I hope all the writers who support this lawsuit understand that they are contributing to a long standing effort to outlaw libraries in general. Nobody makes direct money off of sharing things. Get ready for DRM involved in every single thing that you do.
I still can't believe IA took this risk, however. I agree it should've been fine, but they and we know it isn't. They basically begged for this to happen and I don't understand why when they clearly don't have their ducks in a row to pick this fight (unlike TPB which plays the game well).
I don’t understand why they kept the “emergency library” open after COVID restrictions were lifted. I think they might have had a better shot in court if they had gone back to the normal digital library protocol.
Was the emergency library consensual in the first place? If not, then I would assume lockdown was irrelevant, legally speaking… and it would easily explain why the IA is in hot water right now.
No it was not I believe. But it doesn’t mean that the COVID aspect wouldn’t be weighed into the matter. Still likely would have ended up with them losing, either way in my opinion unfortunately.
I am way too liberal about this sort of stuff and I think you should only be able to go after sharing/pirating if you can definitively prove it’s causing greater harm to your product then it’s benefit.
I often borrow/pirate something to end up paying for another related book, game, Shows or movies, etc. I would have never even bothered if I couldn’t have borrowed/pirated in the first place as I am not going to throw money at shit that is likely going to be crap. Pirating and free lending allows for people to get an intro to something, if it’s good it will lure users into the book/show or whatever’s universe. Causing them to be much more likely to purchase in the future.
Then once the actuaries calculate out that number the only damages you should be able to claim are the difference, if there even is a difference.
I think you should only be able to go after sharing/pirating if you can definitively prove it’s causing greater harm to your product then it’s benefit.
The problem is that while most of us agree, we all also know that isn't how the world works. IA is a major name, they are obviously not operating under the radar. They picked a fight they weren't ready to take on and they should've known better, but instead they decided to jeopardize the entire project.
If you want to be The Pirate Bay, then you need to play it smart like The Pirate Bay. This was reckless and short sighted.
Just because its not how it currently works, doesn’t mean it can’t be changed. We do have an entire branch of government to do just that. I am not optimistic positive changes will be made in that regard, but it doesn’t hurt to talk about it.
Which artist involved in this suit is working for free?
How old are the copyrights being upheld?
I’d need to know those two pieces of information before coming to a conclusion. No one should work for free, I can agree with that, but is that is what is occurring?
Libraries can do that. Okay, technically, it’s illegal, but under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, since US libraries are run by political subdivisions of US states, they can’t be sued with the state’s permission which means that a state government can literally not allow the library to be sued for copyright infringement and then they’d get away with it.
The trade-off is that this probably permanently burns all bridges between the library and publishers, who would likely not want to deal with the library any more.
Edit: The controlling US Supreme Court precedent is Allen v. Cooper. The State of North Carolina published a bunch of shipwreck photos. The copyright owner of those photos sued claiming copyright infringement. The Supreme Court ruled in favour of the state saying Congress can’t abrogate a state’s Amendment XI sovereign immunity using copyright law as a pretext, thus the photography firm needs the State’s permission to sue it in federal court.
The trade-off is that this probably permanently burns all bridges between the library and publishers, who would likely not want to deal with the library any more.
To be fair how is that a tradeoff? Weren't other people contributing to the internet archive?
Yes, it is federal. Congress can’t abrogate a state’s sovereign immunity to make them liable under copyright law. In fact, they tried and it was deemed unconstitutional (Allen v. Cooper). States can’t be sued in federal court without their permission (Amendment XI).
Even assuming that is a viable application of sovereign immunity, which I am not at all convinced, at a minimum you’ve described a very strong due process violation. No, libraries cannot just arbitrarily infringe copyrights.
The applicable Supreme Court precedent here is Allen v. Cooper. The State of North Carolina published all pictures of a shipwreck within its custody on its website as “public record” and the photography firm that owned the copyright sued. The Supreme Court ruled that Congress cannot abrogate a state’s sovereign immunity under its Article I legislative powers and thus ruled in favour of the state.
It is fairly clear the parent isn’t a lawyer. It’s also fairly clear they have very little interaction with law in general. I’m guessing more of the sovereign citizen camp.
I’m not a sovereign citizen. This is just a point where the law isn’t fair/doesn’t work in the way that you’d expect. See the updated parent comment for sources + legal reasoning.
I do frequently. If you’re going to be so smug, you should also be correct. They purchase a copy of each media that they loan at any single time.
