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> We moved up our schedule because, last Monday, four commercial publishers chose to sue Internet Archive during a global pandemic. Did this come as a surprise
by geofft 6y ago
> We moved up our schedule because, last Monday, four commercial publishers chose to sue Internet Archive during a global pandemic.
Did this come as a surprise? Did Internet Archive not expect publishers to sue?
The Archive launched the emergency library during a global pandemic. Lots of people, myself included, said that this was a risky move because they would obviously get sued and it would put not only the Archive but the existing idea of Controlled Digital Lending - which hasn't been clearly established as legal in caselaw - at risk.
They're trying to imply that the publishers are somehow bad people for suing in a pandemic, and sure, the publishers may very well be bad people in general, but IA launched this effort on the grounds that, more or less, the law doesn't matter any more in a pandemic.
> However, this lawsuit is not just about the temporary National Emergency Library. The complaint attacks the concept of any library owning and lending digital books, challenging the very idea of what a library is in the digital world.
That's precisely why we said they shouldn't have done this.
Controlled Digital Lending matches the existing operations of a physical library - there is one paid physical copy per loaned title. Publishers and authors alike like physical libraries because when more people check out books from libraries, more copies get purchased. It stands to reason that they shouldn't mind digital libraries that follow the same principle.
Internet Archive said, the same legal analysis that makes Controlled Digital Lending permissible also makes uncontrolled lending permissible when we decide the world needs it. We can give people unlimited electronic copies of books for one physical copy. The more people who read our books, the fewer purchases happen.
That challenges the very idea of what a library is in the digital world - it breaks the balance that has historically governed how physical libraries work. If I go to my local library and the librarian says "Actually don't bother checking this out, I'll just photocopy the whole book for you and you can keep it," I'm not sure I'd call that a library. It's a useful service for me, of course, at least provided I figure out some way to make sure that the people who write the books I want to read keep getting paid, but it's now something entirely different from a library.
- nordsieck 6y ago> Publishers and authors alike like physical libraries because when more people check out books from libraries, more copies get purchased. I don't think they like libraries per se, they've just made peace with the first sale doctrine. On the upside, libraries are a stable source of demand for new books. On the downside, libraries' collection are generally used more intensely than private collections - each book in a library displaces more than one private sale. > It stands to reason that they shouldn't mind digital libraries that follow the same principle. Maybe. I don't think the first sale doctrine really covers Controlled Digital Lending, so I guess we'll see how things pan out in court.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- p1necone 6y ago"each book in a library displaces more than one private sale" There's no way to prove this. You can't just look at someone borrowing a book from a library and say they would have bought it had the library not been there, They might just have never read the book.
- hopfscotch6 6y agoThe publishers do not have a legitimate business and deserve to go out of existence. Copyright is nonsense.
- jawns 6y agoHow do you propose that the authors of creative works be paid for their efforts, outside of copyright?
- hopfscotch7 6y agoThey aren’t?
- karaterobot 6y agoYour position is unusual enough that I don't really understand it. If you laid out an argument, I'd be happy to read it and have my mind changed. Terse responses are not persuasive, though.
- hopfscotch7 6y agoI hold that you cannot own information. I can have a copy of some information which you have, without depriving you of it. Property rights don't apply. One needs only look at the way Disney has gotten copyright terms extended to see that it exists purely to serve entrenched publishing interests, and nothing more.
- chipotle_coyote 6y agoBetter yet, nobody should be paid for any work whatsoever. We should all love what we do, and if we won't do what we do for free, we clearly don't love it enough. We should all put our lack of money where our mouths are.
- hopfscotch7 6y agoIf you just dropped the sarcastic tone, that's exactly right.
