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While IA has temporarily lifted the restriction on number of copies (but not others like lending time), the complaint also goes against CDL in general, making i

• nitrogen 6y ago
  they do not degrade over time as physical books do It's worth pointing out that libraries will rebind a physical book if it starts falling apart. It's weird to argue that publishers' rights should last the full term of copyright, but readers' rights only last until a book wears out.
  • gamblor956 6y ago
    Why is that weird? Copyright law for centuries has provided that the copyright owner's rights last the full term of the copyright. (The copyright owner may be the publisher or the author.) A reader's right to a physical copy only lasts as long as the physical copy. If they want to extend the term of that right, they should take better care of their physical copy.
    • nitrogen 6y ago
      Modern copyright law in most places allows the creation of a backup copy of digital media to prevent loss due to wear.
      • gamblor956 6y ago
        That is actually not true in the US. The exceptions for making backup copies are limited to software (17 U.S.C. § 117(a)), and to libraries (17 U.S.C. § 108).
        • drewbug 6y ago
          The market of effect of copies for personal use is insignificant and my understanding is that they are generally exempt as fair use.
          • gamblor956 6y ago
            In the US at least, fair use does not include a right to make personal backup copy. If you wish to extend your use of the item containing some IP, your options are basically to just take better care of the physical item. However, it's simply not worth it for a copyright owner to go after someone making a backup copy for personal use since the statutory damages are only $750 (per act of infringement), and don't include legal fees. (Contrast to the infamous Napster/Limewire cases: each peer connection in P2P sharing constitutes a separate act of infringement if you share to them, which is what made it potentially lucrative for some law firms to attempt to shakedown users of those programs.) This is an intended effect of setting the statutory amount at $750: it's too low to make it economical for copyright owners to go after isolated cases without market effect, but at the same time quickly makes it very expensive for infringers to commit multiple acts of infringement.
            • drewbug 6y ago
              I'm not saying Congress has passed a law explicitly making personal copies legal, but it does appear courts (in the US) do consider market effect when determining fair use. This isn't exactly the same as personal use but it's pretty relevant: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/appeals-court-rules-that-google-book-scanning-is-fair-use/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/appeals-court-ru... > "While Google makes an unauthorized digital copy of the entire book, it does not reveal that digital copy to the public," the opinion states. Also, Pamela Samuelson, a professor at University of California at Berkeley has stated: "Personal-use copying should be deemed to be fair, unless there is a demonstrable showing of harm to the market for the copyright at work"
    • topkai22 6y ago
      In the US context- A) Copyright terms have increased 5 fold over the centuries. B) The Supreme has ruled, at least in many contexts, that creating a backup copy of a work is fair use. I believe generally this applies so long as the backups are not sold or distributed separately from the original. So, at least in some context this is false- the reader's right is to the information contained within the physical copy, not just the physical copy itself.
    • deleted 6y ago
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  • DudeInBasement 6y ago
    depends on the 'copyright'. If it covers the book's info and the book physical. This is similar to a 'digital' copy and a 'CD' copy. I'm just saying, the current 'movie/film' money corps will push for 1 side of this argument.
• jawns 6y ago
  Yes, although I have my gripes with IA, I fully support the CDL model, and I think there is strong legal justification for it. The inherent differences the publishers list -- the speed at which ebooks can be lent, the fact that they don't physically degrade, and that they must be read on a device -- are real, but they don't strike me as relevant to the actual legal principle that governs library lending. The first-sale doctrine holds that if you purchase a creative work, you can lend or resell it, and doing so does not violate an author's copyright. Even if there are real differences in how ebooks and physical books are transferred, maintained, and read, I don't see why those differences are material to the first-sale doctrine's granting owners of creative works the right to lend them.
  • gamblor956 6y ago
    That's not how the first sale doctrine works, nor is it how it has ever worked. In a nutshell: the first sale doctrine merely means that if someone comes into legitimate possession of a physical good containing IP, they are free to sell or otherwise exploit the physical good without requiring a license for the IP contained therein. Crucially, the first sale doctrine does not extend to exploiting the IP itself, so if the IP is separated from the physical good (such as by recording or scanning a copy), the first sale doctrine no longer applies. The first sale doctrine does not apply at all to library lending programs. Libraries providing digital lending pursuant to explicit licenses provided by publishers for digital lending.
