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

651–660 of 848 posts

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

#651

Post by tombert »

protocolture wrote: post #472
Dalewyn wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here ya go: https://archive.org/details/super-mario-bros.-wonder-nspe-sh... Note to dang and friends: Not condoning piracy or whatever, this is simply to prove a point that Internet Archive hosts and distributes warez with wanton abandon.

Are you telling me... that an archive has... archived something? Calling the cops right now!

Public and University libraries are also archives, but they follow strict guidelines to stay within the bounds of copyright law and fair use. There are limitations on how you can view the archived copyrighted material, limitations on how you can do so, etc. No one is claiming that "archives" are a bad thing, at least not that I've seen.

What I'm complaining about with IA specifically is that they're basically taking the MegaUpload approach of pretending that flagrant disregard for copyright law is totally fine, and then hiding behind vague data harboring laws and shouting "We're an archive so it's fine!!!!". Depending on how far you want to go, you can say that ThePirateBay or LimeTorrents is also an archive, but most people don't dispute that those sites are piracy.

If IA broke copyright law only in regards to something like AbandonWare, I wouldn't really be complaining, because that is something that should be archived and if it's truly abandonware then you're not even eating into potential profits, but that's not what's happening. Even the act of archiving copyrighted material that's still for sale is fine, but they should be operating within the bounds of the typical library archiving standards, which I don't think that they're doing.

As I said, if I'm aware of how easy it is to get pirated material on IA, then I'm quite confident that their staff is too.

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

#652

Post by ghaff »

matwood wrote: post #602
Amezarak wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under US copyright law controlled digital lending was clearly illegal. This case did not establish any new precedent, it's a plain reading of the law and the decision reflects that. You and I can both not like it, we can wish the law was different, but no court ruling was ever going to go any other way, and the reckless move of opening uncontrolled digital lending doesn't change that. It may make logical sense to thi…

I agree it was going to be a hard case, but I don't think CDL properly implemented is automatically illegal. The issue here is IA had a lack of control and couldn't assert the print copy came down in their CDL implementation. It's unfortunate this was the case used to test CDL since it was a loser from the start.

The point is that providing access to archives of web pages that were once public--especially if robots.txt is even retroactively honored--and CDL, while perhaps not adhering to the letter of copyright law, are sufficiently close to the spirit that most reasonable people see those actions as legit. (There's probably at least a case that you're just providing an equivalent proxy for physical access. IANAL) Especially by an entity which is reasonably viewed as an archive/library.

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

#653

Post by abnry »

teruakohatu wrote: post #72
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…

> 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…

I mean, many authors do care about their copyright. So if you disregard copyright en mass, then yeah, you are against the people writing the books who care about their copyright.

You could have made a fairer point if the IA only disregarded the copyright of authors who are dead or something like 10 years past publication.

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

#654

Post by AlbertCory »

kragen wrote: post #445
AlbertCory wrote: post #272

If I can relate this to movies [1], it might be illuminating: Watching a movie, you normally get a "home viewing" license. That does not give you the right to show it at your business (even if you don't charge money and only 10 people come). There's also a Public Performance Rights (PPR) license, and I always had to get PPR's because Google lawyers would shut us down otherwise. PPR costs considerably more than a home…

there is no such thing as a 'home viewing license'; you don't know the basics of us copyright law, despite having negotiated public performance rights licenses. you need a license from the copyright holder (or a fair use defense) when, and only when, you are doing one of the things reserved to the copyright holder under 17 usc §106 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106 . specifically, 17 usc §106(4) is publi…

[flagged]

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

#655

Post by AlbertCory »

kragen wrote: post #480
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s an unnecessarily pedantic comment. The US copyright act gives the copyright owner exclusive rights regarding public performance and it also defines where public starts. Sure, there is no license for home viewing but that’s not really changing anything about the point that OP was making.

it does, because they were adducing a cause of action that doesn't exist in either statute or caselaw. nor was it asserted by the plaintiffs, because that would have gotten their case summarily dismissed. moreover, to believe that it existed, you would have to have a comprehensively incorrect understanding of the legislative and political history of us copyright law. anyone who wants to understand any of the argument…

[flagged]

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

#656

Post by tombert »

mixologic wrote: post #201
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will admit that I am personally on the fence. I knew for a while that IA was in legal crosshairs and I actually encouraged people to donate to it on this very forum. I am not sure it is fair to stop donations over one miscalculation. Their core mission remains in place and IA is more important to the ecosystem than wikipedia. Not to mention, with this appeal lost, it is not unlikely other entities will try take IA…

Fair though to hesitate over donating if you believe that your donations are not going to go towards the valueable core mission, and instead be misdirected to ill advised legal crusades.

