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

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

#361

Post by tptacek »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #358
tptacek wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copying has a specific definition under the law. Physical lending of books does not come close to meeting it. Applying any of the fair use tests to physical book lending thus does not make any sense. It's like applying the Central Hudson Test to my cooking of a grilled cheese sandwich: it's lawful, the government has minimal interest in regulating it, none of that matters because my sandwich isn't expressive. If your…

> If your whole point is that we could tear down all of copyright law and replace it No, no, not at all. In this situation I just want to change the definition of "copy" slightly. (And to point out that slightly different definitions of terms would make libraries illegal. There's nothing special about the current definitions. In particular they're not the most straightforward definitions at all. Again, none of this i…

There is no reasonable definition of "copy" that would make the lending of a physical book a copy. The word "copy" literally exists to differentiate other actions from that action.

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

#362

Post by kiba »

api wrote: post #344
TeMPOraL wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labor should not be free, but it should also not serve to establish rent to be paid in perpetuity. > Mass indirect piracy via AI being used to flood the Kindle market with slop is bad enough. That just amplified the problem that already existed before LLMs - human-written slop already flooded the Kindle market, and has been flooding paper book market too - and yes, "ending book writing as a profession" is likely the…

This is the fallacy of using the pathological case to argue against the normal case. Copyright is in need of reform but without it there is no intellectual labor, or at least no compensation for it. In the Information Age where everything else is increasingly automated, this eventually converges with all labor being uncompensated since all labor is eventually intellectual in nature if we are sufficiently advanced.

I question the assertion that copyright is necessary for compensating intellectual labor.

For example, there will always be a need and demand for technical documentation, engineering, legal writing, etc, all of which will and must exists without copyright. A lawyer's product is specific to his client, and bridge engineers' output are a correctly designed bridge.

You can extend it to musicians and artists. A musician get paid to play gigs at wedding, or artists being commissioned to create works for their patrons.

Copyright enables certain business models and change the quantity and quality of the work available, for ill or good but it isn't strictly necessary and may even be detrimental.

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

#363

Post by Dylan16807 »

tptacek wrote: post #361
Dylan16807 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your whole point is that we could tear down all of copyright law and replace it No, no, not at all. In this situation I just want to change the definition of "copy" slightly. (And to point out that slightly different definitions of terms would make libraries illegal. There's nothing special about the current definitions. In particular they're not the most straightforward definitions at all. Again, none of this i…

There is no reasonable definition of "copy" that would make the lending of a physical book a copy. The word "copy" literally exists to differentiate other actions from that action.

> There is no reasonable definition of "copy" that would make the lending of a physical book a copy.

But it could count as distribution. Copyright covers that. Library style distribution could be just as illegal as CDL style copying, by barely changing anything.

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

#364

Post by davexunit »

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…

> trumped the rights of authors and publishers

Oh no, won't someone think of the rights of the poor poor publishers :(((

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

#365

Post by pie_flavor »

codedokode wrote: post #234
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…

I think you misunderstand the situation. If you haven't read the lawsuit [1] I suggest you look through it. Basically, there is an established practice for lending printed books: the library buys a book and lends it to patrons without permission from the copyright owner. However, publishers believe that digital books are different from physical books and established practice doesn't apply to them; they believe that l…

What you describe as lending a digital copy, is making new copies. As a matter of engineering fact, the bytes were copied from one location to another; as a matter of black-letter law, that is making a copy in the sense that it is copyright infringement to do so without a license. That IA 'controlled' it to have only one outstanding copy at a time in hands other than theirs does not make it legal. The carveout saying libraries can make three copies does not cover them making hundreds.

If IA would like five dozen copies to be morally equivalent to one copy as long as they ask each person who received one to swear they deleted it before IA makes another, they can call their congressman and ask them to propose a copyright law amendment. They did not do this, and instead just knowingly violated the law repeatedly. Wailing about how libraries won't exist in the future is silly, because it just takes reforming the law to fix this, but IA seemed to be under the impression that as long as the rules would one day be amended, they could act as though they're already amended that way today.

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

#366

Post by pie_flavor »

LunaSea wrote: post #199
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…

That is incorrect. Libraries regularly scan and OCR books to make them digitally accessible and searchable. I hope the likes of the Library of Congress are ready to shutdown their online services.

The law specifically gives libraries a carveout to make one copy in some cases or three copies in others, for purposes like this. It does not give them the ability to send these copies to library customers over the internet.

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

#367

Post by pie_flavor »

codedokode wrote: post #239
jonny_eh wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libraries have different contracts with book publishers for eBooks. IA didn't have any contracts with any publisher. See: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/09/1135639385/libraries-publishe...

The libraries lent physical books without any contracts. What publishers want is to make so that the rules and rights regrading physical books do not apply to digital books; what IA wants is to allow libraries treat and lend digital books the same way as physical, without permission from the publisher. The contracts with libraries you mention require a library to buy a license for every ebook, and renew the license p…

You never had rights to freely copy digital books. You're not being 'stripped' of them when a judge says 'the law applies as written'. If you want these brand new rights, call your Congressman.

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

#368

Post by pie_flavor »

joe5150 wrote: post #314
pcaharrier wrote: post #27

This struck me as significant (buried in the opinion's last footnote): "IA makes a final argument that, even if its Open Libraries project did not qualify as a fair use, we should restrict the injunction to the Open Libraries project and allow IA to continue CDL for books that IA itself owns. In support of that argument, IA argues that the fourth factor analysis would be more favorable if CDL were limited to IA’s own…

It's absurd that the most consequential part of this entire ruling is treated as a literal footnote and given no more due consideration.

It's a footnote because it's the most inconsequential part of the ruling. The copyright infringement status of making thousands of unlicensed digital copies is not affected by whether you own a physical copy or not.

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

#369

Post by pie_flavor »

thimabi wrote: post #216

At this point, the Internet Archive should consider simply moving to another jurisdiction. Decisions like this are a shame, because they hinder a proper way to deal with piracy. Physical libraries compete with book sales too, but of course libraries are lawful. Why should digital libraries be treated differently? Because there are ways to circumvent DRM on Internet Archive books? Well, there are ways to bypass DRM on…

Digital libraries are treated differently because they transmit the book by copying it from one machine to another, physical libraries transmit the book by handing it to you without making any copies, and copyright law restricts copying. DRM doesn't have anything to do with this, the fact that you use the word 'library' to describe the former doesn't have anything to do with this, and the fact that IA didn't make a new copy unless the recipient of the old one had deleted it doesn't have anything to do with this: unlicensed copying outside of fair use is copyright infringement. The remedy for feeling that this is unfair is calling your congressman to change copyright law, not violating it on purpose and then complaining when you get sued.

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

#370

Post by pie_flavor »

codedokode wrote: post #271
Ensorceled wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the conclusion is so obviously incorrect, we should examine the underlying precedent that leads us to such an erroneous conclusion. This precedent should give us pause. They're restricting a NONPROFITs to distribute legally purchased print media in a way that the publishers don't want. This is nonsense. They are not distributing "legally purchased print media", they are VERY literally distributing digital copi…

This is because you cannot buy and then lend an e-book. You can do it with a physical book but you cannot with a digital book due to DRM. IA was trying to work around this and failed. As a result, buyers of digital books cannot enjoy the same rights the buyers of physical books have; it means people have less rights now.

You do not get to break the law just because you are working around some sort of restriction. The law says what it says and the judge is correct that IA violated it.
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