6 ms·

>I wonder how they feel about actual libraries, which make published works available for free to many people as well. If we're talking about "digital" lending

by jasode 6y ago

>I wonder how they feel about actual libraries, which make published works available for free to many people as well. If we're talking about "digital" lending instead of physical books, the traditional libraries "play nice" with publishers by buying DRM ebooks and lending out a limited number of copies. This is what they mean by traditional public libraries being "participants in lawful copyright marketplace". IA scanned books and unlimited lending circumvented all that. In other words, publishers are ok with limited free lending on their own terms so that it doesn't drastically affect their book sales but they never agreed to IA's unlimited lending which is why they akin it to "piracy". Not trying to play sides here but if you want to try to understand the nuance of the publishers' position, I'm trying to explain it in a neutral way.

zozbot234 6y ago
IA's lending is not unlimited, even with the National Emergency Library. The books are still restricted by DRM, they do keep track of how many copies are out for each book, and they do monitor the system to prevent abuse. It's a real library lending system, nothing like what they do with actual public domain works.
- space_fountain 6y ago
  But for copyright to mean something and for the authors to get paid IA's emergency library can't become the norm right? If they don't enforce limits on the number of copies what does it matter that they monitor the number of copies.
  - betamaxthetape 6y ago
    > IA's emergency library can't become the norm I don't think the plan is to "become the norm". It's an 'emergency library', and it exists currently because the pandemic has forced regular libraries to close.
    - space_fountain 6y ago
      Hum, many are starting to reopen which maybe helps to explain why this lawsuit is happening now. Regardless while it changes the morality I don't think it changes anything about the legality.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    As long as physical libraries throughout the U.S. and in much of the world are shuttered due to COVID, something like the NEL makes a lot of sense. It's not the norm, but we're not living in normal times either.
- jasode 6y ago
  >IA's lending is not unlimited, even with the National Emergency Library. I'm not debating with you about the details since I haven't used IA's system myself but the last time this came up, a commenter explained that there were a bunch of loopholes in IA's "limits" that it was effectively "unlimited". E.g. after the checkout period expires, you just check out the ebook again. Again, I don't know if this is true. EDIT to replies equating this to "physical books" : the context of my answer was "digital" ebooks. Physical books are already limited in the sense that libraries' limited budgets only buy limited copies of paper books. So library patrons renewing their borrowed book is "unlimited" on time but not a threat to the publishers because the # of copies are still limited.
  - thomaslord 6y ago
    Shockingly, at physical libraries you can also re-borrow a book if there's nobody on a waiting list for it.
    - space_fountain 6y ago
      Often libraries put limits on the number of times you can do this, but also since IA is currently not restricting the number of copies of a book it loans out that must make a difference no?
      - popinman322 6y ago
        Why would that matter? It's still only available to one party.
        space_fountain 6y ago
        Well right now that isn't true. IA suspended limiting the number of loans they issue to the number of books they own.
  - hashhar 6y ago
    And how is that different from a physical library.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  But under the National Emergency Library, a very large number of people can read one copy of a book at the same time. That makes it completely different from a library "lending" system, regardless of whether user actions are tracked. Whatever your thoughts on the IA's practices, it's worth being clear on this.
- zucker42 6y ago
  > The books are still restricted by DRM I don't think this is true for many books, which are scanned copies and available as PDFs or EPubs.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    It's definitely true of copyrighted books in the NEL. You're not getting actual PDF's or ePub's, only DRM-based versions are made available.
- jasode 6y ago
  >IA's lending is not unlimited, even with the National Emergency Library. The Internet Archive's Chris Freeland is the Director of Open Libraries and wrote the IA blog post[1] announcing the NEL change and he acknowledges that it is "unlimited"[2] -- and yet you say it isn't. I don't understand why you contradict IA's own representative. Are you affiliated with IA in an official capacity? - >Stephanie Willen Brown: So, librarian to librarian, is this unlimited simultaneous users? - >chrisfreeland: Stephanie – Yes, for the duration of our waitlist suspension![2] [1] https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-emergency-library-to-provide-digitized-books-to-students-and-the-public/ https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-em... [2] https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-emergency-library-to-provide-digitized-books-to-students-and-the-public/#comment-392139 https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-em...
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    This is only talking about 'unlimited' simultaneous users, and the term "unlimited" should be related to its proper context. It's 'unlimited' in a sense because the former limits have been suspended. Everything else is separate, so I'm not sure why we're being told assume that IA can't do their job properly.
    - jasode 6y ago
      >This is only talking about 'unlimited' simultaneous users, and the term "unlimited" should be related to its proper context. Because the "proper context" in this case is what the publishers are filing the lawsuit about. It doesn't matter whether you agree or disagree with the publishers. To the publishers, unlimited simultaneous users is the same as unlimited copies. With public libraries, they paid for limited simultaneous checkouts of digital ebooks which is limited copies and that was acceptable by publishers. In contrast, IA did not pay publishers a license to make copyrighted works available to unlimited users. The publishers didn't file lawsuits against public libraries; they filed it against IA. In your own words (since you don't object to the word "unlimited" and you thought my summary was unfair), what exactly did IA do that the publishers are filing lawsuit about?
zucker42 6y ago
> IA's unlimited lending IA's lending is not unlimited, as others have pointed out. From https://openlibrary.org/help/faq/borrow https://openlibrary.org/help/faq/borrow: > The Internet Archive and participating libraries have selected digitized books from their collections that are available to be borrowed by one patron at a time from anywhere in the world for free. [emphasis mine] I think we should be careful not to let publishers control the narrative here. Publishers interests in making profits are naturally going to conflict with the public good, and the point of copyright is to promote the latter.

