14 ms·

A lot of people in these comments still seem confused about what has happened here. This ruling is not about the emergency library at all. It's a ruling that c

A lot of people in these comments still seem confused about what has happened here. This ruling is not about the emergency library at all. It's a ruling that controlled digital lending (one physical copy backing each digital copy lent out) is illegal.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
warent 4y ago
That seems horrendous. Don't many community/government libraries do this? Seems like a huge blow to freedom of information and sharing.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dmix 4y ago
  Is this just ebook lending? Is that popular among local libraries? I thought Kindle/Nook/Apple books/etc completely dominated that market. Reading PDFs on computers/tablets for long form stuff never made much sense to me. I'm curious if local libraries get much traction from their digital libraries. I could see audiobooks getting locked down being a big hit though. Audible has a monopoly on that harder than ebooks ever experienced.
  - jhbadger 4y ago
    It's very popular among local libraries (at least in the US and UK) -- Libby/Overdrive being the main player, followed by Hoopla.
    - Mindwipe 4y ago
      It is worth noting that Libraries in the UK have to pay authors/publishers to loan out books on a royalty basis with the Public Lending Right payment of course. Even physical books.
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    My library lends epubs through OverDrive, which puts Adobe's DRM on them. It works quite well with my Kobo Libra H2O. Checkouts of ebooks spiked during the pandemic, with 3 million in 2019, for a county with a total population of ~800K
    - boomboomsubban 4y ago
      >Checkouts of ebooks spiked during the pandemic, with 3 million in 2019, for a county with a total population of ~800K Did you mean 2020? Or did they spike before the pandemic really started?
      - cratermoon 4y ago
        Sorry, those were two different thoughts. I only have numbers for 2019. I haven't been able to find anything for pandemic years other than general reports that ebook borrowing spiked.
  - dunham 4y ago
    My ten year old uses "Libby" a lot to borrow books from the local library - at one point they started rate limiting him. He also typically has a dozen physical books checked out at any given time.
    - dmix 4y ago
      Just curious: What kind of books do they read? On an ipad or something?
      - piceas 4y ago
        For my five year old, we have been rate limited on overdrive reading Pete the Cat and Franklin books. Partly because the selection is woeful (about 20 English books) compared to IA's thousands in that category.
        efreak 4y ago
        If a book exists in overdrive, they allow you to request that your library add it to their collection. My first two requests were added to my library within days, several others came a few months later, and now about 4(?) years later I'm still getting an occasional notification about it, though at this point I've read them already...
      - dunham 4y ago
        Yeah, on an iPad. He reads a variety of stuff, but he tells me it's been pokemon themed manga recently. We limit screen time, so he mostly reads print books, but he'll get an hour of bonus libby time in the mornings on school holidays. His fun screen time, 30 min weekdays, 1.5 weekends is typically minecraft or pokemon games. I also occasionally let him have a little bit of Libby or scratch time (which I deem "educational") before going to school or before bed. (Everything is contingent on behavior.) Aside from minecraft/pokemon stuff, he typically reads a mix of kids graphic novels and books. Including Tristan Strong, Artimis Fowl, Wings of Fire, Dogman. He's also read Harry Potter, some Terry Pratchett, and Tolkien. He first read the Lord of the Rings in the summer between first and second grade, which blew my mind (it was middle or high school or me). So I don't really worry about stuff like the ratio of graphic novels to textual books.
- bdowling 4y ago
  > Don't many community/government libraries do this? Those books are licensed to the libraries by the publishers. The introduction of the opinion here explains how it works: > This dispute concerns the way libraries lend ebooks. Public and academic libraries in the United States spend billions of dollars each year obtaining print books and ebooks for their patrons to borrow for free. Pls.’ 56.1 ¶ 113. Libraries usually buy their print books from publishers or wholesalers. Id. ¶ 114. Copies of ebooks, however, are typically not bought but licensed to libraries from publishers through distributors called “aggregators.” Id. ¶ 117. The Publishers task aggregators with ensuring that a library lends its ebooks only to the library’s members. Id. ¶¶ 123, 125. The Publishers also require aggregators to employ approved “digital rights management” (“DRM”) software and other security measures to prevent unauthorized copying or distribution of ebook files. Id. ¶ 126. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.188.0.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1rM4_dbpOOKJUi5fRa112PSyoEYcd1z_ePwpL4WUEgA1FVIiWuiLCRs8w https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.53..., page 3 (emphasis added).
