My wife is a librarian. The elephant in the room here is that patrons are shifting toward a preference for digital distribution. However, Fair Use has not caught up. So, libraries end up spending a large portion of their operating budget "leasing" ebooks from publishers at extraordinary markup over the print copies. These leases are only good for so many "check outs" -- often as few as 4-6 -- after which point, the lease must be renewed at a price that can be 2X or 3X the cost of the print book. It's downright predatory.
IA may have gone beyond pushing the envelope and well into stepping over the line on this one, but it is an important legal challenge. I don't think IA will or should win, but I do hope that their loss shifts the needle of public opinion a bit toward actual Fair Use.
I’m glad to see this near the top of this post. The reality of what’s been happening to libraries in the shift to the digital age keeps getting ignored by everyone. For those of us who grew up only being able to afford reading books by borrowing from libraries, I’ve been dismayed to see so little discussion around this. Like other commenters have said, libraries wouldn’t exist if they were to be proposed today and I think that points to a fundamental problem with legislation.
> I don't think IA will or should win, but I do hope that their loss shifts the needle of public opinion a bit toward actual Fair Use.
I find it extremely bizarre the people make posts like this, essentially conceding that controlled digital lending should be legal, but then claiming that they shouldn't win. Why shouldn't they win? They're doing something reasonable, meritorious and not at all clearly prohibited.
Fair use is a defense against infringement, but what we could really use is copyright reform to enable building the digital library of alexandria without it being burned down immediately by infringement claims.
For this to happen, libraries might need something like:
1) first sale doctrine for ebooks
2) explicitly legalizing the distribution (and non-infringing use) of digital copying and transcoding technology with substantial non-infringing uses, similarly to the analog domain (see: photocopiers, VCRs, etc.)
This is your friendly reminder that, if libraries didn't predate copyright, they never would have existed because copyright owners would have argued it's a flagrant violation of copyright. Even given that libraries are clearly legal, copyright owners still try their utmost to make them illegal, because they're seen as lost purchases.
If I were only allowed to change one thing about copyright, what I would change is not the length of copyright terms, but the treatment of digital works. Kill this stupid pretend game that you don't buy anything digital, you merely lease it, and therefore the creator gets to jerk you around to their heart's content because contract law supersedes all. No, make a digital sale a sale, and then we get to have the First Sale Doctrine kick in. And hopefully we get to sit back and enjoy the schadenfreude as they repeatedly go to SCOTUS as the printer manufacturers do with some new harebrained attempt to work around First Sale Doctrine and SCOTUS goes "lol, nope, doesn't work."
But truly, fuck the ebook lending practices. It's downright predatory and it just makes me never want to actually buy an ebook (unless it's from one of the few publishers that goes all-in on DRM-free ebooks).
Maybe it's time for libraries to focus on the physical aspect... and education, for example teaching people how to pirate digital copies without getting malware.
For ebooks, pirates can provide the public library service.
The economics of it seem quite different for rare books that might be checked out once a year versus popular books that are in constant demand.
It seems like for academic research, storing a large collection of unpopular books is what matters. Making best-sellers available to many local readers is a different function.
> My wife is a librarian. The elephant in the room here is that patrons are shifting toward a preference for digital distribution. However, Fair Use has not caught up. So, libraries end up spending a large portion of their operating budget "leasing" ebooks from publishers at extraordinary markup over the print copies. These leases are only good for so many "check outs" -- often as few as 4-6 -- after which point, the lease must be renewed at a price that can be 2X or 3X the cost of the print book. It's downright predatory.
> IA may have gone beyond pushing the envelope and well into stepping over the line on this one, but it is an important legal challenge. I don't think IA will or should win, but I do hope that their loss shifts the needle of public opinion a bit toward actual Fair Use.
Very unlikely that would happen and libraries would inevitably pay the ultimate price in the long run in a period where they're under attack and most at risk of extinction from all fronts (politicians, governments, publishers, copyright cartel, list goes on all hate libraries and this would be a huge win for those groups as a sign to cripple them even more).
It makes me incredibly sad to see the Internet Archive continue to argue that a DRM system (which is what controlled digital lending is) is a liberatory technology whose usage should be expanded. Libraries should stop lighting money on fire buying expensive short-lived licenses from publishers, and start referring patrons to LibGen, Anna's Archive, Sci-Hub, etc.
Do you think the authors and editors should be compensated for their work? Charging for use seems to be a pretty straight forward way to reward the people who create good books.
The "National Emergency Library" was obviously a huge mistake, and I'm surprised that IA continues to defend it. The problem is, their online book lending is far from the most important part of the Internet Archive, and by continuing to fight for it, they risk losing everything, including the entire rest of the archive which seems to me to be far more important.
