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EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

torrentfreak.com

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

#71

Post by chadash »

aka1234 wrote: post #43
gpm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> In America at least, the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Is this true for civil cases? I presume no one is being charged with a crime here...

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

#72

Post by WaltPurvis »

chadash wrote: post #67
ogennadi wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, we’ve had authors opt out. We anticipated that would happen as well; in fact, we launched with clear instructions on how to opt out because we understand that authors and creators have been impacted by the same global pandemic that has shuttered libraries and left students without access to print books. Our takedowns are completed quickly and the submitter is notified via email.

It's nice that they have an easy opt-out system. But this is kind of like spammers who have easy opt-out... better than nothing, but I shouldn't be getting spammed in the first place.

It's worse than that. They're violating copyrights, i.e., stealing, and then saying "if you don't want us to steal from you, we have an opt out form you can fill out."

EDIT: People are downvoting this because I equated violating copyrights to stealing, which is odd because US law explicitly defines copyright infringement as stealing property. That's not debatable; it's a simple fact. (A fact that apparently bothers some people, but being bothered by reality is not a basis for disagreement.)

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

#73

Post by edraferi »

rakoo wrote: post #66
hyko wrote: post #57

How do we back up the Internet Archive? If they lose this case then it will be like losing The Great Library of Alexandria. This is our culture. This is our heritage! Edited to add: when I say “back up”, I mean preserve the data and the archival mission (minus the legal quagmires). The technical challenges can be solved, and we should do this before it’s too late. It seems there was a previous effort, but it has lost…

This is how you backup the Internet Archive: https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=INTERNETARCHIVE....

“IA.BAK has been broken and unmaintained since about December 2016. The above status page is not accurate as of December 2019.”

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

#74

Post by WaltPurvis »

tzs wrote: post #21
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…

I may be misunderstanding this case, but the impression I get is that they are not defending the unlimited lending that IA did as part of their "National Emergency Library" (NEL). They are just defending the earlier "Controlled Digital Lending" (CDL) program where the number of copies lent out at any one time was limited to the number of physical copies in the physical libraries [1]. The lawsuit is going after both N…

That's the way I understand it as well. It may be worthwhile defending CDL (I don't know enough to have an informed opinion), but the NEL is indefensible, and it doesn't appear the EFF intends to defend it.

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

#75

Post by jjcon »

gpm wrote: post #54
aka1234 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

You're nitpicking the language in a hypothetical here. Of course the court can't assume the defendant is guilty, but the purpose of the word criminal here is to say that in the hypothetical the defendant did actually commit the crime they are accused of.

> You're nitpicking the language in a hypothetical here.

That is exactly what you are doing by picking a bone with the phrase wrong side of the law

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

#76

Post by WaltPurvis »

TheHeretic12 wrote: post #7

I recognize some of the names here. This will be a case to watch, which ever way it goes the constructions allowed here will percolate through the law for years to come. This case hinges on the exact wording of the law that authorizes the National Emergency Library. IIRC, it basically gives copyright impunity during a declared national emergency. As far as I am aware, the coronavirus declared national emergency is st…

> This case hinges on the exact wording of the law that authorizes the National Emergency Library. IIRC, it basically gives copyright impunity during a declared national emergency.

There is no such law. What on earth are you talking about?

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

#77

Post by JustSomeNobody »

hyko wrote: post #57

How do we back up the Internet Archive? If they lose this case then it will be like losing The Great Library of Alexandria. This is our culture. This is our heritage! Edited to add: when I say “back up”, I mean preserve the data and the archival mission (minus the legal quagmires). The technical challenges can be solved, and we should do this before it’s too late. It seems there was a previous effort, but it has lost…

Might find an answer in:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/

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

#79

Post by gpm »

jjcon wrote: post #75
gpm wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're nitpicking the language in a hypothetical here. Of course the court can't assume the defendant is guilty, but the purpose of the word criminal here is to say that in the hypothetical the defendant did actually commit the crime they are accused of.

> You're nitpicking the language in a hypothetical here. That is exactly what you are doing by picking a bone with the phrase wrong side of the law

No, it isn't. By saying the EFF is on the wrong side of the law you are implying that they are acting badly, this is simply not the case and needs correcting.

There is a reason why falsley accusing someone of a crime is libel in and of itself and is actionable under the law regardless of damages, I don't think this quite reaches that standard, but it is damn close.

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

#80

Post by Vespasian »

mindslight wrote: post #53

I'd love for the Internet Archive to prevail here, but honestly it was quite boneheaded to do this legal experiment under the same corporate umbrella as their archival work. At this point they should proceed with a damage mitigation strategy of selling off their servers and storage to a second entity at fair market value (maybe "Archive Cloud"), and renting continued access. This way even if the IA organization is ba…

I still wonder what their plan was in anticipation of this confrontation.

Worst Case: Chirping (Not seeing this coming at all)

Naive Case: "Surely they will come to recognize our 'superior' 'moral' arguments and cease their evil ways"

Historically ignorant case: "The people will stand up and join us. We are invincible" (aka every rebel ever...most fail)

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