4 ms·

> But when it comes to outright republishing of in-copyright printed works, the rights of creators and publishers need to be recognized. 'Republishing' is a ba

by shkkmo 3y ago

> But when it comes to outright republishing of in-copyright printed works, the rights of creators and publishers need to be recognized. 'Republishing' is a bad faith description here. What IA is doing is not 'republishing' but offering 'Controlled Digital Lending' with time limited lending for scanned versions of items they posses digital copies of. This is happening in the context of the same publishers refusing to sell lend-able digitial versions of books to libraries at the same price as physical books. Book lending is a concept what these publishers are actively working to eradicate and this lawsuit is an important part of that.

aerostable_slug 3y ago
> 'Republishing' is a bad faith description here. What IA is doing is not 'republishing' but offering 'Controlled Digital Lending' with time limited lending for scanned versions of items they posses digital copies of. The IA does both. It's pretty easy to upload copyrighted works that aren't kept behind borrow-walls, and people do it all the time. The IA doesn't seem super motivated to change that. It would indeed be unfortunate if the baby were thrown out with the bathwater, but come on: I typed "site:archive.org cranberries" on DuckDuckGo and was directed to a downloadable track-by-track rip of the Irish band's greatest hits album. That's tough to defend with a straight face.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > It's pretty easy to upload copyrighted works that aren't kept behind borrow-walls, and people do it all the time. The IA doesn't seem super motivated to change that. Neither do most sites hosting user-submitted content. IA responds to DMCA takedowns. What are they supposed to do if you haven't issued one to them?
- n9 3y ago
  It is basically the same with the books. The IA's book hosting system has DRM, yes, but it is Adobe's ADE which has been well and truly cracked. If you have a bit of patience and tech knowledge you can pull a full PDF of any book on IA in about 20 second's time. They could do a better job restricting access and I figure they wouldn't be in this much trouble.
  - timschmidt 3y ago
    The DMCA makes no distinction between 'weak' and 'strong' DRM. Bypassing any form of digital protection violates the act, and media companies have fought to defend their use of materially insufficient DRM such as DVD-CSS.
    - n9 3y ago
      This is not simply a legal issue. As an author of books myself I have very little problem with libraries and online lending and I feel there is mutual benefit. I do not feel the same way about the way that IA is hosting commercial titles, which hews very close to ZLibrary, which I do not think is beneficial for all of us in the long term as it disincentivizes the production of books even if it makes things available to more people in the near term. We might disagree about that but my belief is pretty set. Regarding legality, the media company battle re: DVD-CSS is quite different in quite a number of ways such that it doesn't simply apply here. That said, I'm not making a legal argument -- I am advocating for a system that makes sense to authors (whom we rely on to write the things that we value) and the greater good.
      - timschmidt 3y ago
        I suppose you could lobby Adobe to build stronger DRM. People will just break it again. There is no apparent technical solution to perfectly prevent users who can read the content from copying the content. Legal solutions are what you get.
        n9 3y ago
        The technical solution in this case is to not allow the ADE files to be downloaded -- they are not even available in the IA GUI -- there is a well-known backdoor that to my eye isn't needed to support any of the available features on the site. Just to rephrase for clarity: the way that pretty much every college student that I know downloads many, many books from the archive is via an undocumented route on the website that isn't needed for the site's published borrowing functionality to work. If you look here: https://archive.org/details/lexicographyoedp0000unse https://archive.org/details/lexicographyoedp0000unse you will see that downloading is not supported. Yet if click "Borrow" and then you hit this URL while logged in: https://archive.org/services/loans/loan/?action=media_url&identifier=lexicographyoedp0000unse&format=pdf&redirect=1 https://archive.org/services/loans/loan/?action=media_url&id... You will download a ADE stub file that is trivially deDRM'd. IA's "solution" to a previous issue with publishers was to remove this functionality from their site. They pulled the links in the UI but not the functionality... I don't think they operate in good faith. But... far be it from me to expect any dialogue where to be anything but creator hostile. To my mind that is very much short term thinking. We need to make sure creators are paid for their work because we want them to keep creating -- and for others to also create. Just because things are legal doesn/t make them right and/or for the greater good.
dano 3y ago
Position statement on 'Controlled Digital Lending' (CDL) [1] is an interesting read. Within it there is the clause "Because there is no directly analogous case on point, this Statement offers a more detailed explanation of how fair use and copyright exhaustion can work together to effectuate CDL practices:" The idea of CDL is indeed novel and possibly worth pursuing through the courts. However, it is an argument fraught with financial peril for the IA because of the statutory penalty structure of US Copyright law. 1. https://controlleddigitallending.org/statement/ https://controlleddigitallending.org/statement/
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> 'Republishing' is a bad faith description here I would have agreed if not for HN. IA is basically used as a paywall workaround here; that’s transparent republishing.
matwood 3y ago
If you read the court case findings the IA was not doing CDL as they claim. They had lost control of whether or not the digital copies were backed by physical copies at all. They were also pushing people to buy used copies from a site part owned by the person who runs IA. I think CDL can work and win legally. Unfortunately, IA's blatant disregard for copyright has poisoned the well for likely a long time to come.

