Judge decides against Internet Archive • Hacker News Board

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#661

Post by yencabulator » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:45 PM UTC

jkdufair wrote: post #215

hedora wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a terrible ruling. The first sale doctrine says the copy of the book you bought is yours. Lending the book is clearly not copying it. So, I guess you just don’t own anything you buy anymore? Like what if I want to lend a tool to someone, and the tool manufacturer wants to rent their tools out? Is that also illegal? What if the tool contains software? What if reasonable use of the tool requires accessing a prin…

I don’t disagree with the ruling. IA is not lending their copy that they purchased. They are lending a copy of their copy. While that copy is lent out, they are still free to, I.e. read the copy in their possession.

You cannot even read an ebook without copying it from storage to RAM, to CPU cache, to video RAM, and so on; by your thinking, all owners of ebooks commit multiple instances of copyright infringement every time they read an ebook.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#662

Post by yencabulator » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:48 PM UTC

hker999 wrote: post #244

benatkin wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsurprising that not all of HN is pro-fair use. That's how you digitally send a copy of a book. You're saying something similar to "you wouldn't download a car".

Yet, we should proscute GPL violations when the original GPL code is untouched.

People rarely buy copies GPL'ed source code, they obtain a license to the software. Buying something is very different from licensing it.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#663

Post by mysterypie » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:51 PM UTC

djha-skin wrote: post #636

Something developers don't seem to understand about the media business is just how much they care about copyright law. One huge thing that was drilled into my skull working for SlingTV: a work comprises the actual data and the medium to which it is affixed . When 11 million people used our DVRs to record the super bowl, we had to store 11 million copies on disc. Of the same exact footage. That we ourselves originally…

> we had to store 11 million copies on disc

The reason you were allowed to store 11 million copies is because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled[1] in 1984 that you were permitted to make copies of TV shows to watch later on your VCR. And this was reputedly because some of the supreme court judges had VCRs — which had been spreading lightning fast at the time — and understood the concept and wanted to find or create a legal argument to permit such copying.

Just imagine if VCR adoption had been slower, and that the judges had not yet tried out that newfangled invention for home recording, and they had ruled that personal copies weren't allowed. Then today, you'd have been making 11 million illegal copies. It's amusing to think about whether making a single copy available to 11 million users would have been much less legal risk in that scenario.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive....

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#664

Post by opzz » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:51 PM UTC

Nowado wrote: post #249

opzz wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not a blockchain? It's much less likely to go down with network issues because people are financially motivated to run the network.

They don't seem motivated to do so now, while torrents, Russian hostings and warez seem up for years. How come?

I don't see any major blockchains going down right now?

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#665

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:51 PM UTC

forgotusername6 wrote: post #600

bachmeier wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Judges are there to enforce the law, not to make it. That's not the right characterization of the argument. Judges are there to tell legislators that they can't make certain laws. The abortion dispute is not about judges making abortion legal, it's about judges telling politicians that they cannot make abortion illegal. Without that, politicians would literally have the ability to do anything they want.

I assume you are coming from the standpoint of the judges working out if a law is unconstitutional. My country, the UK, does not have a written constitution, so this kind of thing doesn't come up as often. However, a constitution is still just a bunch of legal principles, set by government. The judges are still making rulings based on a set of rules. If the rules need changing then the people should elect the right p…

[deleted]

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#666

Post by phendrenad2 » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:53 PM UTC

frankfrankfrank wrote: post #497

Here comes the memory hole, folks. This copyright claim is just the ruse to break down the wall, with the real purpose being to lay claim to news and internet archiving so that inconvenient news and information can be more easily memory holed without archives existing. Let me put it this way, everyone should start working on decentralized archiving tools and retention of information locally about topics they are part…

Uh, you do realize this is just about physical books, right? When I want to read the latest news I don't go to my local bookstore and grab a book on news, I get that from the internet, which the Internet Archive is perfectly able to archive, as it has nothing to do with this. Sigh.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#667

Post by dcow » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:55 PM UTC

bdw5204 wrote: post #590

magicalist wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a fair use case. The judge ruling on a question of law is exactly how it works.

If the Internet Archive's digitizing and distribution of old books is fair use then so is a video game ROM site that distributes digital images of pre-PS360 era games that are no longer available to purchase legally. except at exorbitant rates on eBay. And there's also a strong case for the original Napster being fair use if IA is. I don't think there was ever any serious doubt that the Internet Archive would lose th…

If the ROMs are out of print then they should fall into the public domain.

One much needed copyright law adjustment would be to limit copyright protection to a period where the work is actually commercially viable meaning the owner is making an effort to sell it. It doesn't benefit anybody to have old works locked up for years and years with no way for the public to acquire them legally.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#668

Post by phendrenad2 » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:55 PM UTC

pontifier wrote: post #619

I'm a little bit worried about how this might affect Murfie. I've been an advocate for years for a model where people own physical media, and have access to the media they own in any way they see fit. The way this ruling is structured, it paves the way to make even ripping your own CDs to your MP3 player illegal. As common as it is, this right has never actually been tested in court.

That's just sensationalism. If they wanted to go after ripping CDs, they would have gone after that when CDs actually had more than negligible sales. CDs are a dead format in 2023. Most music isn't even released on CD anymore.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#669

Post by phendrenad2 » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:57 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #368

The culprits of this travesty must be named and shamed: Suing publishers: Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley. Judge: John G. Koeltl. Don't care about the judge, but there should be a massive campaign to boycott these four publishers to oblivion. What's the most harmful thing that we can do to them?

Interesting of you to think that if these particular publishers hadn't stepped up, other publishers wouldn't have created the exact same lawsuit.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#670

Post by phendrenad2 » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 3:58 PM UTC

chrsjxn wrote: post #196

It is genuinely hard to imagine this could have gone any other way. Copying an entire work, with no changes, and then distributing the copy is pretty archetypal copyright infringement. IA's lawyers had to have known this was a long shot, right?

I think IA lives inside the HN/techie bubble, where you can get a lot of positive support for things that don't translate into the real world.