The Internet Archive has become the de-facto default location to upload anything rare, important, or valuable, and a terrifyingly large amount of history would suddenly blink from existence if it were brought down.
You are directing your ire at the wrong party. Hachette has nothing to gain from continuing to pursue this lawsuit, the only possible outcome (as you correctly state) is the world becomes a worse place. The behavior they object to has already stopped, and they've got a judgment to prevent it happening again. Hachette could drop enforcement of the judgment, both parties can dismiss the appeal, and no one loses anything.
Hachette's owners see an opportunity here to destroy a public good, and they are taking it. Hachette are the bad actors trying to destroy what you find valuable, not the IA.
> The Internet Archive has become the de-facto default location to upload anything rare, important, or valuable, and a terrifyingly large amount of history would suddenly blink from existence if it were brought down.
Here's the related discussion: Stop using the Internet Archive as the sole host for preservation projects | 87 points by yours truly | 27 days ago | 27 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39908676
> a terrifyingly large amount of history would suddenly blink from existence
One response to that is the "The Offline Internet Archive" [0], which includes software to crawl Internet Archive collections and store them to a local server [1].
While I agree that the book lending is only a small portion of the value provided by the IA, it makes sense that they're making a stand here. Losing this battle would establish precedent that format-shifting legally aquired copies of media is not protected under fair use, which would be disastrous to preservation efforts of all kinds going forward.
The lawsuit is not about the “National Emergency Library”.
It’s about, as the IA calls it, “Controlled Digital Lending” - which the IA was doing before and after the “emergency”, and is still doing now. The idea that, if they have a physical copy of a book, they can lend, one-for-one, a digital copy.
The “National Emergency Library” was basically uncontrolled - they were ‘lending’ digital copies of books they did not have physical copies of. But there are no lawsuits about that - presumably because they stopped and it would be bad publicity fore book companies to pursue them about it now. I do wonder if it’s what precipitated the book companies’ ire - but I also think a lawsuit about “Controlled Digital Lending” was coming sooner or later anyway.
My problem with the "rest of the archive" is that it's arguably 98% unchecked mass piracy that their own people seem to be ok with, in the form of "we're not copyright police, so just upload whatever you want and let companies deal with it later." which is exactly what Jason Scott has said.
> The problem is, their online book lending is far from the most important part of the Internet Archive,
I disagree. Archiving information for future researchers is valuable, but giving access to information to people right now is also very valuable. Most people's access to texts for research is very shallow, unless they are part of a research university. Google Books hosts many works that are out of copyright, but there is a century-long dead zone that is inaccessible.
I write a history of technology blog and the Internet Archive lending service has saved me thousands of dollars and many hours that it would have taken to track down the same research materials on eBay. Realistically, I just wouldn't have bothered, and the material I write would be of lower quality or not get written at all.
(That said I do agree that the emergency library was a strategic and legal mistake.)
"last-ditch effort to save itself" is the title, "things aren't looking good for the Internet's archivist" the subtitle. But no mention of what losing the lawsuit actually means for IA: is it actually existential as the title and subtitle are alluding to? That's the only thing I care about if we assume (1) the IA is important and (2) they're gonna lose, both of which I think virtually everyone thinks are realistic statements. Bit disappointed by the article because it's rehashing what we know
Edit: found the answer
> per Wikipedia, as of eight months ago (August 2023), the lawsuit parties already reached & had the court approve a negotiated settlement that caps the potential costs to the IA at a survivable level
^from another comment, <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40203627>, nearly at the very bottom of the thread (perhaps because it looks like a wall of text at first glance? But the most important info is first). Thanks, gojomo!
I just hope this appeal cannot make it worse than it is. Sounds like it will soon again be a good time to donate to the IA: they survive, plaintiffs see there is nothing more to take, then we fund their regular operations and hope for no more "emergency" ideas
> I just hope this appeal cannot make it worse than it is.
Sadly, it will get worse. There will be more lawsuits like this opening up once this is over. They're already in a lawsuit from the music publishing industry which threatens to wipe out the Great 78 project and I'm sure the video game industry are prepping for one of their own as well:
[1] > They already have an unresolved pending lawsuit from the music publishing industry which threatens to wipe out the Great 78 project though this lawsuit, IMO, is much more dubious because so many of recordings digitized were originally published prior to 1928 and should in theory be public works. The publishers claim that because they still sell modern versions of those recordings, they are still actively covered under copyright but as long as the IA is sourcing from media pressed before 1928 I don't think that argument is valid but again this is a country ran by corporations, its entirely possible the IA gets shafted just to keep some corporate donors happy.