  - encryptluks2 4y ago
    So then IA just needs to have a free membership and implement the most basic DRM.
    - teraflop 4y ago
      Libraries' ebook lending programs are not legal because they require membership and use DRM. They're legal because they're authorized by the copyright owners, and those are the terms the copyright owners choose to impose (along with licensing fees).
      - drdaeman 4y ago
        But if I purchase the paper book, there is - thankfully - no shrink-wrap licensing anywhere that tells me that I can or cannot lend it to anyone, yet I sure hope I can. Why IA can't?
        4y ago
superkuh 4y ago
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/22/book-publishers-wont-stop-until-libraries-are-dead/ https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/22/book-publishers-wont-sto... is a good overview (from a day or two before the judgement). >Every part of that has been deemed legal. Copyright law already has first sale rights, written directly into the law and allow for the lending or reselling of copyright-covered works without a license or permission. Similarly libraries are given explicit rights to make copies, so long as those collections are made available to the public. On top of that, courts have determined, multiple times, that book scanning itself is fair use for libraries. >So, literally each separate component of what is happening with Controlled Digital Lending has already been deemed to be legal and exactly what we expect libraries to do. >To counter this, publishers (and their supporters, which unfortunately include some authors) argue that (1) this interferes with the market for licensed ebooks, and (2) that there is a real difference in lending out the digital scans: that they don’t deteriorate the way that physical books do.
- granzymes 4y ago
  The article doesn't seem to understand the issue. Whether a copy of a work is fair use turns on, amongst other things, the effect of the copy on the potential market for the original. The article acknowledges this. Controlled Digital Lending competes directly with the licensing scheme publishers have for library ebooks. The fair use argument was always doomed to fail. The article then completely ignores the copyright argument and tries to equate CDL with libraries loaning out their physical copies. This is completely absurd, since libraries do not distribute duplicates of their physical books and so do not even enter the realm of copyright. If libraries were systematically distributing duplicates of their existing books they would be sued for copyright infringement.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    << If libraries were distributing copies of their existing books they would be sued for copyright infringement. There may be a question of definition here. Do you mean that they have to lend it, but they cannot give it away?
hedora 4y ago
That’s a terrible ruling. The first sale doctrine says the copy of the book you bought is yours. Lending the book is clearly not copying it. So, I guess you just don’t own anything you buy anymore? Like what if I want to lend a tool to someone, and the tool manufacturer wants to rent their tools out? Is that also illegal? What if the tool contains software? What if reasonable use of the tool requires accessing a print manual? A pdf manual? Edit: Reading the ruling, IA should have argued they are simply format shifting a single copy that they own. I wonder if they did make this argument, and then the judge conveniently ignored it (then lied in the summary ruling, when they say IA made no other arguments in their defense), or if IA’s lawyers screwed up.
- jkdufair 4y ago
  I don’t disagree with the ruling. IA is not lending their copy that they purchased. They are lending a copy of their copy. While that copy is lent out, they are still free to, I.e. read the copy in their possession.
  - benatkin 4y ago
    Unsurprising that not all of HN is pro-fair use. That's how you digitally send a copy of a book. You're saying something similar to "you wouldn't download a car".
    - endisneigh 4y ago
      I don’t see how you’re refuting their point
      - benatkin 4y ago
        > You're saying something similar to "you wouldn't download a car". It's applying without considering it. The digital book isn't being kept at the old location because there is no digital book in the physical book. It's the only way to transfer a single copy of a book without destroying the physical copy. Judges should consider stuff like this and it's a disappointing ruling. But go on...
sacnoradhq 4y ago
This sets back archival and human knowledge back 100 years. If you embargo a physical copy, an electronic copy should be lendable. I would start a webtorrent+ipfs+i2p site in Iceland just to get around this insane perpetual monopoly on difficult-to-find, old shit that doesn't have a market but publishers keep locked away.
- Zetice 4y ago
  100 years? Seems hyperbolic. And you don’t need to do anything at all; all of these books have been freely available on IRC for years.
