Internet Archive being sued

[Synobun]

Correct, the US is behind the times, as usual.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Lending_Right

 

[Goodfella]

Correct, the US is behind the times, as usual.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Lending_Right

I don't have a horse in this race, but playing devil's advocate, I'll bite on the notion that the Public Lending Right is something we should categorize on the spectrum of "progress." I think you will need to substantiate that claim.

It seems that the PLR can mean a few things depending on to whom you're speaking. It would usually involve a right for the author or copyright owner to control or restrict libraries' and buyers' ability to loan the copyrighted work publicly. I'd find it odd, in a thread devoted to lamenting the possible restriction of access to library books, if this "right" went unchallenged since it fundamentally involves the ability of copyright owners/authors to restrict lending access. In fact, in the very wikipedia article you linked me to the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) even criticizes this right, "IFLA believes that the lending of published materials by libraries should not be restricted by legislation..." and "IFLA does not favour the principles of 'lending right', which can jeopardize free access to the services of publicly accessible libraries, which is the citizen's human right." The argument is that the mere existence of a "right" to restrict libraries' ability to distribute books could create a slippery slope where copyright holders further harm libraries. Could it not be more progressive to have the US framework, where there is a lower possibility and no precedent for restricted access?

I'm guessing you're more focused on the specific payment of the author under PLR. I'm guessing you may see this as "progressive" because it involves payments directly to the authors, as opposed to the publishers, and therefore supports David in a David vs. Goliath situation. However, this really seems like a tool for smaller countries to subsidize local culture and art creation. Countries like Denmark, of course, have public funding for their film industries and so on. The United States obviously has a huge film and publishing industry and has (to my knowledge) rarely found need to subsidize these industries (let's set aside tax incentives for the film industry in Atlanta and Toronto, which are not fundamentally "cultural subsidies"). In this light, I fail to see how a country without a need for cultural subsidies is somehow regressive for not implementing them.

Moreover, I'm not sure if these remunerations for lending are necessary, regardless of the PLR program's intention. Again from the IFLA, "While the cultural and social support for authors that most existing PLR schemes provide is indeed laudable, the justification usually given for PLR - that the use of copyright works through public libraries detracts from primary sales - is unproven. In fact, lending by publicly accessible libraries often assists in the marketing of copyright works and encourages sales."

Overall, I think there's a lot of meat involved in this topic. I would be cautious to summarily categorize a dry issue of copyright law as a matter of progress akin to civil rights or curing some disease.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

The Internet Archive is in the U.S. anyways, so I think it'd....kind of fall under the first doctrine thing. It might be a bit weird because from what I recall they scan the books, stick the physical copy out of circulation somewhere, and then make the digital copy available for lending.

Removing all the waitlist (so that multiple people could simultaneously borrow the same digital copy at the same time) was their mistake here. I hope the courts will take into consideration the whole situation with the pandemic closing down all the other libraries and making a lot of the books otherwise inaccessible.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Open Library did a quiet update a few days ago. Since then, a lot of books are suddenly 1-hour only borrows.

Who can read a novel in an hour? Yes, you can re-borrow, but if it's a popular book....this kind of defeats the entire purpose of the OL.

 

[Commodore]

Correct, the US is behind the times, as usual.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Lending_Right

How does that mean we are behind the times? That just seems like a policy aimed at placating greedy authors that feel people should have to pay them to have access to knowledge and literature at the taxpayers' expense.

Lately I've kinda been growing weary of the concept of intellectual property, especially for works of art and literature. I've been swinging around to the belief that such creative works should be considered the property of all of humanity and shouldn't be allowed to be selfishly withheld by their creators in an attempt to get rich from them.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Or just have copyright go to the author's death and nothing more. And none of that making a corporation to try to get around this.

 

[Synobun]

How does that mean we are behind the times? That just seems like a policy aimed at placating greedy authors that feel people should have to pay them to have access to knowledge and literature at the taxpayers' expense.

Lately I've kinda been growing weary of the concept of intellectual property, especially for works of art and literature. I've been swinging around to the belief that such creative works should be considered the property of all of humanity and shouldn't be allowed to be selfishly withheld by their creators in an attempt to get rich from them.

