I’d be all for altering definitions in a way that enables them to do stuff like the controlled lending system (also just digitizing shit generally).
But I think the law is pretty clear, and a precedent calling their use case fair use would be mind blowing. You need new, much more common sense IP legislation that redefines consumer rights in a digital world.
But I think the law is pretty clear, and a precedent calling their use case fair use would be mind blowing. You need new, much more common sense IP legislation that redefines consumer rights in a digital world.
Indeed. I’m a big supporter of IA’s mission, and I’m a big supporter of piracy (copyright has gone insane over the years), but this outcome was obvious from the moment IA did this and it was a mistake for them to fight this fight. They should focus on preservation. Let the EFF handle the lawsuits, and let Library Genesis handle the illegal distribution of books. Everyone focus on what they’re best at.
Their distribution of books is completely legal.
Corporations just have more money to warp the laws in their favour.
That’s why the Archive is appealing: they still believe they are right.
There’s really no credible argument that their distribution of books even might be legal.
Their only defense is fair use, and there’s no precedent for a “fair use” defense justifying copying a work wholesale for mass distribution. (Yes, “one copy at a time” to multiple people is mass distribution.) Copying a whole work has effectively only qualified as fair use when that copy is not re-distributed, and is actually for a personal backup.
Their distribution of books is completely legal.
Corporations just have more money to warp the laws in their favour.
You just contradicted yourself in two sentences.
By “controlled lending system,” do you mean the library? If so, it is ridiculously expensive for them to offer ebooks and audiobooks. One ebook costs $60-100 and they can only lend the licensed copy for two years. You would think audiobooks would be more expensive to do but publishers charge roughly the same.
What Internet Archive did is digitized physical books, then loaned out their “one copy” with DRM. Their assertion is that this constitutes fair use. I don’t really think there’s any merit to that argument based on the law and the body of precedent, and fundamentally tend to dislike legislation from the bench (judges just arbitrarily reinterpreting laws). Passing new laws and restructuring how IP law works is the job of the legislature, not the judiciary.
IA then made this worse by taking the already super tenuous “fair use” argument and throwing it out the window by removing the lending limits during Covid. It was waving a red flag in front of IP holders and begging them to take aggressive action.
I think if they hadn’t abandoned the CDL modern during the pandemic, they could have kept it going indefinitely. Even if it wasn’t likely fair use, it might have been. More than that, it would have been bad press for the publisher to make the first move.
Abandoning CDL during the pandemic was just waving a red flag and giving the publishers a slam dunk case.
I think if IA had just held the line with CDL, they could have over time just effectively established a precedent. Lost opportunity.
I kind of suspect this was an attempt on the IA’s end to get parts of copyright struck down by court ruling. Laws can be clear and still found to not be in the public’s interest, or in violation of some other legal doctrine, and sometimes you’ll see groups come at them sideways.
Ownership laws are really tough ones to chip away at, and IP law in particular has been getting worse and more unassailable over time.
same same same
can anyone please point me to some piece of writing that explains how IA didn’t willfully self destruct?
everything i read about this legal action, even when I read IA’s stuff about, sounds moronic. doomed to fail and lose big for themselves and for others by setting a loser precident.
How is IAs approach much different to that of a regular library?
True, they were digitising physical books and lending copies. But this is not much different from how a regular library works (assuming controlled digital lending, yeah I heard aboud Covid period 😕).
I’m not an expert on American law (know nothing about it), but reading the articles and comments I thing there’s an argument to be made for IA functioning as a library.
Because it’s a copy. It’s literally that simple.
Libraries can operate because of first sale doctrine. You can do almost whatever you want with a physical object that contains a copyrighted work.
What you can’t do is copy it. There is no possible legal way to distribute a digital copy of a work without an explicit license from the copyright holder. There isn’t even a legal concept of “owning” a digital copy. You purchase a license.
A sad day, but nothing that can’t be fixed by reuploading the files.
At least it didn’t get shut down
I don’t follow. The Internet Archive only allows 1 copy of each physical book to be loaned at a time. If someone has the book you want already, then you need to wait until their loan expires. It’s not like shadow libraries that allow unrestricted DRM-free downloading.
And publishers’ profits are rising and don’t seem to be at all correlated to library access, so of course nobody is suggesting they should close.
What am I not understanding?
During the pandemic, Internet Archive very publicly announced they were relaxing their one physical copy per digitally loaned copy.
I think of they had maintained their 1:1 CDL method, the publishers would still be uncomfortable to be the one to sue first, especially since there was a decent argument and IA would have been pretty sympathetic.
Their pandemic policy was effectively not substantially different from a shadow library., and just set up a slam dunk case for the publishers.
Libraries are still a thing. You can still go there to borrow a book, read it, and return it, so that others can read it.
Public libraries are under assault from every direction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/03/us/book-bans-librarians.html (apologies for nyt link)
https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/5/5/23711417/republicans-want-to-defund-public-libraries-book-bans
Pretty soon you either won’t find the books, or even the libraries themselves. Piracy is the only way they are leaving to us.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/03/us/book-bans-librarians.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1k0.2DLu.z4XyKBb-92s6 Here’s the gift link without the paywall. I got the sub for free because my university has one for students.
It would be a shame if another website pop up and uploaded these removed book to it and call it, idk, Internet Alexandria or something.
