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this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2025
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I'm glad the lawsuits didn't kill them but what Kahle tried to do with "Open Library" and "Project 78" was truly insane. Admirable but insane. They absolutely had to know right from the outset that the Media Companies weren't going to allow it to continue post-COVID.
I mean, large corps like Meta get away with straight up piracy these days.
Laws only matter if you're not part of the ruling class.
Calling Project 78 insane is a bit much.
They didn't even want it during COVID.
If amazon can download books I can also against what's missing from thw archive
Books are less valuable than a record of the state of the digital space, through time.
Indeed, I consider this to be an okay outcome. It's the Internet Archive, not the All Information Ever Archive. It archives the Internet. There are other projects archiving books.
And it's the Internet Archive, not the Internet Barely Disguised Pirate Bay. I'm okay if the data they're archiving isn't super easy to access by everyone all the time, as long as it's being preserved. Someday eventually copyright law might become sane again, at which point these archives can come out of their bunkers. Until then those bunkers are important for keeping them safe.
I really think the Internet Archive did a downright stupid thing poking this bear with a stick. I'm relieved they survived and I hope they learned from the experience.
Had a similar conversation over in Mastodon recently and yeah, this is a very fair point. The indiscriminate scanning and publication of copyrighted books shouldn’t have happened in the first place, especially when there are existing ecosystems for ethical lending/leasing/borrowing of books already in place, which benefit and are working with authors/publishers already.
Copyright should not apply to a historic record, but things don't become historic record upon creation, but sometime after. However, you can't have a historic record if it isn't recording history as it happens so...once enough time passes to make a historic record case versus copyright how do you add back the stuff that wasn't recorded at the time?
The removal of this content is itself now historic record so tag the missing information and why there is a black hole where the record should be. Digital history, and thus history, as swiss cheese because the value of copyright matters more than accuracy of the history of the digital age itself. It is a tragedy to the future that we can't record reality because someone claims they own it...
We are a stupid, stupid species.
You archive it but don't publish it.
Yes, the archiving and republishing would be illegal in most countries, but not in the US. Fair Use
They didn't face trouble over archiving the net, but over digitally lending e-books and audio.
That might be a viable option.
It's the approach I've been advocating for for years now, throughout this whole lawsuit circus. I got a lot of downvotes for it over the years too, people couldn't separate my position from capitulation.
Really, it's just a matter of fighting the battles you can win and not fighting the battles that will annihilate you simply on the basis of principle. The analogy I kept using was a man carrying a precious and fragile treasure going up to a bear and whacking it with a stick, and then acting like we should be sympathetic to them as they desperately scream about how the precious treasure was at risk now that the bear was eating their leg.
They should be focusing on protecting that treasure. Let the EFF take the bear on, that's what they are for.
It does call into question the motive of the archive and it's financial viability to pivot to doing that.
You mean in term of internet archives mission and where it can do the most good? I would agree.