an electronic transmission.
|
| People are allowed to be angry about settled law regardless.
|
| I question your use of "ideological" and "censoring",
| especially with the invocation of Wikipedia and Mozilla. Sounds
| like you have some political hobby horses to ride. Let us keep
| in mind that Internet Archive's biggest risk is just _running
| the Wayback Machine_. Hosting a copy of every website on the
| Internet is an extreme legal risk that is mitigated solely by
| the fact that basically everyone who operates or develops
| websites has had to fish _something_ out of the Internet
| Archive at some point. If IA has an ideology, it 's "it's
| better to ask for forgiveness than permission".
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| So is it game over for IA?
| pcaharrier wrote:
| This struck me as significant (buried in the opinion's last
| footnote):
|
| "IA makes a final argument that, even if its Open Libraries
| project did not qualify as a fair use, we should restrict the
| injunction to the Open Libraries project and allow IA to continue
| CDL for books that IA itself owns. In support of that argument,
| IA argues that the fourth factor analysis would be more favorable
| if CDL were limited to IA's own books. In our view, the fair use
| analysis would not be substantially different if limited to IA's
| CDL of the books it owns, and the fourth factor still would count
| against fair use. So we decline IA's invitation to narrow the
| scope of our holding or of the district court's injunction."
|
| In other words, even if one purchases a print copy of the book,
| fair use would not allow them to lend a digital copy of the book
| to one person at a time. Why the court concludes that that "would
| not be substantially different" is unclear from just this
| footnote.
| preciousoo wrote:
| Donation link for the archive: https://archive.org/donate
| symlinkk wrote:
| Yeah, you can't just give away copyrighted books for free, lol.
| altruios wrote:
| If you buy them first, they are yours to give away...
| raytopia wrote:
| Crazy that this is not fair use but ai is.
| pcaharrier wrote:
| Dare I say "Follow the money"?
| mrweasel wrote:
| Just make an LLM spit out a Metallic song, that will fix that.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| The argument can be more easily made that AI is transformative
| compared to copying the content of eBooks.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| Something like this would never have fallen under fair use in
| the first place, I don't think. It doesn't really mesh very
| well with any of the factors US law lists as considerations
| when deciding whether or not use is fair.
|
| If this falls under anything it falls under the first sale
| doctrine.
|
| I generally side with publishers and artists on the generative
| AI debate, but I'll at least concede that they have some
| grounds for a fair use argument based on the transformative
| (legal jargon meaning, not buzzword meaning) nature of the work
| they're doing.
|
| (IANAL, just guesing, etc etc.)
| bowsamic wrote:
| Is AI fair use? I'm no legal expert, but my impression was that
| the legal precedent simply had not been set yet, but that when
| it is set it is likely against AI
| thebrid wrote:
| As much as I love the Internet Archive, is it really that
| crazy? The four factors used for determining fair use are:
| * the purpose and character of the use * the nature of
| the copyrighted work; * the amount and substantiality of
| the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
| * the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value
| of the copyrighted work.
|
| In the Internet Archive case, they're distributing whole,
| unmodified copies of copyrighted works which will of course
| compete with those original works.
|
| In the AI use case, they're typically aiming _not_ to output
| any significant part of the training data. So they could well
| argue that the use is transformative, reproducing only minimal
| parts of the original work and not competing in the market with
| the original work.
| hiatus wrote:
| > In the Internet Archive case, they're distributing whole,
| unmodified copies of copyrighted works which will of course
| compete with those original works.
|
| Libraries would be illegal if conceived of today. If this
| weren't digital it would be a violation of first sale
| doctrine.
| beardyw wrote:
| > Libraries would be illegal if conceived of today.
|
| Just shows how far forward we have progressed. Maybe book
| burnings next to prevent resale?
| tptacek wrote:
| How? Libraries lend out actual physical objects. They're
| not xeroxing the books and handing them out.
| tcgv wrote:
| Exactly. And if a book is in high demand in a library,
| you'd either have to wait your turn or purchase one
| yourself to avoid the lending queue.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| The IA's controlled digital lending setup worked the same
| way.
| tptacek wrote:
| No, the IA's CDL system required them to make multiple
| copies of books (one to digitize the book, and one for
| every reader of the book), which is not a legal problem a
| physical library runs into.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| I agree, and apparently this distinction is legally
| relevant. However, it does not change my point that the
| CDL also has the property that:
|
| "if a book is in high demand in a library, you'd either
| have to wait your turn or purchase one yourself to avoid
| the lending queue."
| tptacek wrote:
| Right. I'd like a system where that distinction matters
| but it seems plain how the courts will arrive at a
| conclusion that it doesn't, because the law is about the
| mechanism more than it is about the intent. Still, we
| were all holding on to a fig leaf of an argument that the
| intent would control here, and IA has burnt that leaf up,
| at least in NY, CT, and VT.
| haswell wrote:
| To me, the point isn't that what the IA was doing was fair
| use, but that what LLMs are doing arguably is _not_.
|
| > _In the AI use case, they 're typically aiming not to
| output any significant part of the training data_
|
| What they've aimed to do and what they've done are two
| different things. Models absolutely have produced output that
| closely mirrors data they were trained on.
|
| > _not competing in the market with the original work_
|
| This seems like a stretch, if only because I already see how
| much LLMs have changed my own behavior.
|
| These models exist because of that data, and directly compete
| by making it unnecessary to seek out the original information
| to begin with.
| halJordan wrote:
| But look at your own argument. LLMs are not fair use
| because they might be prompted into regurgitating something
| substantially similar to the trained data.
|
| And yet, the IA is 100% aiming to absolutely reproduce
| literally every part of the work in a 100% complete manner
| that replaces the original use of the work.
|
| And you cannot bring yourself to admit that the IA is
| wrong. When you get to that point you have to admit to
| yourself that you're not making an argument your pushing a
| dogma.
| haswell wrote:
| I'm not arguing that the IA is right or wrong here.
|
| The point more generally is that there's an asymmetry in
| how people are thinking about these issues, and to
| highlight that asymmetry.