[2] > Now that the book publishers lawsuit is nearing finalization (I don't see this making it up to the Supreme Court, and even if it does the current supreme court is probably the most corporate friendly court in history) and there has been almost nothing in the way of meaningful public outcry (no, normal people do not care about random people/bots screaming on twitter from their moms basement) we are going to see more lawsuits from other industries which feel like they have been harmed in some way by the Internet Archive. One which I PROMISE is coming, and I am amazed it hasn't yet, is a lawsuit from the video game publishing industry. Archive.org has, over the last decade or so, become a hub for hosting ROMS for basically every video game platform ever made. The IA, at one time, was very good about quickly removing things like REDUMP romsets but has over the years seemingly embraced hosting them. I cannot fathom why they thought that was a good idea, or necessary. Retro gaming isn't a niche hobby anymore, its a billion dollar business they've put themselves firmly in the crosshairs of. Gaming corporations are some of the most litigious corporations on the face of the earth, and the kicker is these files are not in any danger at all. Literally any commercially released game for a commercially released video game platform has 10000 websites that are hosting those files, and those websites continue to exist because they get enough traffic to be profitable through ad revenue, and they are easy enough to quickly dismantle in the even of a cease and desist and then have spring back up 10 days later under a new name with a slightly different layout. The IA does not have that luxury.
Regardless of the legal merits of the Internet Archive's case, and regardless of Hachette Book Group's insistence otherwise, it's clear from Hachette's arguments and public statements that they would be happiest if public libraries altogether didn't exist and fair use was erased from law.
And regardless of what the law is, the Internet Archive an other libraries should be allowed to lend out a digitized copy of a physical book they own while the physical book is not in use (i.e. controlled digital lending). This is especially true for books without an official digital edition. Hachette doesn't want this, because they want to extract as much revenue from libraries as possible through continuing subscription fees for digital catalogs.
Finally, while I agree that the Internet Archive's arguments that the National Emergency Library's unlimited lending should be fair use were always tenuous, I'm still saddened that the arguments failed, and think the precedent their failure sets is much worse for society than the precedent from their success would have been.
"At bottom, [the Internet Archive’s] fair use defense rests on the notion that lawfully acquiring a copyrighted print book entitles the recipient to make an unauthorized copy and distribute it in place of the print book, so long as it does not simultaneously lend the print book. But no case or legal principle supports that notion. Every authority points the other direction."
First of all, why isn't that supported? Why shouldn't they be allowed to distribute that book digitally at a 1:1 ratio?
Secondly, isn't this part of what their case is arguing for though? Wouldn't this be the case that sets that precedent?
Of particular relevance is subsection (g) which explicitly states distributing the one copy permitted under this law multiple times simultaneously is illegal.
> Maybe you and I are on the side of The Internet Archive. Maybe we are such big fans of Archive.org that we want to come to their defense.
> But feelings don't matter here. Only facts. And the facts are simple. The Archive's actions and statements (and questionable legal defense) have all but ensured a loss in this case.
This is what has surprised me about people's defense of IA. When you look at the facts and ignore the admittedly good work they do elsewhere, it's clear that they not only ran afoul of the law but thumbed their noses at it. But so many people are quick to come to its defense because they love IA so much for the other stuff they do and don't want it to go away.
I wanted to write a piece of FOSS that would allow dissemination of a large dataset. It would basically work kind of like a torrent swarm, you'd have a "tracker" (the Internet Archive) deciding what it wants each person to store (usually the rarest content would get stored preferentially), and the user could say "I want to donate 2 TB of space to the Internet Archive" and would download whatever files the IA thought were most at risk of being lost.
This would have the added benefit that, if the IA went down, the public could reconstruct (some of) the dataset from this swarm.
I spoke to a few archiving organizations about whether they'd find it useful, but there wasn't much interest. Too bad, I think a lot of people would like to donate some disk space right about now.
Hopefully in the far future the IA will be distributed over many individual user nodes, but that doesn't seem feasible right now. What we need right now are 2-4 high powered individuals or companies building local mirrors. Hopefully the IA would cooperate in setting these up. These mirror organizations should be distributed around the globe in different jurisdictions, and they need to take the negative lessons from IA into account: for example, they should probably be structured such that the legally precarious data-serving arm is a different entity from the organization that owns the server space.
We absolutely need this kind of resilience, and we need it now. Otherwise this time will retroactively be dubbed the digital dark ages because so very little information actually survived and made it out.
Someone in this thread was estimating about USD 2M investment in hardware, then 1M facilities and a small team of people for initial setup, plus connectivity costs and maintenance - let's say 4M initially and about 1M ongoing costs yearly. A single wealthy individual could fund one of these sites. You don't even have to be "rich" to fund this, being well off would be enough.
If you fit this description and you're feeling altruistic or are looking for a lasting legacy that will benefit humanity far into the future, use a portion of your capital to make this happen.