That's the thing.

Extreme hyperbolic example, and to be clear I am not actually accusing anyone of anything, but imagine that there were evidence that Brewster was using IA donations to fund a meth addiction. I don't think anyone would blame me for stopping donations to that because my intent was for the money to go to archiving, not drugs.

I don't think Brewster does meth, and even if he does I don't think that he's spending IA money to do it, but I do think he's spending IA money in pursuit of a lot of lawsuits that are a result of flagrant disregard for copyright law, at which point it feels more like I'm funding a lobbyist group, not an archive.

To be clear, I really dislike US copyright law, and I'm not even really opposed to people breaking it, but my opinion of of the law is somewhat irrelevant. The fact is that flagrant disregard for it at the level of IA means that lawsuits are going to happen. I don't really want to spend money on that, though obviously it's fine if other people want to.

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

#657

Post by Nullabillity »

trustno2 wrote: post #556
ricardobeat wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whole copies of books, the form of copyrighted work most legible to the law, that are currently for sale in ebook form by their publishers For some reason this was acceptable in physical form for hundreds of years. CDL is just making it more convenient for our modern reality.

No it's not. Libraries don't make copies. They lend you the actual books. Copyright is literally right to copy. Scanning the book and doing something with, such as lending it forward, is copying. (The covid thing strengthens the case of the book guys - the CDL suddenly let anyone get anything because Archive decided to change the rules unilaterally)

Except that's the whole point of the CDL compromise, that only one person can borrow the book at a time.

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

#658

Post by wing-_-nuts »

account42 wrote: post #622
sumeno wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why did only Kahle do it, and why was it only Kahle coming up with CDL as an idea to prevent the death of first sale, of lending a book, of the idea of a free library in a digital future? Lots of libraries do free digital lending of ebooks in a legal way and have done so for a long time

Those libraries are subject to publisher's whims and prices in ways that they never were for paper books.

I have never understood why a digital good isn't subject to the same protections as the physical one. Honestly, this sort of behavior only encourages piracy. Oh, I don't have the same rights if I buy your ebook? Ok then, I guess I won't.

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

#659

Post by xhkkffbf »

michaelt wrote: post #569
protocolture wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet Archive should probably have, granting access to the data in the archive, as a core goal and calling that activism is bizarre to me.

I don't think it's quite that simple. I can't just scrape nytimes.com and re-host it on my own website legally - that's clear copyright infringement. Google news quoting article excerpts was legally controversial, as was their book search function, and their archive option. I always assumed website owners were just sorta turning a blind eye to archive.org because (a) it's slow and (b) it doesn't get indexed in google

I'm very happy about this decision about CDL and I'm glad that the IA got smacked for being so obnoxious and anti-artist. But I'm also willing to turn a blind eye to the archive and the way back machine because they're useful and not really competition.

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

#660

Post by tombert »

orbisvicis wrote: post #283
tombert wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

So the IA should be forked; you can support the fork and people like me Brewster Kahle's original. People who frequent libraries think CDL at retail prices is just; others that it is an end-run around publisher's rights. But libraries pay so much for their limited-lending copies! Why isn't there any support for regional or global libraries? Publishers are like a syndicate but there's no opposing union so they run ram…

Whether I think that the CDL or NEL is a good idea or not is irrelevant, and orthogonal to my point.

The fact that IA disregards copyright law and seems to have a "wait to be sued" mentality means that the donations end up feeling more like lobbying money and less like funding an actual Archive. I'd be totally fine with a CDL being codified into law, and I'd even be fine with IA's version of it, but it doesn't change the fact that Brewster is treating IA like an ideological mission now more than an Archive.

If you want to donate your money to it, that's obviously fine, but I think that it's important to be honest about it.

Post reply on HN