4 ms·

I'm generally a big fan of the IA, but lately they've gotten lost on one big issue and this could hurt them. They tried to give away digital books still under c

I'm generally a big fan of the IA, but lately they've gotten lost on one big issue and this could hurt them. They tried to give away digital books still under copyright when the pandemic began. They seemed to think that this was somehow helping people who couldn't get to a physical library, but this was kind of a ruse. First, many bookstores were still open online and they were desparate for orders to stay in business. Second, many libraries were also operating, albeit under COVID rules. When they started this plan, I wrote my friends at the IA and begged them not to go down this route. They answered with lots of rhetoric about how they were some how helping and seemed oblivious to the claims of the authors and the libraries. So I'm not surprised that they're being sued. They went down this path willfully.

Chris2048 5y ago
I agree - A real, processional company shouldn't be skirting the law. IA is too important a source of legal archives, it shouldn't be risking that.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  A real, professional company? You mean such as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netscape, or Google?
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    No, none of those
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      The law is in large part a creation of the interests it serves --- in the case of copyright, that being publishers. Changing that regime requires challenging the assumptions and spotlighting the harms and costs. Which is what IA undertook. It's an activist cause, yes, and one aligned with the Archive's interests and mission. To that extent, IA's action is entirely commendable.
      - Chris2048 5y ago
        it's not in the archives interests to get sued out of existence. Breaking the law isn't just "challenging" something - they'll lose in court and set a bad precedent for future challenges. Maybe it should separate its activism from its legal, and important, archiving mission; rather than throw the baby with bathwater.
        dredmorbius 5y ago
        I'm not aware of the Internet Archive being sued out of existence.
        Chris2048 5y ago
        so it can't happen?
        dredmorbius 5y ago
        It hasn't. Which suggests that the risk may have been well-considered. This could of course change, but your counterfactual remains that.
        Chris2048 5y ago
        How does it suggest that? What benefit did IA derive from getting sued?
        dredmorbius 5y ago
        Getting sued provides for testing and asserting law. Losing is the part which you wish to avoid.
        Chris2048 5y ago
        So IA picks a fight with opponents with a huge legal budget?
shkkmo 5y ago
That issue isn't nearly as straight forwards as you are trying to present it. > First, many bookstores were still open online and they were desparate for orders to stay in business. Bookstores were not an option for all the people who lost their job during the pandemic. > Second, many libraries were also operating, albeit under COVID rules. And many libraries were closed, leaving people with no access to affordable reading material. > They tried to give away digital books still under copyright when the pandemic began. This doesn't seem accurate at all. The IA expanded their existing lending program and removed wait limits, they didn't start "giving away books". The ongoing efforts to hobble libraries abilities to lend eBooks is a significant factor in this. While I will buy that this expanded lending program broke the crappy copyright laws we are stuck with, I whole heartedly support this IA decision. If these industry associations didn't have their head so far up their ass, they would have realized what a wonderful opportunity the pandemic was to boost book readership and their overall market, rather than trying to sue the IA because they want to ring every last penny out of the crisis.
zozbot234 5y ago
The books were not given away, they were lent, with significant DRM-enforced restrictions, whilst libraries were closed. What they did was allow multiple users to concurrently borrow a single work in some cases, where previously this wouldn't have been allowed. But they also had the support of multiple physical libraries while doing this, so there's that too.
- teraflop 5y ago
  The books were not DRM-protected in any meaningful way. They could not have been, given that they were viewable using open source browsers without proprietary plugins. I remember specifically testing this by borrowing a book, flipping through it, and seeing that the image URLs were all very easily accessible in Firefox's developer tools.
ilamont 5y ago
> So I'm not surprised that they're being sued. They went down this path willfully. That's right. And when compelled to remove copyrighted works by living authors, Kahle made claims equating the lawsuits with "digital book burnings." If Ray Bradbury were still alive, he would have likely have rejected this claim. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), which Bradbury was long associated with, and many major writers still belong to, has been critical of the IA's actions from the beginning: The Internet Archive justified these actions based on an unproven and dubious legal argument called “Controlled Digital Lending” which supposedly would allow the Archive to make and distribute a single digital copy of a donated physical book in their storehouse as long as they “control” its distribution. It was and is SFWA’s understanding that this is not library lending, but direct infringement of authors’ copyrights. As if this wasn’t bad enough, using the Coronavirus pandemic as an excuse, the Archive has created the “National Emergency Library” and removed virtually all controls from the digital copies so that they can be viewed and downloaded by an unlimited number of readers. The uncontrolled distribution of copyrighted material is an additional blow to authors who are already facing long-term disruption of their income because of the pandemic. Uncontrolled Digital Lending lacks any legal argument or justification. https://www.sfwa.org/2020/04/08/infringement-alert-national-emergency-library/# https://www.sfwa.org/2020/04/08/infringement-alert-national-...
- kombucha13 5y ago
  Idk I like the idea of controlled digital lending. There was a really niche topic book (the seminal work on the expulsion of Zainichi Koreans from Japan to the DPRK post-WWII) that I had been trying to find for a while. It was out of print and fetching 100 plus dollars on the resale market and I couldn't find a library that had it. Luckily IA had a single copy that they are lending out to one user at a time via a DRM applet on their site. I have to check it out every hour in order to read it but I'm super grateful.
adhesive_wombat 5y ago
I wonder if they were always planning to bring the concept of CDL to court and this was a good way to provoke that while not making it too easy to be painted as feckless pirates by the plaintiffs (they were just trying to help in a national crisis, you know?). CDL seems a common sense process, inasmuch as copyright can be said to be sensible. If I own a book, I can show it to others, even electronically, but only to one person at time, and I don't look at it while showing it, so I'm not actually increasing the copies in circulation. Most normal (as in, not familiar with IP law) people would probably agree that that seems a reasonable way for a library to operate, since that's fundamentally how normal libraries do operate (except for the electronic bit). Those weird DVD-ripping jukeboxes that locked the data and/or discs down are similar too, and they were declared legal. However, making sense is not required under the law: the concept has (apparently, according to the plaintiffs) never been actually legally tested. It is in the IA's interest to actually test it, as getting it legally proven to be a valid way to run a library would be revolutionary: any library could suddenly lend their legally-held holdings digitally without legal clouds around them. It would also put the IA's massive CDL system on a solid footing. Meanwhile, proving it illegal would raise difficult questions over what it means to own even a physical item. As a form of accelerationism, that can work to the IA's advantage too, by shining a light on the fact that you, yes you, actually do not really own a book in that it's illegal to lend it in certain ways. Either way, the outcome will be very interesting, though it'll be far better if CDL comes out as allowed.

