23 ms·

My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive

311 points by edward 6y ago

jjcon 6y ago
Archive is clearly getting awfully nervous about the current lawsuits against them - I’m not sure this is going to do them any good though.
- kiba 6y ago
  Whataboutism what? As far as I am concerned, we should be preserving knowledge and making it accessible to the public, not locking up knowledge forever.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    Should anyone get compensated for creating the knowledge? If you "lend out" unlimited copies for a single copy you own, that compensation gets pretty much limited to a single copy and thew few copies that friends, family and fans buy, doesn't it?
    - kiba 6y ago
      Should anyone get compensated for creating the knowledge? Look, do you want books to sit around uselessly not being read because everybody have to decide if they want to learn based on textbooks costing hundred of dollars? If you believe people should be compensated for creating knowledge, then buy a copy. I certainly do.
    - abbub 6y ago
      Within reason, sure? The idea that that compensation should exist in perpetuity is nonsense, particularly when the people who most often are the ones getting compensated aren't actually the one's responsible for the 'creation' in the first place. But let's be clear, people very seldom 'create' knowledge, they extend existing knowledge. That's one of the main reasons why the human race has gotten as far as we have. It's something Newton understood very well, and but modern hubris seems to disregard.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        > But let's be clear, people very seldom 'create' knowledge, they extend existing knowledge. That's semantics, you can just as easily frame that as "creating knowledge that will be added to the wealth of human knowledge". The point is that IA's idea about unlimited parallel lending (that is, essentially, a free download portal) is a problem unless there's a different way to compensate the authors & publishers. I don't think they suggested a different way and are trying to make it about "knowledge itself", and not their unilateral abandonment of laws & contracts.
  - jjcon 6y ago
    Despite the circlejerk, copyright helps push innovation and human knowledge by allowing IP to be profitable for those that spent time and resources creating. In a post-scarcity world though I would agree. Were not there yet though.
eldaisfish 6y ago
Nothing makes me more angry than publishers who act like this. I regularly deal with the academic publishing industry and feel the pain of professors and students alike. The usual suspects are involved here - >I call on the executives at Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House to come together with us to help solve the pressing challenges to access to knowledge during this pandemic. The publishing industry should take a cue from the gaming industry. Offer games at a reasonable price, make delivery easy and you only stand to profit. Services like Steam, GOG, Epic et al have massively reduced game piracy. If books were being sold for a couple of dollars each online, we would not need lawsuits like this.
- Qahlel 6y ago
  Each industry always tries to hold on to max profits first. They don't have long term vision. They only have yearly balance sheets to care about.
  - jagged-chisel 6y ago
    Yearly? Pretty sure it’s quarterly executive bonuses driving “The Market.”
- wnevets 6y ago
  > Services like Steam, GOG, Epic et al have massively reduced game piracy. This has absolutely been the case for me. I went from pirating everything to having so many games that I've paid for but haven't played yet. I'm sure part of it is being older with more disposable income and less free time but its just so much easier to buy the game on steam.
  - an_opabinia 6y ago
    You'd never know the difference between reducing game piracy and making games that cannot be pirated.
    - IggleSniggle 6y ago
vuln 6y ago
I have a monthly reoccurring donation in the amount of $10. If you haven’t donated please do. https://archive.org/donate/ https://archive.org/donate/
- FartyMcFarter 6y ago
  Some tech companies match employee donations to it as well.
- garmaine 6y ago
  Why? I stoped my donations when this started, because I could see the writing on the wall. I have better uses for my charitable dollars than paying legal fees and judgement for a lawsuit they are clearly going to lose.
- remram 6y ago
  I had a recurring donation until they decided to take a step that was obviously going to get them sued. I support IA's mission and products, but won't throw money in legal proceedings they set themselves to lose; I feel like this is better spent on EFF etc who are serious about it. I object to modern intellectual property and publishing practices as much as anyone, but what did they expect would happen when they dropped their entire legal justification?
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    The EFF is taking up the legal defense in this suit, so your donation would be ending up at the same place anyway.
    - remram 6y ago
      I knew that! And I have no problem with it, since EFF are upfront about what the money is for (and are probably better/more rational about the battles they pick)
      - jachee 6y ago
karlp 6y ago
Considering they were only lending to one person at a time, it does seem like the lawsuit is uncalled for.
- martin__ 6y ago
  Last I heard from this story, the lawsuit was because of unlimited lending: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23391662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23391662
  - criddell 6y ago
    I wonder what the truth is. In this article Kahle makes it sound like they are lending one digital copy for every physical copy that is locked up in a library somewhere and not circulating.