|
| If it turns out after various lawsuits shake out that
| LLMs as they currently exist are actually entirely legal,
| there's a case to be made that the criteria for
| establishing fair use is quite broken. In a world where
| the IA gets in legal trouble for interpreting existing
| rules too broadly, it seems entirely unjust that LLM
| companies would get off scott free for doing something
| arguably far worse from some perspectives.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > and not competing in the market with the original work
|
| AI _absolutely_ competes in the market with the original
| works it trains on, and with new works in those same markets.
| Proponents of unrestricted AI training loudly tout and
| _celebrate_ that it does so.
|
| Which would be fine, if everyone else had the _same_ rights
| to completely ignore copyright. The asymmetry here seems
| critically broken.
| tptacek wrote:
| IA's arguments that this was fair use seem exceptionally weak:
|
| * Their "transformation" argument comes down to easing access,
| which has already been shot down in previous cases;
| unsurprising, since Napster could make the same argument.
|
| * Their "nature of the work" argument came down to the fact
| that some of the books they scanned were nonfiction.
|
| * They made a halfhearted attempt to claim that "amount and
| substantiality" weighed neutrally in this case, despite copying
| entire books wholesale and making them available in their
| entirety.
|
| * They brought experts to make their "commercial impact"
| argument who limited their analysis to physical books(?!)
| despite the publishers coming to the case with competing
| ebooks.
|
| It's wild to me they thought they could win this case. There's
| the law as people at IA and on message boards want it to be,
| and there's the law as it is. For people who want those two
| concepts to come closer together, this case seems like a major
| setback and an egregious strategic blunder.
| Minor49er wrote:
| Creating something transformative is worse than straight up
| copying it? How does this make any sense?
| woadwarrior01 wrote:
| Indeed! Although in the AI training case it's much more
| surreptitious. Everyone trains on them, the only story that I'm
| aware of is the one about the OpenAI books1 and books2 datasets
| used to train GPT3.
| suprjami wrote:
| Lending books to students doesn't make Red Line go up.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| I wonder how legit it would be to have an AI scan over the
| copy, re-write it (as minimally as possible) in its own words,
| and then just distribute that.
|
| Probably not all that legit, but arguably thats where we're
| headed anyway :/
| tombert wrote:
| I still cannot imagine how IA thought that giving unrestricted
| access to copyrighted books was a good idea. It seemed inevitable
| that _someone_ would sue them over it.
|
| Honestly, I think that IA's ambivalence towards the use of their
| website for outright piracy might lead to their collapse, and
| that's a shame. The Archive _can_ be a really wonderful tool,
| though I 'm not sure that its current management really knows
| what they're doing.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| This article doesn't mention controlled digital lending at all,
| what the entire lawsuit was about, and instead spends a
| significant chunk of the article on the national emergency
| library, a program that got like a one sentence mention in the
| judgment.
| tombert wrote:
| I think it was the catalyst for the whole lawsuit though. If
| they had done _just_ CDL, then I think that the book companies
| would have just tolerated it.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| It wasn't, the book publishers were clearly preparing the
| lawsuit for years before the NEL.
|
| The logic doesn't even make sense, if their objection was to
| the NEL they would have sued over that and the lawsuit would
| have been over four years ago.
| tombert wrote:
| > It wasn't, the book publishers were clearly preparing the
| lawsuit for years before the NEL.
|
| Even if that were true, they could have still been waiting
| for something like NEL to start the process, if nothing
| else to get the narrative on their side.
|
| I don't know, I don't work for a book company.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I'll agree that the NEL was a PR boon for this case, it's
| turned most of the discourse on this topic into people
| saying the IA deserved it for something unrelated to the
| case.
|
| That's a different claim than "book publishers would have
| tolerated CDL without it."
| tombert wrote:
| Sure, fair enough, they were probably just waiting for
| the right time to pounce. The NEL was as good a time as
| any, but it was probably a matter of "when", not "if".
| jrockway wrote:
| Someone has to push the limits to see where they actually are.
| Now we know.
| jzb wrote:
| We knew. This was a dumb move on IA's part. I support the
| organization wholeheartedly, but it was a dumb and risky move.
| (They may be _morally_ correct, but there was little if any
| doubt that they 'd overstepped the legal bounds.)
| tptacek wrote:
| That's an overly simplistic way to look at this. Depending on
| the fact pattern you bring to a case, you will get _different
| limits_ , which then apply to everyone later on regardless of
| their own fact patterns. IA took just about the worst possible
| fact pattern all the way to the 2nd Circuit for no discernible
| reason.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Now we should _fix_ those limits to be less broken.
| EarlKing wrote:
| We already knew what those limits were. This accomplished
| nothing other than endangering the internet archive by
| committing mass acts of copyright infringement. Ultimately, if
| he wanted to push the limits and get the law changed through
| judicial activism, he should've done it in his personal
| capacity rather than as a policy of the internet archive.
| quartesixte wrote:
| Really wish one of the billionaires would fund a publishing house
| that worked off a very different model than the Copyright
| Protection Scheme that the current majors used. Something that
| would allow authors to capture upsides, publishers to recoup, and
| information to spread freely.
|
| Patronage? Large Advances + Subscriptions?
|
| Something besides what we have now. Writing a 200 - 300 page book
| takes fair bit of effort and time that is not directly
| compensated, hence advances and the upside of royalties.
| vidarh wrote:
| The majority of authors who write novels hardly earn money as
| it is. I've written two novels, and they've sold more than
| average, and yet it can't cover my takeaway budget. That's
| fine, it's a hobby. But the point is only a vanishingly small
| minority write for money.
|
| Of course we want to keep some of those who do, but I don't
| know what a good solution would be. Not least because there's a
| vast chasm in terms of effort: a novel of the same length can
| take days or years, and it's not at all a given the low effort
| one will be the worst one.
| jandrese wrote:
| It's not about making money for the author, it's about making
| money for the publishing company. Nobody in government cares
| about the authors.
| daedrdev wrote:
| Even the publishers themselves loose money on most books they
| publish. Its something crazy like 65% of titles loose money,
| and 4% of books make 60% of the profits
|
| They book industry is much similar to venture capital, where a
| bunch of bets are made on books that they hope they hit it big,
| and get the rest of their income from the long tail of previous
| books they hang onto.