Chris2048 5y ago

I agree - A real, processional company shouldn't be skirting the law. IA is too important a source of legal archives, it shouldn't be risking that.

dredmorbius 5y ago
A real, professional company? You mean such as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netscape, or Google?
- Chris2048 5y ago
  No, none of those
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    The law is in large part a creation of the interests it serves --- in the case of copyright, that being publishers. Changing that regime requires challenging the assumptions and spotlighting the harms and costs. Which is what IA undertook. It's an activist cause, yes, and one aligned with the Archive's interests and mission. To that extent, IA's action is entirely commendable.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      it's not in the archives interests to get sued out of existence. Breaking the law isn't just "challenging" something - they'll lose in court and set a bad precedent for future challenges. Maybe it should separate its activism from its legal, and important, archiving mission; rather than throw the baby with bathwater.
      - dredmorbius 5y ago
        I'm not aware of the Internet Archive being sued out of existence.
        Chris2048 5y ago
        so it can't happen?
        dredmorbius 5y ago
        It hasn't. Which suggests that the risk may have been well-considered. This could of course change, but your counterfactual remains that.
        Chris2048 5y ago
        How does it suggest that? What benefit did IA derive from getting sued?
        dredmorbius 5y ago
        Getting sued provides for testing and asserting law. Losing is the part which you wish to avoid.
        Chris2048 5y ago
        So IA picks a fight with opponents with a huge legal budget?