    - jandrese 6y ago
      From what I understand that was the original policy but when COVID hit they announced that they were removing those restrictions. Commenters went “you’re gonna get sued” and then archive.org was all surprised Pikachu face when their mailbox filled up with lawsuits.
    - duxup 6y ago
      They say that now, but man I only remember them announcing that the limits were off whole hog. Not sure what the legal standing is loaning ebooks based on "well someone else isn't using their book".
  - mcguire 6y ago
    If so, then the lawsuit would likely be dismissed for lack of standing. (Yes, yes, they may have loaned more copies of a particular work than they had, but those loans have expired now.)
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  I certainly appreciate what they did and I donate to the Internet Archive but what does lending to one person at a time mean here? It's on the internet, anyone could lend, as far as I know. If 1000 users come on a shopping portal and buy things they are all buying one at a time, but 1000 transactions are still done.
theferalrobot 6y ago
> In total, 650 million books were locked up just in public libraries alone. Because of that, we felt we could, and should, and needed to make the digitized versions of those books available to students Libraries also have movies and music... should they have put those out for free too? I love wayback machine but I’m not sure I follow the logic on this one. I’m no legal expert but that seems like pretty iffy reasoning.
- joshuahaglund 6y ago
  Using controlled digital lending, yes. Why not? The libraries hold licenses to lend this media in physical format but were temporarily shifting to lending using controlled digital lending. They didn't just give away unencrypted copies to be pirated. They did what libraries do, lend media.
  - ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
    They lent unlimited copies. The limit is very very key to being covered under CDL.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - joshuahaglund 6y ago
      Have you ever borrowed a digital book? It's for a limited period of time usually a couple weeks, in an app of some sort. That's what they did, that's CDL. They temporarily removed waitlists which did allow more people to borrow a title than they had licenses, as physical libraries closed and as schools tried to get online. It was an unprecedented time. They had the support of major libraries. They stopped early when they got sued. The lawsuit should be dropped.
      - ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
        These two statements contradict: >It's for a limited period of time usually a couple weeks, in an app of some sort. That's what they did, that's CDL. >They temporarily removed waitlists which did allow more people to borrow a title than they had licenses That is not CDL, by definition (lending out more copies than they had licenses). Official source, March 30th: http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/30/internet-archive-responds-why-we-released-the-national-emergency-library/ http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/30/internet-archive-responds... Relevant quote: >And so, to meet this unprecedented need at a scale never before seen, we suspended waitlists on our lending collection.
bmarquez 6y ago
I'm confused by this article. As I remember Archive.org created a "National Emergency Library" basically breaking the 1:1 ratio of physical to digital books in Controlled Digital Lending, and allowing unrestricted use. The lawsuits were brought on June 1st, while the NEL was active. Are these lawsuits based on the CDL (which I personally support) or based on the NEL (which could be considered piracy)?
- pwinnski 6y ago
  According to this post, they did not break the 1:1 ratio of physical to digital books, but expanded the pool of physical books to include those unlent at libraries across the country. That is certainly a debatable point, though. More to the point, the lawsuits are in effect and moving forward now, long after the NEL has ceased operations. They are directed at the CDL now.
  - duxup 6y ago
    It seems strange to loan a digital copy of ... someone else's book. As for the lawsuit going on after they stopped lending, well yeah the legal matter wasn't settled, so it can go on.
    - pwinnski 6y ago
      Yeah, I don't think they're going to win this one, either. Their best bet is probably to shame the publishers into dropping the suit, since they won't actually win if it comes down to it. I assume that's what this is meant to do: shame the publishers.
      - duxup 6y ago
        Hopefully they can just settle it in a way that IA goes on, but maybe with some better guidance at the top of IA.
        londons_explore 6y ago
duxup 6y ago
I thought Internet Archive started loaning books ebooks beyond their usual 1 ebook to 1 digital copy system? The paragraph that addresses this isn't clear to me as it seems to indicate it was 1:1 (although at the time everyone seemed to think it wasn't) and then that paragraph seems to note all the books stuck in other libraries... did they feel they were loaning out ebooks associated with all the libraries that were closed too? Was there some sort of legal arrangement there? This letter seems very non specific on a critical points....
patrickhogan1 6y ago
