Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

storage.courtlistener.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 848 posts

Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#171

Post by altruios »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #143
teruakohatu wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In his many interviews with U.S. media, he portrays the court cases and legal judgements as a crusade against the Internet Archive and all librarians. It's not. It's the logical outcome of one man's seemingly fanatical conviction against the law and the people who work very hard to bring new books into being. If IA had won, IA would be hailed as a cultural hero. They hit and they missed. Claiming Brewster Kahle is…

[flagged]

Just for the sake of argument, let us say infinite copies kills all profit drive to make a book. What kind of books still get written? There is an argument for the quality of books being made increasing due to only books that have true passion for the sake of sharing being produced under this system... art for the sake of itself, not for the sake of profit.

If your only determining factor for writing a book is to make and profit off of 'valuable intangibles', then I get the ick, just personally for me.

I'm not arguing for more starving artists, I'm arguing art and capitalism don't mix (see AI for further validation of that position).

Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#172

Post by tombert »

ilamont wrote: post #52

This has been playing out for many years. And it's all because Brewster Kahle decided that an overly broad interpretation of the Internet Archive's mission trumped the rights of authors and publishers, and the laws of the United States. When IA was asked to stop CDL - many times - he continued. The National Writers Union tried to open a dialogue as early as 2010 but was ignored: The Internet Archive says it would rat…

This is why I stopped donating to IA, and I will not donate until they get new leadership.

I'm a very big supporter of a lot of what IA does, but I feel if I donate, my money is just going to fund more and more legal defenses because Brewster Kahle is being stubborn, and I'm afraid it's going to lead to the entire Archive being shut down.

I've mentioned this before, but there are lots of cases where IA will let you download full video games for the switch that are still being actively sold [1]. The same applies to a lot of movies and TV shows, available via torrents no less.

Before someone gives me a lecture about data harboring laws and fair use, I know that it is technically on the copyright holder to issue takedown requests for infringing material, but even still, I think they'd be smart to be a bit proactive about this. If I know that the Internet Archive is an easy place to get pirated material, then I'm quite confident that their staff does as well. If there's even one employee email that implies that they know about pirated content but didn't bother taking it down, then I think that's grounds for a lawsuit (though I'm not a lawyer).

Much as I respect him for founding IA, I think that Kahle needs to be replaced as a leader.

[1] I'm not going to link it here because I'm not sure HN's policy on potentially legally dubious material, but it is not hard to find.

Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#173

Post by healsdata »

cmiles74 wrote: post #148
doublescoop wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This wasn't a case of the estates of dead authors trying to hold onto rights. Working authors were actively being harmed by the activities of the IA through the CDL. Working authors were met with refusals to meet to discuss this issue. I don't think that characterization of Kahle is unfair at all. His position was unreasonable, determined to be illegal, and damaging to people who depend on copyright to license their…

How was the CDL hurting working authors? A library bought the book, paying the publisher and the author. The IA scanned the book for digital lending, this digital copy could only be checked out by one person and only when the physical book was not also checked out. I understand the court decided this wasn't okay. That aside, how was it hurting working authors?

Because other libraries have licensing agreements that benefit authors on a different basis than "you sold one book to one library".

You may argue that that shouldn't be the paradigm, but one library unilaterally changing it denies the authors their say on the change, either through licensing or legislation.

Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#174

Post by healsdata »

altruios wrote: post #171
xhkkffbf wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Just for the sake of argument, let us say infinite copies kills all profit drive to make a book. What kind of books still get written? There is an argument for the quality of books being made increasing due to only books that have true passion for the sake of sharing being produced under this system... art for the sake of itself, not for the sake of profit. If your only determining factor for writing a book is to mak…

I think that argument is pretty naive. The only books that would still get made are those from people privileged enough (money and time) to write books.

You'll get way more ghost-written biographies from celebrities and hot takes from politicians.

Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#175

Post by EarlKing »

cmiles74 wrote: post #154
EarlKing wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A physical library does not involve making a copy, but lending out an existing physical copy. One book, one reader. "Controlled Digital Lending" literally involves making and transmitting a copy to another physical medium electronically. Brewster has endangered the good work done by people at the archive for a case he was never going to win and which was of dubious value. If he wants to be the next Anna's Archive the…

Still, under the CDL it is only one book, one person. This is significantly different from a site like Anna's Archive.

No, it isn't. They're issuing a copy to the reader for the duration of their checkout. Your argument might hold some weight if they scanned a book, destroyed the book, and then deleted the book from their own servers every time it was lent out... but that's not how CDL works. What they're doing is unambiguously copying.

Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#176

Post by forrestthewoods »

cmiles74 wrote: post #148
doublescoop wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This wasn't a case of the estates of dead authors trying to hold onto rights. Working authors were actively being harmed by the activities of the IA through the CDL. Working authors were met with refusals to meet to discuss this issue. I don't think that characterization of Kahle is unfair at all. His position was unreasonable, determined to be illegal, and damaging to people who depend on copyright to license their…

How was the CDL hurting working authors? A library bought the book, paying the publisher and the author. The IA scanned the book for digital lending, this digital copy could only be checked out by one person and only when the physical book was not also checked out. I understand the court decided this wasn't okay. That aside, how was it hurting working authors?

> this digital copy could only be checked out by one person and only when the physical book was not also checked out

Even if that were the case I don’t think it’s acceptable.

Physical used goods have limitations on transfer rate. If you want a used book you have to go to the store. Or have it shipped across the country.

I adamantly oppose a global digital pool with instantaneous transfers. In that world you never need to sell more than peak concurrent users. If that were the case then each copy would need to sell for thousands of dollars for content creators to afford food.

The same argument applies to “used” digital movies and games. It’s nonsense.

Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#178

Post by dang »

Related URLs (from threads we merged hither) in case of interest:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/4/24235958/internet-archive-...

https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-loses-hachette-...

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/major-book-publishers-defeat-...

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/internet-archive-digita...

Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#179

Post by kmeisthax »

Kerrick wrote: post #151
EarlKing wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A physical library does not involve making a copy, but lending out an existing physical copy. One book, one reader. "Controlled Digital Lending" literally involves making and transmitting a copy to another physical medium electronically. Brewster has endangered the good work done by people at the archive for a case he was never going to win and which was of dubious value. If he wants to be the next Anna's Archive the…

Does this case's effect on CDL mean that a library could still buy a huge stack of ultra-cheap eBook readers, load each one up with their one copy of a given book, and then lend out the physical readers?

No, but I suspect the licensing on the ebooks already forbids transferring the physical reader the book is on to another person.

Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#180

Post by Amezarak »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #176
cmiles74 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was the CDL hurting working authors? A library bought the book, paying the publisher and the author. The IA scanned the book for digital lending, this digital copy could only be checked out by one person and only when the physical book was not also checked out. I understand the court decided this wasn't okay. That aside, how was it hurting working authors?

> this digital copy could only be checked out by one person and only when the physical book was not also checked out Even if that were the case I don’t think it’s acceptable. Physical used goods have limitations on transfer rate. If you want a used book you have to go to the store. Or have it shipped across the country. I adamantly oppose a global digital pool with instantaneous transfers. In that world you never nee…

> If that were the case then each copy would need to sell for thousands of dollars for content creators to afford food.

We have an enormous surplus of content creators and most of the content is not very good. I don't see why we need to structure our economic system such that people must be able to making a living churning out mediocre scifi/romance/mystery novels. If they can, great, but I don't think that's the goal we should be aiming for with copyright. There would still be plenty of novels turned out every year even if copyright did not exist.

> In that world you never need to sell more than peak concurrent users.

That sounds good to me, and I doubt it's really much more than the number of sales now. Many/most people would still buy their own copy anyway, just as they do today when a new book comes out.

Copyright law as structured today is destroying more art than saving it; the number of out-of-print but copyrighted works that are vanishing from human knowledge is astronomical.

Post reply on HN