There's a lot of sentiment here uncritically equating "right" to "the law". Yes, they almost certainly will not win because it seems (at least to a layperson like me) that they've broken the law. However, that doesn't mean the law is right.
> There's a lot of sentiment here uncritically equating "right" to "the law".
No, that is not what's happening and you are willfully misreading the people who disagree with you. The people who oppose IA's decision are doing this because it was foolish to tie the continued existence of the Archive to a designed-to-fail protest action. I encourage protesting unjust laws, but if you set things up so that your inherently-doomed protest will take a critical piece of infrastructure down with you, people are going to be pissed. Don't take something people rely on and make it collateral damage.
Should I assume that this latest tilt at a windmill is going to cause IA to get decapitated by a blade, and start preparing for a world without the Wayback Machine and the other legally non-controversial bits of IA?
Is it too late for them to turn back from this craziness and settle out of court for a non-fatal amount?
If this makes the IA website go down, we are going to lose so much important internet history. For example, Garry’s Mod recently had almost all of its Nintendo addons taken down, and they were republished on the IA. So if we lose the IA, we might honestly lose quite a lot of preserved media, between games, videos, audio, and everything else.
I love IA but honestly they're almost not a library anymore. You can find entire ROMsets for a lot of consoles for games that are still being commercially sold both physically and digitally, you can download without any kinds of restrictions (no attempts at controlled digital lending or anything like it), and without having to see a bunch of ads for "Horny and Single MILFS in your area".
You can also download full TV series that are currently still available on Netflix and full movies and lots of other stuff. I'm all for archiving, and I think they'd have a case if this were Abandonware or Lost Media, but I fear that a lot of stuff on there simply isn't and their ambivalence towards flagrant abuses of copyright is going to get them repeatedly sued.
It's annoying, because IA is a wonderful resource and it would be a shame if they get sued out of existence.
Yep, as I said here a few minutes ago, there will be more lawsuits like this coming and the big one should be coming from the video game publishing industry: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40214377
From the headline to the details, this is a deeply misinformed take on the arguments, current case status, & possible outcomes.
"Save itself"?
Despite occasional prior histrionic kayfabe about "IA in existential danger" in the media (& HN threads) – sometimes fanned by the IA's supporters themselves – that's never been the real stakes.
For the serious librarians, publishing businesspeople, and lawyers involved, this has been about legal clarity for a gray area at the intersection of copyright, fair use, & traditional rights of first-sale and library practices. It's not really about damages, nor the IA's (or traditional publishers') existence. Instead: the principles controlling what's allowable going forward.
To that end, per Wikipedia, as of eight months ago (August 2023), the lawsuit parties already reached & had the court approve a negotiated settlement that caps the potential costs to the IA at a survivable level, & sets ground rules for future similar e-book activities that the Hachette et al (4 major publishers) plaintiffs and AAP (publishers' trade group) find acceptable. But further: this mutual settlement permits IA to continue its legal appeal on the principles involved.
> On August 11, 2023, the parties reached a negotiated judgment. The agreement prescribes a permanent injunction against the Internet Archive preventing it from distributing the plaintiffs' books, except those for which no e-book is currently available,[3] as well as an undisclosed payment to the plaintiffs.[25][26] The agreement also preserves the right for the Internet Archive to appeal the previous ruling.[25][26]
That is: the publishers were never b-movie villains trying to destroy a public resource; the IA was never reckless anarchists gambling all its other programs for a quixotic legal precedent. They were all adults with a legitimate legal dispute about what's allowed, seeking a clear definitive resolution in the culturally-appropriate manner.
And via the settlement and appeal, the parties are still working out the issues.
This author misdescribes the IA as "a profitable enterprise (bringing in between $20 and $30 million per year) that is on the verge of a potentially devastating legal ruling which could put [it] out of business". But IA is a non-profit, arguing for a mission-critical principle – a principle which is a plausible extrapolation of existing fair-use rights and library/IA practices into a new domain. And it's doing so with explicit permission under the existing settlement, capping financial risks far below any existential risk.
This author further deceptively excerpts IA's central argument as being just "Controlled digital lending is not equivalent to posting an ebook online for anyone to read". Against this, the author writes, essentially, "nuh-uh, that's exactly what they did".
In fact the full necessary context of IA's argument is:
> First, Publishers disregard the key feature of controlled digital lending: the controls that ensure borrowing a book digitally adheres to the same owned-to-loaned ratio inherent in borrowing a book physically. Publishers repeatedly compare IA’s lending to inapposite practices that lack this key feature. Controlled digital lending is not equivalent to posting an ebook online for anyone to read or copy (contra Resp.Br. 27) or to peer-to-peer file-sharing by companies like Napster (contra Resp.Br. 5). Neither practice is based on use of a library’s lawfully acquired physical copy, and neither ensures that only the one person entitled to borrow the book (or recording) can access it at a time. Controlled digital lending is also distinct from the digital resale considered in Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi, Inc., 910 F.3d 649 (2d Cir. 2018). Contra Resp.Br. 35. The former’s purpose is nonprofit library lending, while the latter’s was commercial resale. Controlled digital lending is fair use, even if these other practices are not.