I love the IA. But it is so clear the argument made is written by a lawyer after the fact. Reading between the lines of the lawyer speak: 1. The books were not locked up and out of the reach of students. Students were able to take their books home. Yes class was over Zoom. Teaching from the same books previously used in the physical classroom. College classes have done this for decades using physical books for online courses. 2. Public libraries throughout the country ramped up digital online access at the start of COVID-19. Students were able to get online library access. It's possible that some obscure books were non-digital (650 million books seems like a stretch). But, obscure books are mostly unused in the classroom. Schools usually assign students classics like "The Giver” which are digitized. 3. The argument is made that IA has a right to lend the books digitally, because it owns a copy of the books. Because any rational person can understand the quantity of books IA digitized casts doubt on if they own a copy. The argument shifts quickly to saying it had a right to digitize because of its 130 “endorsing” libraries. 4. Some of these 130 libraries did not "endorse" IA until after the lawsuit was filed. By the point of the lawsuit the service had been active for some time. Meaning the copyright infringement had already occurred. 5. IA has lawyers on payroll to advise IA on their main product. Which is archiving of copyrighted web content. Meaning that a lawyer likely advised IA before the service started that a library "endorsing" support for a cause !== to a licensing agreement allowing the endorsed cause to use the endorsing libraries’ licensed content. It should be noted that libraries pay for books. Libraries are a public good and funded by methods such as government funding and donations. Yet they have real expenses. Imagine a city library. Library cards are limited to city residents. For example, think of a city with 1M residents. That puts a cap on the license costs they will pay for content. Imagine IA serving the world 7B or even just the US 365M. Whoever sells content to the library that is co-sharing content with IA would be charged such exorbitant prices either: 1) the library is unable to license content 2) the library shuts down. 3) the library stops working with IA IA can be a library. But they have to act like one. Pay for your content like public libraries do.
- thatcat 6y ago
  >Library cards are limited to city residents. For example, think of a city with 1M residents. That puts a cap on the license cost. So you're saying that the amount libraries pay for a book is proportional to the number of residents in that city?
aSplash0fDerp 6y ago
Foundations matter, so legally this is a raw emotion debate and only changes the course of the IA (pivot while the forgiveness/permission quote still applies). Maybe proposing an annual charity drive for "published" material to fill these new "shared resource" vacuums that you`ve uncovered will satisfy the hybrid-capitalism model that you desire. Making teaching resources HC compatible (with permission windows or indefinitely) may make compromise-it-forward a movement that is uniquely yours. Even though Nielsen and the music charts have not figured out how to accurately count digital figures, the tax deduction angle looks promising as part of a formal model.
dreamcompiler 6y ago
It has been stated many times that if today's copyright laws had been in effect 200 years ago, US libraries would never have been allowed to exist. This situation looks to me like a fresh attempt by the beneficiaries of copyright law to destroy libraries in general; not just the IA. Between this fiasco and paywalls around scientific literature, it's becoming impossible for me to see publishers as anything other than cat-stroking Bond villains.
- murphy1312 6y ago
  And thats why i like libgen.. havnt paid for a book in some time, cause most/all ebooks are overpriced af imo. And also how can i resell my ebooks? why would i pay the same price as a physical copy then..
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Borlands 6y ago
IA is one of the most valuable resources on the web, and has been for quite a while. Hope they come out of this in a good way.
dmurray 6y ago
> With this suit, the publishers are saying that in the digital world, we cannot buy books anymore, we can only license and on their terms; we can only preserve in ways for which they have granted explicit permission, and for only as long as they grant permission; and we cannot lend what we have paid for because we do not own it. This is not a rule of law, this is the rule by license. This does not make sense. If that's the main argument of IA, they'll have a tough time in court. It's reasonably well established that when it comes to intellectual property, you can refuse to sell it, and only grant a limited license. With some small carve outs like the First Sale doctrine. They'll need a judge who is willing to legislate from the bench.
- thatcat 6y ago
  The First Sale doctrine can be applied to the digital domain.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    I mean you could try but you still wouldn't be allowed to duplicate the work. So you would only be allowed to sell your purchased version if you deleted any copy you had.
    - supermatt 6y ago
      That’s what DRM is supposedly for...
  - phkahler 6y ago
    Is there precedent for that? DVDs sure - see Netflix. But that's still physical goods.
    - gowld 6y ago
      Precedent? It's the law. https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1854-copyright-infringement-first-sale-doctrine https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
gorbachev 6y ago
"With this suit, the publishers are saying that in the digital world, we cannot buy books anymore, we can only license and on their terms;" And this is why I still prefer physical media. I own it and I can do whatever the hell I please with it. Not so with almost every digital media platform I've seen. Well, other than platforms built on piracy.
- twox2 6y ago
  >I own it and I can do whatever the hell I please with it. Not really... IP law still applies. You can't photocopy the book and sell it or give it out without consequence.
threepio 6y ago
