3 ms·
The lawsuit is unquestionably about controlled digital lending. It was filed after the start of the National Emergency Library, but all the contents of the laws
by boomboomsubban 4y ago
The lawsuit is unquestionably about controlled digital lending. It was filed after the start of the National Emergency Library, but all the contents of the lawsuit are attacking CDL with the pandemic actions only a way of showing the Internet Archive is an organization that can't be trusted.
You can see this in the filed paperwork, where amusingly they also attack the IA by saying they've occasionally incorrectly labeled things as in the public domain, which was clearly done maliciously.
If this lawsuit was only seeking damages over the National Emergency Library, nobody would be writing stories about it. And publishers were openly hostile to CDL before the pandemic, you could see them preparing for this lawsuit in 2019.
- misnome 4y ago> all the contents of the lawsuit are attacking CDL with the pandemic actions only a way of showing the Internet Archive is an organization that can't be trusted. I mean, that seems like a reasonable position given the circumstances? I'm sure if a physical library started their own book printing business and handing out unlimited copies of books that they had bought one of, that the publishers would be equally pissed, and not stop being pissed if the library said "oopsie I got caught I've stopped doing it now".
- boomboomsubban 4y agoI don't think it's reasonable to use actions taken in an unprecedented situation as indicators of how they act in normal circumstances. To use your example, if a library started publishing illegal copies of some kind of emergency materials while their town faced a major flood, I wouldn't think the library was trying to replace publishers. Circumstances matter, and while you can argue the IA overstepped it's bounds I don't think that shows they can't be trusted.