  - nvader 4y ago
    Sherlock Holmes' emotions would like a word. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/07/the-curious-case-of-sherlock-holmes-evolving-emotions https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/07/the-curious-ca...
    - Zetice 4y ago
      Are you aware of how that case resolved?
      - nvader 4y ago
        My recollection was that they reached a settlement, but I don't know for how much. https://abbasmedialaw.com/posts/copyright-netflix-reaches-settlement-on-enola-holmes-sherlock-lawsuit/ https://abbasmedialaw.com/posts/copyright-netflix-reaches-se... I found this chart interesting, and unexpectedly complicated: https://www.belmont.edu/legal/pdf/Public-Domain-Chart.pdf https://www.belmont.edu/legal/pdf/Public-Domain-Chart.pdf Based on that I think a heuristic of 100 years is broadly correct.
        Zetice 4y ago
        No, it’s not broadly correct, because “when does copyright expire” has no relevance to “setting back the concept of human knowledge”. Human knowledge remains entirely unaffected by this ruling.
Zetice 4y ago
So what does this mean for my extensive library in Plex of DVDs I own?
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  It means you are not legally allowed to lend them or sell them, even if you lose the original DVD and even though you did have the right to lend or sell the original DVD.
  - Zetice 4y ago
    It seems like I might not have legally been allowed to make a copy of the DVD in the first place too...
    - dmonitor 4y ago
      you can make a personal backup, but once you hand it to someone else it is no longer personal
      - Zetice 4y ago
        Can you? The ruling seems to rake issue with the digitalization itself.
        jasomill 4y ago
        IANAL, but even if we assume the act of backing up a DVD to hard drive is legal, it's not clear to me how one could legally use the resulting copy without somehow circumventing CSS. And with only narrow exceptions that probably don't apply here, this act of circumvention violates 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(A)[1] unless the copyright owner has authorized the process (as they do with licensed playback devices and software). [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201
gamblor956 4y ago
This is basically the same way that courts have always ruled on this point. Redbox tried this theory several years ago when they were trying to launch their film streaming service, and failed for the same reasons.
ssalka 4y ago
If a judge thinks THAT's illegal, wait till they hear about fractional reserve banking.
- GolfPopper 4y ago
  Pretty sure fractional reserve banking passes the "do rich people make money from this" test, and is therefore fine.
dahart 4y ago
> It’s a ruling that controlled digital lending is illegal. That’s not really true. One issue described explicitly in the decision is that the lending is mostly uncontrolled, and worse there’s evidence of it the defendant was aware of. The second issue is that the defendant isn’t using the first sale doctrine, their defense is fair use. Presumably the whole reason they decided to argue fair use is because they knew they weren’t adhering to the lending analogy, because they were aware they were effectively distributing copies, not just lending them.
lucb1e 4y ago
> This ruling is not about the emergency library at all. It's a ruling that [...] one physical copy backing each digital copy lent out) is illegal. That's not what I read in the linked article, specifically: Regarding "IA’s promise not to lend simultaneously": "IA has not kept its promise. Although the Open Library’s print copies of the Works in Suit are non-circulating, IA concedes that it has no way of verifying whether Partner Libraries remove their physical copies from circulation after partnering with IA…. To the contrary, IA knows that some Partner Libraries do not remove the physical books from their shelves" As I understand it, this case exists because the IA was not keeping its promise anymore and made an error of judgement by breaking the 1:1 ratio without any legal argumentation or even a logical reason for it. It was said at the time already, but the obviousness, whether something as important as the wayback machine's owner should compete with the pirate bay for market share on illegal ebooks, and the use of (my/our) donated money on the ensuing legal nonsense, is a different discussion... If these underlying facts and circumstances were different, such as if someone tries this concept again but keeps their promise and implements it correctly, the same ruling cannot be passed because it's not the same situation. It would have to be tried again and it might (or might not) swing the other way, at least that is my general understanding of legal systems around the world. Perhaps it would also be different in another country whence ExampleBooks Ltd could operate legally, that will depend in part on whether the copyright alliance pact (I forgot the name) has provisions letting signatories (afaik that's every nation you might want to live in) make exceptions for things like this.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

