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https://torrentfreak.com/there-is-more-to-copyright-than-financial-incentives-internet-archive-argues-in-court-240423/

The Internet Archive is doubling down on its position that its digital lending library service operates under the bounds of fair use. Major publishers assert that digitizing books without appropriate licensing amounts to infringement but IA counters that the practice is in the public interest. It also fits copyright’s ultimate purpose; to promote the broad public availability of literature and other arts.

  • BreakDecks@lemmy.mlEnglish
    7·
    5 months ago

    Uh, they’re being sued for over $200 Billion. What do you expect them to do, not fight it?

    They’ve already shut down the “Emergency Library” they are being sued over, but the plaintiffs aren’t dropping the suit.

    If losing this lawsuit destroys the IA, you should want them to fight like hell to win.

    • FaceDeer@fedia.io
      04·
      5 months ago

      I expect them to not provoke the $200 billion lawsuit in the first place. They should never have done the “Emergency Library”, it was an obvious boneheaded decision.

      Then, once they had done it and the inevitable lawsuit came down on them, they should have tried to settle the lawsuit. Not fight to the bitter end, not double down. They’re only making it worse for themselves. It’s not simply losing the lawsuit that could destroy them, it’s refusing to negotiate.

      • BreakDecks@lemmy.mlEnglish
        4·
        5 months ago

        The emergency library followed the same legal framework that ebook lending follows at local libraries.

        A library owns x many copies of a book, and they remove some percentage of them from circulation so that they can leverage them to lend digital copies (usually via Libby).

        All IA did was coordinate with libraries that were closed due to COVID to allocate a portion of their uncirculated books for IA’s lending system. It was never uncapped, and even used DRM to protect against piracy like Libby does.

        Every book that was lended had a physical copy deliberately uncirculated for the purpose of allowing redistribution. It was entirely legitimate, and I commend them for doing it.

        Publishers are already trying to fight against libraries that they feel threaten their profitability. This attack against IA is just a test case for going after local libraries, and Libby next. I want IA to fight this and win, because we’re fucked on multiple levels of they lose.

        Don’t blame IA for fulfilling their mission to make knowledge free. Blame capitalists for attacking libraries in an attempt to make knowledge less free.

        • FaceDeer@fedia.io
          02·
          5 months ago

          The emergency library followed the same legal framework that ebook lending follows at local libraries.

          No, it did not. From the Wikipedia article:

          On March 24, 2020, as a result of shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Internet Archive opened the National Emergency Library, removing the waitlists used in Open Library and expanding access to these books for all readers.

          Emphasis added. They took the limits off.

          What the libraries do is already in a legal grey area, the publishers just don’t go after it because it’s more trouble than it’s worth and would bring bad press. Like how most rightsholders ignore fanfiction. But the IA went way beyond that and smacked them in the face.

          Don’t blame IA for fulfilling their mission to make knowledge free.

          Their mission is archiving the Internet. a mission that they are putting at risk with this stunt.

          • BreakDecks@lemmy.mlEnglish
            5·
            5 months ago

            I think you might be confused, albeit by a poorly written Wikipedia article.

            First of all, it isn’t clear what it is meant by “removing the waitlists and expanding access to all readers”. It doesn’t seem to mean uncapping loans without backing them with physical books. In fact, the part of the wiki you quoted is the first of two mentions of the word “waitlist”, a word that doesn’t appear in either of the sources cited for those sections.

            In fact, the first cited source says this:

            IA’s attorney argued that the publishers had not offered empirical evidence of market harm in this case, focusing on the fact that when a library lends out a CDL scan, it does so in lieu of a physical book, “simulating the limitations of physical books.” This is due to CDL’s “owned to loaned” ratio requirement: a library can only loan out the number of CDL scans as it has physical books in its collection, and can only loan these scans out to one patron at a time.

            And this:

            Plaintiffs discussed what they see as massive financial harm stemming from IA’s CDL program, which they estimated to amount to “millions of dollars in licensing revenues.” Plaintiffs also emphasized that, were CDL “given the green light,” or upheld as a fair use, the plaintiffs would suffer even greater losses.

            And this:

            CDL is a longstanding and established practice, which has seen adoption and growth in libraries across the country while the ebook licensing market has continued to thrive.

            So it seems easy for me to conclude, having checked Wikipedia’s sources, that the plaintiffs are challenging the Open Library CDL system itself, as a threat to their profits, even though IA was playing by the same rules as every other library system, and that IA losing this fight will be a major blow to libraries across the country:

            The judge also questioned whether CDL actually could represent such a loss: the publishers’ argument rests on the premise that libraries loan out CDL scans in lieu of paying to license ebooks, and were CDL not permitted under the law, IA and other libraries would instead choose to pay licensing fees to lend out ebooks. The judge pointed out that the result might in fact be that libraries would choose not to lend digital copies of works out at all, or would instead lend out physical books, undercutting the lost licensing revenue argument.

            Tl;Dr: Everything I said was correct, and the publishers want to establish precedent that definites physical books and ebooks and separately licensed so that libraries lend out fewer books, and/or have to pay more to loan out the same number of books that they currently do. They just chose IA as the first target hoping that smaller libraries will be forced into compliance should they win.

            Also, someone who knows how to effectively edit Wikipedia articles needs to overhaul that page, because it seems intentionally written to make IA look like they did something much worse than they actually did.