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

501–510 of 848 posts

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

#501

Post by thaumasiotes »

tptacek wrote: post #452
thaumasiotes wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The court could instead have heard a case exclusively about books that were under copyright but not available digital in any form, or one in which a library had some existing licensing arrangement that covered the usage imperfectly, which would have made both the transformation and commercial impact fair use tests more complicated. Instead, IA chose to bring this deeply unsympathetic fact pattern to the 2nd Circuit.…

> The court could instead have heard a case exclusively about books that were under copyright but not available digital in any form, or one in which a library had some existing licensing arrangement that covered the usage imperfectly, which would have made both the transformation and commercial impact fair use tests more complicated. Instead, IA chose to bring this deeply unsympathetic fact pattern to the 2nd Circuit. Now, in that circuit, if some entity did have that more sympathetic fact pattern, it doesn't matter: the finding here was categorical.

How do you see this as different from the claim that the judge(s) did a bad job?

If you think this ruling is just an obvious application of the law to the facts, then you'd get the same result in a different case.

Or, if you think the ruling is contingent on whether a judge approves of the conduct independently of the law, then the court is the party that screwed this up. In particular, the example you highlight, "the finding here was categorical", is completely at the judges' discretion.

(Or are you saying that this ruling is clearly correct, but you wish that the judges would have gotten confused?)

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

#502

Post by aezart »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #133
msla wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CDL is how physical libraries work: They buy a book and then lend it out multiple times to multiple people, on a one-in one-out basis, who then do not have to buy the book themselves. They even repair books to avoid purchasing new ones again. Do you think physical libraries harm the people who bring books into being?

> Do you think physical libraries harm the people who bring books into being? Yes, actually, I do. But the public benefits of libraries outweigh the harm it does to authors. But, the fact that I can buy a book once, and pass it between 50 friends to read feels unfair to the author who effectively makes no money off of the work.

If I buy a hammer and then lend it to a friend, is that unfair to the hammer manufacturer?

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

#503

Post by 7bit »

protocolture wrote: post #475
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hope the organization can survive Maybe it shouldn’t. There is value in asking if there is a better home for those projects.

Maybe a European country that gives much less shit?

Europe is not a third world country, where nobody gives a shit. It has laws and regulations like the US. Educate yourself.

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

#504

Post by hilbert42 »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #491
hilbert42 wrote: post #432

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.

How about we feed an "AI" with it, like MS does with licensed code? Then we can host that AI and let people use that, without having it output where some text is from, just like MS does for code.

Right. Then there's the issue of compiled code which is the elephant in the room, as ultimately AI will be able to decompile code with ease. If it cannot, say through encryption, then AI will be able to emulate it.

If I can think this then I'd reckon I'm not alone, the thought must be high on the agenda for MS and like.

The implications are enormous.

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

#505

Post by dmonitor »

rakoo wrote: post #494
vesinisa wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but this case was not about digital presevation but lending out scanned traditional books without proper controls, presented as some sort of a social welfare project. Choose your battles.

What's the point of having digital preservation if noone can read the archives ? Digital access make sense, it's the logical conclusion to what IA does

This isn’t about access to the archives. It’s about IA giving away books in violation of a specific agreement they made with authors. The archives are legally nebulous, but the written works are clear cut obviously illegal.

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

#506

Post by Nevermark »

rakoo wrote: post #494
vesinisa wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but this case was not about digital presevation but lending out scanned traditional books without proper controls, presented as some sort of a social welfare project. Choose your battles.

What's the point of having digital preservation if noone can read the archives ? Digital access make sense, it's the logical conclusion to what IA does

Both copyright protection and fair use exceptions have valid but contradictory “logical conclusions” that require practical considerations, wisdom and negotiated compromise to balance.

Anyone going all in on either side is not on the side of maximizing access, which legitimately depends on maximizing the production of things to access.

Anyone making a crusade of only one side, without collaborating with the other, will damage both.

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

#508

Post by Shank »

gizmo wrote: post #493
vesinisa wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto. Worth also noting is that IA lost the case by summary judgement. This usually means that the legal matter was so clear that the judge didn't even see a reason to start a trial. This judgement has now been confirmed on appeal. Just about any lawyer could have probably told them this was the inevitable outcome had they listened. I personally have donated previously to IA but now it frankly disgusts me that the p…

You approach this from a perspective of realism. The law is what it is and IA is wrong according to the plain interpretation of the law. Except that's not how everybody lives. Some people do what they believe is right regardless of the consequences. They will fight fights they are guaranteed to lose. Not because it makes sense but because that's who they are . The people who get mad that idealists fight losing battle…

> Your disgust is misplaced. Your disgust should be reserved for those who exploit and hurt others. Not for idealists who fight against impossible odds. Especially when the cause (challenging how copyright law works) is one you support.

I don't think so. IA is a valuable resource for the Wayback Machine and other endeavors which are far more seated in fair use or preservation. Choosing to sacrifice the rest of IA for a grandiose or idealized vision of how the world should work is a betrayal of those who donate to IA in hopes of funding the much more tangible goal. If he wanted to take the stance he took, he should have spun the library component out of IA and served it as a separate legal entity to take on that risk.

Maybe the community trust in IA has been misplaced. The mission on their website clearly says they want to serve "All Knowledge" but I'm not alone in thinking it would be best for them to narrow their scope to just internet-related things, and specifically, things that aren't served by other archive or library sources.

IA is currently used to host and distribute large quantities of software, games, and other media in a quasi-legal mindset that is truly not something that is easily justified. Is having every Xbox 360 ISO publicly available for download on IA really serving the same mission as archiving all of the random blogs people have written on the internet? Is serving in-copyright published books?

I think the problem is that IA has multiple missions that all compete, and broadly, people assumed that they would act in a way that wouldn't jeopardize the rest of the archive.

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

#510

Post by SllX »

rakoo wrote: post #494
vesinisa wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but this case was not about digital presevation but lending out scanned traditional books without proper controls, presented as some sort of a social welfare project. Choose your battles.

What's the point of having digital preservation if noone can read the archives ? Digital access make sense, it's the logical conclusion to what IA does

In a controlled manner in line with existing laws, yes. The law is still the law, even though the law may not be what you or I would like it to be.
Post reply on HN