That is: the heart of IA argument is that its "controlled digital lending" practices were technologically limited in purpose and duration to be like libraries' other traditional legal reuses of owned works. (Typically, this meant maintaining the 1:1 physical-copy-to-leant-ebook ratio, but even under the temporary "National Emergency Library" program, it meant no permanent unrestricted copies were created – all rights-managed borrowings could and did expire when the crisis ended and normal book sources reopened.)
This author's manipulative clipping distorts the IA's filing into a strawman not matching the actual arguments advanced.
The main purpose is that there will be more lawsuits coming their way once this is over and it's doubtful whether they can survive them when not if it happens. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40214377
The discussion here makes for tawdry reading I must say. If the relatively technologically capable are apparently predominantly convinced now that copying a file is the same as stealing a physical good then the Internet Archive is already in bad shape.
It's surprising to me the internet archive isn't raking in the money selling AI training data. There are so many quality resources that aren't available on the internet anymore and aren't discoverable.
There is another story on the HN front page about the FCC fining wireless carriers for sharing location data. Someone left a comment comparing the fine for each carrier to their yearly revenue. The biggest fine was for only 0.1% of the carrier's yearly revenue.
What the Internet Archive did was obviously illegal, no matter how well intentioned, and I'm disappointed in how they've handled the situation. But what those carriers did is arguably much worse in regards to the public good. So why is the IA looking at its potential end while those carriers receive wrist slaps?
As a regular user of this wonderful archive.org project, I found it a pitty that no agreement could be found with editors such as Hachette regarding old books.
Without archive.org, it seems no money at all was made from them.
A subscription to access these old books would be a win-win, with a part redistributed to editors.
Access could be made from archive.org or why not, directed to a frame in editor websites.
Same for old magazines which are really appreciated by the retrocomputing community.
[+] [-] nanolith|1 year ago|reply
IA may have gone beyond pushing the envelope and well into stepping over the line on this one, but it is an important legal challenge. I don't think IA will or should win, but I do hope that their loss shifts the needle of public opinion a bit toward actual Fair Use.
[+] [-] hysan|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] AnthonyMouse|1 year ago|reply
I find it extremely bizarre the people make posts like this, essentially conceding that controlled digital lending should be legal, but then claiming that they shouldn't win. Why shouldn't they win? They're doing something reasonable, meritorious and not at all clearly prohibited.
[+] [-] musicale|1 year ago|reply
For this to happen, libraries might need something like:
1) first sale doctrine for ebooks
2) explicitly legalizing the distribution (and non-infringing use) of digital copying and transcoding technology with substantial non-infringing uses, similarly to the analog domain (see: photocopiers, VCRs, etc.)
[+] [-] jcranmer|1 year ago|reply
If I were only allowed to change one thing about copyright, what I would change is not the length of copyright terms, but the treatment of digital works. Kill this stupid pretend game that you don't buy anything digital, you merely lease it, and therefore the creator gets to jerk you around to their heart's content because contract law supersedes all. No, make a digital sale a sale, and then we get to have the First Sale Doctrine kick in. And hopefully we get to sit back and enjoy the schadenfreude as they repeatedly go to SCOTUS as the printer manufacturers do with some new harebrained attempt to work around First Sale Doctrine and SCOTUS goes "lol, nope, doesn't work."
But truly, fuck the ebook lending practices. It's downright predatory and it just makes me never want to actually buy an ebook (unless it's from one of the few publishers that goes all-in on DRM-free ebooks).
[+] [-] tgsovlerkhgsel|1 year ago|reply
For ebooks, pirates can provide the public library service.
[+] [-] skybrian|1 year ago|reply
It seems like for academic research, storing a large collection of unpopular books is what matters. Making best-sellers available to many local readers is a different function.
[+] [-] leotravis10|1 year ago|reply
If you haven't read this, now's the time to: https://buttondown.email/ninelives/archive/the-coming-enshit...
> IA may have gone beyond pushing the envelope and well into stepping over the line on this one, but it is an important legal challenge. I don't think IA will or should win, but I do hope that their loss shifts the needle of public opinion a bit toward actual Fair Use.
Very unlikely that would happen and libraries would inevitably pay the ultimate price in the long run in a period where they're under attack and most at risk of extinction from all fronts (politicians, governments, publishers, copyright cartel, list goes on all hate libraries and this would be a huge win for those groups as a sign to cripple them even more).
