this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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Here's the Wikipedia article on the lawsuit. From the opening paragraph:
IA was using the CDL without any problems or complaints before the National Emergency Library incident, with the one-copy-at-a-time restriction in place. It was only after they took those limiters off that the lawsuit was launched.
What I said was true.
Basically what you're saying is big corporations found an opportunity and took it.
But the lawsuit was about CDL as a whole, not what happened in 2020.
Also, why you're trusting Wikipedia over the EFF is beyond me.
Yes, the lawsuit is about CDL as a whole. They could have sued IA years earlier. They could be suing libraries all over the place for using CDL. But they didn't, because the people using CDL were doing so in order to placate the publishers. It was an unspoken truce.
You can see a similar dynamic going on with fanfiction. A site like fanfiction.net is a gigantic pile of copyright violations, and yet you don't see it beset with lawsuits. That's because fanfiction.net isn't doing anything that would harm the income of the copyright holders or otherwise "poke the bear." You occasionally hear about fan projects getting shut down when they go "too far", however. Like what IA did in the case of the National Emergency Library.
Wikipedia has neutral point of view and verifiability policies. Everything written in their articles should be backed by external sources and if there are multiple sides to a story they should all be fairly represented. The EFF, on the other hand, is taking the IA's side in this and is motivated to make them sound better and the publishers to sound worse.
The Wikipedia article has 32 external sources cited for its contents. The EFF article has only two internal links, one of them leading to their lawyers' homepage and one linking to the motion that the EFF filed.
They sued the Internet Archive for doing the exact same thing libraries do, and only with books that are not in print. Much like why you trust Wikipedia over the EFF, why you think that's something worth defending I don't know.
Libraries do not make unlimited copies of books so everyone can check it out at the same time without wait. Obviously the EFF doesn't want to admit its client did that because it destroys their case, but that's what the judge found the IA stupidly did.
Libraries use CDL all the time.
Libraries buy licenses to do so from the publishers, but that's unrelated to what I said.
I'm saying the judge found that IA violated its own CDL, so even if its interpretation of the law was correct, the IA would still be liable.
So why aren't they suing libraries for doing those "exact same things?" Why target the IA specifically, and not other libraries?
Could it be that the IA did not in fact do the "exact same thing" as libraries?
I am not "defending" the publishers. They are the villains here. I think current copyright laws are insanely overreaching and have long ago lost the plot of what they were originally intended for.
This is like a horror movie where there's a slasher hiding in the house and the dumb protagonists say "let's split up to find him more quickly", and I'm shouting at the idiot who's going down into the dark basement alone. The slasher is the publishing companies and the idiot going down the stairs is the IA. It's entirely justified to shout at them for being an idiot and recommend that they just run away, without being accused of "defending" the slasher.
Because publishers suing every public library in America would take a lot of time since it would involve every separate library system and also wouldn't exactly look good from a PR perspective.
You really don't have a good eye for the obvious.
Exactly, it'd be bad PR. I've argued this before in other threads, the publishers don't want to destroy IA. They just want IA to not flagrantly interfere with their business. They only sued IA when IA poked them too hard for them to ignore.
You may note that the settlement agreement they reached with IA lets IA continue to host books that the publishers haven't released as ebooks themselves, for example. Even now they're not being as harsh as they could be.
As the husband of a librarian who is now a library administrator, you cannot be more wrong. If publishing companies had a way of shutting down all the public libraries in America or charge everyone a per-lending fee, they would absolutely do that. They hate public libraries. They are as hostile to them as they can be without getting lawyers involved.
So why aren't they? If libraries are doing exactly what IA is doing, why not sue them too? The judge issued a summary judgement in their favor so it's pretty open-and-shut, isn't it?
It's because the libraries know where the line is and they're careful not to cross it. IA jumped merrily across the line and shouted about it from the rooftops.
See above re: PR.