I love Brewster Kahle. He doesn't get nearly enough credit for being one of the VERY few tech zillionaires who has dedicated his subsequent time and money to creating an enduring and necessary public-spirited resource. (And that part of his career all happened after he & Hillis created the Connection Machine.) He epitomizes the intellect and curiosity and good ethics that I associate with old-school hackerdom. I don't know if he can win this dispute. I hope so.
blumomo 6y ago
Internet Archive stores the history of the internet. There’s someone who’s afraid of it, there’s someone who wants to erase history and write a new one.
throwaway-92831 6y ago
If you want something removed from the Archive, now is the time to make your request. Who knows what hands the data will end up in after they're gone.
8bitsrule 6y ago
I'm glad to see the names of the publishers involved in the lawsuit - "Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House" - out on the open. I will gladly avoid purchasing books by the companies that are threatening this remarkable digital institution in a time when hundreds of physical libraries are closed.
avemilia 6y ago
> Controlled Digital Lending is a respectful and balanced way to bring our print collections to digital learners. A physical book, once digital, is available to only one reader at a time. I never understood this "lending" practice. Can somebody explain? Sounds like obscurantism to me. So, if there is only one digitally scanned copy of an old book, only one person on planet Earth can borrow it? Because I remember a few times when I clicked on some document in IA and it said I couldn't read it "because it was borrowed".
- aw1621107 6y ago
  My impression was that "lending" digital copies this way is less likely to upset publishers, since it's more or less analogous to the already-acceptable practice of checking out physical books from a library. Allowing an arbitrary number of simultaneous readers would take better advantage of the digital format, but is much more likely to attract a lawsuit.
- rocqua 6y ago
  It is using the existing carve out for library book lending in the physical world, and applying it to the digital world. So if the book is old enough to not be covered by copyright, they can distribute as many copies as the want. Otherwise, in order to use the library carve-out, they need to limit it to the number of physical copies taken out of circulation in actual libraries.
nashashmi 6y ago
This article is very well written and very helpful. It presents the case for digital lending quite well. But in the last 20 years, pirates have abused digital copies of data and given digital copies a bad name. Today the publishers are sore from that experience. And they fight like they always did before. But they will use court cases against pirates to justify suit against IA. And that sucks. Judges worldwide have sided with opposing sides on the issue. No consistency has been reached. It is clear that courts cannot interpret these issues with consistency. So legislatives must CREATE rules for digital content and digitized content. And they are not the same. The latter is conversion of data into a less than digital format and this takes effort, the kind of effort like buying tires, creating molds for them, and distributing tires made from those molds. Current copyright laws do not distinguish between digital and paper products. Paper products before year 2000 should be digitizable. After should need to be paid a fee. And lending should be clarified.
- Vespasian 6y ago
  Well, some countries already created legislation to settle the issue (Public Lending Right) In Germany for example, libraries pay a few cents (~3-4) every time they lend out one of their books / films / etc. AFAIK this is also true for digital copies which are also limited to the number of licenses the library acquired.
nabakin 6y ago
What about all the copyrighted books put up for free, unlimited downloads? For example [1]. [1]: https://archive.org/details/01TheLightningThief https://archive.org/details/01TheLightningThief
- britmob 6y ago
  Those are user-uploaded, so the appopriate copyright holder can DMCA them.
walterbell 6y ago
Should the web archive organisation be legally separated from the lending library, to protect Internet history in the event of losing the lending library lawsuit?
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  It would have been a great idea before this. if they survive, they 100% should
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chx 6y ago
> Over 130 libraries endorsed lending books from our collections, and we used Controlled Digital Lending technology to do it in a controlled, respectful way Respect to whom? Not to authors! Most of the value of a book is in the first reading and if people can read it for free why buy it? And no, lending out unlimited copies is not what libraries do. Yes, this is artificial scarcity. Tearing down the Berne Convention, however can not be done this way and also calling heaping additional stress on authors during COVID "respectful" is a slap in the face. I have been pirating software 1985-2004, I have been a columnist in the 1990s and learned about the new copyright law from the Hungarian copyright collecting agency and explained it to the whole country. I have been on both side of this fence for an extremely long time and I can't imagine what the IA was thinking. Risking the Wayback Machine with this is :(
iJohnDoe 6y ago
IA needs to make it much easier to have content removed from their archive. A simple form and a simple verification step. Their robot.txt BS does not work.
gigama 6y ago
Glad to hear directly from Mr. Kahle on this topic and fully support IA's mission to buy, preserve, and lend digital books and similar materials. Seems Hachette, Harpercollins, Wiley, Penguin Random House have not fully considered the mass boycott they are inviting by their petty, greedy lawsuit.