warent 4y ago

That seems horrendous. Don't many community/government libraries do this? Seems like a huge blow to freedom of information and sharing.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dmix 4y ago
Is this just ebook lending? Is that popular among local libraries? I thought Kindle/Nook/Apple books/etc completely dominated that market. Reading PDFs on computers/tablets for long form stuff never made much sense to me. I'm curious if local libraries get much traction from their digital libraries. I could see audiobooks getting locked down being a big hit though. Audible has a monopoly on that harder than ebooks ever experienced.
- jhbadger 4y ago
  It's very popular among local libraries (at least in the US and UK) -- Libby/Overdrive being the main player, followed by Hoopla.
  - Mindwipe 4y ago
    It is worth noting that Libraries in the UK have to pay authors/publishers to loan out books on a royalty basis with the Public Lending Right payment of course. Even physical books.
- cratermoon 4y ago
  My library lends epubs through OverDrive, which puts Adobe's DRM on them. It works quite well with my Kobo Libra H2O. Checkouts of ebooks spiked during the pandemic, with 3 million in 2019, for a county with a total population of ~800K
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    >Checkouts of ebooks spiked during the pandemic, with 3 million in 2019, for a county with a total population of ~800K Did you mean 2020? Or did they spike before the pandemic really started?
    - cratermoon 4y ago
      Sorry, those were two different thoughts. I only have numbers for 2019. I haven't been able to find anything for pandemic years other than general reports that ebook borrowing spiked.
- dunham 4y ago
  My ten year old uses "Libby" a lot to borrow books from the local library - at one point they started rate limiting him. He also typically has a dozen physical books checked out at any given time.
  - dmix 4y ago
    Just curious: What kind of books do they read? On an ipad or something?
    - piceas 4y ago
      For my five year old, we have been rate limited on overdrive reading Pete the Cat and Franklin books. Partly because the selection is woeful (about 20 English books) compared to IA's thousands in that category.
      - efreak 4y ago
        If a book exists in overdrive, they allow you to request that your library add it to their collection. My first two requests were added to my library within days, several others came a few months later, and now about 4(?) years later I'm still getting an occasional notification about it, though at this point I've read them already...
    - dunham 4y ago
      Yeah, on an iPad. He reads a variety of stuff, but he tells me it's been pokemon themed manga recently. We limit screen time, so he mostly reads print books, but he'll get an hour of bonus libby time in the mornings on school holidays. His fun screen time, 30 min weekdays, 1.5 weekends is typically minecraft or pokemon games. I also occasionally let him have a little bit of Libby or scratch time (which I deem "educational") before going to school or before bed. (Everything is contingent on behavior.) Aside from minecraft/pokemon stuff, he typically reads a mix of kids graphic novels and books. Including Tristan Strong, Artimis Fowl, Wings of Fire, Dogman. He's also read Harry Potter, some Terry Pratchett, and Tolkien. He first read the Lord of the Rings in the summer between first and second grade, which blew my mind (it was middle or high school or me). So I don't really worry about stuff like the ratio of graphic novels to textual books.
bdowling 4y ago
> Don't many community/government libraries do this? Those books are licensed to the libraries by the publishers. The introduction of the opinion here explains how it works: > This dispute concerns the way libraries lend ebooks. Public and academic libraries in the United States spend billions of dollars each year obtaining print books and ebooks for their patrons to borrow for free. Pls.’ 56.1 ¶ 113. Libraries usually buy their print books from publishers or wholesalers. Id. ¶ 114. Copies of ebooks, however, are typically not bought but licensed to libraries from publishers through distributors called “aggregators.” Id. ¶ 117. The Publishers task aggregators with ensuring that a library lends its ebooks only to the library’s members. Id. ¶¶ 123, 125. The Publishers also require aggregators to employ approved “digital rights management” (“DRM”) software and other security measures to prevent unauthorized copying or distribution of ebook files. Id. ¶ 126. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.188.0.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1rM4_dbpOOKJUi5fRa112PSyoEYcd1z_ePwpL4WUEgA1FVIiWuiLCRs8w https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.53..., page 3 (emphasis added).
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  So then IA just needs to have a free membership and implement the most basic DRM.
  - teraflop 4y ago
    Libraries' ebook lending programs are not legal because they require membership and use DRM. They're legal because they're authorized by the copyright owners, and those are the terms the copyright owners choose to impose (along with licensing fees).
    - drdaeman 4y ago
      But if I purchase the paper book, there is - thankfully - no shrink-wrap licensing anywhere that tells me that I can or cannot lend it to anyone, yet I sure hope I can. Why IA can't?
      - 4y ago