If they have 5 copies of digital media, 5 people can use them simultaneously. Not more.
It’s why Libby has a waiting list.
The internet archive would have been legal if they had a) purchased the copy and b) had not lent it to more than a single person simultaneously (or purchased more copies). They weren’t doing that. They were acquiring (legally or not, I’m not sure) copies and putting on their website for as many people as wanted to read them.
That is not what libraries do.
It’s why libraries don’t photocopy infinite books so there’s never a waiting list. You can’t do it with print media, and you can’t do it with digital media.
People at the internet archive literally gave away all the books they had in the library for free to as many people who wanted them, basically pretending they had a right to copy the books as many times as they desired as long as it was under the guise of being a library.
Not only did they deserve to lose this case, they displayed such arrogant weaponized stupidity in making that decision that I'm surprised they weren't trying to screw themselves over.
The internet archive is awesome, their decision in 2020 was fucking stupid
People at the internet archive literally gave away all the books they had in the library for free to as many people who wanted them, basically pretending they had a right to copy the books as many times as they desired
That is a good thing.
You are describing a good thing which makes the world better and which IA should do more of.
Never has someone wanted to write something and then stopped because of profit motive.
Many many times have people wanted to expend more than a side jobs worth of effort to write and couldn't because they, you know, need a house and food.
When you contribute to society in a substantial way you deserve to be able to get paid for it.
And then you lose any aspect of the fact that authors should be making something worthwhile to spend their time and effort writing.
UBI is a terrible concept because you'd get a ton of terrible authors wasting their lives writing books nobody wants to read.
Either something like authors selling their books or a government system that determines who can work what job would have to exist, and the latter is a hilariously bad idea.
UBI is a terrible concept because you'd get a ton of terrible authors wasting their lives writing books nobody wants to read.
Who cares? There's enough resources to pay people to do nothing.
Let people write shit books if they want.
Let people masturbate in their apartment while eating corn chips.
I'm sorry, are we pumping out dangerous amounts of CO2 we need to cut down immediately or do people have to commute to bullshit jobs to afford to buy shit they don't need?
People doing bad things (trying to shut IA down) is bad.
Them freely copying and distributing things is good.
"Yeah, it was a good thing, but it invoked the wrath of a bully" doesn't make the entity doing the good thing at fault for getting beaten up, nor does it make the good thing they did bad.
He's saying the IA did something that would very obviously get them into legal trouble. Even if you think it's okay it was a very disputable action they did that can't just be considered bullying. They were obviously going to face lawsuits over it and it would be naive to think otherwise.
Basically very brazenly endangering the project.
It doesn't make them the people at IA bad people but it was a very dumb decision.
Like even if you assume the other people are evil, you have to acknowledge they exist
I agree it was stupid. I just know that media companies are foaming at the mouth to use this decision to destroy online lending all together. And many writers are being tricked into thinking this will somehow help them. It won’t. This will help Amazon. People renting your book from the internet archive is not why you’re failing to make money.
I remember my aunt (lawyer) coming up with some insane conspiracy-level solution to this problem:
The Supreme Court has ruled in Allen v. Cooper that Congressional attempts to make US state governments liable for copyright infringement are unconstitutional. In other words, US states can’t be sued for copyright infringement under US federal law without their permission. Under standard federal jurisprudence, all subdivisions and departments of a state are considered to be the state they are a part of for the purposes of sovereign immunity. This also applies to organisations that receive most of their funding from and are wholly dependent on state government agencies as well.
The solution would be to have a friend state government either:
donate a copious amount of money to the Internet Archive to make it “financially dependent” on that state government, or
in cooperation with the Internet Archive, pass a law that makes the Internet Archive an independent state agency of that government (probably safer in terms of keeping the IA independent)
This would make the IA fully immune from copyright lawsuits because they would benefit from their patron state’s sovereign immunity. But it comes at the cost that the patron state has a lot of power over the IA. A considerable trade-off.
QAnon would have made for an excellent action movie plotline if only people didn’t subscribe to it in real life. Swap in some fake politicians and it’s almost Hollywood-ready.
It’s not the entire Internet Archive that has been found infringing. The judgment applies only to the Internet Archive’s lending of digital books without limiting the number of copies.
5 years protection should be the limit. If you can't make back costs and get a tidy sum in 5 years, you fucked up. Especially as most sales are within the first few months
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