5 ms·

IMHO they were very dumb to do the emergency lending nonsense to begin with. A good example of letting ideology walk you past the cliff. Even if they’re succes

IMHO they were very dumb to do the emergency lending nonsense to begin with. A good example of letting ideology walk you past the cliff. Even if they’re successful against the injunction the damage has been done. Given how tenuous online lending is already, it was naive to push the boundary further. I feel a similar ideological gap is slowly growing in the treatment of data surrounding generative AI.

boomboomsubban 3y ago
The emergency lending has almost no relevance in this case, which is about controlled digital lending as a whole
- endisneigh 3y ago
  The initial ruling cited emergency lending to justify banning all digital lending and the case was only brought up due to it as well. It has the utmost relevance. It’s no coincidence the initial suit happened mere months after the emergency lending began.
  - boomboomsubban 3y ago
    >initial ruling cited emergency lending to justify banning all digital lending and the case was only brought up due to it as well. The ruling's only mention of the emergency lending was that it was illegal as CDL was illegal. There's also a fair amount of reason to suspect the publishers were preparing for the lawsuit far before the emergency lending. They were publishing stories about it and forming a petition against it in 2019, following years of criticizing it.
Osmose 3y ago
Personally I find it more naive to think that tiptoeing around book publishers in fear hoping that they can slowly make small progress is the smarter move. They're not going to make serious progress in the fight against unfair online lending terms by appeasing publishers.
- endisneigh 3y ago
  I’m not sure how you can have this opinion given the result. The internet archive would have clearly been better off “tiptoeing” around
  - Osmose 3y ago
    Not only do they still have an appeal, but the problem goes beyond the Internet Archive itself. Lobbying politicians, coordinating with other libraries, inspiring more civil disobedience, all of which can more productively happen now that we've seen what publisher's limits are as well as how we've seen that publisher profits _grew_ over the period that the National Emergency Library was available.
    - endisneigh 3y ago
      The appeal would be for the implementation of the restriction both parties have already agreed to. It’s a clear regression from pre Covid. They’ve lost either way.
      - Osmose 3y ago
        Again, considering only the IA's own CDL program is a narrow view of the larger issue. This doesn't necessarily end with a single lawsuit.
- toss1 3y ago
  Agree, but the real naivety is that they did it (afaict) under the same corporate entity as the critical online Internet Archive. This means a loss on this lending issue may jeopardize the entire IA, which would be a much greater loss. They should absolutely be pushing the edges, but cleave it off so as not to put the whole enterprise at risk. I hope it doesn't come to that.
  - Osmose 3y ago
    If they spun it off separately they'd be handing a pretty big target for publishers to lean on during trial: "They *knew* what they were doing was wrong, they even tried to separate it from their non-profit to protect themselves from the consequences!" Probably it's more that we just disagree on the relative importance of digital lending; I think that digital lending is one core part of the overall ability to access archived works, and thus is core to the Internet Archive's mission and function rather than a simple extension of it. That makes it worthy of putting their full weight behind it.
endgame 3y ago
I was utterly flabbergasted by this move. If some unrelated entity had done some bold move in the digital lending space, that would be one thing, but IA is a single point of failure for large amounts of internet history. Frankly, it was completely idiotic to risk all that on an untested lending experiment.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  If I’m being honest, none of you would have made the archive happen. Presumably, you would have been troubled by the copyright implications. The kind of person who does that would probably also do this. There is no perfect stopping point. Everyone fantasizes that they would have sold GME at the top, run a business to the point it was at its best and no farther, and pushed a law to bend only as far as it can. The evidence is in the action. The archives are available yet none of you even host a mirror of this supposed treasure. Of course you are flabbergasted: you would have been flabbergasted anyway. What use is the surprise of the peanut gallery?
- AshamedCaptain 3y ago
  I agree. I don't understand why the IA seem to be continuously poking the limits of what's acceptable or not, when their core mission is already complicated enough copyright-law-wise. They are one big lawsuit away from being possibly forced to shut the _entire_ archiving operation down, and yet they continuously prod all the entities that are likely to serve them such a lawsuit. I cannot but have this picture of a small dog barking at a pack of huge dogs. And then they'll cry and make a fuss and claim they are the victims when they are inevitably sued. Exempli gratia: https://archive.org/search?query=office+2019 https://archive.org/search?query=office+2019 Why. Just why they risk everything by being yet-another file sharing site that is full of pirated software?
alexey-salmin 3y ago
What is it there to lose? Worst case we're back to kindle which is the same as doing nothing.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- xp84 3y ago
  Worst case is they’re ordered to shut the entire archive down. It will be like the burning of the Library of Alexandria only the arsonists are the IP lobby and the reason it happened is ego.

