- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
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Internet archive turned themselves into an ebook piracy site rather than a digital library. They distributed unlimited copies of books for free. And then Internet Archive defended it with something in the lines of:
It costs a lot of money to make, and distribute, digital copies of books without the permission of the copyright holder… therefore it should be legal for The Internet Archive to do it.
That’s a really terrible misrepresentation of what happened.You should probably investigate this matter more. This article is supremely biased and basically outright wrong.
The quote you gave, for example, is an almost cartoonist level of distortion of the facts.
The court filings I’ve read corroborate the article.
https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/lbvggjmzovq/internetarchive.pdf
[IA] professes to perform the traditional function of a library by lending only limited numbers of these works at a time through “Controlled Digital Lending,” … CDL’s central tenet, according to a September 2018 Statement and White Paper by a group of librarians, is that an entity that owns a physical book can scan that book and “circulate [the] digitized title in place of [the] physical one in a controlled manner.” … CDL’s most critical component is a one-to-one “owned to loaned ratio.” Id. Thus, a library or organization that practices CDL will seek to “only loan simultaneously the number of copies that it has legitimately acquired.”
…
Judging itself “uniquely positioned to be able to address this problem quickly and efficiently,” on March 24, 2020, IA launched what it called the National Emergency Library (“NEL”), intending it to “run through June 30, 2020, or the end of the US national emergency, whichever is later.” … During the NEL, IA lifted the technical controls enforcing its one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio and allowed up to ten thousand patrons at a time to borrow each ebook on the Website.
[…]
The Publishers have established a prima facie case of copyright infringement.
First, the Publishers hold exclusive publishing rights in the Works in Suit …
Second, IA copied the entire Works in Suit without the Publishers’ permission. Specifically, IA does not dispute that it violated the Publishers’ reproduction rights, by creating copies of the Works in Suit … ; the Publishers’ rights to prepare derivative works, by “recasting” the Publishers’ print books into ebooks …; the Publishers’ public performance rights, through the “read aloud” function on IA’s Website …; and the publishers’ display rights, by showing the Works in Suit to users through IA’s in-browser viewer
Bold added.
It’s pretty much not in dispute that Internet Archive distributed the copyrighted works of the publishers without permission, outside of what even a traditional library lending system would allow.
Nobody gives a shit. Internet Archive is good; the law is wrong.
Internet Archive’s other projects like the Wayback Machine may be good but how they handled their digital lending of books during the pandemic was not. They removed the limit on the number of people that can borrow a book at a time, thus taking away any resemblance to traditional physical lending. You can argue that copyright laws are bad and should be changed (and I’d agree) but that doesn’t change the facts of what happened under the current law.
How do you propose we break laws without…breaking them?
He is proposing not to break them and work toward changing the law first.
Straw meet man.
If you think you need to break laws to get them changed, you must’ve failed Civics 101
If you think you can chang oppressive laws without breaking laws, you’re a boot licker with no education of history
I’ve never seen someone self-report a failure of Amerikan History like this before. You must’ve missed THE ENTIRE Civil Rights Movement segment, or just tuned it out because it made you or someone close to you uncomfy to think about-- like I’ve asked another person in this thread, what the fuck do you think CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE means???
I don’t propose we break the laws, I propose we change them.
Again, the law is wrong, limiting digital copies is an unreasonable position to place on libraries.
Saying the law is wrong is the worst defense you can have in court.
Wong laws should be challenged outside of courts.
They should. But you can’t exactly be surprised if you get in trouble because you broke the law, no matter how stupid you think that law is.
I think it’s stupid that you can’t always turn right on a red light. Plenty of people would agree. I’ll get a ticket if I do it anyway, and it’ll be my own fault.I fully agree with that, but that’s not going to help Internet Archive
What the fuck do you think civil disobedience is you settler-assed windbag
It’s an excellent difference in political debate.
(unless the Supreme Court really likes you by a 6-4 majority)
Law is never wrong. Got it.
Oh, or was it we should have no defense in court. Whichever.
Laws can very well be wrong, in a moral sense, and quite a few of them still in existence today are, but trying to argue that in court is usually a bad idea.
In court you’re defending that you didn’t break the law. They have no such defense. You can’t just play Calvinball in court.