311 points by edward 6y ago

Archive is clearly getting awfully nervous about the current lawsuits against them - I’m not sure this is going to do them any good though.

kiba 6y ago
Whataboutism what? As far as I am concerned, we should be preserving knowledge and making it accessible to the public, not locking up knowledge forever.
- luckylion 6y ago
  Should anyone get compensated for creating the knowledge? If you "lend out" unlimited copies for a single copy you own, that compensation gets pretty much limited to a single copy and thew few copies that friends, family and fans buy, doesn't it?
  - kiba 6y ago
    Should anyone get compensated for creating the knowledge? Look, do you want books to sit around uselessly not being read because everybody have to decide if they want to learn based on textbooks costing hundred of dollars? If you believe people should be compensated for creating knowledge, then buy a copy. I certainly do.
  - abbub 6y ago
    Within reason, sure? The idea that that compensation should exist in perpetuity is nonsense, particularly when the people who most often are the ones getting compensated aren't actually the one's responsible for the 'creation' in the first place. But let's be clear, people very seldom 'create' knowledge, they extend existing knowledge. That's one of the main reasons why the human race has gotten as far as we have. It's something Newton understood very well, and but modern hubris seems to disregard.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > But let's be clear, people very seldom 'create' knowledge, they extend existing knowledge. That's semantics, you can just as easily frame that as "creating knowledge that will be added to the wealth of human knowledge". The point is that IA's idea about unlimited parallel lending (that is, essentially, a free download portal) is a problem unless there's a different way to compensate the authors & publishers. I don't think they suggested a different way and are trying to make it about "knowledge itself", and not their unilateral abandonment of laws & contracts.
- jjcon 6y ago
  Despite the circlejerk, copyright helps push innovation and human knowledge by allowing IP to be profitable for those that spent time and resources creating. In a post-scarcity world though I would agree. Were not there yet though.

eldaisfish 6y ago

Nothing makes me more angry than publishers who act like this. I regularly deal with the academic publishing industry and feel the pain of professors and students alike. The usual suspects are involved here - >I call on the executives at Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House to come together with us to help solve the pressing challenges to access to knowledge during this pandemic. The publishing industry should take a cue from the gaming industry. Offer games at a reasonable price, make delivery easy and you only stand to profit. Services like Steam, GOG, Epic et al have massively reduced game piracy. If books were being sold for a couple of dollars each online, we would not need lawsuits like this.

Qahlel 6y ago
Each industry always tries to hold on to max profits first. They don't have long term vision. They only have yearly balance sheets to care about.
- jagged-chisel 6y ago
  Yearly? Pretty sure it’s quarterly executive bonuses driving “The Market.”
wnevets 6y ago
> Services like Steam, GOG, Epic et al have massively reduced game piracy. This has absolutely been the case for me. I went from pirating everything to having so many games that I've paid for but haven't played yet. I'm sure part of it is being older with more disposable income and less free time but its just so much easier to buy the game on steam.
- an_opabinia 6y ago
  You'd never know the difference between reducing game piracy and making games that cannot be pirated.
  - IggleSniggle 6y ago

vuln 6y ago

I have a monthly reoccurring donation in the amount of $10. If you haven’t donated please do. https://archive.org/donate/ https://archive.org/donate/

FartyMcFarter 6y ago
Some tech companies match employee donations to it as well.
garmaine 6y ago
Why? I stoped my donations when this started, because I could see the writing on the wall. I have better uses for my charitable dollars than paying legal fees and judgement for a lawsuit they are clearly going to lose.
remram 6y ago
I had a recurring donation until they decided to take a step that was obviously going to get them sued. I support IA's mission and products, but won't throw money in legal proceedings they set themselves to lose; I feel like this is better spent on EFF etc who are serious about it. I object to modern intellectual property and publishing practices as much as anyone, but what did they expect would happen when they dropped their entire legal justification?
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  The EFF is taking up the legal defense in this suit, so your donation would be ending up at the same place anyway.
  - remram 6y ago
    I knew that! And I have no problem with it, since EFF are upfront about what the money is for (and are probably better/more rational about the battles they pick)
    - jachee 6y ago

karlp 6y ago

Considering they were only lending to one person at a time, it does seem like the lawsuit is uncalled for.