superkuh 4y ago

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/22/book-publishers-wont-stop-until-libraries-are-dead/ https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/22/book-publishers-wont-sto... is a good overview (from a day or two before the judgement). >Every part of that has been deemed legal. Copyright law already has first sale rights, written directly into the law and allow for the lending or reselling of copyright-covered works without a license or permission. Similarly libraries are given explicit rights to make copies, so long as those collections are made available to the public. On top of that, courts have determined, multiple times, that book scanning itself is fair use for libraries. >So, literally each separate component of what is happening with Controlled Digital Lending has already been deemed to be legal and exactly what we expect libraries to do. >To counter this, publishers (and their supporters, which unfortunately include some authors) argue that (1) this interferes with the market for licensed ebooks, and (2) that there is a real difference in lending out the digital scans: that they don’t deteriorate the way that physical books do.

granzymes 4y ago
The article doesn't seem to understand the issue. Whether a copy of a work is fair use turns on, amongst other things, the effect of the copy on the potential market for the original. The article acknowledges this. Controlled Digital Lending competes directly with the licensing scheme publishers have for library ebooks. The fair use argument was always doomed to fail. The article then completely ignores the copyright argument and tries to equate CDL with libraries loaning out their physical copies. This is completely absurd, since libraries do not distribute duplicates of their physical books and so do not even enter the realm of copyright. If libraries were systematically distributing duplicates of their existing books they would be sued for copyright infringement.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  << If libraries were distributing copies of their existing books they would be sued for copyright infringement. There may be a question of definition here. Do you mean that they have to lend it, but they cannot give it away?

hedora 4y ago

That’s a terrible ruling. The first sale doctrine says the copy of the book you bought is yours. Lending the book is clearly not copying it. So, I guess you just don’t own anything you buy anymore? Like what if I want to lend a tool to someone, and the tool manufacturer wants to rent their tools out? Is that also illegal? What if the tool contains software? What if reasonable use of the tool requires accessing a print manual? A pdf manual? Edit: Reading the ruling, IA should have argued they are simply format shifting a single copy that they own. I wonder if they did make this argument, and then the judge conveniently ignored it (then lied in the summary ruling, when they say IA made no other arguments in their defense), or if IA’s lawyers screwed up.

jkdufair 4y ago
I don’t disagree with the ruling. IA is not lending their copy that they purchased. They are lending a copy of their copy. While that copy is lent out, they are still free to, I.e. read the copy in their possession.
- benatkin 4y ago
  Unsurprising that not all of HN is pro-fair use. That's how you digitally send a copy of a book. You're saying something similar to "you wouldn't download a car".
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    I don’t see how you’re refuting their point
    - benatkin 4y ago
      > You're saying something similar to "you wouldn't download a car". It's applying without considering it. The digital book isn't being kept at the old location because there is no digital book in the physical book. It's the only way to transfer a single copy of a book without destroying the physical copy. Judges should consider stuff like this and it's a disappointing ruling. But go on...

sacnoradhq 4y ago

This sets back archival and human knowledge back 100 years. If you embargo a physical copy, an electronic copy should be lendable. I would start a webtorrent+ipfs+i2p site in Iceland just to get around this insane perpetual monopoly on difficult-to-find, old shit that doesn't have a market but publishers keep locked away.