|
| https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books
| jandrese wrote:
| Very much not a surprise. I think the Internet Archive is
| providing an invaluable service to humanity in preserving works
| that would otherwise be lost to time. it is one of the crown
| jewels of the Internet, doing a job that nobody else is willing
| to do. But at the same time I know the courts side with
| publishers pretty much every time and copyright law being such as
| it is they're totally screwed. The only real question is how many
| trillions dollars will the judgment be. Preserving history is at
| odds with the profit motive, and lawmakers care a lot more about
| the latter than the former.
| wslh wrote:
| But, beyond this ruling, could Internet Archive just scan the
| books, store the data and release it to the public at a later
| time? I am just thinking about the preservation part in your
| comment.
| jandrese wrote:
| "A later time" being the after the year 2100 for most of
| these works. I am not exaggerating. If the author is still
| alive today their works won't enter the public domain until
| after you are dead.
|
| One can argue that the Internet Archive would be effectively
| useless if they strictly followed copyright law.
| wslh wrote:
| I only separated the logic based on your point about
| preservation. I completely agree that copyright rules are
| often abused and modified 'a piacere.' The topic of
| preservation resonated with me because I do amateur
| research in genealogy, and, for example, if you don't
| interview great-grandparents or grandparents, much of that
| information could become irrecoverable later.
| jandrese wrote:
| My overall point was "are works actually preserved if
| they are locked away and inaccessible?" A work that
| technically exists, but is inaccessible until after your
| death is effectively lost to you.
| nine_k wrote:
| In the meantime, the copyright duration could be shortened.
|
| Or, from another POV, cultural artifacts we dig out from
| earth millennia after they were buried still preserve
| something valuable. An entity like IA should think past one
| lifetime.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| >In the meantime, the copyright duration could be
| shortened.
|
| There's a better chance of you winning every lottery on
| Earth twice in a row than copyright terms being shortened
| in this century.
| fudged71 wrote:
| "If libraries were invented today they would be illegal"
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Internet Archive response blog post:
| https://blog.archive.org/2024/09/04/internet-archive-respond...
| ilamont wrote:
| This has been playing out for many years. And it's all because
| Brewster Kahle decided that an overly broad interpretation of the
| Internet Archive's mission trumped the rights of authors and
| publishers, and the laws of the United States.
|
| When IA was asked to stop CDL - many times - he continued. The
| National Writers Union tried to open a dialogue as early as 2010
| but was ignored:
|
| _The Internet Archive says it would rather talk with writers
| individually than talk to the NWU or other writers'
| organizations. But requests by NWU members to talk to or meet
| with the Internet Archive have been ignored or rebuffed._
|
| https://nwu.org/nwu-denounces-cdl/
|
| When the requests to abandon CDL turned into demands, Kahle dug
| in his heels. When the inevitable lawsuits followed, and IA lost,
| he insisted that he was still in the right and plowed ahead with
| appeals.
|
| He also opened a new front in the court of public opinion. In his
| blog posts and interviews with U.S. media, Kahle portrays the
| court cases and legal judgements as a crusade against the
| Internet Archive and all librarians (see
| https://blog.archive.org/2023/12/15/brewster-kahle-appeal-st...).
| It's not. It's the logical outcome of one man's seemingly
| fanatical conviction against the law and the people who work very
| hard to bring new books into being.
|
| In addition, there has been real collateral damage to the many
| noble aspects of the Internet Archive. Legal fees and judgements
| have diverted resources away from the Wayback Machine, the
| library of public domain works, and other IA programs that
| provide real value to society. I truly hope the organization can
| survive.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| So, this case was not about CDL (Controlled Digital Lending).
| It was about DL with the "C" removed. Specifically the IA's
| previous CDL program only lent out one electronic copy at a
| time per physical copy held, and this case is about a program
| at beginning of pandemic where they suspended these limits.
|
| There could still be appeals in store for this case, but
| regardless of the outcome of this case, CDL could still be
| quite legal (and I think ought to be -- libraries ability to
| lend out books without publisher permission or license has been
| a huge gain for society, and I think must be able to continue
| in the electronic realm; and I think there are good legal
| arguments for it, on extension of first-sale doctrine to
| electronic realm and on fair use).
|
| It was not helpful for the case of CDL to have this pretty bad
| ("uncontrolled digital lending"?) case decided first though, I
| agree this was not a very strategic move.
| zerocrates wrote:
| They lost here on both regular CDL and the National Emergency
| Library "uncontrolled" variant.
|
| The court's decision and conclusion is almost entirely about
| just regular CDL:
|
| "This appeal presents the following question: is it "fair
| use" for a nonprofit organization to scan copyright-protected
| print books in their entirety and distribute those digital
| copies online, in full, for free, _subject to a one-to-one
| owned-to-loaned ratio between its print copies and the
| digital copies it makes available at any given time_ , all
| without authorization from the copyright-holding publishers
| or authors? Applying the relevant provisions of the Copyright
| Act as well as binding Supreme Court and Second Circuit
| precedent, we conclude the answer is no."
|
| (emphasis added)
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Well, that is a disaster. I'll have to read more, I hadn't
| realized that.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Yeah the posture and discussion on that is basically "we
| don't even need to go into the NEL because CDL as a whole
| isn't fair use."
|
| There are some limiting principles... the lower decision
| only covered books that were "in print" in eBook form...
| but the rationale here is quite broad and would easily
| stretch beyond these specifics. (There's a small amount
| of analysis related to whether the digitization involved
| in CDL is "transformative" that rests on official
| publisher eBooks being available, but there's a strong
| overall impression that the decision would come out the
| same way for things not already available digitally.)