martin__ 6y ago
Last I heard from this story, the lawsuit was because of unlimited lending: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23391662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23391662
- criddell 6y ago
  I wonder what the truth is. In this article Kahle makes it sound like they are lending one digital copy for every physical copy that is locked up in a library somewhere and not circulating.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    From what I understand that was the original policy but when COVID hit they announced that they were removing those restrictions. Commenters went “you’re gonna get sued” and then archive.org was all surprised Pikachu face when their mailbox filled up with lawsuits.
  - duxup 6y ago
    They say that now, but man I only remember them announcing that the limits were off whole hog. Not sure what the legal standing is loaning ebooks based on "well someone else isn't using their book".
- mcguire 6y ago
  If so, then the lawsuit would likely be dismissed for lack of standing. (Yes, yes, they may have loaned more copies of a particular work than they had, but those loans have expired now.)
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
I certainly appreciate what they did and I donate to the Internet Archive but what does lending to one person at a time mean here? It's on the internet, anyone could lend, as far as I know. If 1000 users come on a shopping portal and buy things they are all buying one at a time, but 1000 transactions are still done.

theferalrobot 6y ago

> In total, 650 million books were locked up just in public libraries alone. Because of that, we felt we could, and should, and needed to make the digitized versions of those books available to students Libraries also have movies and music... should they have put those out for free too? I love wayback machine but I’m not sure I follow the logic on this one. I’m no legal expert but that seems like pretty iffy reasoning.

joshuahaglund 6y ago
Using controlled digital lending, yes. Why not? The libraries hold licenses to lend this media in physical format but were temporarily shifting to lending using controlled digital lending. They didn't just give away unencrypted copies to be pirated. They did what libraries do, lend media.
- ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
  They lent unlimited copies. The limit is very very key to being covered under CDL.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - joshuahaglund 6y ago
    Have you ever borrowed a digital book? It's for a limited period of time usually a couple weeks, in an app of some sort. That's what they did, that's CDL. They temporarily removed waitlists which did allow more people to borrow a title than they had licenses, as physical libraries closed and as schools tried to get online. It was an unprecedented time. They had the support of major libraries. They stopped early when they got sued. The lawsuit should be dropped.
    - ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
      These two statements contradict: >It's for a limited period of time usually a couple weeks, in an app of some sort. That's what they did, that's CDL. >They temporarily removed waitlists which did allow more people to borrow a title than they had licenses That is not CDL, by definition (lending out more copies than they had licenses). Official source, March 30th: http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/30/internet-archive-responds-why-we-released-the-national-emergency-library/ http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/30/internet-archive-responds... Relevant quote: >And so, to meet this unprecedented need at a scale never before seen, we suspended waitlists on our lending collection.

bmarquez 6y ago

I'm confused by this article. As I remember Archive.org created a "National Emergency Library" basically breaking the 1:1 ratio of physical to digital books in Controlled Digital Lending, and allowing unrestricted use. The lawsuits were brought on June 1st, while the NEL was active. Are these lawsuits based on the CDL (which I personally support) or based on the NEL (which could be considered piracy)?

pwinnski 6y ago
According to this post, they did not break the 1:1 ratio of physical to digital books, but expanded the pool of physical books to include those unlent at libraries across the country. That is certainly a debatable point, though. More to the point, the lawsuits are in effect and moving forward now, long after the NEL has ceased operations. They are directed at the CDL now.
- duxup 6y ago
  It seems strange to loan a digital copy of ... someone else's book. As for the lawsuit going on after they stopped lending, well yeah the legal matter wasn't settled, so it can go on.
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    Yeah, I don't think they're going to win this one, either. Their best bet is probably to shame the publishers into dropping the suit, since they won't actually win if it comes down to it. I assume that's what this is meant to do: shame the publishers.
    - duxup 6y ago
      Hopefully they can just settle it in a way that IA goes on, but maybe with some better guidance at the top of IA.
      - londons_explore 6y ago

duxup 6y ago

I thought Internet Archive started loaning books ebooks beyond their usual 1 ebook to 1 digital copy system? The paragraph that addresses this isn't clear to me as it seems to indicate it was 1:1 (although at the time everyone seemed to think it wasn't) and then that paragraph seems to note all the books stuck in other libraries... did they feel they were loaning out ebooks associated with all the libraries that were closed too? Was there some sort of legal arrangement there? This letter seems very non specific on a critical points....