- jawns 6y agoI'm an author, and from my perspective, CDL seems like a reasonable way (if not the most reasonable way) to apply the first sale doctrine in the digital age. Publishers would prefer to instead license ebooks and pretend first sale doesn't apply at all for digital books. I understand why that irritates a lot of people. The Internet Archive, on the flip side, is pretending that copyright infringement doesn't apply during a pandemic and that the first sale doctrine is much more expansive than it actually is. My hope is that both sides will come to accept CDL as a compromise system. It hurts publishers and authors no more than print lending does, and it's on much more solid legal ground than the IA's uncontrolled lending.
- geofft 6y agoYeah - I think CDL is great. But it worries me that CDL doesn't sit on established caselaw (let alone established legal code... really we should pass an amendment to the Copyright Act saying that CDL is fine) and that the Internet Archive is relying on the same legal arguments for CDL to support their uncontrolled model, because it means there's genuine validity in a judge ever saying "if we allow CDL it's a slippery slope." The Internet Archive has demonstrated that they are very interested in sliding to the bottom of the slope as fast as possible
- jcranmer 6y agoOne issue I have with borrowing ebooks is that, while typically there's ~1 copy per branch of physical books, there's ~1 copy per library system of ebooks, which makes trying to borrow ebooks unnecessarily frustrating. I'm not entirely certain who's to blame for this disparity, but it does exist, and I would love to see it rectified.
- toast0 6y agoThere's been some hubub recently about publishers limiting the number of new books for eLending, but for books older than about 6 months? the number of eLending copies is determined by your library system to balance use and cost, although some of the eLending pricing is pretty sketchy though, I think I saw some books are priced at $x for 1 year or N borrows, whichever comes first.
- johnrgrace 6y agoFirst, I think the legal analysis behind Controlled Digital Lending has a fundamential flaw in the creation of a digital copy and I have serious doubts that it would hold up for commerically published fiction. Having worked in publishing I strongly suspect that publishers didn't care to deal with some minor violations which is why they didn't go to court over it. Second, even if Controlled Digital Lending is permited what they did is so far beyond that. And they did it with widely avaialble commerical works making fair use arguments of access, academic use etc. non viable. The internet archive has an important mission, and they may have put that in jeopardy in order to let people get free copies of books that anyone can get from their local library (maybe going on a wait list) or just buy outright for under $10.
- ashtonkem 6y agoThe dynamic here is exactly why a lot of fundamental questions rarely get litigated; both parties are terrified that a court case against them will create long term precedent. So they usually negotiate a compromise before the court decides.
- sjy 6y agoI think this is why the debatable proposition that samples used in hip-hop and mashups need to be cleared with the copyright holder (rather than being fair use) has never been decided by the Supreme Court. Nobody ever sued Girl Talk over it, because if he fought back there was a risk that the existing pro-copyright decisions like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeport_Music,_Inc._v._Dimension_Films https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeport_Music,_Inc._v._Dime... would be overruled.
- oska 6y agoYour last paragraph suffers from hyperbolic rhetoric and a faultful analogy (common with arguments from analogy). A librarian offering to photocopy a book for you is incurring cost of resources (the paper used for the photocopy) and giving you an inferior copy (not bound and nicely finished). Neither of those apply with a digital copy, which is essentially cost-free to make and indistinguishable from the source. And why should a digital library have to work in the same way as a physical library? Why should we be bound by analogising the way a physical library works to how a digital library could and can work? A library, to me, is an accessible store of published works, with some level of curation. That's it. It doesn't have to include the idea of physical access limits, artificially imposed. Indeed, one of the benefits of digitisation is escaping the limits imposed by physicality and opening new ways of doing things.
- ketzu 6y agoThe problem with arguments from analogy are that people often just try to figure out some way in which the analogy doesn't work, instead of challenging the point it made. Which is easy, otherwise it would be a terrible analogy. In this case, copying a book has cost and reduces quality, are not related to the point of the analogy, even though they differ from digital copys. Given your last paragraph, it seems that the you and the original comment disagree on what a library is. In the end, like in your second paragraph, it doesn't really matter what we currently think a library is and what we want to make of it. And that's an important discussion.
