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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

#431

Post by Tomte »

radarsat1 wrote: post #427

What will this mean for other sites with similar programs? I know many libraries do similar "renting" of digital texts on their websites. I guess they will have to shut down these programs. For instance, I know this is Canadian so different jurisdiction but here is an example of one: https://montreal.ca/en/services/digital-book-loans

Not at all.

They have contracts with publishers, they lend out only the licensed number of copies, and they pay a lot for the privilege.

IA lent out infinite copies simultaneously, pays nothing and actively denied to even talk to publishers (and authors).

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

#432

Post by hilbert42 »

Things will get worse before they're get better, but ultimately the publishers will pay dearly for this.

First, the IA should move to a more favorable copyright jurisdiction to preserve the collection.

Second, there's no point fighting the copyright lobby, especially so in the US. We need to build an alternative access to knowledge that bypasses the copyright/ownership of knowledge paradigm.

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

#433

Post by squeaky-clean »

pie_flavor wrote: post #368
joe5150 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This ruling isn't about making thousands of digital copies. They're no longer able to offer even 1 digital copy.

The CDL is where they would buy N physical copies of a book, and then allow N active rentals of the digitally scanned version of that book with a waiting list for when people "return" them. Can't do that anymore.

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

#434

Post by alexey-salmin »

EarlKing wrote: post #386
codedokode wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Making a copy is not always illegal; for example, scanning books for Google Books by Google is considered legal. 2) Digital books are DRM-protected so you cannot lend them or re-sell like you can with physical books. So making a digital copy of a physical book can be considered merely a method to workaround these restrictions. 3) Publishers want to use new technology (electronic books) to remove rights that consum…

Making a copy is not always illegal when it is considered fair use or fair dealing. Part of the analysis for determining the same involves the quantity of material copied. They copied entire books. Your other points are entirely irrelevant. They knew what they were doing was wrong, and they jeopardized the archive by doing it. If you want to change the law, change the law. If you want to break the law, break it yours…

> If you want to break the law, break it yourself... don't drag the archive down with you to do it.

It takes a court decision to know if the law was broken or not. You apparently forget that the Wayback Machine itself breaks copyright laws and went to court over this many times. Most cases were settled by removal of infringing content but it doesn't undo the fact that infringements did actually happen.

The IA exists in the first place because Brewster Kahle isn't afraid to test what's possible and go to court if necessary.

You can take it or leave it. Or you can build your own archive... oh wait, you can't because it breaks the copyright law which is unacceptable for you.

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

#435

Post by p0w3n3d »

caseyy wrote: post #356
haswell wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Simply breaking them has close to zero probability of changing them Breaking laws and pushing to change them has been the modus operandi for some of tech’s biggest names. It’d be interesting to see how this might have played out if the IA had the resources that Uber, Airbnb, Google, Facebook, etc have at their disposal. It’s a sobering look at who actually has power to shape the legal landscape, and which direction…

Tech companies have large legal departments which find ways to skirt around existing laws. Where these companies break laws, they almost never challenge them. When they are prosecuted for breaking laws, they draw attention to orthogonal issues in court proceedings and hearings, delay the process, and involve a lot of other legal strategies. When they are sued by competitors for infringing on other's interests by brea…

In Russia similar situation effectively is called an oligarchy. If you have money, you can count on law being on your side despite the case. If companies having a lot of money can change law to be on their side, this is the same.

Becoming a martyr in US law system (precedential) does not make much sense in my honest opinion. Look at Disney Mickey Mouse casus - nothing will change in here

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

#436

Post by pests »

polynomial wrote: post #396
matwood wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The further you take a federal case the more precedent you create. Not really. This put a huge chilling effect on real attempts at CDL, which IA was not.

That's what matwood is saying.

You are replying to matwood.

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

#437

Post by p0w3n3d »

haswell wrote: post #391
caseyy wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech companies have large legal departments which find ways to skirt around existing laws. Where these companies break laws, they almost never challenge them. When they are prosecuted for breaking laws, they draw attention to orthogonal issues in court proceedings and hearings, delay the process, and involve a lot of other legal strategies. When they are sued by competitors for infringing on other's interests by brea…

> because it doesn't for Uber when they break laws Every company I mentioned has broken laws, paid fines, and subsequently had laws changed in their favor. I'm not saying it always works, but it works enough of the time that these companies accept it as a cost of doing business and have won. With that said, as pointed out in a different reply, copyright isn't one of the categories in which these companies are winning…

Exactly. Big companies are buying laws but a normal civil person must adhere and lose possibility for example to own a movie or music. Moreover US law system is extrapolated on other countries but unlawfully (i.e. Bigtech behaves in my country as if it was US and I have no possibility to appeal)

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

#438

Post by exitb »

tourmalinetaco wrote: post #398
Cheyana wrote: post #300

I’ve purchased quite a few old books from online booksellers based on my browsing of them through IA so I hope, at least, there could be some way to still expose these old treasures to people so they could somehow acquire a printed copy of them.

Piracy is realistically the only option for books that are not printed but also not in the public domain.

Big publishers don’t care for those cases, but they’d rather you don’t spend time with that and buy a fresh, new book they just printed.

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

#439

Post by thaumasiotes »

tptacek wrote: post #430
thaumasiotes wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's what you think, then the precedent is neither terrible nor interesting.

It's bad if you want people to be able to do 1:1 lending of digitized books. It's fine if you don't care. The point is that it didn't need to happen; there was no reason to appeal the case. It was a loser to begin with.

> It's bad if you want people to be able to do 1:1 lending of digitized books.

How? By your argument, this was already clearly illegal. What did the precedent change?

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

#440

Post by bryanrasmussen »

asadotzler wrote: post #410
mumblemumble wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ruling discusses this starting on page 33. The gist is that they set up a non-transformative service that is substantially equivalent to competing ebook services and CDLs, but unlike those it is not paying the customary price to publishers. It also discusses that there is a very good reason why digital libraries don't typically get to have perpetual rights to a work at the retail (or used) price for a print book.…

>The ruling discusses this starting on page 33. The gist is that they set up a non-transformative service that is substantially equivalent to competing ebook services and CDLs, but unlike those it is not paying the customary price to publishers. The question was "how is this hurting authors" and your reply is to carry water for publishers?

as lousy and inefficient a system as the one we mainly have is, as a theoretical rule in this system authors get some share of the money that goes to publishers.
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