Appeals Court Seems Lost On How Internet Archive Harms Publishers (arstechnica.com) 26
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Internet Archive (IA) went before a three-judge panel Friday to defend its open library's controlled digital lending (CDL) practices after book publishers last year won a lawsuit claiming that the archive's lending violated copyright law. In the weeks ahead of IA's efforts to appeal that ruling, IA was forced to remove 500,000 books from its collection, shocking users. In an open letter to publishers, more than 30,000 readers, researchers, and authors begged for access to the books to be restored in the open library, claiming the takedowns dealt "a serious blow to lower-income families, people with disabilities, rural communities, and LGBTQ+ people, among many others," who may not have access to a local library or feel "safe accessing the information they need in public."
During a press briefing following arguments in court Friday, IA founder Brewster Kahle said that "those voices weren't being heard." Judges appeared primarily focused on understanding how IA's digital lending potentially hurts publishers' profits in the ebook licensing market, rather than on how publishers' costly ebook licensing potentially harms readers. However, lawyers representing IA -- Joseph C. Gratz, from the law firm Morrison Foerster, and Corynne McSherry, from the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation -- confirmed that judges were highly engaged by IA's defense. Arguments that were initially scheduled to last only 20 minutes stretched on instead for an hour and a half. Ultimately, judges decided not to rule from the bench, with a decision expected in the coming months or potentially next year. McSherry said the judges' engagement showed that the judges "get it" and won't make the decision without careful consideration of both sides.
"They understand this is an important decision," McSherry said. "They understand that there are real consequences here for real people. And they are taking their job very, very seriously. And I think that's the best that we can hope for, really." On the other side, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the trade organization behind the lawsuit, provided little insight into how the day went. When reached for comment, AAP simply said, "We thought it was a strong day in court, and we look forward to the opinion." [...] "There is no deadline for them to make a decision," Gratz said, but it "probably won't happen until early fall" at the earliest. After that, whichever side loses will have an opportunity to appeal the case, which has already stretched on for four years, to the Supreme Court. Since neither side seems prepared to back down, the Supreme Court eventually weighing in seems inevitable.
During a press briefing following arguments in court Friday, IA founder Brewster Kahle said that "those voices weren't being heard." Judges appeared primarily focused on understanding how IA's digital lending potentially hurts publishers' profits in the ebook licensing market, rather than on how publishers' costly ebook licensing potentially harms readers. However, lawyers representing IA -- Joseph C. Gratz, from the law firm Morrison Foerster, and Corynne McSherry, from the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation -- confirmed that judges were highly engaged by IA's defense. Arguments that were initially scheduled to last only 20 minutes stretched on instead for an hour and a half. Ultimately, judges decided not to rule from the bench, with a decision expected in the coming months or potentially next year. McSherry said the judges' engagement showed that the judges "get it" and won't make the decision without careful consideration of both sides.
"They understand this is an important decision," McSherry said. "They understand that there are real consequences here for real people. And they are taking their job very, very seriously. And I think that's the best that we can hope for, really." On the other side, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the trade organization behind the lawsuit, provided little insight into how the day went. When reached for comment, AAP simply said, "We thought it was a strong day in court, and we look forward to the opinion." [...] "There is no deadline for them to make a decision," Gratz said, but it "probably won't happen until early fall" at the earliest. After that, whichever side loses will have an opportunity to appeal the case, which has already stretched on for four years, to the Supreme Court. Since neither side seems prepared to back down, the Supreme Court eventually weighing in seems inevitable.
"Man, my gavellin' hand is ITCHy..." (Score:5, Insightful)
"Since neither side seems prepared to back down, the Supreme Court eventually weighing in seems inevitable."
Gentlemen, start your gratuities.
Maybe they shouldn't have done unlimited lending? (Score:1)
If they didn't do that dumb stunt, they wouldn't be in this mess.
Re:Maybe they shouldn't have done unlimited lendin (Score:5, Insightful)
And how was it dumb? Basically libraries were closed and no one could borrow anything. So all those books were sitting on a shelf that cannot be borrowed.
All the IA did was briefly make it unlimited so people who couldn't visit a library to borrow a book might be able to borrow it from the IA instead. As far as the publishers are concerned, they were happy because they were selling more books as people couldn't borrow them from libraries, even though those books were sitting there waiting.
