3 ms·

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

by 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.
  - toss1 3y ago
    >> 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!" Maybe, if they did it foolishly and obviously. But it could easily be done so as to undermine the same argument, and even if not, the counter-argument is that "we did it that way because "we knew we would be swimming with a bunch of excessively litigious asshat corporations." Not hard to convince a jury of that. Moreover, as important as digital lending is, losing BOTH digital lending AND The Internet Archive will be a serious disaster with very long-lasting consequences. This latest decision just made ti more likely, and the current SCOTUS, which may well be where this ends up, is likely to produce that result. We need an archive copy of The Internet Archive (both the data set and the organization).

by Osmose 3y ago

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.
- toss1 3y ago
  >> 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!" Maybe, if they did it foolishly and obviously. But it could easily be done so as to undermine the same argument, and even if not, the counter-argument is that "we did it that way because "we knew we would be swimming with a bunch of excessively litigious asshat corporations." Not hard to convince a jury of that. Moreover, as important as digital lending is, losing BOTH digital lending AND The Internet Archive will be a serious disaster with very long-lasting consequences. This latest decision just made ti more likely, and the current SCOTUS, which may well be where this ends up, is likely to produce that result. We need an archive copy of The Internet Archive (both the data set and the organization).