by jasode 6y ago

zozbot234 6y ago

IA's lending is not unlimited, even with the National Emergency Library. The books are still restricted by DRM, they do keep track of how many copies are out for each book, and they do monitor the system to prevent abuse. It's a real library lending system, nothing like what they do with actual public domain works.

space_fountain 6y ago
But for copyright to mean something and for the authors to get paid IA's emergency library can't become the norm right? If they don't enforce limits on the number of copies what does it matter that they monitor the number of copies.
- betamaxthetape 6y ago
  > IA's emergency library can't become the norm I don't think the plan is to "become the norm". It's an 'emergency library', and it exists currently because the pandemic has forced regular libraries to close.
  - space_fountain 6y ago
    Hum, many are starting to reopen which maybe helps to explain why this lawsuit is happening now. Regardless while it changes the morality I don't think it changes anything about the legality.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  As long as physical libraries throughout the U.S. and in much of the world are shuttered due to COVID, something like the NEL makes a lot of sense. It's not the norm, but we're not living in normal times either.
jasode 6y ago
>IA's lending is not unlimited, even with the National Emergency Library. I'm not debating with you about the details since I haven't used IA's system myself but the last time this came up, a commenter explained that there were a bunch of loopholes in IA's "limits" that it was effectively "unlimited". E.g. after the checkout period expires, you just check out the ebook again. Again, I don't know if this is true. EDIT to replies equating this to "physical books" : the context of my answer was "digital" ebooks. Physical books are already limited in the sense that libraries' limited budgets only buy limited copies of paper books. So library patrons renewing their borrowed book is "unlimited" on time but not a threat to the publishers because the # of copies are still limited.
- thomaslord 6y ago
  Shockingly, at physical libraries you can also re-borrow a book if there's nobody on a waiting list for it.
  - space_fountain 6y ago
    Often libraries put limits on the number of times you can do this, but also since IA is currently not restricting the number of copies of a book it loans out that must make a difference no?
    - popinman322 6y ago
      Why would that matter? It's still only available to one party.
      - space_fountain 6y ago
        Well right now that isn't true. IA suspended limiting the number of loans they issue to the number of books they own.
- hashhar 6y ago
  And how is that different from a physical library.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
But under the National Emergency Library, a very large number of people can read one copy of a book at the same time. That makes it completely different from a library "lending" system, regardless of whether user actions are tracked. Whatever your thoughts on the IA's practices, it's worth being clear on this.
zucker42 6y ago
> The books are still restricted by DRM I don't think this is true for many books, which are scanned copies and available as PDFs or EPubs.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  It's definitely true of copyrighted books in the NEL. You're not getting actual PDF's or ePub's, only DRM-based versions are made available.
jasode 6y ago
>IA's lending is not unlimited, even with the National Emergency Library. The Internet Archive's Chris Freeland is the Director of Open Libraries and wrote the IA blog post[1] announcing the NEL change and he acknowledges that it is "unlimited"[2] -- and yet you say it isn't. I don't understand why you contradict IA's own representative. Are you affiliated with IA in an official capacity? - >Stephanie Willen Brown: So, librarian to librarian, is this unlimited simultaneous users? - >chrisfreeland: Stephanie – Yes, for the duration of our waitlist suspension![2] [1] https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-emergency-library-to-provide-digitized-books-to-students-and-the-public/ https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-em... [2] https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-emergency-library-to-provide-digitized-books-to-students-and-the-public/#comment-392139 https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-em...
- zozbot234 6y ago
  This is only talking about 'unlimited' simultaneous users, and the term "unlimited" should be related to its proper context. It's 'unlimited' in a sense because the former limits have been suspended. Everything else is separate, so I'm not sure why we're being told assume that IA can't do their job properly.
  - jasode 6y ago
    >This is only talking about 'unlimited' simultaneous users, and the term "unlimited" should be related to its proper context. Because the "proper context" in this case is what the publishers are filing the lawsuit about. It doesn't matter whether you agree or disagree with the publishers. To the publishers, unlimited simultaneous users is the same as unlimited copies. With public libraries, they paid for limited simultaneous checkouts of digital ebooks which is limited copies and that was acceptable by publishers. In contrast, IA did not pay publishers a license to make copyrighted works available to unlimited users. The publishers didn't file lawsuits against public libraries; they filed it against IA. In your own words (since you don't object to the word "unlimited" and you thought my summary was unfair), what exactly did IA do that the publishers are filing lawsuit about?

zucker42 6y ago

> IA's unlimited lending IA's lending is not unlimited, as others have pointed out. From https://openlibrary.org/help/faq/borrow https://openlibrary.org/help/faq/borrow: > The Internet Archive and participating libraries have selected digitized books from their collections that are available to be borrowed by one patron at a time from anywhere in the world for free. [emphasis mine] I think we should be careful not to let publishers control the narrative here. Publishers interests in making profits are naturally going to conflict with the public good, and the point of copyright is to promote the latter.