[+] [-] yjftsjthsd-h|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] greyface-|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] xhkkffbf|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] LeoPanthera|1 year ago|reply
The Internet Archive has become the de-facto default location to upload anything rare, important, or valuable, and a terrifyingly large amount of history would suddenly blink from existence if it were brought down.
[+] [-] coldpie|1 year ago|reply
Hachette's owners see an opportunity here to destroy a public good, and they are taking it. Hachette are the bad actors trying to destroy what you find valuable, not the IA.
[+] [-] leotravis10|1 year ago|reply
Here's the related discussion: Stop using the Internet Archive as the sole host for preservation projects | 87 points by yours truly | 27 days ago | 27 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39908676
[+] [-] tithe|1 year ago|reply
One response to that is the "The Offline Internet Archive" [0], which includes software to crawl Internet Archive collections and store them to a local server [1].
[0] https://archive.org/about/offline-archive
[1] https://github.com/internetarchive/dweb-mirror
[+] [-] idle_zealot|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jrmg|1 year ago|reply
It’s about, as the IA calls it, “Controlled Digital Lending” - which the IA was doing before and after the “emergency”, and is still doing now. The idea that, if they have a physical copy of a book, they can lend, one-for-one, a digital copy.
The “National Emergency Library” was basically uncontrolled - they were ‘lending’ digital copies of books they did not have physical copies of. But there are no lawsuits about that - presumably because they stopped and it would be bad publicity fore book companies to pursue them about it now. I do wonder if it’s what precipitated the book companies’ ire - but I also think a lawsuit about “Controlled Digital Lending” was coming sooner or later anyway.
[+] [-] bombcar|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ranger_danger|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] darksim905|1 year ago|reply
Context?
[+] [-] ideamotor|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] cfmcdonald|1 year ago|reply
I disagree. Archiving information for future researchers is valuable, but giving access to information to people right now is also very valuable. Most people's access to texts for research is very shallow, unless they are part of a research university. Google Books hosts many works that are out of copyright, but there is a century-long dead zone that is inaccessible.
I write a history of technology blog and the Internet Archive lending service has saved me thousands of dollars and many hours that it would have taken to track down the same research materials on eBay. Realistically, I just wouldn't have bothered, and the material I write would be of lower quality or not get written at all.
(That said I do agree that the emergency library was a strategic and legal mistake.)
[+] [-] lucb1e|1 year ago|reply
Edit: found the answer
> per Wikipedia, as of eight months ago (August 2023), the lawsuit parties already reached & had the court approve a negotiated settlement that caps the potential costs to the IA at a survivable level
^from another comment, <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40203627>, nearly at the very bottom of the thread (perhaps because it looks like a wall of text at first glance? But the most important info is first). Thanks, gojomo!
I just hope this appeal cannot make it worse than it is. Sounds like it will soon again be a good time to donate to the IA: they survive, plaintiffs see there is nothing more to take, then we fund their regular operations and hope for no more "emergency" ideas
[+] [-] dada78641|1 year ago|reply
It cannot. The IA already basically got the worst possible judgment.
This is also not an existential threat to the IA, and payment has already been agreed upon. The reporting on this is extremely sensationalist.
[+] [-] leotravis10|1 year ago|reply
Sadly, it will get worse. There will be more lawsuits like this opening up once this is over. They're already in a lawsuit from the music publishing industry which threatens to wipe out the Great 78 project and I'm sure the video game industry are prepping for one of their own as well:
[1] > They already have an unresolved pending lawsuit from the music publishing industry which threatens to wipe out the Great 78 project though this lawsuit, IMO, is much more dubious because so many of recordings digitized were originally published prior to 1928 and should in theory be public works. The publishers claim that because they still sell modern versions of those recordings, they are still actively covered under copyright but as long as the IA is sourcing from media pressed before 1928 I don't think that argument is valid but again this is a country ran by corporations, its entirely possible the IA gets shafted just to keep some corporate donors happy.
[2] > Now that the book publishers lawsuit is nearing finalization (I don't see this making it up to the Supreme Court, and even if it does the current supreme court is probably the most corporate friendly court in history) and there has been almost nothing in the way of meaningful public outcry (no, normal people do not care about random people/bots screaming on twitter from their moms basement) we are going to see more lawsuits from other industries which feel like they have been harmed in some way by the Internet Archive. One which I PROMISE is coming, and I am amazed it hasn't yet, is a lawsuit from the video game publishing industry. Archive.org has, over the last decade or so, become a hub for hosting ROMS for basically every video game platform ever made. The IA, at one time, was very good about quickly removing things like REDUMP romsets but has over the years seemingly embraced hosting them. I cannot fathom why they thought that was a good idea, or necessary. Retro gaming isn't a niche hobby anymore, its a billion dollar business they've put themselves firmly in the crosshairs of. Gaming corporations are some of the most litigious corporations on the face of the earth, and the kicker is these files are not in any danger at all. Literally any commercially released game for a commercially released video game platform has 10000 websites that are hosting those files, and those websites continue to exist because they get enough traffic to be profitable through ad revenue, and they are easy enough to quickly dismantle in the even of a cease and desist and then have spring back up 10 days later under a new name with a slightly different layout. The IA does not have that luxury.
