- cross-posted to:
- brainworms@lemm.ee
- academia
- cross-posted to:
- brainworms@lemm.ee
- academia
If you found out that 500,000 books had been removed from your local public library, at the demands of big publishers who refused to let them buy and lend new copies, and were further suing the library for damages, wouldn’t you think that would be a major news story? Wouldn’t you think many people would be up in arms about it?
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Name and shame these publishers, so that enthusiastic “curators” can “make libraries” of their entire catalogs.
All major ones, it’s that simple
And that’s the reason why sites like this one shouldn’t be registered and hosted in the USA.
They literally poked the bear. They had a copyright exception for the Wayback machine. Apparently they though it would be a good idea to put everything in danger by illegally sharing books. They say they should be exempt because they are a library but all libraries are still required to follow the law.
They shared them the exact same way regular libraries do it.
They didn’t though
That’s why they are getting sued.
As we’ve discussed at great length, the Internet Archive’s Open Library system is indistinguishable from the economics of how a regular library works. The Archive either purchases physical books or has them donated (just like a physical library). It then lends them out on a one-to-one basis (leaving aside a brief moment where it took down that barrier when basically all libraries were shut down due to pandemic lockdowns), such that when someone “borrows” a digital copy of a book, no one else can borrow that same copy.
The decision opens the door to doing the same thing to any library that offers digital copies of the books they own.
leaving aside a brief moment where it took down that barrier
That was the problem that started this mess. They aren’t even willing to admit that was the cause. If they would have admitted wrong doing off the bat and looked to settle the book publishers may of just left them alone. The problem is they can’t see past there own nose
Would have
Thanks
Thankfully libgen and annas archive are doing the lords work with backups.
We need distributed, back-ups of the net to be stored anonymously on IPFS (or something similar) running on I2P. Then publishers, Nintendo, the RIAA and many others could give up on these kinds of things.
No, that’s supporting piracy.
What the Internet Archive really needs it to stop breaking copyrights.
Bad take. Don’t be a bootlicker.
libgen to the rescue!
This is upsetting, but yet again this is ignoring the real reason they are being slammed and is misrepresenting things to try and support (the legitimately amazing) internet archive.
They willfully, intentionally, and very loudly broke the laws/agreements about how many copies of each book they could lend out simultaneously. I hope they win this. I hope more people become aware of this situation.
I also hope more coverage about this starts to be more honest and straightforward about why this is occurring.
You got downvoted by the hivemind because it’s unpopular, but you’re not wrong. IA flew in the face of existing copyright law by opening up their site to unlimited downloads. They knew the existing copyright law, because they had systems in place to comply. Then they intentionally disabled those systems, to blatantly violate existing copyright and licensing agreements. Pretty much everyone who understood copyright law went “uhh this is a horrible idea and you’re going to get sued so hard” but the IA forged ahead anyways.
Their entire argument has basically been “but we’re a library” and completely misses the fact that even public libraries need to comply with existing copyright and licensing laws. They can’t just allow unlimited downloads for ebooks; They purchase a specific number of licenses, can only lend out as many ebooks as they have licenses for, and then have to use time-locked DRM to ensure those rentals get automatically revoked when the check-out time is expired. All of this is well established, and IA used to comply with it fully. But again, they intentionally disabled those systems, which put them in violation of copyright law and their licensing agreements.
I love IA. I use it all the time. But they fucked around, and now they’re finding out that the large studded dildo of copyright violation lawsuits rarely arrives lubed.
I was super pissed at them when they made the move, as stuff like the wayback machine is far too important to risk by making unforced errors like this
Right? The US government was on there side and granted the Wayback machine a copyright exception. Apparently they let that go to the head.
The make this sound so bad but then you realize that the Internet Library never should of been giving these out to begin with. They complain about being sued but they were the ones that poked the bear.
Overall I think this author is a but out if touch