• 08-15 6y ago
  You have to admit, they've got a point: Digital books are inherently different from physical books. So maybe copyright should never have been applied to digital books at all. Now if the courts decide that applying copyright, which is as old as the printing press, to digital media, which are neither printed nor pressed, makes no sense, and they declare all forms of Digital Restrictions Management to be illegal, and it all happens because of this lawsuit, specifically because of this slip of the tongue, which only happened because the Internet Archive intentionally overstepped some legal boundaries at an opportune time, I'd say: Well played, Internet Archive. Not going to happen, though. Courts don't rule against established companies, ever.
  • boogies 6y ago
    I agree with the majority of your comment, but > copyright, which is as old as the printing press The idea of copyright was not fabricated until about 200 years after the the printing press was invented, and then it was a tool for censorship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Background
    • 08-15 6y ago
      Point taken; bureaucracies were even slower back then. But... > it was a tool for censorship When did that change? Did it ever?
      • kbenson 6y ago
        No, copyright is censorship, so it can't have changed. Censorship isn't always bad, though. Copyright is censorship in the same way that making it illegal for someone else to say they are you (identity theft) is censorship. Copyright is a bit more abstract though, so is easier to abuse.
        • nybble41 6y ago
          > Censorship isn't always bad, though. Yes, it is. Censorship is obscene, no matter how well-intentioned the perpetrators. > Copyright is censorship in the same way that making it illegal for someone else to say they are you (identity theft) is censorship. It isn't illegal for someone else to say that they are you—per se. Actors do that sort of thing all the time. It only becomes illegal if they do so deceptively with the intent of achieving some sort of financial or personal gain, i.e. to commit fraud. The illegal part is the attempt to obtain goods or services under false pretenses. Copyright is completely different. It penalizes the unauthorized distribution of factual information—even if these facts are just the arrangement of words in a work of fiction, or a series of numbers describing a certain sound wave. There is no deception involved in copyright infringement, no goods or services obtained under false pretenses, just the communication of information through channels which certain parties would prefer to suppress.
• gamblor956 6y ago
  Your re-characterizing of the publisher's claims is as disingenuous as the IA's, since that's not what they're claiming at all. You left out the second half of that paragraph: "For these reasons, the Publishers have established independent and distinct distribution models for ebooks, including a market for lending ebooks through libraries, which are governed by different terms and expectations than print books." Normal public libraries can do digital lending (and have, for decades) because they get proper licenses from publishers or authors to do so. The IA is claiming that they don't need a license for physical books they own under the first sale doctrine, which is blatantly false: the first sale doctrine means they can sell or lend the physical copy of the book they possess, not that they can distribute the underlying IP of the book without permission of its creator. And even to the extent that the IA claimed it was limited lending on a one-to-one basis, it abandoned those limits and simply lent out as many copies as people wanted. Also from the publisher's lawsuit: "Separately, Section 109 of the Copyright Act is clear that, pursuant to the doctrine of first sale, the owner of a lawfully acquired print book may dispose only of her/his particular print copy." In its response, the IA denies that section 109 [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/109 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/109] in fact says precisely that. It lets you know that their argument isn't premised in any sort of legal grounding.
  • bilkow 6y ago
    I don't think my post re-characterizes publisher's claims at all, the part you mention simply claim that they offer a way to license those books in another way and they're trying to separate ownership into physical and digital, denying any form of digital ownership (by licensing instead). > Normal public libraries can do digital lending (and have, for decades) because they get proper licenses from publishers or authors to do so. Normal libraries do not need any licenses to lend books they own at all, but they can get a digital-only license, which is not ownership > The IA is claiming that they don't need a license for physical books they own under the first sale doctrine, which is blatantly false: the first sale doctrine means they can sell or lend the physical copy of the book they possess, not that they can distribute the underlying IP of the book without permission of its creator. CDL is not distributing the underlying IP of the book at all, its lending a single copy of the book using DRM to prevent anyone from copying or reading after the lend time is over. Only a single person can read the legally owned copy of the book at any given time. > And even to the extent that the IA claimed it was limited lending on a one-to-one basis, it abandoned those limits and simply lent out as many copies as people wanted. Yes it did it for a limited time (which I believe was an obvious mistake), and that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm saying is that the complaint ALSO goes against CDL in general, not only against their IA's national emergency program, as its clear from the parts quoted by you and me.
• deleted 6y ago
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