[1] [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1bswhdj/if_the...
Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39908676
[+] [-] GrantMoyer|1 year ago|reply
And regardless of what the law is, the Internet Archive an other libraries should be allowed to lend out a digitized copy of a physical book they own while the physical book is not in use (i.e. controlled digital lending). This is especially true for books without an official digital edition. Hachette doesn't want this, because they want to extract as much revenue from libraries as possible through continuing subscription fees for digital catalogs.
Finally, while I agree that the Internet Archive's arguments that the National Emergency Library's unlimited lending should be fair use were always tenuous, I'm still saddened that the arguments failed, and think the precedent their failure sets is much worse for society than the precedent from their success would have been.
[+] [-] _aavaa_|1 year ago|reply
First of all, why isn't that supported? Why shouldn't they be allowed to distribute that book digitally at a 1:1 ratio?
Secondly, isn't this part of what their case is arguing for though? Wouldn't this be the case that sets that precedent?
[+] [-] Dalewyn|1 year ago|reply
Of particular relevance is subsection (g) which explicitly states distributing the one copy permitted under this law multiple times simultaneously is illegal.
[+] [-] jawns|1 year ago|reply
> But feelings don't matter here. Only facts. And the facts are simple. The Archive's actions and statements (and questionable legal defense) have all but ensured a loss in this case.
This is what has surprised me about people's defense of IA. When you look at the facts and ignore the admittedly good work they do elsewhere, it's clear that they not only ran afoul of the law but thumbed their noses at it. But so many people are quick to come to its defense because they love IA so much for the other stuff they do and don't want it to go away.
[+] [-] stavros|1 year ago|reply
This would have the added benefit that, if the IA went down, the public could reconstruct (some of) the dataset from this swarm.
I spoke to a few archiving organizations about whether they'd find it useful, but there wasn't much interest. Too bad, I think a lot of people would like to donate some disk space right about now.
[+] [-] Udo|1 year ago|reply
We absolutely need this kind of resilience, and we need it now. Otherwise this time will retroactively be dubbed the digital dark ages because so very little information actually survived and made it out.
Someone in this thread was estimating about USD 2M investment in hardware, then 1M facilities and a small team of people for initial setup, plus connectivity costs and maintenance - let's say 4M initially and about 1M ongoing costs yearly. A single wealthy individual could fund one of these sites. You don't even have to be "rich" to fund this, being well off would be enough.
If you fit this description and you're feeling altruistic or are looking for a lasting legacy that will benefit humanity far into the future, use a portion of your capital to make this happen.
[+] [-] ghusto|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] acuozzo|1 year ago|reply
I wonder what percentage of the population is stuck in stage 4 of Kohlberg's "Stages of Moral Development".
[+] [-] Analemma_|1 year ago|reply
No, that is not what's happening and you are willfully misreading the people who disagree with you. The people who oppose IA's decision are doing this because it was foolish to tie the continued existence of the Archive to a designed-to-fail protest action. I encourage protesting unjust laws, but if you set things up so that your inherently-doomed protest will take a critical piece of infrastructure down with you, people are going to be pissed. Don't take something people rely on and make it collateral damage.
[+] [-] mostlysimilar|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] geye1234|1 year ago|reply
Is it too late for them to turn back from this craziness and settle out of court for a non-fatal amount?
[+] [-] favorited|1 year ago|reply
They have already done so. Part of that settlement allowed them to appeal the result, which is what this is.
[+] [-] ethanholt1|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tombert|1 year ago|reply
You can also download full TV series that are currently still available on Netflix and full movies and lots of other stuff. I'm all for archiving, and I think they'd have a case if this were Abandonware or Lost Media, but I fear that a lot of stuff on there simply isn't and their ambivalence towards flagrant abuses of copyright is going to get them repeatedly sued.
It's annoying, because IA is a wonderful resource and it would be a shame if they get sued out of existence.
[+] [-] criddell|1 year ago|reply
The IA wants to preserve digital media. Sometimes it’s a website, sometimes it’s a CD, sometimes it’s a ROM image, and sometimes it’s a scan of paper.
In the end though, I don’t think it’s the archiving part that got them in trouble. It was providing access to that archive.