Also, libraries cross that line all the time.
https://www.nypl.org/research
Exactly, PR. The IA was fine as long as they weren't flagrantly bragging about how they were letting everyone download as many copies of everything as they wanted. If they'd stuck to their original pattern (shared with libraries) of only letting one digital copy out at a time then the publishers would have grumbled and not done anything about it because it would have been bad PR to attack IA under those conditions.
Are you referring me to the Digital Research Books beta?
Where on the NYPL can I download unlimited copies of books that are currently in print from these major publishers under non-free licenses?
The IA did not have books that were currently in print and they also told publishers that if they found any that were in print that were uploaded, they would be removed.
Too bad that U.S. copyright law doesn't recognize CCLs or you'd have a point. They are violating copyright law by allowing them to be downloaded an unlimited number times and saying they are under a CCL is irrelevant. On top of that, the creator may grant a CCL but a publisher can claim they own the rights and then it is up to the NYPL to decide who is right until it goes to court, so even suggesting that somehow a CCL makes it legal doesn't actually mean the CCL itself is granted by someone who doesn't actually own the rights to grant it.
Again from Wikipedia:
And from the section on the settlement reached:
If you're going to accuse me of lying I would appreciate if you took a little more care to ensure your own statements were truthful.
That's a flat "what." From me. Creative Commons licenses depend on copyright to function. In what way does US copyright law "not recognize" Creative Commons licenses?
It does not recognize CCLs because there is no legal mechanism in place to recognize them. They depend on copyright to function in the sense that copyright allows them to function in the nebulous grey area in which they exist and it hasn't been challenged yet.
Because, again, terrible PR.
Also, I accused you of lying when you said this:
Because the lawsuit wasn't the result of that, the lawsuit created a window of opportunity for publishers to do something they wanted to for years and sue them for something unrelated to that. Which you claim you knew. It's victim-blaming because I'm sure you also know that they would have been sued eventually regardless of what they did or did not do.
So yeah, that makes what you said a lie by your own admission.
No, I "know" no such thing. How do you "know" that?
In fact, I think the IA wouldn't have been sued if they'd continued to keep a low profile and stuck to the common practice of limiting their "digital lending" to one copy at a time. I don't "know" it because you can't know the future, only predict it, but I think that's most likely given how many other libraries get away with exactly that same practice and how IA itself was getting away with it for years before they blew it.
You are imagining that I "know" I'm lying, and then using that to claim that I'm lying "by my own admission." This is so blatantly fallacious it's actually kind of remarkable.
You were lying by admission because you admitted you knew that it was a window of opportunity to sue them for something unrelated to that.
Please read more carefully before having such silly knee-jerk reactions.
I honestly have no idea what you mean here.
It wasn't a "window of opportunity", it was a provocation that couldn't be ignored. The publishers have had the opportunity to sue for a long time, as you've said. They just didn't want to for PR reasons, again as you've said.
The lawsuit isn't for "unrelated" reasons. It's for copyright violation due to their practice of distributing ebooks without permission.
You're clearly very passionate about this matter, but you're only paying attention to things that support one view of it and are instantly dismissing anything that might challenge that as being "supporting the enemy" or outright lies. I like the Internet Archive, I want them to survive and flourish. That's not going to happen if the keep tilting at windmills and picking unwinnable fights. I don't cheer them when they're charging headlong into a meatgrinder.
No, I'm paying full attention to your claim that the Internet Archive provoked publishers into suing them for something unrelated to that supposed provocation.
The Internet Archive was distributing unlimited copies of ebooks whose rights were held by major publishers.
The major publishers sued them for distributing copies of ebooks whose rights were held by them.
Yeah, totally unrelated.
Me:
You:
So is it about what happened in 2020 or is it about something public libraries do too?
For example: https://blc.org/controlled-digital-lending
You are both speculating about what triggered the lawsuit because the only people that know for sure what triggered the lawsuit are the publishers and they aren't talking.
If all public libraries are using CDL and the publishers have only sued IA, who flagrantly violated CDL, and they sued them only 2 months after they started violating the CDL, then that certainly seems like a very possible factor in the lawsuit, right?