“We are reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books.”
Unpopular opinion: They stepped out of their fucking lane. There are already laws that protect actual libraries, in fact most nations have laws to ensure libraries have access to all locally published works.
One good thing to come of this is I’ve now joined my national and local libraries.
Internet archive digitized actual books and lent out copies (which was already 100% not legal under current law), then thought it was a good idea to just say “fuck it” and remove the thin veil of legitimacy that kept publishers from caring too much by removing the “one copy at a time per book” policy and daring the publishers to do something about it.
The law was abundantly clear. You cannot distribute wholesale copies of someone else’s work. Publishers didn’t bother because the scale was small and they didn’t want to take the PR hit for a scale that didn’t matter.
The first sale doctrine, necessarily, can only possibly apply to a physical object. There is no such thing as a “single copy” of a digital object. Every time that “single copy” moves is a new copy. There is no legal framework in the US that even acknowledges the premise of a digital copy. It’s always a license.
You need new laws to apply to the digital world. There is absolutely zero room for ambiguity that what the Internet archive did never in any way was protected. This ruling was a literal guarantee the minute the Internet Archive removed their (unambiguously not in any way legal) pretense of a “single copy”. There isn’t a court in the country that would even consider ruling any other way, because the law is well beyond clear. This ruling happened because the Internet Archive forced it to happen. If they had left open mass scale piracy to pirate sites they would have been fine.
If their lawyers advised them that there was even a possibility that this argument could work, they should be disbarred. They would be better off spending their money on lobbying for better laws than pursuing a case less likely than winning the power ball jackpot 5 draws in a row.
Literally every digital “loan” is multiple separate, unrecoverable copies. That law is not about digital lending and cannot be applied to digital lending.
All digital lending of copyrighted material without an explicit license to do so is copyright infringement, and it was always a guarantee that the ruling would happen.
The removal of the “single copy” lie isn’t relevant to the legal status. It’s relevant because it forced the hands of the publishers to take action. There was never any possibility of any ruling but the obvious blanket “you can’t do that” that the law dictates, once IA forced them to take it to court.
It is literally impossible to send a file over the internet with no more than one copy. Every additional “loan” is multiple additional copies. Even if we ignore that, you’re very conveniently ignoring the “material objects” part of that definition, which again, completely and unconditionally disqualifies a loan over the internet.
DRM is entirely irrelevant. It has no bearing on anything.
They filed a lawsuit because IA flagrantly and egregiously violated their rights. They openly fucking dared them to. And now they don’t get ignored on their limited copy illegal lending and can’t get away with any copies.
How about, instead of throwing a tantrum about the courts doing the only thing they had any authority to do, you spend your efforts lobbying to fix IP law?
Accusing somebody else of licking the boot, while you’re having the same boot ground in your face and just acting like it’s no big deal, not a problem.
Unpopular opinion: They stepped out of their fucking lane. There are already laws that protect actual libraries, in fact most nations have laws to ensure libraries have access to all locally published works.
One good thing to come of this is I’ve now joined my national and local libraries.
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Other libraries have licenses. And follow them.
Internet archive digitized actual books and lent out copies (which was already 100% not legal under current law), then thought it was a good idea to just say “fuck it” and remove the thin veil of legitimacy that kept publishers from caring too much by removing the “one copy at a time per book” policy and daring the publishers to do something about it.
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Any digitized lending was always illegal.
The law was abundantly clear. You cannot distribute wholesale copies of someone else’s work. Publishers didn’t bother because the scale was small and they didn’t want to take the PR hit for a scale that didn’t matter.
The first sale doctrine, necessarily, can only possibly apply to a physical object. There is no such thing as a “single copy” of a digital object. Every time that “single copy” moves is a new copy. There is no legal framework in the US that even acknowledges the premise of a digital copy. It’s always a license.
You need new laws to apply to the digital world. There is absolutely zero room for ambiguity that what the Internet archive did never in any way was protected. This ruling was a literal guarantee the minute the Internet Archive removed their (unambiguously not in any way legal) pretense of a “single copy”. There isn’t a court in the country that would even consider ruling any other way, because the law is well beyond clear. This ruling happened because the Internet Archive forced it to happen. If they had left open mass scale piracy to pirate sites they would have been fine.
If their lawyers advised them that there was even a possibility that this argument could work, they should be disbarred. They would be better off spending their money on lobbying for better laws than pursuing a case less likely than winning the power ball jackpot 5 draws in a row.
deleted by creator
Literally every digital “loan” is multiple separate, unrecoverable copies. That law is not about digital lending and cannot be applied to digital lending.
All digital lending of copyrighted material without an explicit license to do so is copyright infringement, and it was always a guarantee that the ruling would happen.
The removal of the “single copy” lie isn’t relevant to the legal status. It’s relevant because it forced the hands of the publishers to take action. There was never any possibility of any ruling but the obvious blanket “you can’t do that” that the law dictates, once IA forced them to take it to court.
deleted by creator
It is literally impossible to send a file over the internet with no more than one copy. Every additional “loan” is multiple additional copies. Even if we ignore that, you’re very conveniently ignoring the “material objects” part of that definition, which again, completely and unconditionally disqualifies a loan over the internet.
DRM is entirely irrelevant. It has no bearing on anything.
They filed a lawsuit because IA flagrantly and egregiously violated their rights. They openly fucking dared them to. And now they don’t get ignored on their limited copy illegal lending and can’t get away with any copies.
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How about, instead of throwing a tantrum about the courts doing the only thing they had any authority to do, you spend your efforts lobbying to fix IP law?
Yeah because that has ever changed anything. I’ll just keep voting harder while I’m at it.
Accusing somebody else of licking the boot, while you’re having the same boot ground in your face and just acting like it’s no big deal, not a problem.
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Oh, and now you make a great deal of change by putting slurs all over.
Wanna change someone’s mind? Go civil. Wanna vent your anger? Don’t vent it on other people.
I 100% want all copyright to be eliminated, but what you do is counterproductive and rude at best.
Agreed. While a noble cause, it was honestly predictable.
I don’t understand why they did that. Their status was already quite shaky. They really shot themselves and their users in the foot