5 ms·
> future controlled digital lending cases with better facts. Was anyone else doing anything? Or standing ready to do anything?
by creer 2y ago
> future controlled digital lending cases with better facts.
Was anyone else doing anything? Or standing ready to do anything?
- tptacek 2y agoI don't know, but anybody who wasn't doing anything and wasn't standing to do anything was more valuable to digital rights than the people who appealed this case to the 2nd Circuit, in that none of them actually damaged digital rights.
- creer 2y agoI don't know. From the point of view of the appeal and mechanical precedent specifically, maybe, maybe not. At first read, the decision rationale seems somewhat measured and interesting - it doesn't just say "Declined". And meanwhile, IA kept the issue present and discussed and with some attempt at doing something different - even in the appeal.
- immibis 2y agoIt was ruled illegal when they did it with DVDs
- stavros 2y agoSure, but that's judging in hindsight. Then again, everyone here was saying how dumb a move this was before the trial even started, so... The payoff for winning would have been massive, but if the IA shuts down because of this, so will the cost for losing.
- tptacek 2y agoYes, it is. But back to the point I made originally: this case had an infinitesimal chance of success. You can come up with a worse fact pattern for fair use, but you have to work at it. Whole copies of books, the form of copyrighted work most legible to the law, that are currently for sale in ebook form by their publishers? That was simply never going to be determined to be "fair use". IA isn't going to shut down over this, I don't think. I don't think they'll pay any damages at all, since there's a statute that suggests damages be remitted for nonprofits. Again: the real damage is a 2nd Cir. precedent that 1:1 CDL fails the fair use test. That's going to hurt other people. This happens often enough that there's a saying about it: "bad facts make bad law."
- ricardobeat 2y ago> Whole copies of books, the form of copyrighted work most legible to the law, that are currently for sale in ebook form by their publishers For some reason this was acceptable in physical form for hundreds of years. CDL is just making it more convenient for our modern reality.
- mkesper 2y agoWith physical copies only one reader can read it at any time. With digital copies in principle everyone can read it even in 100 years from now going back to one original copy.
- trustno2 2y agoNo it's not. Libraries don't make copies. They lend you the actual books. Copyright is literally right to copy. Scanning the book and doing something with, such as lending it forward, is copying. (The covid thing strengthens the case of the book guys - the CDL suddenly let anyone get anything because Archive decided to change the rules unilaterally)
- account42 2y agoThe problem is that the act of sharing something digitally is implicitly assumed to be making a copy wheres lending someone a book you have already read and internalized is not. Copyright laws should have been adjusted to preserve the same freedoms for digital use as you had before rather than being even more of a bad deal for society.
- tptacek 2y agoIt's not "assumed" to be making a copy. It clearly is making a copy. Nerds like us want there to be a special kind of copy that doesn't "count" under copyright law, to facilitate things like CDL. But there isn't, and the courts are the wrong place to look for it. Go get a new Copyright Act passed.
- mindslight 2y agoAereo had much more favorable facts and yet was still decided in favor of copyright maximalism, so it's probably a moot point. Ultimately, the digital rights we have are the ones we take.