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| So what I'm mad at is not that IA did CDL and imperilled
| thier other work -- it's that instead of doing CDL in a
| way most likely to result in a successful case if sued,
| they did it in a reckless not-C way that resulted in a
| bad case that ruined CDL, where maybe a better case with
| better facts would not have.
|
| In a more reasonable world we could imagine Congress
| might pass a law authorizing actual one-copy-per CDL by
| non-profit libraries. But nobody's going to hold their
| breath for that.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Yes, the NEL period surely soured even more what was
| already going to be a hard case, and gave the publishers
| greater impetus to bring it, and blunted the negative PR
| they'd have gotten. I don't know that any CDL that was
| done on a significant enough scale to be worth the suit
| was ever going to survive, though.
|
| I've thought since the beginning of this saga that a
| change in statute would pretty much be needed for CDL or
| something similar. The idea being to craft something that
| extends the philosophy or idea of libraries in the face
| of an increasingly digital world where doing much of
| anything requires a copy, things are licensed rather than
| sold, and the first sale doctrine has little application,
| but I agree with you that such an idea has dim prospects.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Also, I lazily assumed differently, because I'm used to
| appellate courts making it as easy as possible and narrow
| as possible and not making new law they didn't need to
| make. I expected since the NEL thing was so blatant and
| made the decision easier, they'd just make a decision
| about that. Isn't that how it usually used to work? New
| era I guess.
|
| But looking at it, maybe this was the way the original
| suit was set up necessarily, and the lower court
| decision? OK.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > the lower decision only covered books that were "in
| print" in eBook form
|
| This is actually a pretty significant limitation, because
| so much of what was practically available as CDL was
| actually out-of-print books that the publishers never
| bothered to make available for eBooks licensing. It's at
| least reasonable to expect that the fair-use analysis
| might tilt the other way for such books - the use is a
| bit more "transformative" because at least it technically
| contributes something that the publisher didn't, and the
| potential of market harm wrt. the copywritten work
| becomes a lot more speculative.
| ndiddy wrote:
| If you read the decision (https://ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisi
| ons/isysquery/797361df-8d...), it almost entirely focuses on
| CDL not being legal in general rather than bringing up IA's
| "National Emergency Library" program. One illustrative quote:
|
| "IA maintains that it delivers each Work "only to one already
| entitled to view [it]"--i.e., the one person who would be
| entitled to check out the physical copy of each Work. But
| this characterization confuses IA's practices with
| traditional library lending of print books. IA does not
| perform the traditional functions of a library; it prepares
| derivatives of Publishers' Works and delivers those
| derivatives to its users in full. That Section 108 allows
| libraries to make a small number of copies for preservation
| and replacement purposes does not mean that IA can prepare
| and distribute derivative works en masse and assert that it
| is simply performing the traditional functions of a library.
| 17 U.S.C. SS 108; see also, e.g., ReDigi, 910 F.3d at 658
| ("We are not free to disregard the terms of the statute
| merely because the entity performing an unauthorized
| reproduction makes efforts to nullify its consequences by the
| counterbalancing destruction of the preexisting
| phonorecords.")."
| snapetom wrote:
| Technically true, but people are naive to think the
| catalyst to file the lawsuit wasn't the NEL.
|
| CDL had been going on for years in a bit of a cold war.
| Publishers had a lot to lose if they lost CDL and just
| lived with it. When NEL happened, they decided to use their
| nukes. They had a rock-solid case against NEL, so might as
| well use it and try to take out CDL at the same time.
|
| If they lost CDL but won NEL, they would be back where
| we've started for years.
| pavon wrote:
| No, that's wrong. The original case covered both CDL and the
| "emergency" lending, but this appeal focused solely on CDL.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > In his many interviews with U.S. media, he portrays the court
| cases and legal judgements as a crusade against the Internet
| Archive and all librarians. It's not. It's the logical outcome
| of one man's seemingly fanatical conviction against the law and
| the people who work very hard to bring new books into being.
|
| If IA had won, IA would be hailed as a cultural hero. They hit
| and they missed. Claiming Brewster Kahle is against "the people
| who work very hard to bring new books into being" is unfair.
| The copyright goalposts have moved so far past where they were
| originally, the people who work very hard can be dead for
| decades and their works still in copyright, and by the time
| they are dead for 70 years, the copyright will probably be
| extended again.
| tptacek wrote:
| The further you take a federal case the more precedent you
| create. The infinitesimal odds IA seemed to have at winning
| this case have to be weighed against the precedent they have
| created that may bind on future controlled digital lending
| cases with better facts. What IA did here wasn't costless.
| doublescoop wrote:
| This wasn't a case of the estates of dead authors trying to
| hold onto rights. Working authors were actively being harmed
| by the activities of the IA through the CDL. Working authors
| were met with refusals to meet to discuss this issue.
|
| I don't think that characterization of Kahle is unfair at
| all. His position was unreasonable, determined to be illegal,
| and damaging to people who depend on copyright to license
| their work.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| How was the CDL hurting working authors? A library bought
| the book, paying the publisher and the author. The IA
| scanned the book for digital lending, this digital copy
| could only be checked out by one person and only when the
| physical book was not also checked out.
|
| I understand the court decided this wasn't okay. That
| aside, how was it hurting working authors?
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Maybe not the CDL, but the "national emergency library"
| that ignored the one-book-per-person limit definitely
| went too far.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| This particular ruling deals with the CDL.
| Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 wrote:
| From TFA:
|
| > However, the Internet Archive expanded its library
| project during the covid-19 pandemic. It launched the
| National Emergency Library, allowing an unlimited number
| of people to access the same copies of ebooks. That's
| when the publishers banded together to file the lawsuit,
| targeting both online libraries.
|
| The digital copy could be checked out by many people at
| the same time.
| s-video wrote:
| NEL was a brief deviation from the usual CDL one-
| borrower-at-a-time system. Parent asked how CDL, not NEL,
| hurt authors.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| The pandemic lending is a different thing, it's not
| "CDL".
| healsdata wrote:
| Because other libraries have licensing agreements that
| benefit authors on a different basis than "you sold one
| book to one library".
|
| You may argue that that shouldn't be the paradigm, but
| one library unilaterally changing it denies the authors
| their say on the change, either through licensing or
| legislation.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| > this digital copy could only be checked out by one
| person and only when the physical book was not also
| checked out
|
| Even if that were the case I don't think it's acceptable.
|
| Physical used goods have limitations on transfer rate. If
| you want a used book you have to go to the store. Or have
| it shipped across the country.
|
| I adamantly oppose a global digital pool with
| instantaneous transfers. In that world you never need to
| sell more than peak concurrent users. If that were the
| case then each copy would need to sell for thousands of
| dollars for content creators to afford food.
|
| The same argument applies to "used" digital movies and
| games. It's nonsense.
| Amezarak wrote:
| > If that were the case then each copy would need to sell
| for thousands of dollars for content creators to afford
| food.