Greedy authors, lol. Most authors never make back their investment, let alone rake in the dough. Stop reading books if you value their work so little.

 

[Commodore]

Greedy authors, lol. Most authors never make back their investment, let alone rake in the dough. Stop reading books if you value their work so little.

It's not that I don't value their work, it's that I don't believe one should go into the arts with the expectation to get rich. There shouldn't be any kind of profit motive in the arts. Especially since most of those skillsets have an analogous "9 to 5" career that can sustain them while they work on their art.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

It's not that I don't value their work, it's that I don't believe one should go into the arts with the expectation to get rich. There shouldn't be any kind of profit motive in the arts. Especially since most of those skillsets have an analogous "9 to 5" career that can sustain them while they work on their art.

Or, y'know, universal basic income....

 

[Manfred Belheim]

How does that mean we are behind the times? That just seems like a policy aimed at placating greedy authors that feel people should have to pay them to have access to knowledge and literature at the taxpayers' expense.

Lately I've kinda been growing weary of the concept of intellectual property, especially for works of art and literature. I've been swinging around to the belief that such creative works should be considered the property of all of humanity and shouldn't be allowed to be selfishly withheld by their creators in an attempt to get rich from them.

That'll really inspire people to create won't it.

 

[Commodore]

That'll really inspire people to create won't it.

Art wasn't always done with profit motive in mind. In fact the idea of getting paid beyond the initial commission fee for art is a very recent concept. Most of the great artists in history that we all now revere didn't make their living through art. Knowing that they likely would not get rich off their art didn't seem to stop any of them from creating beautiful works.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Art wasn't always done with profit motive in mind. In fact the idea of getting paid beyond the initial commission fee for art is a very recent concept. Most of the great artists in history that we all now revere didn't make their living through art. Knowing that they likely would not get rich off their art didn't seem to stop any of them from creating beautiful works.

How recent are you thinking. Because patronage of the arts goes back to at least medieval times.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Four commercial publishers (Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House) have filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive due to their Open Library project, alleging copyright infringement.

There's some court PDFs available here. Somebody doesn't like James Patterson:

(I actually have bought legitimate eBook copies of books after reading them initially on the OL. But I'll make sure not to buy any more from those four publishers.)

The Open Library takes physical copies of books, scans them, and then makes them available to borrow. There's restrictions placed on it—users can only borrow the book for two weeks, only one copy can be loaned at a time. Using Adobe Digital Editions, you can even load the books onto an ereader, although the ePub copies are terribly-formatted (they just OCR'd them) and the PDFs can be glitchy.

At least until a few months ago. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and all the public libraries closing down (making the books inaccessible), the OL decided to dispense with the waitlist and make unlimited copies available. (Though from my own experiences, it might not have been for every book.) That's one of the angles that the plaintiffs seem to be going for in the court.

Worst-case scenario? This could bankrupt the entire Internet Archive and put everything else they worked for at risk. Even if it doesn't, it's possible that the Open Library will shut down and there will be no more digital copies of many, many books that are no longer in print.

I have thought something like this might happen since I first heard about it.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...oh-fuddle-duddle.656312/page-24#post-15722893

I hope they survive.

James Patterson might be the 2nd richest author on Earth, but I never heard of him until last year.

 

[Commodore]

How recent are you thinking. Because patronage of the arts goes back to at least medieval times.

Through commissions though, which I acknowledged in my post. The idea of royalties and intellectual property that can be monetized indefinitely are modern concepts that need to go away.

For books, I would be okay with nationalizing all the publishing houses and setting up a system where the government just purchases a manuscript from an author for a one time price and then that book goes into the public domain for anyone to enjoy, free of charge.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Terrible news

The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case

Hachette v. Internet Archive was brought by book publishers objecting to the archive’s digital lending library.