Zetice 4y ago
100 years? Seems hyperbolic. And you don’t need to do anything at all; all of these books have been freely available on IRC for years.
- nvader 4y ago
  Sherlock Holmes' emotions would like a word. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/07/the-curious-case-of-sherlock-holmes-evolving-emotions https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/07/the-curious-ca...
  - Zetice 4y ago
    Are you aware of how that case resolved?
    - nvader 4y ago
      My recollection was that they reached a settlement, but I don't know for how much. https://abbasmedialaw.com/posts/copyright-netflix-reaches-settlement-on-enola-holmes-sherlock-lawsuit/ https://abbasmedialaw.com/posts/copyright-netflix-reaches-se... I found this chart interesting, and unexpectedly complicated: https://www.belmont.edu/legal/pdf/Public-Domain-Chart.pdf https://www.belmont.edu/legal/pdf/Public-Domain-Chart.pdf Based on that I think a heuristic of 100 years is broadly correct.
      - Zetice 4y ago
        No, it’s not broadly correct, because “when does copyright expire” has no relevance to “setting back the concept of human knowledge”. Human knowledge remains entirely unaffected by this ruling.

Zetice 4y ago

So what does this mean for my extensive library in Plex of DVDs I own?

tsimionescu 4y ago
It means you are not legally allowed to lend them or sell them, even if you lose the original DVD and even though you did have the right to lend or sell the original DVD.
- Zetice 4y ago
  It seems like I might not have legally been allowed to make a copy of the DVD in the first place too...
  - dmonitor 4y ago
    you can make a personal backup, but once you hand it to someone else it is no longer personal
    - Zetice 4y ago
      Can you? The ruling seems to rake issue with the digitalization itself.
      - jasomill 4y ago
        IANAL, but even if we assume the act of backing up a DVD to hard drive is legal, it's not clear to me how one could legally use the resulting copy without somehow circumventing CSS. And with only narrow exceptions that probably don't apply here, this act of circumvention violates 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(A)[1] unless the copyright owner has authorized the process (as they do with licensed playback devices and software). [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201

gamblor956 4y ago

This is basically the same way that courts have always ruled on this point. Redbox tried this theory several years ago when they were trying to launch their film streaming service, and failed for the same reasons.

ssalka 4y ago

If a judge thinks THAT's illegal, wait till they hear about fractional reserve banking.

GolfPopper 4y ago
Pretty sure fractional reserve banking passes the "do rich people make money from this" test, and is therefore fine.

dahart 4y ago

> It’s a ruling that controlled digital lending is illegal. That’s not really true. One issue described explicitly in the decision is that the lending is mostly uncontrolled, and worse there’s evidence of it the defendant was aware of. The second issue is that the defendant isn’t using the first sale doctrine, their defense is fair use. Presumably the whole reason they decided to argue fair use is because they knew they weren’t adhering to the lending analogy, because they were aware they were effectively distributing copies, not just lending them.

lucb1e 4y ago

> This ruling is not about the emergency library at all. It's a ruling that [...] one physical copy backing each digital copy lent out) is illegal. That's not what I read in the linked article, specifically: Regarding "IA’s promise not to lend simultaneously": "IA has not kept its promise. Although the Open Library’s print copies of the Works in Suit are non-circulating, IA concedes that it has no way of verifying whether Partner Libraries remove their physical copies from circulation after partnering with IA…. To the contrary, IA knows that some Partner Libraries do not remove the physical books from their shelves" As I understand it, this case exists because the IA was not keeping its promise anymore and made an error of judgement by breaking the 1:1 ratio without any legal argumentation or even a logical reason for it. It was said at the time already, but the obviousness, whether something as important as the wayback machine's owner should compete with the pirate bay for market share on illegal ebooks, and the use of (my/our) donated money on the ensuing legal nonsense, is a different discussion... If these underlying facts and circumstances were different, such as if someone tries this concept again but keeps their promise and implements it correctly, the same ruling cannot be passed because it's not the same situation. It would have to be tried again and it might (or might not) swing the other way, at least that is my general understanding of legal systems around the world. Perhaps it would also be different in another country whence ExampleBooks Ltd could operate legally, that will depend in part on whether the copyright alliance pact (I forgot the name) has provisions letting signatories (afaik that's every nation you might want to live in) make exceptions for things like this.