- oska 6y agoArguments from analogy can be useful to infer some possible further similarity. So as a creative, inductive process. But using an argument from analogy to say why something can't or shouldn't be done is yes, as you say, problematic, because it's 1) usually easy to pick apart the analogy but also because 2) it's intellectually dubious and lacking in rigour.
- sverhagen 6y agoI read most of the comments, but I'm still wondering if, since CDL is so similar to conventional, analogue libraries, isn't there a "right of way" type of argument to be made for CDL? Like, you didn't challenge it for decades, it's gotten an established place in society, no dice? (I'm specifically asking for CDL, not unlimited.)
- nordsieck 6y ago> Like, you didn't challenge it for decades, it's gotten an established place in society, no dice? 1. After some quick searching, I don't think CDL has been ongoing for anywhere close to "decades". 2. Some IP like trademark can be lost if it isn't defended. I do not believe that is true for copyright. 3. In general, this is not the way law works. If you steal from someone for years without being caught, you don't create a right to steal from that person over time because it's "been ongoing for anywhere close to 'decades'". The lone exception that I"m aware of is land ownership - adverse possession is a thing, but it only applies to real estate and it applies to a specific piece of real estate, not a pattern of activity.
- Reelin 6y ago> If you steal from someone for years without being caught Wait, what? Who said anything about stealing? Publishers might try to argue piracy but CDL doesn't seem to fit that either on account of the DRM. Honestly I'm not at all clear what a cohesive argument against CDL would look like. Given the first sale doctrine it wouldn't even surprise me if some of the current ebook pricing practices were actually illegal.
- nordsieck 6y ago> Honestly I'm not at all clear what a cohesive argument against CDL would look like. The argument is simple. Copyright allows the copyright holder to enjoin anyone else from making a copy of a work - including a digital copy. Essentially all software works by making copies of data that is uses. The first sale doctrine doesn't apply (IMO) because it sets limitations on the rights of a copyright holder to a particular copy of a work after it has been sold. Each "loan" of an ebook is a fresh copy. If you look at the Controlled Digital Lending website[1], they pin most of the legal legitimacy on fair use, not first sale doctrine, which I think is probably much more solid legal footing. ___ 1. https://controlleddigitallending.org/ https://controlleddigitallending.org/
- enriquto 6y agoThis thing "Controlled Digital Lending" is either impossible or tyrannical. In either case, it is idiotic to pretend it to be a solution to anything. Controlled Digital Lending is impossible because if someone can read a page of text on their computer, then they can also scan the whole book automatically. Thus readers can lend a book for a second, and keep a copy of it forever under their control. Once they have a copy, they can share it privately with other people at no cost. Pretending that Controlled Digital Lending is possible is tyrannical because it requires that people not be able to run arbitrary software on their computers, and that they cannot communicate privately between them. As long as general computing devices are available and that private communication is possible, Controlled Digital Lending is a physical impossibility.
- Denvercoder9 6y agoYou can also scan a hardcopy obtained from a library. It works because most people want to follow the law, don't care or don't bother.
- enriquto 6y agoSure, you can, and it is alright. You would not accept a policeman controlling all your movements at home just to prevent you from scanning the book; would you?
- random_savv 6y agoExcept it takes hours to scan a hardcopy. > Thus readers can lend a book for a second, and keep a copy of it forever under their control Unless you were referring to this; in this case, how is this _Controlled_ Digital Lending?
- posterboy 6y agothere are machines to speed it up, but as it usually this, it only reaches a threshold when everybody, could and would buy it on the cheap. Nevertheless, controled purchase would be out of the question in your case, too, would it? Or is that controled inasmuch digital lending can be persued?
- kalleboo 6y ago> If I go to my local library and the librarian says "Actually don't bother checking this out, I'll just photocopy the whole book for you and you can keep it," I'm not sure I'd call that a library The NEL lendings still expire after 2 weeks using the same DRM as before, it’s not the same as downloading a free copy for life.