www.wired.com

The Internet Archive has lost a major legal battle—in a decision that could have a significant impact on the future of internet history. Today, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled against the long-running digital archive, upholding an earlier ruling in Hachette v. Internet Archive that found that one of the Internet Archive’s book digitization projects violated copyright law.
Notably, the appeals court’s ruling rejects the Internet Archive’s argument that its lending practices were shielded by the fair use doctrine, which permits for copyright infringement in certain circumstances, calling it “unpersuasive.”
In March 2020, the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, launched a program called the National Emergency Library, or NEL. Library closures caused by the pandemic had left students, researchers, and readers unable to access millions of books, and the Internet Archive has said it was responding to calls from regular people and other librarians to help those at home get access to the books they needed.
The NEL was an offshoot of an ongoing digital lending project called the Open Library, in which the Internet Archive scans physical copies of library books and lets people check out the digital copies as though they’re regular reading material instead of ebooks. The Open Library lent the books to one person at a time—but the NEL removed this ratio rule, instead letting large numbers of people borrow each scanned book at once.
The NEL was the subject of backlash soon after its launch, with some authors arguing that it was tantamount to piracy. In response, the Internet Archive within two months scuttled its emergency approach and reinstated the lending caps. But the damage was done. In June 2020, major publishing houses, including Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley, filed the lawsuit.
In March 2023, the district court ruled in favor of the publishers. Judge John G. Koeltl found that the Internet Archive had created “derivative works,” arguing that there was “nothing transformative” about its copying and lending. After the initial ruling in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the parties negotiated terms—the details of which have not been disclosed—though the archive still filed an appeal.
James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and internet law at Cornell University, says the verdict is “not terribly surprising” in the context of how courts have recently interpreted fair use.
The Internet Archive did eke out a Pyrrhic victory in the appeal. Although the Second Circuit sided with the district court’s initial ruling, it clarified that it did not view the Internet Archive as a commercial entity, instead emphasizing that it was clearly a nonprofit operation. Grimmelmann sees this as the right call: “I’m glad to see that the Second Circuit fixed that mistake.” (He signed an amicus brief in the appeal arguing that it was wrong to classify the use as commercial.)
“Today’s appellate decision upholds the rights of authors and publishers to license and be compensated for their books and other creative works and reminds us in no uncertain terms that infringement is both costly and antithetical to the public interest,” Association of American Publishers president and CEO Maria A. Pallante said in a statement. “If there was any doubt, the Court makes clear that under fair use jurisprudence there is nothing transformative about converting entire works into new formats without permission or appropriating the value of derivative works that are a key part of the author’s copyright bundle.”
In a statement, Internet Archive director of library services Chris Freeland expressed disappointment “in today’s opinion about the Internet Archive’s digital lending of books that are available electronically elsewhere. We are reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books.”
Dave Hansen, executive director of the Author’s Alliance, a nonprofit that often advocates for expanded digital access to books, also came out against the ruling. “Authors are researchers. Authors are readers,” he says. “IA’s digital library helps those authors create new works and supports their interests in seeing their works be read. This ruling may benefit the bottom line of the largest publishers and most prominent authors, but for most it will end up harming more than it will help.”
The Internet Archive’s legal woes are not over. In 2023, a group of music labels, including Universal Music Group and Sony, sued the archive in a copyright infringement case over a music digitization project. That case is still making its way through the courts. The damages could be up to $400 million, an amount that could pose an existential threat to the nonprofit.
The new verdict arrives at an especially tumultuous time for copyright law. In the past two years there have been dozens of copyright infringement cases filed against major AI companies that offer generative AI tools, and many of the defendants in these cases argue that the fair use doctrine shields their usage of copyrighted data in AI training. Any major lawsuit in which judges refute fair use claims are thus closely watched.
It also arrives at a moment when the Internet Archive’s outsize importance in digital preservation is keenly felt. The archive’s Wayback Machine, which catalogs copies of websites, has become a vital tool for journalists, researchers, lawyers, and anyone with an interest in internet history. While there are other digital preservation projects, including national efforts from the US Library of Congress, there’s nothing like it available to the public.

 

[danjuno]

Just donated. Especially in light of the case with the record labels. Music industry parasites are the scum of the Earth.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Or just have copyright go to the author's death and nothing more. And none of that making a corporation to try to get around this.

Yes, that is how I see it too.

 

[Hygro]

Well that adds a perverse incentive

 

[EnglishEdward]

Ah yes, authors would no doubt quake in fear at the possibility that stingy readers may assassinate them so as to obtain free access to their works.

 

[danjuno]

Patents only go for twenty years here, never been convinced by the arguments that pieces of media are more deserving of special treatment.