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EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

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Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#41

Post by ocdtrekkie »

devit wrote: post #37
jjcon wrote: post #2

EFF is on the wrong side of both the law and common sense here and they will lose no matter how much they pay their legal team. Internet archive didn’t just steal from ‘publishers’ they are also stealing from authors big and small. You don’t get to give out free digital copies of books to people without permission and expect to get away with it. This exact digital/physical equivalence idea has already been through th…

If the books were not being sold as digital copies, maybe they could invoke fair use due to the pandemic making other ways to access the books impossible. That said, the best avenue would seem to be a PR campaign with a call for a boycott and public shaming of the publishers (Hachette, Penguin Random House, John Wiley & Sons, and HarperCollins) that are putting their profit ahead of public access to the books. In fac…

Publishers (for books, movies, and music) do not really have much shame when it comes to copyright enforcement. For one, they're natural monopolies, where a given content is solely owned by them, and you can't get it through any of their competitors. And especially in the case of books, very few people think about a book in terms of the publisher who published it, and very few people buy their books based on which publisher has the rights to it. So the value of public reputation for a book publisher is very low.

They do not care about the compensation. They are aware that they will probably see effectively no dollar bills here. However, the publishers are interested in shutting down a distribution method they see as unlawful/theft, and most importantly, they want to publicly destroy any company who engages in it to deter future offenders.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#42

Post by jjcon »

catawbasam wrote: post #30
jjcon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quit trolling/baiting this thread - this isn’t some big corporatist conspiracy - this is protecting creator livelihoods big and small. The vast majority of the civilized world agrees it is good to protect ‘art’ (from code to books) to keep it sustainable. Just because it can be infinitely duplicated and shared ‘freely’ does not mean it is sustainable to do so. If there is no money in art, less art will be made and mo…

The "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" moved the goalposts so egregiously as to damage the legitimacy of the legal protections. Those who manipulate the laws must understand they are weakening the rule of law by their actions.

If IA was making a principled stand against some aspect of copyright (like making only works >50 years old free to the public) I could follow and would even be on board but as far as I understand it what they are doing/did wasn’t principled it was just piracy.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#43

Post by aka1234 »

gpm wrote: post #22
jjcon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EFF is on the right side of the law the same way a lawyer for a criminal is. By this definition, no lawyer can be on the wrong side - you know what is meant by the phrase ‘wrong side of the law’ stop it with the mental gymnastics.

No, the criminal in the above is absolutely on the wrong side of the law. That's the assumption after all. Lawyers are on the wrong side of the law when they break it themselves (see, e.g., Avenatti), but not when they represent people on the wrong side of the law. The latter is necessary for the common law court system to work at all.

> "No, the criminal in the above is absolutely on the wrong side of the law. That's the assumption after all."

In America at least, the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. So the assumption should be that the defendant is on the right side of the law. It's the prosecutor or complainant's job to prove the defendant is in fact on the wrong side of the law.

To call a defendant 'the criminal' (and saying the defendant is in the wrong) is putting the cart before the horse.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#44

Post by MereInterest »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #41
devit wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the books were not being sold as digital copies, maybe they could invoke fair use due to the pandemic making other ways to access the books impossible. That said, the best avenue would seem to be a PR campaign with a call for a boycott and public shaming of the publishers (Hachette, Penguin Random House, John Wiley & Sons, and HarperCollins) that are putting their profit ahead of public access to the books. In fac…

Publishers (for books, movies, and music) do not really have much shame when it comes to copyright enforcement. For one, they're natural monopolies, where a given content is solely owned by them, and you can't get it through any of their competitors. And especially in the case of books, very few people think about a book in terms of the publisher who published it, and very few people buy their books based on which pu…

I agree completely on most items, except that copyright is not a natural monopoly. There isn't a high barrier of entry to printing a different book, nor is there a very limited supply of printing presses. Copyright is entirely a government-granted monopoly, intended to serve the public good by promoting good writing. In cases where it doesn't serve the public good, it is reasonable to reduce the strength of copyright.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#45

Post by saagarjha »

kstenerud wrote: post #29
jjcon wrote: post #2

EFF is on the wrong side of both the law and common sense here and they will lose no matter how much they pay their legal team. Internet archive didn’t just steal from ‘publishers’ they are also stealing from authors big and small. You don’t get to give out free digital copies of books to people without permission and expect to get away with it. This exact digital/physical equivalence idea has already been through th…

"EFF is on the wrong side of both the law and common sense here" Are they? We can armchair critique all we want, but I find it doubtful that an organization with so much litigation and advocacy experience under their belt would naively throw away a ton of money on a losing battle.