by shkkmo 3y ago

aerostable_slug 3y ago

> 'Republishing' is a bad faith description here. What IA is doing is not 'republishing' but offering 'Controlled Digital Lending' with time limited lending for scanned versions of items they posses digital copies of. The IA does both. It's pretty easy to upload copyrighted works that aren't kept behind borrow-walls, and people do it all the time. The IA doesn't seem super motivated to change that. It would indeed be unfortunate if the baby were thrown out with the bathwater, but come on: I typed "site:archive.org cranberries" on DuckDuckGo and was directed to a downloadable track-by-track rip of the Irish band's greatest hits album. That's tough to defend with a straight face.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> It's pretty easy to upload copyrighted works that aren't kept behind borrow-walls, and people do it all the time. The IA doesn't seem super motivated to change that. Neither do most sites hosting user-submitted content. IA responds to DMCA takedowns. What are they supposed to do if you haven't issued one to them?
n9 3y ago
It is basically the same with the books. The IA's book hosting system has DRM, yes, but it is Adobe's ADE which has been well and truly cracked. If you have a bit of patience and tech knowledge you can pull a full PDF of any book on IA in about 20 second's time. They could do a better job restricting access and I figure they wouldn't be in this much trouble.
- timschmidt 3y ago
  The DMCA makes no distinction between 'weak' and 'strong' DRM. Bypassing any form of digital protection violates the act, and media companies have fought to defend their use of materially insufficient DRM such as DVD-CSS.
  - n9 3y ago
    This is not simply a legal issue. As an author of books myself I have very little problem with libraries and online lending and I feel there is mutual benefit. I do not feel the same way about the way that IA is hosting commercial titles, which hews very close to ZLibrary, which I do not think is beneficial for all of us in the long term as it disincentivizes the production of books even if it makes things available to more people in the near term. We might disagree about that but my belief is pretty set. Regarding legality, the media company battle re: DVD-CSS is quite different in quite a number of ways such that it doesn't simply apply here. That said, I'm not making a legal argument -- I am advocating for a system that makes sense to authors (whom we rely on to write the things that we value) and the greater good.
    - timschmidt 3y ago
      I suppose you could lobby Adobe to build stronger DRM. People will just break it again. There is no apparent technical solution to perfectly prevent users who can read the content from copying the content. Legal solutions are what you get.
      - n9 3y ago
        The technical solution in this case is to not allow the ADE files to be downloaded -- they are not even available in the IA GUI -- there is a well-known backdoor that to my eye isn't needed to support any of the available features on the site. Just to rephrase for clarity: the way that pretty much every college student that I know downloads many, many books from the archive is via an undocumented route on the website that isn't needed for the site's published borrowing functionality to work. If you look here: https://archive.org/details/lexicographyoedp0000unse https://archive.org/details/lexicographyoedp0000unse you will see that downloading is not supported. Yet if click "Borrow" and then you hit this URL while logged in: https://archive.org/services/loans/loan/?action=media_url&identifier=lexicographyoedp0000unse&format=pdf&redirect=1 https://archive.org/services/loans/loan/?action=media_url&id... You will download a ADE stub file that is trivially deDRM'd. IA's "solution" to a previous issue with publishers was to remove this functionality from their site. They pulled the links in the UI but not the functionality... I don't think they operate in good faith. But... far be it from me to expect any dialogue where to be anything but creator hostile. To my mind that is very much short term thinking. We need to make sure creators are paid for their work because we want them to keep creating -- and for others to also create. Just because things are legal doesn/t make them right and/or for the greater good.

dano 3y ago

Position statement on 'Controlled Digital Lending' (CDL) [1] is an interesting read. Within it there is the clause "Because there is no directly analogous case on point, this Statement offers a more detailed explanation of how fair use and copyright exhaustion can work together to effectuate CDL practices:" The idea of CDL is indeed novel and possibly worth pursuing through the courts. However, it is an argument fraught with financial peril for the IA because of the statutory penalty structure of US Copyright law. 1. https://controlleddigitallending.org/statement/ https://controlleddigitallending.org/statement/

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> 'Republishing' is a bad faith description here I would have agreed if not for HN. IA is basically used as a paywall workaround here; that’s transparent republishing.

matwood 3y ago

If you read the court case findings the IA was not doing CDL as they claim. They had lost control of whether or not the digital copies were backed by physical copies at all. They were also pushing people to buy used copies from a site part owned by the person who runs IA. I think CDL can work and win legally. Unfortunately, IA's blatant disregard for copyright has poisoned the well for likely a long time to come.