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Internet Archive forced to remove 500,000 books after publishers’ court win (arstechnica.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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[–] 65 points 2 years ago (16 children)

I'd be all for altering definitions in a way that enables them to do stuff like the controlled lending system (also just digitizing shit generally).

But I think the law is pretty clear, and a precedent calling their use case fair use would be mind blowing. You need new, much more common sense IP legislation that redefines consumer rights in a digital world.

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  • [–] 36 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    But I think the law is pretty clear, and a precedent calling their use case fair use would be mind blowing. You need new, much more common sense IP legislation that redefines consumer rights in a digital world.

    Indeed. I'm a big supporter of IA's mission, and I'm a big supporter of piracy (copyright has gone insane over the years), but this outcome was obvious from the moment IA did this and it was a mistake for them to fight this fight. They should focus on preservation. Let the EFF handle the lawsuits, and let Library Genesis handle the illegal distribution of books. Everyone focus on what they're best at.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

    Their distribution of books is completely legal.

    Corporations just have more money to warp the laws in their favour.

    That's why the Archive is appealing: they still believe they are right.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    There's really no credible argument that their distribution of books even might be legal.

    Their only defense is fair use, and there's no precedent for a "fair use" defense justifying copying a work wholesale for mass distribution. (Yes, "one copy at a time" to multiple people is mass distribution.) Copying a whole work has effectively only qualified as fair use when that copy is not re-distributed, and is actually for a personal backup.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Their distribution of books is completely legal.

    Corporations just have more money to warp the laws in their favour.

    You just contradicted yourself in two sentences.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    By "controlled lending system," do you mean the library? If so, it is ridiculously expensive for them to offer ebooks and audiobooks. One ebook costs $60-100 and they can only lend the licensed copy for two years. You would think audiobooks would be more expensive to do but publishers charge roughly the same.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    What Internet Archive did is digitized physical books, then loaned out their "one copy" with DRM. Their assertion is that this constitutes fair use. I don't really think there's any merit to that argument based on the law and the body of precedent, and fundamentally tend to dislike legislation from the bench (judges just arbitrarily reinterpreting laws). Passing new laws and restructuring how IP law works is the job of the legislature, not the judiciary.

    IA then made this worse by taking the already super tenuous "fair use" argument and throwing it out the window by removing the lending limits during Covid. It was waving a red flag in front of IP holders and begging them to take aggressive action.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    I think if they hadn't abandoned the CDL modern during the pandemic, they could have kept it going indefinitely. Even if it wasn't likely fair use, it might have been. More than that, it would have been bad press for the publisher to make the first move.

    Abandoning CDL during the pandemic was just waving a red flag and giving the publishers a slam dunk case.

    I think if IA had just held the line with CDL, they could have over time just effectively established a precedent. Lost opportunity.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    same same same

    can anyone please point me to some piece of writing that explains how IA didn't willfully self destruct?

    everything i read about this legal action, even when I read IA's stuff about, sounds moronic. doomed to fail and lose big for themselves and for others by setting a loser precident.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    How is IAs approach much different to that of a regular library?

    True, they were digitising physical books and lending copies. But this is not much different from how a regular library works (assuming controlled digital lending, yeah I heard aboud Covid period 😕).

    I'm not an expert on American law (know nothing about it), but reading the articles and comments I thing there's an argument to be made for IA functioning as a library.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago

    Because it's a copy. It's literally that simple.

    Libraries can operate because of first sale doctrine. You can do almost whatever you want with a physical object that contains a copyrighted work.

    What you can't do is copy it. There is no possible legal way to distribute a digital copy of a work without an explicit license from the copyright holder. There isn't even a legal concept of "owning" a digital copy. You purchase a license.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I kind of suspect this was an attempt on the IA's end to get parts of copyright struck down by court ruling. Laws can be clear and still found to not be in the public's interest, or in violation of some other legal doctrine, and sometimes you'll see groups come at them sideways.

    Ownership laws are really tough ones to chip away at, and IP law in particular has been getting worse and more unassailable over time.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    Probably, but I think that every month that CDL went unchallenged was slowly building a precedent. I wonder if they had stuck to CDL if we'd still be waiting for the publishers to blink.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    The constitution explicitly grants authority to regulate IP. There's absolutely no path to a constitutional issue, and constitutional issues are the only way you get laws overturned. "Other legal doctrine" means something like violations of due process somewhere in the chain, which is a constitutional issue, or direct conflict with another law.

    The only possible judicial remedy is the premise that it's fair use, which there's a lot of precedent that it isn't.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    While digital lending is fun and games it wouldnt work on a scale of the Internet Archive. The wait list would be tremendous for popular books.
    Go use and support your local library if possible and donate a fiver to IA for their other services they offer

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