boomboomsubban 3y ago

The emergency lending has almost no relevance in this case, which is about controlled digital lending as a whole

endisneigh 3y ago
The initial ruling cited emergency lending to justify banning all digital lending and the case was only brought up due to it as well. It has the utmost relevance. It’s no coincidence the initial suit happened mere months after the emergency lending began.
- boomboomsubban 3y ago
  >initial ruling cited emergency lending to justify banning all digital lending and the case was only brought up due to it as well. The ruling's only mention of the emergency lending was that it was illegal as CDL was illegal. There's also a fair amount of reason to suspect the publishers were preparing for the lawsuit far before the emergency lending. They were publishing stories about it and forming a petition against it in 2019, following years of criticizing it.

Osmose 3y ago

Personally I find it more naive to think that tiptoeing around book publishers in fear hoping that they can slowly make small progress is the smarter move. They're not going to make serious progress in the fight against unfair online lending terms by appeasing publishers.

endisneigh 3y ago
I’m not sure how you can have this opinion given the result. The internet archive would have clearly been better off “tiptoeing” around
- Osmose 3y ago
  Not only do they still have an appeal, but the problem goes beyond the Internet Archive itself. Lobbying politicians, coordinating with other libraries, inspiring more civil disobedience, all of which can more productively happen now that we've seen what publisher's limits are as well as how we've seen that publisher profits _grew_ over the period that the National Emergency Library was available.
  - endisneigh 3y ago
    The appeal would be for the implementation of the restriction both parties have already agreed to. It’s a clear regression from pre Covid. They’ve lost either way.
    - Osmose 3y ago
      Again, considering only the IA's own CDL program is a narrow view of the larger issue. This doesn't necessarily end with a single lawsuit.
toss1 3y ago
Agree, but the real naivety is that they did it (afaict) under the same corporate entity as the critical online Internet Archive. This means a loss on this lending issue may jeopardize the entire IA, which would be a much greater loss. They should absolutely be pushing the edges, but cleave it off so as not to put the whole enterprise at risk. I hope it doesn't come to that.
- Osmose 3y ago
  If they spun it off separately they'd be handing a pretty big target for publishers to lean on during trial: "They *knew* what they were doing was wrong, they even tried to separate it from their non-profit to protect themselves from the consequences!" Probably it's more that we just disagree on the relative importance of digital lending; I think that digital lending is one core part of the overall ability to access archived works, and thus is core to the Internet Archive's mission and function rather than a simple extension of it. That makes it worthy of putting their full weight behind it.

endgame 3y ago

I was utterly flabbergasted by this move. If some unrelated entity had done some bold move in the digital lending space, that would be one thing, but IA is a single point of failure for large amounts of internet history. Frankly, it was completely idiotic to risk all that on an untested lending experiment.

renewiltord 3y ago
If I’m being honest, none of you would have made the archive happen. Presumably, you would have been troubled by the copyright implications. The kind of person who does that would probably also do this. There is no perfect stopping point. Everyone fantasizes that they would have sold GME at the top, run a business to the point it was at its best and no farther, and pushed a law to bend only as far as it can. The evidence is in the action. The archives are available yet none of you even host a mirror of this supposed treasure. Of course you are flabbergasted: you would have been flabbergasted anyway. What use is the surprise of the peanut gallery?
AshamedCaptain 3y ago
I agree. I don't understand why the IA seem to be continuously poking the limits of what's acceptable or not, when their core mission is already complicated enough copyright-law-wise. They are one big lawsuit away from being possibly forced to shut the _entire_ archiving operation down, and yet they continuously prod all the entities that are likely to serve them such a lawsuit. I cannot but have this picture of a small dog barking at a pack of huge dogs. And then they'll cry and make a fuss and claim they are the victims when they are inevitably sued. Exempli gratia: https://archive.org/search?query=office+2019 https://archive.org/search?query=office+2019 Why. Just why they risk everything by being yet-another file sharing site that is full of pirated software?

alexey-salmin 3y ago

What is it there to lose? Worst case we're back to kindle which is the same as doing nothing.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
xp84 3y ago
Worst case is they’re ordered to shut the entire archive down. It will be like the burning of the Library of Alexandria only the arsonists are the IP lobby and the reason it happened is ego.