Even with losing cases, there is value in having a competent legal team. With luck, the entire Internal Archive will not be at stake.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#46

Post by ocdtrekkie »

MereInterest wrote: post #44
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publishers (for books, movies, and music) do not really have much shame when it comes to copyright enforcement. For one, they're natural monopolies, where a given content is solely owned by them, and you can't get it through any of their competitors. And especially in the case of books, very few people think about a book in terms of the publisher who published it, and very few people buy their books based on which pu…

I agree completely on most items, except that copyright is not a natural monopoly. There isn't a high barrier of entry to printing a different book, nor is there a very limited supply of printing presses. Copyright is entirely a government-granted monopoly, intended to serve the public good by promoting good writing. In cases where it doesn't serve the public good, it is reasonable to reduce the strength of copyright…

That's fair. It'd be more correct to call it a government-granted monopoly, indeed. My point was mostly that for any given book, the publisher has no competition, so the reputation of the publisher doesn't matter too much to someone who needs to buy that book.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#47

Post by nitrogen »

evgen wrote: post #39
bosswipe wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a just world the destruction of the Wayback machine should be a much bigger crime than some copyright violation. Sadly our world is not just, content conglomerates have bought themselves the most draconian laws possible to protect their profits above all other benefits to humanity. They must be stopped!

In a just world, the management team that decided to risk the future of the Wayback machine so that they could take advantage of a global pandemic to strike a blow against copyright would go to jail. They must be stopped and prevented from doing more damage to IA!

No good deed goes unpunished.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#48

Post by Wowfunhappy »

evgen wrote: post #40
gknoy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What prevents them from selling/giving the data of the wayback machine to another curator?

The wayback machine is an asset of the IA. The courts tend to take a dim view of obvious attempts to hide assets from judgements.

In this case, I don't think the "asset" has any monetary value though.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#49

Post by _jal »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #3
jjcon wrote: post #2

EFF is on the wrong side of both the law and common sense here and they will lose no matter how much they pay their legal team. Internet archive didn’t just steal from ‘publishers’ they are also stealing from authors big and small. You don’t get to give out free digital copies of books to people without permission and expect to get away with it. This exact digital/physical equivalence idea has already been through th…

Agreed. However, I would expect the EFF to (possibly) be good negotiators. They might be able to make a settlement that keeps the IA's website open while satisfying the publishers - or at least making the lawsuit complicated enough that the publishers won't keep going. Without this representation, the publishers could almost certainly bankrupt the IA, even if they are given the minimum infringement fine of $200/ea.

> the publishers could almost certainly bankrupt the IA

They do that and they will find themselves with a Napster/sci-hub problem.

If it weren't so destructive, the chronic inability of legacy industries to learn would be funny.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#50

Post by devit »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #41
devit wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the books were not being sold as digital copies, maybe they could invoke fair use due to the pandemic making other ways to access the books impossible. That said, the best avenue would seem to be a PR campaign with a call for a boycott and public shaming of the publishers (Hachette, Penguin Random House, John Wiley & Sons, and HarperCollins) that are putting their profit ahead of public access to the books. In fac…

Publishers (for books, movies, and music) do not really have much shame when it comes to copyright enforcement. For one, they're natural monopolies, where a given content is solely owned by them, and you can't get it through any of their competitors. And especially in the case of books, very few people think about a book in terms of the publisher who published it, and very few people buy their books based on which pu…

That seems quite a risky strategy as well, because it could backfire: if the court declares even just that controlled digital lending is legal, more companies and bigger companies may start offering it (e.g. Google that already has the scanned books), making things worse for the publishers.
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