|
| We have an enormous surplus of content creators and most
| of the content is not very good. I don't see why we need
| to structure our economic system such that people must be
| able to making a living churning out mediocre
| scifi/romance/mystery novels. If they can, great, but I
| don't think that's the goal we should be aiming for with
| copyright. There would still be plenty of novels turned
| out every year even if copyright did not exist.
|
| > In that world you never need to sell more than peak
| concurrent users.
|
| That sounds good to me, and I doubt it's really much more
| than the number of sales now. Many/most people would
| still buy their own copy anyway, just as they do today
| when a new book comes out.
|
| Copyright law as structured today is destroying more art
| than saving it; the number of out-of-print but
| copyrighted works that are vanishing from human knowledge
| is astronomical.
| tomxor wrote:
| You're arguing against a principle that applies to
| physical libraries (Who also have films btw)...so are
| physical libraries also nonsense?
|
| Libraries do not serve the interest of publishers (and
| let's just focus on publishers because if we're being
| _real_ here, _publishers_ are the ones who stand to lose
| money - "think of the authors" is just a distraction)...
| i digress, Libraries exist as a benefit to society, they
| aren't supposed to neatly fit into absolutist capitalist
| ideals.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| > let's just focus on publishers
|
| No. I'm focusing on all media - books, tv, movies, games,
| etc. It's one set of copyright laws.
|
| > so are physical libraries also nonsense?
|
| Copyright strikes a balance of rights between content
| creators/owners and content consumers. Physical libraries
| with the limitations of physical transfer strike are a
| reasonable balance. A global digital pool with
| instantaneous and unlimited transfer of non-degradable
| goods does not strike a reasonable balance.
| pineaux wrote:
| Also you are allowed to lend your book out to anybody in
| earth at any time you want. You have bought the book, its
| yours you can do with it what you want. Burn it, read it,
| use it as toiletpaper. You arent allowed to republish the
| book however and earn money on it. Or give it away for
| free. So the real question here is: what is the
| definition of publishing. Is the IA publishing?
| mixologic wrote:
| > If that were the case then each copy would need to sell
| for thousands of dollars for content creators to afford
| food.
|
| That is precisely the agreement that existing libraries
| have with publishers _now_. The digital copy that they
| buy to lend out comes with restrictions on how many
| copies can be lent at a time, and also costs a _lot_ more
| than just buying one copy of the book.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| That's certainly not the license that Internet Archive
| paid for!
|
| If we want media licenses to cost thousands of dollars so
| they can be loaned out digitally fine. That's something
| that can be fairly negotiated.
|
| What I oppose is a regular off the shelf purchase being
| used for unlimited, instantaneous digital rentals. That's
| disastrously terrible idea.
| pessimizer wrote:
| If IA had won, it would have been a bad, fragile decision,
| that could have been instantly erased by another judge or an
| executive order. If you want to change the law because it is
| unconstitutional, fight it in the courts. If you want to
| change the law because it is bad law, get Congress to change
| the law.
|
| Liberals were spoiled by the Warren Court in thinking that
| their own personal crusades will be inevitably be given force
| of law in the end by an appointed judge or an executive
| order. No, you're going to have to convince people, you can't
| just wave your degrees and resume around.
|
| It's self-indulgent to risk the archive and the wayback
| machine like this, but it was his to risk. If it's gone after
| this, I guess the people who think this was a noble cause can
| write a poem or do a retrospective about what archive.org
| _was_ in a gallery somewhere.
| tptacek wrote:
| How would an executive order reverse an appeals court
| finding? This wasn't a regulatory case.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| > Liberals were spoiled by the Warren Court[...] No, you're
| going to have to convince people, you can't just wave your
| degrees and resume around.
|
| Maybe this was true in the 1950s and 60s, but a lot of
| things enshrined by judicial or executive fiat already have
| democratic support. ex: https://xkcd.com/1431/ Tearing them
| down is just an exercise in vetocracy.
|
| I'm not entirely sure how this relates to copyright, though
| - an aspect of law whose main impact on the average person
| is YouTube or Facebook saying "no, you can't put 50 year
| old pop songs on your uploads". Here, the problem isn't a
| majority opposition that needs to be convinced, it's a
| majority that _doesn 't care_, or doesn't know how to fight
| in favor of reform.
|
| IA won't be gone because libraries have limitations on
| copyright damages. In fact, they already paid damages in a
| settlement with the publishers in the lawsuit. The only
| reason why there even is an appeal being talked about is
| because IA and the publishers both agreed to keep the case
| live through the appeals court.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Sorry. It's not unfair. I am much less likely to create a new
| book if I know that IA will just be giving away infinite
| copies to anyone under their crazy theory. Now that some
| sanity has returned, I'm more likely to actually share my
| knowledge with the world in book form instead of charging
| much more to single payers as consulting fees.
| elaus wrote:
| This court ruling was (also) about "CDL" (controlled
| digital lending), i.e. lending ONE digital copy of a book
| for each physical book in a library's possession - and only
| while the physical copy was not lent.
|
| This is as far away from "giving away infinite copies to
| anyone" as it could be.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| While I agree with your point, there is some nuance
| because transfers can be nearly instantaneous. Physical
| books have to be transported to and from the library. CDL
| is as if we all lived in the same library and could
| shelve/swap books with anyone at any moment and only have
| to wait when there is a queue.
| dark-star wrote:
| That's what the internet does: it makes things that took
| days or weeks before (nearly-)instantaneous. If I have
| 100$, I can lend them to someone (via paypal or
| whatever), and when I get them back, I can immediately
| give them out again. I don't have to wait for them to
| physically go to my place (or a bank) and return cash.
|
| If your whole defense hinges on "borrowing books has to
| have an inherent delay of X hours/days/weeks before they
| can be given out again", that's a very weak point in
| today's day and age. It's like saying "sending mails is
| bad because it is nearly instantaneous, and you don't
| have to wait for the postman to deliver your letter".
