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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

#701

Post by lesuorac »

organsnyder wrote: post #689
lesuorac wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't they have the same protections? I think it's perfectly fine to download an ebook and mail somebody your harddrive for them to read it no? I'm not sure it's legal for you to photocopy a physical book and mail them those photocopies even if you burn your book.

You typically can't just mail a hard drive: you have to share access to the account that was used to purchase the ebook.

Well, I'm not claiming it's practical; I'm just saying its the same.

Rather than mailing your friend a hard drive, you could mail them a door key and they can come over and use your computer to read the ebook or your couch to read the book.

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

#702

Post by xdennis »

tptacek wrote: post #115
doctorpangloss wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that the law reflects an entrenched, emotional celebration of an antique, traditional notion of a library, and not something rational and consistent about lending, copyright and the economics of writing? Apostasy! I want this conversation to only be strictly about what the case law says, so that I may tell you about it “again” and again!

No, the problem is that the preceding analysis is a category error, in that it assumes the law has a purpose of minimizing the circulation of an individual book. It does not, which is why traditional libraries weren't threatened by it.

> in that it assumes the law has a purpose of minimizing the circulation of an individual book

That's exactly what it's about. Publishers lost the battle of banning libraries, but have won and keep winning everything about digital books.

The end effect is that people have fewer liberties when it comes to digital things. Authors don't gain much. All the profit goes to the publishers.

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

#704

Post by autoexec »

vesinisa wrote: post #522
rakoo wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But that's not what this case was about. Throughout the trial they have been allowed to provide continued digital access to the scanned books, granted they operate like a library (each borrowed book is backed by a physical copy.) The case was launched when during the Covid-19 pandemic they removed the limitations under the veil of "National Emergency Library": https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/30/internet-archive-resp…

> This seemed already at the time completely counter-productive and unnecessary step as it basically forced the publishers to react because it made IA's digital lending indistinguishable from casual e-book piracy.

casual e-book piracy doesn't include DRM.

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

#705

Post by boring_twenties »

wly_cdgr wrote: post #669
vagrantJin wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will claim that IA is an overly-sensible org because they fought this in court. That about show a healthy respect to the law, middlemen and authors to argue in the presence of a judge. For Publishers and middlemen, this is a hollow victory. Murky water. Say for instance, I buy a book. I make a scanned copy and lend out the original. The person who borrowed the book, makes a copy and sends it back. I do this for 1 m…

[flagged]

Whatever you may think of what OP's buddies were doing, there is no way to apply any reasonable meaning of the word "stealing" to it.

There is indeed plenty murky here, and it is mostly coming from you in an attempt to incorrectly use an emotionally-loaded word in order to deceive people into supporting your position.

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

#706

Post by altruios »

didntcheck wrote: post #233
Cpoll wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think writing a book to make money is itself pretty naive. There's already a bit of privilege involved in being able to devote time to writing, and in many cases make attempts for years before getting published to modest revenue. A lot of people start writing books despite knowing those odds and outcomes.

And how many give up after one (if that) when they realize they can't afford the time to do it without enough compensation to reduce hours/replace their day job? Especially when it comes to the boring business side of getting it published and marketed. I can imagine someone writing in their spare time (like any other hobby), but it's much harder to imagine going through all the rest of the process unless they're (a)…

Self publishing is on the rise. Some people feel the need to share, more than the need to make money... that's why a lot of books get written (I believe), generally not to make money, but to share something (the author feels is) important.

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

#707

Post by autoexec »

Aeolun wrote: post #557
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.

Do you think any book lent out by the archive would have turned into a sale? It just didn’t materially hurt anyone, and it made a lot of people happy. I think it was great, and while, sure, the battle was probably lost from the beginning, I like it when people challenge existing conventions. I’ve never stopped donating.