patrickhogan1 6y ago

I love the IA. But it is so clear the argument made is written by a lawyer after the fact. Reading between the lines of the lawyer speak: 1. The books were not locked up and out of the reach of students. Students were able to take their books home. Yes class was over Zoom. Teaching from the same books previously used in the physical classroom. College classes have done this for decades using physical books for online courses. 2. Public libraries throughout the country ramped up digital online access at the start of COVID-19. Students were able to get online library access. It's possible that some obscure books were non-digital (650 million books seems like a stretch). But, obscure books are mostly unused in the classroom. Schools usually assign students classics like "The Giver” which are digitized. 3. The argument is made that IA has a right to lend the books digitally, because it owns a copy of the books. Because any rational person can understand the quantity of books IA digitized casts doubt on if they own a copy. The argument shifts quickly to saying it had a right to digitize because of its 130 “endorsing” libraries. 4. Some of these 130 libraries did not "endorse" IA until after the lawsuit was filed. By the point of the lawsuit the service had been active for some time. Meaning the copyright infringement had already occurred. 5. IA has lawyers on payroll to advise IA on their main product. Which is archiving of copyrighted web content. Meaning that a lawyer likely advised IA before the service started that a library "endorsing" support for a cause !== to a licensing agreement allowing the endorsed cause to use the endorsing libraries’ licensed content. It should be noted that libraries pay for books. Libraries are a public good and funded by methods such as government funding and donations. Yet they have real expenses. Imagine a city library. Library cards are limited to city residents. For example, think of a city with 1M residents. That puts a cap on the license costs they will pay for content. Imagine IA serving the world 7B or even just the US 365M. Whoever sells content to the library that is co-sharing content with IA would be charged such exorbitant prices either: 1) the library is unable to license content 2) the library shuts down. 3) the library stops working with IA IA can be a library. But they have to act like one. Pay for your content like public libraries do.

thatcat 6y ago
>Library cards are limited to city residents. For example, think of a city with 1M residents. That puts a cap on the license cost. So you're saying that the amount libraries pay for a book is proportional to the number of residents in that city?

aSplash0fDerp 6y ago

Foundations matter, so legally this is a raw emotion debate and only changes the course of the IA (pivot while the forgiveness/permission quote still applies). Maybe proposing an annual charity drive for "published" material to fill these new "shared resource" vacuums that you`ve uncovered will satisfy the hybrid-capitalism model that you desire. Making teaching resources HC compatible (with permission windows or indefinitely) may make compromise-it-forward a movement that is uniquely yours. Even though Nielsen and the music charts have not figured out how to accurately count digital figures, the tax deduction angle looks promising as part of a formal model.

dreamcompiler 6y ago

It has been stated many times that if today's copyright laws had been in effect 200 years ago, US libraries would never have been allowed to exist. This situation looks to me like a fresh attempt by the beneficiaries of copyright law to destroy libraries in general; not just the IA. Between this fiasco and paywalls around scientific literature, it's becoming impossible for me to see publishers as anything other than cat-stroking Bond villains.

murphy1312 6y ago
And thats why i like libgen.. havnt paid for a book in some time, cause most/all ebooks are overpriced af imo. And also how can i resell my ebooks? why would i pay the same price as a physical copy then..

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Borlands 6y ago

IA is one of the most valuable resources on the web, and has been for quite a while. Hope they come out of this in a good way.

dmurray 6y ago

> With this suit, the publishers are saying that in the digital world, we cannot buy books anymore, we can only license and on their terms; we can only preserve in ways for which they have granted explicit permission, and for only as long as they grant permission; and we cannot lend what we have paid for because we do not own it. This is not a rule of law, this is the rule by license. This does not make sense. If that's the main argument of IA, they'll have a tough time in court. It's reasonably well established that when it comes to intellectual property, you can refuse to sell it, and only grant a limited license. With some small carve outs like the First Sale doctrine. They'll need a judge who is willing to legislate from the bench.

thatcat 6y ago
The First Sale doctrine can be applied to the digital domain.
- Spivak 6y ago
  I mean you could try but you still wouldn't be allowed to duplicate the work. So you would only be allowed to sell your purchased version if you deleted any copy you had.
  - supermatt 6y ago
    That’s what DRM is supposedly for...
- phkahler 6y ago
  Is there precedent for that? DVDs sure - see Netflix. But that's still physical goods.
  - gowld 6y ago
    Precedent? It's the law. https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1854-copyright-infringement-first-sale-doctrine https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...

gorbachev 6y ago

"With this suit, the publishers are saying that in the digital world, we cannot buy books anymore, we can only license and on their terms;" And this is why I still prefer physical media. I own it and I can do whatever the hell I please with it. Not so with almost every digital media platform I've seen. Well, other than platforms built on piracy.

twox2 6y ago
>I own it and I can do whatever the hell I please with it. Not really... IP law still applies. You can't photocopy the book and sell it or give it out without consequence.

threepio 6y ago

I love Brewster Kahle. He doesn't get nearly enough credit for being one of the VERY few tech zillionaires who has dedicated his subsequent time and money to creating an enduring and necessary public-spirited resource. (And that part of his career all happened after he & Hillis created the Connection Machine.) He epitomizes the intellect and curiosity and good ethics that I associate with old-school hackerdom. I don't know if he can win this dispute. I hope so.

blumomo 6y ago

Internet Archive stores the history of the internet. There’s someone who’s afraid of it, there’s someone who wants to erase history and write a new one.

throwaway-92831 6y ago

If you want something removed from the Archive, now is the time to make your request. Who knows what hands the data will end up in after they're gone.