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| As an author it means my book is less likely to be
| purchased directly by impatient library patrons.
| altruios wrote:
| Just for the sake of argument, let us say infinite copies
| kills all profit drive to make a book. What kind of books
| still get written? There is an argument for the quality of
| books being made increasing due to only books that have
| true passion for the sake of sharing being produced under
| this system... art for the sake of itself, not for the sake
| of profit.
|
| If your only determining factor for writing a book is to
| make and profit off of 'valuable intangibles', then I get
| the ick, just personally for me.
|
| I'm not arguing for more starving artists, I'm arguing art
| and capitalism don't mix (see AI for further validation of
| that position).
| healsdata wrote:
| I think that argument is pretty naive. The only books
| that would still get made are those from people
| privileged enough (money and time) to write books.
|
| You'll get way more ghost-written biographies from
| celebrities and hot takes from politicians.
| Cpoll wrote:
| I think writing a book to make money is itself pretty
| naive. There's already a bit of privilege involved in
| being able to devote time to writing, and in many cases
| make attempts for years before getting published to
| modest revenue.
|
| A lot of people start writing books despite knowing those
| odds and outcomes.
| didntcheck wrote:
| [delayed]
| didntcheck wrote:
| Yep. This isn't a dichotomy between unscrupulous trend
| chasers vs passionate _artistes_ writing masterpieces
| just for the love of it. There are plenty of people who
| would _like_ to make their living selling creative works
| that they 're passionate about, but there's only a finite
| amount of time in the day, and bills need to be paid.
| It's fairly well known that being an author or musician
| is a difficult career, and this is obviously a bad thing
| for artistic expression. It biases cultural output
| towards the financially privileged, or those who pander
| to those who will sponsor them
| daedrdev wrote:
| Who are we to decide books made for profit are not good?
| In fact many of my favorite books were clearly made in an
| attempt to trade my money for enjoyment, and were better
| because of that since they were made with the readers
| satisfaction as a goal.
|
| Plus there are plenty of people who do it for the art
| even if they get paid, but the payment makes themselves
| better off and allows them to continue their work.
|
| Like capitalism allows many authors to be able to create
| their intended art and find an audience, with both
| artistry and the desire to make money. And it's not like
| writing a book is easy, so the money is also extra
| motivation.
| stroupwaffle wrote:
| A lot of the material I checked out on IA was older books
| still in copyright, but no longer published. And physical
| copies get warn over time. Existing knowledge should remain
| accessible. Publishers do not act in the best interest of
| authors, they squeeze higher percentages from them just
| like any other content distribution platform.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| If IA had fought _that_ fight ... dealing with copyright
| holders who have stopped publishing and made this content
| unavailable, they would have had more support at every
| step of the way.
| gosub100 wrote:
| giving a way copies != lost sales.
| zajio1am wrote:
| > The copyright goalposts have moved so far past where they
| were originally, the people who work very hard can be dead
| for decades and their works still in copyright, and by the
| time they are dead for 70 years
|
| Note that copyright lasting 50 years after the author's death
| was already in Berne Convention from 1886. Some (but not all)
| of these extensions in US were just adaptation of older
| weaker US copyright to international conventions.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You're taking an extreme and ultimately wrong position.
|
| The the name of this nonsense, the Internet Archive damaged
| itself, perhaps mortally and damaged the concepts it stands
| for. Archives should be run by boards of archivists and
| librarians, not reckless activists.
| msla wrote:
| CDL is how physical libraries work: They buy a book and then
| lend it out multiple times to multiple people, on a one-in one-
| out basis, who then do not have to buy the book themselves.
| They even repair books to avoid purchasing new ones again. Do
| you think physical libraries harm the people who bring books
| into being?
| tptacek wrote:
| Physical libraries lend actual physical objects. They don't
| copy anything. This is a copyright case.
| msla wrote:
| The effect on authors is the same: A book is circulated
| multiple times after being bought once.
| tptacek wrote:
| That's not how the law works. Again: this is a copyright
| case.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| "The only moral laws are my laws."
| pessimizer wrote:
| Who is this a quote from, and who is talking about "moral
| laws?"
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| I don't think people here are confused about how the law
| works. I think many people here feel the law _shouldn 't_
| work that way.
|
| Stating it explicitly: while the NEL was dubious, CDL
| _should_ have been 100% legal, and it 's a massive
| disappointment to see it ruled against.
| tptacek wrote:
| Maybe a case with a better fact pattern (for instance:
| lending only books without competing publisher epubs)
| might have had a better chance, but I think people are
| getting themselves tied up in knots about IA's intent,
| which is just one factor in a fair-use analysis. The law
| cares deeply about _copies_ , not about circulation or
| access.
|
| Further: it seems weird to blame judges for applying what
| is in fact very straightforward law. Seems like your
| problem is with Congress!
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Fair use is not "very straightforward law", and is
| deliberately a fuzzy line; I do in fact think CDL
| _should_ have passed a fair-use analysis. _Separately_ I
| also think the law should improve.
| tptacek wrote:
| In which part of this case were the judges required to
| stretch at all? The decision is conveniently broken down
| across the 4-part fair use test.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| It seems like you're making a "what happened" argument in
| response to a "what should have happened" argument. It's
| possible to make an argument in favor of this being fair
| use, and it's possible to make an argument against fair
| use. The (subjective) decision here was the latter; it
| doesn't preclude the possibility of the former. I'm not
| arguing that it was a stretch to say "no"; I'm arguing
| that it _also_ wasn 't a stretch to say "yes".
|
| In terms of the fair use argument that _could_ have been
| made, the Internet Archive 's CDL obviously failed
| "nature of" and "amount and substantiality of", but I
| think it did _not_ inherently fail "purpose and
| character" or "effect of the use", despite the decision
| saying it did.
|
| In terms of concrete legal changes that could and should
| happen: "right of first sale" should be updated for
| digital, and include both "right to do format-shifting"
| (e.g. scanning physical to digital) and "right to lend
| copies digitally" (just like first-sale already
| explicitly allows physically).