> It just didn’t materially hurt anyone,

It took a lot of money control from the publishers and third party vendors libraries force people to use for digital lending. Those vendors can force users to create accounts, collect reading history and personal data, push ads, and sell lender's data to publishers and others. It also let publishers restrict what titles were available, remotely censor content, or remove titles whenever they wanted.

The IA was creating their own scans which limited the control publishers had and cut out much of that data collection/ad pushing. It was a better deal for readers, but it was a worse deal for publishers and advertisers.

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

#708

Post by mlyle »

perihelions wrote: post #687
mlyle wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having a hard time aligning "voluntarily" with "in compliance with a court order" in my mind.

IA was not served with a court order; Reuters was (in India). (It would still be voluntary even if IA had been ordered to do something in India, because as is the topic of the thread, IA is a US-based nonprofit under the jurisdiction of US courts).

So, deciding not to comply with the norms of foreign jurisdictions is a risky business. Aggrieved judges from other jurisdictions can and will do things that will make your life miserable-- seeking to seize foreign assets, filter locally, arrest your personnel when they travel there, etc. So just ignoring any action that might happen in India isn't really an option.

Of course, letting the most restrictive jurisdictions set the global norm isn't great, either.

Anyways, I fully understand how one would make the choice to not piss off India. From your source:

> "We were faced with the decision of either keeping the article available and risking having legal action taken against us, and incurring a costly defense in an unfamiliar venue..."

That's under duress and coercion, and doesn't meet my definition of "voluntarily", even if one could still fight.

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

#709

Post by tiahura »

alexhektor wrote: post #573
lolinder wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you about copyright, but the fact is that the IA never had a chance and we knew it years ago. The top comment on HN a week after their launch of the EL is critical [0], right at the moment when HN would be most expected to rally to their defense. By the time the lawsuit was actually starting to take shape most commenters had become very concerned for the fate of the IA [1]. This is on a forum that reliab…

outside of the content of of the comment, top comment doesn't necessarily mean the most held opinion. Especially if a comment is thoughtfully written, contains multiple aspects and might just get upvotes for reasonably looking at both sides like in this thread. Being thoughtful, mindful, respecting and trying to not see something in black and white can get upvotes just for being like that. And that's just one tiny as…

Lawyer here. IA’s position was indefensible and reeked of a personal agenda. Given the value of IA, it was deeply irresponsible.

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

#710

Post by jrflowers »

Dalewyn wrote: post #525
jrflowers wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you verify or report the link to what you claim is a working and playable copy of Super Mario Wonder for Nintendo Switch that you posted here as proof that IA “wantonly distributes warez”?

Here you go, 500GB of warez in just one link: https://archive.org/details/pcgames-jp But wait, there's more!: https://archive.org/details/pcgames-jp-part2 And more!: https://archive.org/details/pcgames-jp-part3 and https://archive.org/details/pcgames-jp-part4 2TB of warez in just four links. But that was way too easy, I just listed 2TB of mostly Japanese eroge. What about more mainstream stuff? Presenting the PS1 rel…

Have you verified or reported _ANY_ of the links you’ve posted here as proof of “hosting warez with wanton abandon”? It is clear that you have some sort of motivation and knowledge about how to navigate the IA to find what you believe to be infringing content — why are you using it to post links to it on this website rather than reporting it?

The only thing that you have proven is that the IA accepts user uploads. That is it, end of proof. The only party possibly acting irresponsibly here is the user distributing links to what is claimed to be infringing content and not answering a simple question about reporting or verification.

“Watch me distribute what I claim to be ‘warez’ using a neutral file upload service that I will not answer questions about reporting or verification about! My going out of my way to make this available to you is not the issue, this evil host is the problem for existing!” belies either a deep misunderstanding of how the internet works (also kind of indicated by repeatedly using the word ‘warez’ in 2024) as a whole at best or a weird bad faith attack (also kind of indicated by accusing a stranger of “white knighting” for asking if you verified or reported your link to Super Mario Wonder) at worst. So I am a bit confused as to what is going on here

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