8bitsrule 6y ago

I'm glad to see the names of the publishers involved in the lawsuit - "Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House" - out on the open. I will gladly avoid purchasing books by the companies that are threatening this remarkable digital institution in a time when hundreds of physical libraries are closed.

avemilia 6y ago

> Controlled Digital Lending is a respectful and balanced way to bring our print collections to digital learners. A physical book, once digital, is available to only one reader at a time. I never understood this "lending" practice. Can somebody explain? Sounds like obscurantism to me. So, if there is only one digitally scanned copy of an old book, only one person on planet Earth can borrow it? Because I remember a few times when I clicked on some document in IA and it said I couldn't read it "because it was borrowed".

aw1621107 6y ago
My impression was that "lending" digital copies this way is less likely to upset publishers, since it's more or less analogous to the already-acceptable practice of checking out physical books from a library. Allowing an arbitrary number of simultaneous readers would take better advantage of the digital format, but is much more likely to attract a lawsuit.
rocqua 6y ago
It is using the existing carve out for library book lending in the physical world, and applying it to the digital world. So if the book is old enough to not be covered by copyright, they can distribute as many copies as the want. Otherwise, in order to use the library carve-out, they need to limit it to the number of physical copies taken out of circulation in actual libraries.

nashashmi 6y ago

This article is very well written and very helpful. It presents the case for digital lending quite well. But in the last 20 years, pirates have abused digital copies of data and given digital copies a bad name. Today the publishers are sore from that experience. And they fight like they always did before. But they will use court cases against pirates to justify suit against IA. And that sucks. Judges worldwide have sided with opposing sides on the issue. No consistency has been reached. It is clear that courts cannot interpret these issues with consistency. So legislatives must CREATE rules for digital content and digitized content. And they are not the same. The latter is conversion of data into a less than digital format and this takes effort, the kind of effort like buying tires, creating molds for them, and distributing tires made from those molds. Current copyright laws do not distinguish between digital and paper products. Paper products before year 2000 should be digitizable. After should need to be paid a fee. And lending should be clarified.

Vespasian 6y ago
Well, some countries already created legislation to settle the issue (Public Lending Right) In Germany for example, libraries pay a few cents (~3-4) every time they lend out one of their books / films / etc. AFAIK this is also true for digital copies which are also limited to the number of licenses the library acquired.

nabakin 6y ago

What about all the copyrighted books put up for free, unlimited downloads? For example [1]. [1]: https://archive.org/details/01TheLightningThief https://archive.org/details/01TheLightningThief

britmob 6y ago
Those are user-uploaded, so the appopriate copyright holder can DMCA them.

walterbell 6y ago

Should the web archive organisation be legally separated from the lending library, to protect Internet history in the event of losing the lending library lawsuit?

s1artibartfast 6y ago
It would have been a great idea before this. if they survive, they 100% should

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chx 6y ago

> Over 130 libraries endorsed lending books from our collections, and we used Controlled Digital Lending technology to do it in a controlled, respectful way Respect to whom? Not to authors! Most of the value of a book is in the first reading and if people can read it for free why buy it? And no, lending out unlimited copies is not what libraries do. Yes, this is artificial scarcity. Tearing down the Berne Convention, however can not be done this way and also calling heaping additional stress on authors during COVID "respectful" is a slap in the face. I have been pirating software 1985-2004, I have been a columnist in the 1990s and learned about the new copyright law from the Hungarian copyright collecting agency and explained it to the whole country. I have been on both side of this fence for an extremely long time and I can't imagine what the IA was thinking. Risking the Wayback Machine with this is :(

iJohnDoe 6y ago

IA needs to make it much easier to have content removed from their archive. A simple form and a simple verification step. Their robot.txt BS does not work.

gigama 6y ago

Glad to hear directly from Mr. Kahle on this topic and fully support IA's mission to buy, preserve, and lend digital books and similar materials. Seems Hachette, Harpercollins, Wiley, Penguin Random House have not fully considered the mass boycott they are inviting by their petty, greedy lawsuit.