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Are you suggesting that the law reflects an entrenched,
| emotional celebration of an antique, traditional notion
| of a library, and not something rational and consistent
| about lending, copyright and the economics of writing?
| Apostasy! I want this conversation to only be strictly
| about what the case law says, so that I may tell you
| about it "again" and again!
| tptacek wrote:
| No, the problem is that the preceding analysis is a
| category error, in that it assumes the law has a purpose
| of minimizing the circulation of an individual book. It
| does not, which is why traditional libraries weren't
| threatened by it.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| I don't know, it doesn't take a genius or a law degree to
| understand that maintaining a one to one ratio of
| physical copies to digitally lent books is the same shit
| as a regular library but more convenient. It stands to
| reason that the law shouldn't preclude technological
| advances that make libraries more convenient. The reason
| traditional libraries aren't threatened by the law is
| cultural. There are states that ban books my dude, it's
| all cultural.
|
| I wonder why judges are anti-library. Although I can
| understand why they are generally anti-technology: the
| law school people have a lot of beefs, and beefs with the
| compsci people rank highly. And before you start telling
| me all the reasons why "beefs" aren't a central part of
| the character of judges and therefore law in this
| country, you should maybe read more about guys like
| Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
| tptacek wrote:
| Judges aren't anti-library. People care a lot less about
| "compsci" culture than "compsci" people think they do. We
| simply aren't that important.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > Judges aren't anti-library.
|
| Some are now!
| usr1106 wrote:
| But judges and/or legislators might not have fully arrived in
| the internet age yet?
|
| I would also see a difference whether the activity is for
| profit (Google earning money with news scraped from
| Newspapers) and non-profit (IA and physical libraries).
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| > Do you think physical libraries harm the people who bring
| books into being?
|
| Yes, actually, I do. But the public benefits of libraries
| outweigh the harm it does to authors. But, the fact that I
| can buy a book once, and pass it between 50 friends to read
| feels unfair to the author who effectively makes no money off
| of the work.
| andybak wrote:
| So, lending a book to a friend is wrong? Or just doing that
| when your have more then x friends?
|
| I'm genuinely not sure what you're saying here.
| EarlKing wrote:
| A physical library does not involve making a copy, but
| lending out an existing physical copy. One book, one reader.
| "Controlled Digital Lending" literally involves making and
| transmitting a copy to another physical medium
| electronically. Brewster has endangered the good work done by
| people at the archive for a case he was never going to win
| and which was of dubious value. If he wants to be the next
| Anna's Archive then he should drop all pretense and go do
| that... but leave the archive to do what the archive is meant
| to do.
| Kerrick wrote:
| Does this case's effect on CDL mean that a library could
| still buy a huge stack of ultra-cheap eBook readers, load
| each one up with their one copy of a given book, and then
| lend out the physical readers?
| tptacek wrote:
| Presumably not, because the same copies would be created.
| This wasn't a case that hinged on DRM or content
| protection. IA was _making copies_ , lots of copies, and
| that's an action governed by copyright law; it's right
| there in the name.
|
| All that aside: if you have 1:1 physical books anyways,
| what is the reader accomplishing here? Just loan out the
| book.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| No, but I suspect the licensing on the ebooks already
| forbids transferring the physical reader the book is on
| to another person.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| Still, under the CDL it is only one book, one person. This
| is significantly different from a site like Anna's Archive.
| EarlKing wrote:
| No, it isn't. They're issuing a copy to the reader for
| the duration of their checkout. Your argument might hold
| some weight if they scanned a book, destroyed the book,
| and then deleted the book from their own servers every
| time it was lent out... but that's not how CDL works.
| What they're doing is unambiguously copying.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| They aren't lending the physical book and the digital
| book simultaneously; there's only ever one "book" lent.
| To my mind this is materially different from sites like
| Anna's Archive.
| LunaSea wrote:
| That is incorrect. Libraries regularly scan and OCR books
| to make them digitally accessible and searchable.
|
| I hope the likes of the Library of Congress are ready to
| shutdown their online services.
| EarlKing wrote:
| Digitally accessible and searchable on site, not on
| line... unless you're saying the Library of Congress
| makes *in copyright* works available on line to all
| comers?
| jhbadger wrote:
| It does when the physical library is loaning an ebook -- it
| works on exactly the same principal as CDL -- library owns
| ebook, library loans out to one user the ebook -- that's
| why there is often a wait list when trying to check out
| ebooks from a real physical library. In fact, even the same
| DRM system is used to prevent the user from keeping the
| ebook after the loan is up -- Adobe's Digital Editions.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Libraries have different contracts with book publishers
| for eBooks. IA didn't have any contracts with any
| publisher.
|
| See: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/09/1135639385/libraries-
| publishe...
| tombert wrote:
| This is why I stopped donating to IA, and I will not donate
| until they get new leadership.
|
| I'm a very big supporter of a lot of what IA does, but I feel
| if I donate, my money is just going to fund more and more legal
| defenses because Brewster Kahle is being stubborn, and I'm
| afraid it's going to lead to the entire Archive being shut
| down.
|
| I've mentioned this before, but there are lots of cases where
| IA will let you download full video games for the switch that
| are still being actively sold [1]. The same applies to a lot of
| movies and TV shows, available via torrents no less.
|
| Before someone gives me a lecture about data harboring laws and
| fair use, I know that it is technically on the copyright holder
| to issue takedown requests for infringing material, but even
| still, I think they'd be smart to be a bit proactive about
| this. If _I_ know that the Internet Archive is an easy place to
| get pirated material, then I 'm quite confident that their
| staff does as well. If there's even one employee email that
| implies that they know about pirated content but didn't bother
| taking it down, then I think that's grounds for a lawsuit
| (though I'm not a lawyer).
|
| Much as I respect him for founding IA, I think that Kahle needs
| to be replaced as a leader.
|
| [1] I'm not going to link it here because I'm not sure HN's
| policy on potentially legally dubious material, but it is not
| hard to find.
| jrflowers wrote:
| > IA will let you download full video games for the switch
| that are still being actively sold [1]
|
| I am not seeing that anywhere. I see a file called "My
| Nintendo Switch games collection" and it is a big jpeg photo
| of a bookshelf. Is this what you mean?
| opan wrote:
| It's harder to find them than I expected, but one search
| with a result is "super mario wonder nsp". I had the
| advantage of knowing the format(s) Switch game dumps come
| in, though, so the average person might not find much.
| 0x1ch wrote:
| I'm heavy into the tracker and open water scenes.
|
| IA is most certainly holding some amount of content that is
| copyrighted and currently sold like they mentioned. It's
| just not easy to find.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > IA is most certainly holding some amount of content
| that is copyrighted and currently sold like they
| mentioned. It's just not easy to find.
