4 ms·

> During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kahle opened the library for free ebook borrowing via the Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) program. Publishing companies were no

> During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kahle opened the library for free ebook borrowing via the Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) program. Publishing companies were not amused and the Internet Archive lost the resulting lawsuit, Hachette v. Internet Archive. The court rejected the Archive’s fair use defense, finding that its digital lending practices infringed on publishers’ copyrights. > That’s a huge problem on its own. The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit with a gross revenue in its most recent 990 filing of only $30.5 million. For the size of the job it’s undertaken, it’s grossly underfinanced. "The size of the job it's undertaken" is an interesting way to say "the size of the legal bills that it willfully racked up by intentionally violating copyright law in ways that everyone knew at the time had a snowball's chance in hell of surviving in court". I believe that Intellectual Property is a terrible concept that shouldn't exist at all. I want copyright reform as badly as anyone. I want to want to support the Internet Archive. I want to want them to have enough resources to accomplish their mission. But man have I lost all faith in their leadership's judgement and ability to actually change anything—if they survive the judgement at all they'll be paying for it for years to come. You don't win this kind of fight by sacrificing the ground you've won. When you've won as much ground as the Internet Archive did, you hold that ground and let someone else take the risk of winning new ground. If you absolutely can't sit still then you found a new organization to push further. But when you're the sole bastion holding the "we should be able to archive everything with no regard to copyright" space, it's irresponsible to try to move on to "we should be able to lend everything with no regard to copyright". They may very well lose both rights.

tourmalinetaco 2y ago
And what’s worse is at the same time shadow libraries like Z-Lib and LibGen became popular. If they had left the copyright infringement to shadow libraries, maybe making a blog post saying you totally shouldn’t go there because free books are evil and they have a full archive of our books for free, then the same thing would have happened, that is free full access to books on a wide scale, with minimal legal pushback for IA via genuinely vile publishers looking to hoard IP they should have lost decades ago.
- startupsfail 2y ago
  Agreed, but what’s done is done. Many organizations were making weird calls at the chaos of the moment. It’s good to give a slap on the wrists and establish boundaries. But at some point, there is such thing as forgiveness. And it’d be terrible if the Internet Archive would be shut down. If this is to happen, I’m sure that anyone who used the Wayback Machine or watched Back To The Future :) would reserve very special place in their personal hell for Hatchette. And it is easy to punish Hatchette Book Group. Just don’t keep their books. Return the books within 30, return them on Audible, or sell used for fifty cents on Amazon.
- BizarroLand 2y ago
  That's the painful beauty of hindsight being 20/20. There is a world where IA became listed as a digital library and maybe had to comply with some arcane rules in order to operate but had otherwise escaped relatively unscathed from this incident. Maybe we missed it on this pass but there's always a chance we could get another.
tivert 2y ago
> I believe that Intellectual Property is a terrible concept that shouldn't exist at all. IMHO, that's an overreaction to certain specific abuses. Intellectual property shouldn't be abolished as it solves certain pretty serious problems, we don't have much visceral experience of because intellectual property exists. It protects the little guy: for instance: if it were abolished, the first thing that would happen is the megacorps would stop paying authors anything. Around the same time, the GPL would collapse, and you can say hello to Linux-based closed-source binary blobs.
soneil 2y ago
I think this mirrors my take. Not a fan of the current IP regime, and I'm all for IP activism. I don't think the IA is the right place to fight it. It is a valuable resource, which is why it needs to be insulated from the impact of activism.

tourmalinetaco 2y ago

And what’s worse is at the same time shadow libraries like Z-Lib and LibGen became popular. If they had left the copyright infringement to shadow libraries, maybe making a blog post saying you totally shouldn’t go there because free books are evil and they have a full archive of our books for free, then the same thing would have happened, that is free full access to books on a wide scale, with minimal legal pushback for IA via genuinely vile publishers looking to hoard IP they should have lost decades ago.

startupsfail 2y ago
Agreed, but what’s done is done. Many organizations were making weird calls at the chaos of the moment. It’s good to give a slap on the wrists and establish boundaries. But at some point, there is such thing as forgiveness. And it’d be terrible if the Internet Archive would be shut down. If this is to happen, I’m sure that anyone who used the Wayback Machine or watched Back To The Future :) would reserve very special place in their personal hell for Hatchette. And it is easy to punish Hatchette Book Group. Just don’t keep their books. Return the books within 30, return them on Audible, or sell used for fifty cents on Amazon.
BizarroLand 2y ago
That's the painful beauty of hindsight being 20/20. There is a world where IA became listed as a digital library and maybe had to comply with some arcane rules in order to operate but had otherwise escaped relatively unscathed from this incident. Maybe we missed it on this pass but there's always a chance we could get another.

tivert 2y ago

> I believe that Intellectual Property is a terrible concept that shouldn't exist at all. IMHO, that's an overreaction to certain specific abuses. Intellectual property shouldn't be abolished as it solves certain pretty serious problems, we don't have much visceral experience of because intellectual property exists. It protects the little guy: for instance: if it were abolished, the first thing that would happen is the megacorps would stop paying authors anything. Around the same time, the GPL would collapse, and you can say hello to Linux-based closed-source binary blobs.

soneil 2y ago

I think this mirrors my take. Not a fan of the current IP regime, and I'm all for IP activism. I don't think the IA is the right place to fight it. It is a valuable resource, which is why it needs to be insulated from the impact of activism.