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My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive

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Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive

#211

Post by nordsieck »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #150
nine_k wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this does not mesh well with their mission. They are the Internet Archive , the archive of freely (in the past) available stuff that can't be found anywhere else, in most cases. This is much more fragile than old books which likely exists in thousands of copies anyway. I do not admire their stance, and am unhappy that they are recklessly jeopardizing their unique thing to make a case where they have a very bi…

Let's go ahead and put to rest this theory that they're going to cease to exist. They don't have enough resources to be destroyed. Suppose the naysayers are right and they're going to go bankrupt. What happens in bankruptcy? They sell their assets for fair market value. To a new non-profit that uses them for the same purpose. All that requires is that they raise an amount of money similar to what they ordinarily have…

> What happens in bankruptcy? They sell their assets for fair market value.

Maybe.

The other thing that could happen is that their assets get valued by some 3rd party and the publishers own IA's assets as part of the settlement (who presumably destroy them).

Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive

#212

Post by MaxBarraclough »

roblabla wrote: post #55
jjcon wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN: Pirating a movie isn’t the same as stealing it HN now: Digital lending should be treated the same as physical lending

Both can be correct at the same time. Pirating a movie is copyright infringement, not stealing. Digital lending is currently legally gray-zone, but the pragmatic end-game for lenders is to make it so a physical book can be digitally lent so long as the physical book is unused during the lending period. This is because it can easily be shown that the publisher doesn't incur damages, since the same amount of books are…

> This is because it can easily be shown that the publisher doesn't incur damages, since the same amount of books are on the market at any given time.

This strikes me as an approximation. If, in digital lending, the licence can change-hands instantly and across any physical distance, then it's not analogous to physical lending. Two people might be able to 'time share' a single licence, in a way that wouldn't be possible with a physical book.

Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive

#213

Post by severine »

hnick wrote: post #200
tptacek wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Rayiner often points out, this argument applies even more powerfully to real property, which was usually expropriated coercively from its original owners.

I'm not familiar with that person (poster?). But taken to the extreme it could also be an endorsement for Communism or something like it too, but I don't think it's usually healthy to take things to the extreme. I prefer a middle ground and the original intent (at least as much as is commonly told) around copyright, trade secrets, and patents seemed to be a relatively healthy take on that even if it now needs an upda…

> I'm not familiar with that person (poster?). But taken to the extreme it could also be an endorsement for Communism or something like it too

I think this example might serve: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22250260

Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive

#214

Post by Mindwipe »

timeinput wrote: post #170
mulmen wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's an unfair take on the law. If you create something you decide what happens with it. That seems reasonable to me. Why are the rest of us entitled to your creation?

I think the root issue is the creator didn't entirely understand what they were giving away. Harper Collins and all publishers don't create content. They are a delivery platform. Unfortunately to use their delivery platform I have to give them exclusive rights to the content (it's even worse than face book and reddit where they merely claim right to use the content). In return they'll give you On top of that we're al…

If it were such a terrible deal authors wouldn't take it, especially successful authors. They overwhelmingly do because it's absolutely more successful the vast, vast majority of the time in getting paid than any of the alternatives are.

Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive

#215

Post by chongli »

nordsieck wrote: post #175
wahern wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If that's the main argument of IA, they'll have a tough time in court. As a non-profit library the plaintiffs effectively have to show that the Internet Archive acted in bad faith[1] in order to receive statutory damages. § 504 (c)(2) says, > The court shall remit statutory damages in any case where an infringer believed and had reasonable grounds for believing that his or her use of the copyrighted work was a fair…

> As a non-profit library the plaintiffs effectively have to show that the Internet Archive acted in bad faith[1] in order to receive statutory damages. >> The court shall remit statutory damages in any case where an infringer believed and had reasonable grounds for believing that his or her use of the copyrighted work was a fair use under section 107 Specifically, the plaintiffs have to show that uncontrolled digita…

No, the plaintiffs have to show that the IA acted in bad faith. They may be able to show that IA’s actions do not constitute fair use, but to obtain a statutory damage award they need to go much further since the law presumes librarians, teachers, and so on are acting in good faith when they carry out their duties.

Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive

#216

Post by nordsieck »

chongli wrote: post #215
nordsieck wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a non-profit library the plaintiffs effectively have to show that the Internet Archive acted in bad faith[1] in order to receive statutory damages. >> The court shall remit statutory damages in any case where an infringer believed and had reasonable grounds for believing that his or her use of the copyrighted work was a fair use under section 107 Specifically, the plaintiffs have to show that uncontrolled digita…

No, the plaintiffs have to show that the IA acted in bad faith. They may be able to show that IA’s actions do not constitute fair use, but to obtain a statutory damage award they need to go much further since the law presumes librarians, teachers, and so on are acting in good faith when they carry out their duties.

> No, the plaintiffs have to show that the IA acted in bad faith.

"Bad faith" has a specific legal meaning that does not apply here.

In order to obtain statutory damages, they need to show that IA did not have reasonable grounds to believe that unlimited digital lending is fair use.

Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive

#217

Post by zeckalpha »

dmurray wrote: post #50

> With this suit, the publishers are saying that in the digital world, we cannot buy books anymore, we can only license and on their terms; we can only preserve in ways for which they have granted explicit permission, and for only as long as they grant permission; and we cannot lend what we have paid for because we do not own it. This is not a rule of law, this is the rule by license. This does not make sense. If tha…

That’s not the case here, these books weren’t licensed, but bought.

> We lent books that we own—at the Internet Archive and also the other endorsing libraries. These books were purchased and we knew they were not circulating physically. They were all locked up. In total, 650 million books were locked up just in public libraries alone.

Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive

#218

Post by rocqua »

Spooky23 wrote: post #110
rocqua wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, the IA did not make infinite copies and distribute them freely. They specifically made limited copies and for every copy the lent out, they took a physical copy out of circulation.

Then they did the emergency Covid library, where they just gave copies of everything away.

Yeah, the original link was written in a very confusing way.

Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive

#219

Post by nordsieck »

hnick wrote: post #194
nordsieck wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a non-profit library the plaintiffs effectively have to show that the Internet Archive acted in bad faith[1] in order to receive statutory damages. >> The court shall remit statutory damages in any case where an infringer believed and had reasonable grounds for believing that his or her use of the copyrighted work was a fair use under section 107 Specifically, the plaintiffs have to show that uncontrolled digita…

If I'm an educator and I want to select parts of a work to present in class, usually I'd want to view the whole work and select the pieces from that. That's how it'd work when using a traditional library. Is this basically what they are suggesting here? They are supplying the copies, and it's up to the users whether or not they break the law from there?

> If I'm an educator and I want to select parts of a work to present in class, usually I'd want to view the whole work and select the pieces from that. That's how it'd work when using a traditional library.

> Is this basically what they are suggesting here? They are supplying the copies, and it's up to the users whether or not they break the law from there?

Copyright doesn't work like that - the party who makes the copy is the one who does the infringing.

If you want to use a traditional library analogy, what IA did was basically photocopy a bunch of books and put them on the shelf for patrons to check out.

Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive

#220

Post by account42 »

Silhouette wrote: post #197
nitrogen wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the path to legalization of something requires ongoing and widespread illegality before the question will even be considered.

That's not a strong argument, IMHO, since it would similarly condone any other law-breaking activity where the perpetrator disagrees with the law. It's not as if copyright wasn't controversial before or the IA's actions here have any realistic prospect of moving the needle. If you're talking about civil disobedience, that's a different matter, but one of the key things about effective civil disobedience is that large…

You don't get to large numbers of people disregarding the law before first having a few.
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