[+] [-] leotravis10|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] RecycledEle|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gojomo|1 year ago|reply
"Save itself"?
Despite occasional prior histrionic kayfabe about "IA in existential danger" in the media (& HN threads) – sometimes fanned by the IA's supporters themselves – that's never been the real stakes.
For the serious librarians, publishing businesspeople, and lawyers involved, this has been about legal clarity for a gray area at the intersection of copyright, fair use, & traditional rights of first-sale and library practices. It's not really about damages, nor the IA's (or traditional publishers') existence. Instead: the principles controlling what's allowable going forward.
To that end, per Wikipedia, as of eight months ago (August 2023), the lawsuit parties already reached & had the court approve a negotiated settlement that caps the potential costs to the IA at a survivable level, & sets ground rules for future similar e-book activities that the Hachette et al (4 major publishers) plaintiffs and AAP (publishers' trade group) find acceptable. But further: this mutual settlement permits IA to continue its legal appeal on the principles involved.
From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachette_v._Internet_Archive#F...>:
> On August 11, 2023, the parties reached a negotiated judgment. The agreement prescribes a permanent injunction against the Internet Archive preventing it from distributing the plaintiffs' books, except those for which no e-book is currently available,[3] as well as an undisclosed payment to the plaintiffs.[25][26] The agreement also preserves the right for the Internet Archive to appeal the previous ruling.[25][26]
That is: the publishers were never b-movie villains trying to destroy a public resource; the IA was never reckless anarchists gambling all its other programs for a quixotic legal precedent. They were all adults with a legitimate legal dispute about what's allowed, seeking a clear definitive resolution in the culturally-appropriate manner.
And via the settlement and appeal, the parties are still working out the issues.
This author misdescribes the IA as "a profitable enterprise (bringing in between $20 and $30 million per year) that is on the verge of a potentially devastating legal ruling which could put [it] out of business". But IA is a non-profit, arguing for a mission-critical principle – a principle which is a plausible extrapolation of existing fair-use rights and library/IA practices into a new domain. And it's doing so with explicit permission under the existing settlement, capping financial risks far below any existential risk.
This author further deceptively excerpts IA's central argument as being just "Controlled digital lending is not equivalent to posting an ebook online for anyone to read". Against this, the author writes, essentially, "nuh-uh, that's exactly what they did".
In fact the full necessary context of IA's argument is:
> First, Publishers disregard the key feature of controlled digital lending: the controls that ensure borrowing a book digitally adheres to the same owned-to-loaned ratio inherent in borrowing a book physically. Publishers repeatedly compare IA’s lending to inapposite practices that lack this key feature. Controlled digital lending is not equivalent to posting an ebook online for anyone to read or copy (contra Resp.Br. 27) or to peer-to-peer file-sharing by companies like Napster (contra Resp.Br. 5). Neither practice is based on use of a library’s lawfully acquired physical copy, and neither ensures that only the one person entitled to borrow the book (or recording) can access it at a time. Controlled digital lending is also distinct from the digital resale considered in Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi, Inc., 910 F.3d 649 (2d Cir. 2018). Contra Resp.Br. 35. The former’s purpose is nonprofit library lending, while the latter’s was commercial resale. Controlled digital lending is fair use, even if these other practices are not.
That is: the heart of IA argument is that its "controlled digital lending" practices were technologically limited in purpose and duration to be like libraries' other traditional legal reuses of owned works. (Typically, this meant maintaining the 1:1 physical-copy-to-leant-ebook ratio, but even under the temporary "National Emergency Library" program, it meant no permanent unrestricted copies were created – all rights-managed borrowings could and did expire when the crisis ended and normal book sources reopened.)
This author's manipulative clipping distorts the IA's filing into a strawman not matching the actual arguments advanced.
[+] [-] squigz|1 year ago|reply
Wait. Does this mean the IA can't lend books that the publishers currently sell ebooks for?
[+] [-] leotravis10|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sourcepluck|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] uuddlrlrbaba|1 year ago|reply
Its so frustrating that copyright claims provide riches to the middlemen while buyers/consumers and authors/artists get screwed over again and again.
[+] [-] throwaway48476|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] CivBase|1 year ago|reply
What the Internet Archive did was obviously illegal, no matter how well intentioned, and I'm disappointed in how they've handled the situation. But what those carriers did is arguably much worse in regards to the public good. So why is the IA looking at its potential end while those carriers receive wrist slaps?
[+] [-] kryptonomist|1 year ago|reply
Without archive.org, it seems no money at all was made from them. A subscription to access these old books would be a win-win, with a part redistributed to editors. Access could be made from archive.org or why not, directed to a frame in editor websites.
Same for old magazines which are really appreciated by the retrocomputing community.