shkkmo 5y ago

That issue isn't nearly as straight forwards as you are trying to present it. > First, many bookstores were still open online and they were desparate for orders to stay in business. Bookstores were not an option for all the people who lost their job during the pandemic. > Second, many libraries were also operating, albeit under COVID rules. And many libraries were closed, leaving people with no access to affordable reading material. > They tried to give away digital books still under copyright when the pandemic began. This doesn't seem accurate at all. The IA expanded their existing lending program and removed wait limits, they didn't start "giving away books". The ongoing efforts to hobble libraries abilities to lend eBooks is a significant factor in this. While I will buy that this expanded lending program broke the crappy copyright laws we are stuck with, I whole heartedly support this IA decision. If these industry associations didn't have their head so far up their ass, they would have realized what a wonderful opportunity the pandemic was to boost book readership and their overall market, rather than trying to sue the IA because they want to ring every last penny out of the crisis.

zozbot234 5y ago

The books were not given away, they were lent, with significant DRM-enforced restrictions, whilst libraries were closed. What they did was allow multiple users to concurrently borrow a single work in some cases, where previously this wouldn't have been allowed. But they also had the support of multiple physical libraries while doing this, so there's that too.

teraflop 5y ago
The books were not DRM-protected in any meaningful way. They could not have been, given that they were viewable using open source browsers without proprietary plugins. I remember specifically testing this by borrowing a book, flipping through it, and seeing that the image URLs were all very easily accessible in Firefox's developer tools.

ilamont 5y ago

> So I'm not surprised that they're being sued. They went down this path willfully. That's right. And when compelled to remove copyrighted works by living authors, Kahle made claims equating the lawsuits with "digital book burnings." If Ray Bradbury were still alive, he would have likely have rejected this claim. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), which Bradbury was long associated with, and many major writers still belong to, has been critical of the IA's actions from the beginning: The Internet Archive justified these actions based on an unproven and dubious legal argument called “Controlled Digital Lending” which supposedly would allow the Archive to make and distribute a single digital copy of a donated physical book in their storehouse as long as they “control” its distribution. It was and is SFWA’s understanding that this is not library lending, but direct infringement of authors’ copyrights. As if this wasn’t bad enough, using the Coronavirus pandemic as an excuse, the Archive has created the “National Emergency Library” and removed virtually all controls from the digital copies so that they can be viewed and downloaded by an unlimited number of readers. The uncontrolled distribution of copyrighted material is an additional blow to authors who are already facing long-term disruption of their income because of the pandemic. Uncontrolled Digital Lending lacks any legal argument or justification. https://www.sfwa.org/2020/04/08/infringement-alert-national-emergency-library/# https://www.sfwa.org/2020/04/08/infringement-alert-national-...

kombucha13 5y ago
Idk I like the idea of controlled digital lending. There was a really niche topic book (the seminal work on the expulsion of Zainichi Koreans from Japan to the DPRK post-WWII) that I had been trying to find for a while. It was out of print and fetching 100 plus dollars on the resale market and I couldn't find a library that had it. Luckily IA had a single copy that they are lending out to one user at a time via a DRM applet on their site. I have to check it out every hour in order to read it but I'm super grateful.

adhesive_wombat 5y ago

I wonder if they were always planning to bring the concept of CDL to court and this was a good way to provoke that while not making it too easy to be painted as feckless pirates by the plaintiffs (they were just trying to help in a national crisis, you know?). CDL seems a common sense process, inasmuch as copyright can be said to be sensible. If I own a book, I can show it to others, even electronically, but only to one person at time, and I don't look at it while showing it, so I'm not actually increasing the copies in circulation. Most normal (as in, not familiar with IP law) people would probably agree that that seems a reasonable way for a library to operate, since that's fundamentally how normal libraries do operate (except for the electronic bit). Those weird DVD-ripping jukeboxes that locked the data and/or discs down are similar too, and they were declared legal. However, making sense is not required under the law: the concept has (apparently, according to the plaintiffs) never been actually legally tested. It is in the IA's interest to actually test it, as getting it legally proven to be a valid way to run a library would be revolutionary: any library could suddenly lend their legally-held holdings digitally without legal clouds around them. It would also put the IA's massive CDL system on a solid footing. Meanwhile, proving it illegal would raise difficult questions over what it means to own even a physical item. As a form of accelerationism, that can work to the IA's advantage too, by shining a light on the fact that you, yes you, actually do not really own a book in that it's illegal to lend it in certain ways. Either way, the outcome will be very interesting, though it'll be far better if CDL comes out as allowed.