4 ms·

> There's no fair use exclusion for what they're doing Fair use is not the only exception to copyright. US copyright law has a separate section on exceptions

• icebraining 10y ago
  No help there, the exception is very limited in the number of copies it may produce, among other factors: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108
  • matt4077 10y ago
    A "copy", in this context, is a file. They can have three of those, which aligns perfectly with standard backup practices. Serving them is distribution, but not copying.
    • icebraining 10y ago
      Yes, it is. Even loading a file to RAM was considered a copy (see MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc) until Congress made an explicit exception.
• ghaff 10y ago
  There are [1] but they seem to be pretty rooted in making a copy of original works in a physical library. The parent's point that the IA operates in a very grey area of law and therefore needs to bend over backwards to comply with requests to remove material still applies. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108
• jacquesm 10y ago
  Ask yourself what you would rather have the IA spends it's meager funds on: buying hardware and paying people to do critical work or paying a bunch of lawyers to fight lawsuits against much better funded opponents they would lose anyway.
  • matt4077 10y ago
    I asked, and the answer was: "it's important to fight these fights, which is why I'm donating to the ACLU". I believe Us Code 108 is relevant here. It starts: it is not an infringement of copyright for a library or archives, or any of its employees acting within the scope of their employment, to reproduce no more than one copy or phonorecord of a work[...] There's obviously more to it that I haven't done research on, but that's a pretty good start and I wouldn't worry too much about lawsuits. In fact, if they were at risk of lawsuits, I don't see why respecting robots.txt would stop them–there's no "but you didn't tell me not to" excuse in copyright.
    • biztos 10y ago
      If someone wanted to sue the Archive, they would probably argue that every time archive.org serves a file they are making a copy... which is true, after all, if anything reproduced digitally is a "copy" in that sense. Nice point about the lack of implied permission in copyright. It makes me think robots.txt probably doesn't have any meaning one way or the other legally, but is just a community thing.
      • ghaff 10y ago
        >If someone wanted to sue the Archive, they would probably argue that every time archive.org serves a file they are making a copy... which is true, after all, if anything reproduced digitally is a "copy" in that sense. It absolutely could be/would be argued. Otherwise an arbitrary library or archive--oh, lets give it a name like Google Books--would have the right to make digital copies of physical books available to the public. Obviously Google tried to do this and (although the case was/is complicated) they weren't allowed to do this unconditionally. ADDED: Or, heck, any site could declare themselves an archive and offer up ripped CDs to the public.
      • icebraining 10y ago
        > If someone wanted to sue the Archive, they would probably argue that every time archive.org serves a file they are making a copy... which is true, after all, if anything reproduced digitally is a "copy" in that sense. It's more than a theoretical point - that each "serving" of a file is a copy is well established legally. In fact, even loading a program to RAM was considered a copy, per MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, until Congress made an explicit exception.