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Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

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Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#141

Post by Dalewyn »

iandanforth wrote: post #120
troad wrote: post #105

Should it be legal for IA to offer this, especially for older and out of print books? Yes, almost certainly. Is it legal? No, not as the law currently stands. You can support Robin Hood, but you shouldn't be shocked when Robin Hood is caught and sent to jail. It was a mistake and a huge legal risk for IA to do this. It could easily have brought down the whole organisation, and all that they've archived to date. I wis…

Are you a lawyer? Can you point to the relevant statutes? I don't ask this flippantly as there exist many forms (private / public / academic) of library which allow for both physical and digital lending of owned assets and are not subject to lawsuits like this. It's not at all obvious that IA's interpretation of the law is in error.

>Can you point to the relevant statutes?

IANAL, but:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117

What the Internet Archive did (loan many digital copies based on one physical copy) is illegal as the law stands today.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#142

Post by lupire »

hysan wrote: post #140
encomiast wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure this argument works unless you are willing to give away the other property on death like houses, stocks, farms, etc. Maybe 60 years is too long, but that doesn't seem to be your argument.

Genuine question since I don’t know much about inheritance. Don’t things like houses, stocks, etc get taxed in certain places? Whereas I don’t think copyright does? In a way, that is similar to having to give property away upon death (can’t pay the tax, forced to get rid of it).

Income is taxed, obviously.

Copyright is taken away, originally after 14 years, now 70(?) years. After the death of the creator

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#143

Post by anigbrowl »

encomiast wrote: post #134
kibwen wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason that "selling copyrights" needs to a be a thing. If the author themself wants to profit from their work, sure, but once they die, that's it, and there's no excuse for it to not be in the public domain at that point.

So the wife that supported the author can't profit off their assets? The author can't pass on this to children? Should we do the same thing for other property like land and money?

This kind of hectoring discourse is aggressive and rude. You can do better.

Authors that get paid can certainly leave the assets they received to their families. They could also transfer ownership of unpublished intangible assets. More than that sucks the general public into a quasi-contractual relationship with a posthumous person; I disclaim fiscal obligations of strangers toward ghosts.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#144

Post by spankalee »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #128
spankalee wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should an author be forced to give away their work for free? They can already choose to give it away for free if they wish. We already have the Creative Commons licenses, and there are many open textbook projects.

[flagged]

Who's been jailed for singing Happy Birthday? How many people have been jailed for copyright violations at all?

If you're arguing that copyright length should be shortened, I strongly agree.

If you're arguing that we should eliminate copyright completely because we should only regulate things you would immediately throw people in jail for, I strongly disagree.

As a society we need to be able to regulate some behavior that is not severe enough for jail time on its own, or for most standard offenses, even if the state ultimately has the power of incarceration to punish non-compliance. Just because moderately speeding shouldn't land you in jail, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't have speed limits.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#145

Post by ethagnawl »

timschmidt wrote: post #107
MattGaiser wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source covers a very tiny set of use cases for software. How many paid products have an open source competitor at all? How many have a credible competitor (GIMP isn’t a credible alternative to PhotoShop for the people who pay for it for example). It is far from rendering paid software obsolete. And not nobody. Virtually nobody. Yes open source exists. Out of the hundreds of devs I have worked with, I know one wh…

> GIMP isn’t a credible alternative to PhotoShop for the people who pay for it for example Weird take. GIMP's been good enough for professional work for more than a decade, and lots of professionals use it. I paid for Paint Shop Pro ages ago, because it was better than Photoshop for my use cases. GIMP progressed and became better than PSP for the same. I've used it ever since. It's even been used for major motion pic…

> Some open source tools, like Blender, like Linux, exist at the top of their respective foodchains. Proprietary tools are working to try to compete with them.

OBS is on this list, too.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#146

Post by lupire »

rty32 wrote: post #62
MattGaiser wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Can't agree. Even as recent as about one decade ago, the best way to learn a programming language is often buying a book or checking out a book from the library, because that's the only high-quality source on the topic. Since then we have had people creating complete tutorials like the Rust book and distribute it on the Internet, for free. In the US, some professors profit from selling textbooks that get updated ever…

Arguably, professors are paid a salary to write those books.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#147

Post by rwasco »

spankalee wrote: post #104
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #25

There is no greater folly of contemporary human society than the purposeful restriction of such vast and easily shareable repositories of knowledge. Perhaps these schemes made sense in the past but with the advent of the internet and independent groups willing to fund all hosting fees, we should move to models of publishing that do not require this restriction of information. Library genesis exists but necessarily mu…

Why should an author be forced to give away their work for free? They can already choose to give it away for free if they wish. We already have the Creative Commons licenses, and there are many open textbook projects.

[flagged]

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#148

Post by rwasco »

encomiast wrote: post #132
PostOnce wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dead authors can't choose to give away their works, they're dead. Yet someone still owns the rights 60 years later.

Not sure this argument works unless you are willing to give away the other property on death like houses, stocks, farms, etc. Maybe 60 years is too long, but that doesn't seem to be your argument.

Copyright is literally the opposite of property rights.

Just because people call it "property rights" does not make it true.

It's as false a term as calling the events of 1939-1945 "World Peace 2".

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#149

Post by FpUser »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #25

There is no greater folly of contemporary human society than the purposeful restriction of such vast and easily shareable repositories of knowledge. Perhaps these schemes made sense in the past but with the advent of the internet and independent groups willing to fund all hosting fees, we should move to models of publishing that do not require this restriction of information. Library genesis exists but necessarily mu…

Most financially successful humans only care how to increase their already huge amount of money. they do not give a flying fuck about advancing humanity as a whole.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#150

Post by troad »

iandanforth wrote: post #120
troad wrote: post #105

Should it be legal for IA to offer this, especially for older and out of print books? Yes, almost certainly. Is it legal? No, not as the law currently stands. You can support Robin Hood, but you shouldn't be shocked when Robin Hood is caught and sent to jail. It was a mistake and a huge legal risk for IA to do this. It could easily have brought down the whole organisation, and all that they've archived to date. I wis…

Are you a lawyer? Can you point to the relevant statutes? I don't ask this flippantly as there exist many forms (private / public / academic) of library which allow for both physical and digital lending of owned assets and are not subject to lawsuits like this. It's not at all obvious that IA's interpretation of the law is in error.

The relevant statute provision is 17 U.S.C. § 501.

On March 24, 2023, the Internet Archive was found liable for copyright infringement under that section by a federal court, in an order granting a motion for a summary judgment.[0] A summary judgment means that there is no genuine dispute about facts, and the plaintiffs (the people suing the Internet Archive) are entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.[1]

It is your prerogative to feel that you're better qualified to interpret federal law than a federal court is, but it is fairly misleading to say that it is not at all clear what the law is here, when a court decision exists on these exact facts.

Should the law be changed? Yes, in my opinion. Is there much dispute over what the law is? No, not really.

[0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.53...

[1] Other common law jurisdictions use clearer language to describe summary judgments: in the UK and Australia, for example, a summary judgment is granted when a party has "no reasonable prospects of success" and there is no point in going to trial. These exact words aren't used in the US, but they give a reasonable indication of how summary judgments are used in practice.

None of this is legal advice.

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