3 ms·

They appear to be treating this like a digital library. From the Wired article[1]: > you can click the name of the book and see a two-page preview of the cited

They appear to be treating this like a digital library. From the Wired article[1]: > you can click the name of the book and see a two-page preview of the cited work, so long as the citation specifies a page number. You can also borrow a digital copy of the book, so long as no else has checked it out, for two weeks—much the same way you'd borrow a book from your local library. The two page preview should be defensible as fair use; this is less than what Google's archived books allow you to view, for example. The legal details of the borrowing process are further documented here[2]: > We have recently made available a small number of books (currently 61 books) published between 1923 and 1941 under a provision of US Copyright law that was written to permit libraries to copy and lend titles that are no longer subject to commercial exploitation, and selection is currently overseen by lawyers expert in US copyright law.[3] It sounds like as long as a book in the last twenty years of copyright and is out of print, it might well be fair game for archival and lending. I'm not sure about books more recent than that. 1. https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-wikipedia-more-reliable/ https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-wikipedia-more-... 2. https://blog.archive.org/2018/01/24/digital-books-on-archive-org/ https://blog.archive.org/2018/01/24/digital-books-on-archive... 3. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3049158 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3049158

jrochkind1 7y ago
I think you have found a lot of the relevant law. The relevant laws are definitely not _entirely_ clearcut. Especially in how it applies to making a digital copy like this. Which means they aren't entirely clearcut against them either. But someone could certainly try suing them. Apparently IA is willing to be a bit risk forward here. But if they're only doing out of print books, there's less likely to be someone who _wants_ to sue them (a lot of old out of print books are basically "orphaned", there is no identifiable copyright owner, which is what a lot of the relevant laws are targetted at), and if someone did want to sue them, they'd have less chance of winning for an out of print book. (It's not entirely clear to me they're only doing out of print books?) Don't forget that Google's ability to scan and offer previews of books as 'fair use' was the subject of a multi-year lawsuit too! Which ended in a settlement, not a court ruling...

jrochkind1 7y ago

I think you have found a lot of the relevant law. The relevant laws are definitely not _entirely_ clearcut. Especially in how it applies to making a digital copy like this. Which means they aren't entirely clearcut against them either. But someone could certainly try suing them. Apparently IA is willing to be a bit risk forward here. But if they're only doing out of print books, there's less likely to be someone who _wants_ to sue them (a lot of old out of print books are basically "orphaned", there is no identifiable copyright owner, which is what a lot of the relevant laws are targetted at), and if someone did want to sue them, they'd have less chance of winning for an out of print book. (It's not entirely clear to me they're only doing out of print books?) Don't forget that Google's ability to scan and offer previews of books as 'fair use' was the subject of a multi-year lawsuit too! Which ended in a settlement, not a court ruling...