Also, "stunts" is generally how the limits of laws get tested. Copyright laws statutory damages get silly when you're charging teens with billions of dollars because they decided to use Napster, for example. Things like copyright reform don't appear on anyone's radar until that started to happen (and chances are, Disney could've gotten an extension by quietly lobbying for such, but too many people now are too aware of copyright).
Civil Asset Forfeiture had police and government authorities stealing money from the public - to fund things like daiquiri makers and other frivolous things for the department.
All the IA did was expose the problem of digital lending to the world - there were all these books sitting in libraries that could not be borrowed no matter how hard you tried. Publishers could loosen restrictions to allow libraries to digitally lend those books out to patrons, but refused to. Digital lending is somewhat of a farce as well - libraries pay publishers every time they digitally loan out books.
All that's really happened is the IA has exposed such to the public at large and to get the courts involved
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> And how was it dumb?
Er, perhaps because its, um, illegal??
> Basically libraries were closed and no one could borrow anything
They were still lending ebooks online. The meat of the matter is how the publishers have a strange and convoluted way (well multiple ways) of allowing libraries to lend ebooks. That needs fixing as an ebook should be easier for a library to lend, instead thanks to the many decades of protections afforded to them, physical books have no such issues, heck they even have a secon
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Yes, and if they only lended the number of copies they had, then they wouldn't be in this mess. Lending out unlimited copies of a book that isn't yours is clear copyright infringement.
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Yes
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no, unless you count book bans, which seem to be popular in slave states of late.
Strange (Score:1)
If an AI company hoovers up all your shit, it's a cataclysm.
If the IA hoovers up all your shit, mad bro?
The answer is simply to reverse the letters in your acronym and everything is legal.
Really poor claim (Score:2)
Taking this stuff down is bullshit. But the counter claim to taking this stuff down is very poor persuasion. The specifics of which are left as an exercise to the reader.
Libraries (Score:5, Insightful)
Without libraries advanced civilization would not exist. How greedy have we gotten? It would have been laughed at in the past centuries if publishers tried to block people from borrowing books. If the right to borrow is eliminated, the right lend your friend your car or even a pencil would be illegal. How is it that a book publisher can have the right to block people from lending their books but a car manufacturer can't block you from lending your car or giving people rides. How many sales is Ford losing because people can take cabs instead of buying a car?
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Without libraries advanced civilization would not exist. How greedy have we gotten? It would have been laughed at in the past centuries if publishers tried to block people from borrowing books. If the right to borrow is eliminated, the right lend your friend your car or even a pencil would be illegal. How is it that a book publisher can have the right to block people from lending their books but a car manufacturer can't block you from lending your car or giving people rides. How many sales is Ford losing because people can take cabs instead of buying a car?
Stop being a drama queen. Every public library offers e-books using the licensed means provided by the publishers. IA just doesn't want to pay for licenses.
Re: Libraries (Score:5, Interesting)
Because they believe no license is necessary. First sale doctrine, pretty foundational to copyright law over the last always.
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First sale doctrine rules. There was never any 'rule' that a book in a library could only be borrowed 'N' times. Pretty sure religious texts are borrowed a lot. Nor could you buy a book say 10, 23, or 2024 times as a condition. No, Ebook numbers is a scam, and it is not directly equivalent because IA has to store a physical copy. What is an eye-opener is how many 2 hour or less, just checking the references bit is going on. Hopefully AI will close that door.
They even violated this concept of "we own one copy and only lend it out to one person at a time". Look up what they did with "partner libraries" in the court decision
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IA just doesn't want to pay for licenses.
Because they believe no license is necessary. First sale doctrine, pretty foundational to copyright law over the last always.
They can believe anything they like. You should read the court decision to understand just how scammy their behavior was and why they lost
Re: (Score:2)
> How greedy have we gotten?
It's not about "greed" but about control.
Copyright is a time limited monopoly, an agreement that we agree to allow works to be published and controlled by the copyright holders for their benefit and the authors benefit for a defined period of time after which the public takes ownership.
The greed is actually in how long that lasts! Copyright should expire far shorter as it used to, to push authors to create new works. That’s where the greed is. The term of copyright is
Huh? (Score:1)
Dafuq?
Why bother with IA? (Score:2)
Why bother with IA? Go to libgen. If your country tracks you, use Tor.
the supreme court? (Score:2)