|
| You could say the same of YouTube. As long as they take
| down copywritten works when asked, they should be fine.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I will admit that I am personally on the fence. I knew for a
| while that IA was in legal crosshairs and I actually
| encouraged people to donate to it on this very forum. I am
| not sure it is fair to stop donations over one
| miscalculation. Their core mission remains in place and IA is
| more important to the ecosystem than wikipedia. Not to
| mention, with this appeal lost, it is not unlikely other
| entities will try take IA out.
| mixologic wrote:
| Fair though to hesitate over donating if you believe that
| your donations are not going to go towards the valueable
| core mission, and instead be misdirected to ill advised
| legal crusades.
| dark-star wrote:
| > IA will let you download full video games for the switch
| that are still being actively sold
|
| That's a weak argument that is the same as saying "BitTorrent
| is bad because you can download illegal stuff" or" file
| hosters should be banned because I found $illegal_thing on
| this one"
|
| Yes, a free upload service will get abused. And yes, they are
| very quick to take these kinds of warez downloads offline
| _when someone notifies them_.
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| You also forgot the national emergency library thing which only
| made his position more unworkable with current copyright law.
| Sysreq2 wrote:
| We've been here before: you can't punish someone into being
| your consumer. Someone who wants your product at the price you
| offer it will ultimately pay for it. Short sighted business
| decisions ultimately hurt the industry more than accepting the
| need to change your business model.
| codedokode wrote:
| I think you misunderstand the situation. If you haven't read
| the lawsuit [1] I suggest you look through it.
|
| Basically, there is an established practice for lending printed
| books: the library buys a book and lends it to patrons without
| permission from the copyright owner.
|
| However, publishers believe that digital books are different
| from physical books and established practice doesn't apply to
| them; they believe that lending should be made at publishers'
| terms, to be specific:
|
| - only "academic libraries" (chosen by publishers) may lend
| digital books
|
| - they may lend them only to the members, for example, only
| students of the university, not to random people
|
| - library must buy a special "library license", which might
| have arbitrary price and arbitrary terms
|
| - the license has a limited term: sometimes it is 1-2 years,
| sometimes it is 26 lendings, after which the library must
| purchase a new license
|
| - the library must use publishers-approved DRM which might not
| work on some devices
|
| To enforce these rules publishers use DRM that prevents anyone
| from buying a digital book and lending it to other person
| (which was possible with digital books). So, in publishers view
| new technology means new rules and new opportunities.
|
| The IA found a workaround: they bought physical books, scanned
| them and lent those digital copies instead of a physical book,
| provided that only one user can read the same book at the same
| time. They acted like a library but using remote access to a
| digital copy. The lender might read the book on IA's website
| enforcing the terms of use or download a DRM-protected PDF.
|
| The lawsuit is about whether IA actions are legal or not (i.e.
| if digital books may be lent like physical books). Given that
| in future there will be less and less physical books, if
| publishers win, it will mean that libraries will not be able to
| lend contemporary books at the same terms and costs they lent
| physical books.
|
| There are several complications: dubious partnerships by IA
| with libraries to increase the number of lent simultaneously
| copies; dubious decision to remove limits during COVID
| pandemic. However, there are facts that play in IA favour:
| there are precedents when making digital copies was considered
| legal (by Google Books), and there are a 17 US Code 108 [2] and
| 109 [3], which allows some exemptions from copyright for
| libraries and archives.
|
| [1]
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23723923-hachette-v-...
|
| [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108
|
| [3] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/109
| breck wrote:
| Buckminster Fuller: "You never change something by fighting the
| existing reality. To change something, build a new model that
| makes the existing model obsolete."
|
| This is why we need the World Wide Scroll. A decentralized,
| offline first, successor to the web. I already built the damn
| thing and it works. Just need some liquid methane for propulsion.
| Buy a folder, help us start a peaceful revolution.
| https://wws.scroll.pub/
| Ekaros wrote:
| Whole thing should be obvious if you tried something else too.
| Like say DVD movies, rip them on free service and then only
| stream 1 copy at time... Surely that should be allowed as well?
|
| Why not music too, go out buy cds or vinyls, rip single one and
| now however many bulk copies you have you can stream at one time?
|
| Software gets bit more messy as it needs to be installed, but why
| not share saas seats, just somehow enforce single concurrent
| user...
| mdp2021 wrote:
| It is not clear if this user knows about mediatheques.
| sentrysapper wrote:
| > permitting the digital library would "allow for widescale
| copying that deprives creators of compensation and diminishes the
| incentive to produce new works."
|
| What a sad, neoliberal ideological ruling collectively holding us
| back.
|
| Providing rental access does not directly deprive compensation.
| Loans provide access to information, which can have profound
| socio-economic benefits.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| They should go for the route of letting people view webcam
| streams that look at physical book pages. Just need a camera per
| page or two.
| gdw2 wrote:
| Sounds like a similar concept to Aereo
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo)
|
| > Aereo leased each user an individual antenna and DVR situated
| in a remote warehouse that they could access over the Internet,
| allowing subscribers to view live broadcast television and to
| record the broadcasts for later viewing.
| dang wrote:
| Url changed from
| https://twitter.com/PublishersWkly/status/183135757036549737...,
| which points to this.
| dang wrote:
| Related URLs (from threads we merged hither) in case of interest:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/4/24235958/internet-archive-...
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-loses-hachette-...
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/major-book-publishers-defeat-...
|
| https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/internet-archive-digita...
| puppycodes wrote:
| What a disgusting lawsuit. I struggle to beleive in the "lost
| profits" these publishers "suffer" from. Libraries, digital and
| physical alike are incredible and neccessary institutions that
| deserve our support.
| thimabi wrote:
| At this point, the Internet Archive should consider simply moving
| to another jurisdiction. Decisions like this are a shame, because
| they hinder a proper way to deal with piracy.
|
| Physical libraries compete with book sales too, but of course
| libraries are lawful. Why should digital libraries be treated
| differently? Because there are ways to circumvent DRM on Internet
| Archive books? Well, there are ways to bypass DRM on sold ebooks,
| too.
|
| Perhaps IA's greatest mistake was to allow unrestricted lending
| during the pandemic. If it had kept its original mission, maybe
| things would not have ended up like this.
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(page generated 2024-09-04 23:00 UTC)