5 ms·

So they let people borrow as many books as they wanted which obviously violates copyright law but accidentally this didn't surpass the number of available books

by chx 4y ago

So they let people borrow as many books as they wanted which obviously violates copyright law but accidentally this didn't surpass the number of available books and this makes the whole thing legal? Bold strategy.

hannasanarion 4y ago
Since when does letting people borrow books from a library violate copyright law? I could go up to my local library with a dump truck and load it up with books if I wanted to, I'm not making copies, so I'm not violating copyright, period. Copyright protects the publisher's ability to proliferate the stock of books, not to police the use of existing stock.
- fabianhjr 4y ago
  There is an anachronism were the following circumstances collide: - lending is limited to the original bought copies (a library cannot create more copies of a book for further lending) - digital lending requires sending the data to another device creating a copy - digital lending has near-zero marginal cost (specially at scale) - digital borrowing has near-zero marginal cost (no library membership, single click borrowing for some minutes or some hours with single click return) IMHO I think Archive is legally in the right and it is only due to the previous circumstances, Archive.org collaborating with _a lot_ of libraries, and the tension between the older/traditional socialist/communal lending practice vs newer/contemporary private property laws that allows this conflict to emerge.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  The GP was referring to the fact that Archive.org let, in principle, an unlimited number of people borrow the same book. A library has a limited number of copies of a book, so if a million people come in and want to borrow it, only X will get to. Archive.org would have served a million copies of that book according to the emergency policy. Now, as far as I understand, it happened that no book was likely borrowed more times than the number of physical copies held by archive.org + the libraries they had partenere with. But the process they normally had in place to prevent this was explicitly decided to be ignored during the pandemic.
  - leereeves 4y ago
    > Archive.org would have served a million copies of that book according to the emergency policy. Does it matter what they might have done under different circumstances? Even if they weren't checking the limits, if they got lucky and never exceeded the number of copies they had licenses to share, then how did they infringe anyone's copyright?
    - chx 4y ago
      > if they got lucky and never exceeded the number of copies they had licenses to share where is this stated
      - leereeves 4y ago
        > Now, as far as I understand, it happened that no book was likely borrowed more times than the number of physical copies held by archive.org + the libraries they had partnered with
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    >it happened that no book was likely borrowed more times than the number of physical copies held by archive.org + the libraries they had partenere with. This is not their argument. They previously had libraries offer copies of books, but during the time of crisis they decided to act quickly to repace the 650 million books now out-of-circulation. Only around a hundred libraries signed on on support. I can understand the argument as for why the IA shouldn't have done this, but agree with the IA that in these unique circumstances it should be fair use. Either way, the lawsuit is about ending the entire CDL policy, not the short term change.
- epa 4y ago
  Its a factor of 1:1 or 1:many scaling.
  - hannasanarion 4y ago
    Except it isn't. Every time a book was digitally lent, it became inaccessible to anyone else. A digital lend is the same as a physical lend. They didn't copy any books.
whatshisface 4y ago
There is no grounds for a civil lawsuit if no damage was actually done. Furthermore, the parties bringing suit have to be the ones who were damaged.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  I suppose it also makes it harder for the publishers because they now have to the homework of proving which titles would have hypothetical been over subscribed of the gazillions of books lent by archive.org and of those proof which specific publisher was damaged.
jacobolus 4y ago
The borrowing feature is an amazing way of working around utterly broken copyright law, which is in its current form more or less a tax and brake on scientific and cultural progress. From the internet archive I can now search through and read 60-year-old self-published technical manuals, obscure Hungarian journal papers, historical archival material only kept in one French museum, soviet math and physics textbooks, etc. which is difficult or expensive to find physical copies of, and not being published and distributed anymore. Even better, people can use those links as sources in their own work (e.g. in Wikipedia articles) and anyone else interested can follow-up with original sources instead of just taking things on faith because the references are too much bother to track down. All of this material from the past ~century is otherwise locked away by copyright law even though nobody was making any money from it.
- kelnos 4y ago
  > The borrowing feature is an amazing way of working around utterly broken copyright law If lending had exceeded the number of available purchased/physical copies, then it wouldn't be "working around", it would be "violating" copyright law. I agree with you that copyright law is horribly broken as-is, but I think it's irresponsible of the Internet Archive to play so fast and loose with it. A monetary judgment against them could be devastating to their effort to preserve history.
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    > but I think it's irresponsible of the Internet Archive to play so fast and loose with it I don’t think that they did. But for the sake of discussion, I also don’t think it’s irresponsible. If copyright law is horribly broken (I agree), the most likely remedy is in court. You can’t get to that remedy with a case which has a reasonable chance of success if you don’t take that chance.
    - kelnos 4y ago
      So you're saying that challenging copyright law by breaking it is worth the (IMO fairly probable) possibility of being hit with a fine that could destroy IA's ability to continue their primary mission of preserving digital and physical history? I really just cannot agree with that. IA shouldn't be broadly challenging copyright law; at most they should be challenging laws that interfere with their primary mission.
SoftTalker 4y ago
I have a car which is capable of double the maximum speed limit on any road. Should I be fined for that potential, or should violations depend only my actual speed?
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  It's more like if you posted on Facebook that you were going to do 120mph in your car if ten people DMed you "do it", and you didn't get ten such replies. Then being pulled over, while still under the speed limit, for speeding on that basis.
zozbot234 4y ago
> but accidentally this didn't surpass the number of available books I suspect that the "accidentally" should be heavily qualified. Just because Internet Archive said they were going to let anyone freely borrow books (And it never was "as much as they wanted"; there were borrowing limits on each user, enforced by strong DRM) doesn't make that true in a literal sense. The whole thing was always under their control, and they would've had the stats telling them how much each book was being borrowed.

by chx 4y ago

hannasanarion 4y ago

Since when does letting people borrow books from a library violate copyright law? I could go up to my local library with a dump truck and load it up with books if I wanted to, I'm not making copies, so I'm not violating copyright, period. Copyright protects the publisher's ability to proliferate the stock of books, not to police the use of existing stock.

fabianhjr 4y ago
There is an anachronism were the following circumstances collide: - lending is limited to the original bought copies (a library cannot create more copies of a book for further lending) - digital lending requires sending the data to another device creating a copy - digital lending has near-zero marginal cost (specially at scale) - digital borrowing has near-zero marginal cost (no library membership, single click borrowing for some minutes or some hours with single click return) IMHO I think Archive is legally in the right and it is only due to the previous circumstances, Archive.org collaborating with _a lot_ of libraries, and the tension between the older/traditional socialist/communal lending practice vs newer/contemporary private property laws that allows this conflict to emerge.
tsimionescu 4y ago
The GP was referring to the fact that Archive.org let, in principle, an unlimited number of people borrow the same book. A library has a limited number of copies of a book, so if a million people come in and want to borrow it, only X will get to. Archive.org would have served a million copies of that book according to the emergency policy. Now, as far as I understand, it happened that no book was likely borrowed more times than the number of physical copies held by archive.org + the libraries they had partenere with. But the process they normally had in place to prevent this was explicitly decided to be ignored during the pandemic.
- leereeves 4y ago
  > Archive.org would have served a million copies of that book according to the emergency policy. Does it matter what they might have done under different circumstances? Even if they weren't checking the limits, if they got lucky and never exceeded the number of copies they had licenses to share, then how did they infringe anyone's copyright?
  - chx 4y ago
    > if they got lucky and never exceeded the number of copies they had licenses to share where is this stated
    - leereeves 4y ago
      > Now, as far as I understand, it happened that no book was likely borrowed more times than the number of physical copies held by archive.org + the libraries they had partnered with
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  >it happened that no book was likely borrowed more times than the number of physical copies held by archive.org + the libraries they had partenere with. This is not their argument. They previously had libraries offer copies of books, but during the time of crisis they decided to act quickly to repace the 650 million books now out-of-circulation. Only around a hundred libraries signed on on support. I can understand the argument as for why the IA shouldn't have done this, but agree with the IA that in these unique circumstances it should be fair use. Either way, the lawsuit is about ending the entire CDL policy, not the short term change.
epa 4y ago
Its a factor of 1:1 or 1:many scaling.
- hannasanarion 4y ago
  Except it isn't. Every time a book was digitally lent, it became inaccessible to anyone else. A digital lend is the same as a physical lend. They didn't copy any books.

whatshisface 4y ago

There is no grounds for a civil lawsuit if no damage was actually done. Furthermore, the parties bringing suit have to be the ones who were damaged.

DoingIsLearning 4y ago
I suppose it also makes it harder for the publishers because they now have to the homework of proving which titles would have hypothetical been over subscribed of the gazillions of books lent by archive.org and of those proof which specific publisher was damaged.

jacobolus 4y ago

The borrowing feature is an amazing way of working around utterly broken copyright law, which is in its current form more or less a tax and brake on scientific and cultural progress. From the internet archive I can now search through and read 60-year-old self-published technical manuals, obscure Hungarian journal papers, historical archival material only kept in one French museum, soviet math and physics textbooks, etc. which is difficult or expensive to find physical copies of, and not being published and distributed anymore. Even better, people can use those links as sources in their own work (e.g. in Wikipedia articles) and anyone else interested can follow-up with original sources instead of just taking things on faith because the references are too much bother to track down. All of this material from the past ~century is otherwise locked away by copyright law even though nobody was making any money from it.

kelnos 4y ago
> The borrowing feature is an amazing way of working around utterly broken copyright law If lending had exceeded the number of available purchased/physical copies, then it wouldn't be "working around", it would be "violating" copyright law. I agree with you that copyright law is horribly broken as-is, but I think it's irresponsible of the Internet Archive to play so fast and loose with it. A monetary judgment against them could be devastating to their effort to preserve history.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  > but I think it's irresponsible of the Internet Archive to play so fast and loose with it I don’t think that they did. But for the sake of discussion, I also don’t think it’s irresponsible. If copyright law is horribly broken (I agree), the most likely remedy is in court. You can’t get to that remedy with a case which has a reasonable chance of success if you don’t take that chance.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    So you're saying that challenging copyright law by breaking it is worth the (IMO fairly probable) possibility of being hit with a fine that could destroy IA's ability to continue their primary mission of preserving digital and physical history? I really just cannot agree with that. IA shouldn't be broadly challenging copyright law; at most they should be challenging laws that interfere with their primary mission.

SoftTalker 4y ago

I have a car which is capable of double the maximum speed limit on any road. Should I be fined for that potential, or should violations depend only my actual speed?

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
It's more like if you posted on Facebook that you were going to do 120mph in your car if ten people DMed you "do it", and you didn't get ten such replies. Then being pulled over, while still under the speed limit, for speeding on that basis.

zozbot234 4y ago

> but accidentally this didn't surpass the number of available books I suspect that the "accidentally" should be heavily qualified. Just because Internet Archive said they were going to let anyone freely borrow books (And it never was "as much as they wanted"; there were borrowing limits on each user, enforced by strong DRM) doesn't make that true in a literal sense. The whole thing was always under their control, and they would've had the stats telling them how much each book was being borrowed.