That's why archive.org should have never been sued for lending books they had physical copy of. This is the result. Publishers should be more careful what they wish for.

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kingstnap 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The archive.org story was more nuanced than that. If I recall correctly the full story was that they used to lend digital versions of books they physically bought and scanned with DRM to enforce a sort of one to one at a time restriction.

But during covid archive.org decided to just remove the limit and lend unlimited copies concurrently which started the debacle with the publishers.

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cvadict 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> But during covid archive.org decided to just remove the limit and lend unlimited copies concurrently

IIRC, this was 100% it. Lending one digital version of one physical asset was likely already a violation copyright. Lending UNLIMITED digital versions of one physical copy was DEFINITELY a blatant violation of copyright.

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phasefactor 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Correct, it was switching to unlimited lending instead of one lend per physical book that got them in trouble.

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butlike 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How is lending one digital version of one physical asset a violation of copyright? Since I MAY be able to lend out the physical as well?

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ndiddy 2 hours ago | parent [-]

From the court decision:

"IA maintains that it delivers each Work “only to one already entitled to view [it]”―i.e., the one person who would be entitled to check out the physical copy of each Work. But this characterization confuses IA’s practices with traditional library lending of print books. IA does not perform the traditional functions of a library; it prepares derivatives of Publishers’ Works and delivers those derivatives to its users in full. That Section 108 allows libraries to make a small number of copies for preservation and replacement purposes does not mean that IA can prepare and distribute derivative works en masse and assert that it is simply performing the traditional functions of a library. 17 U.S.C. § 108; see also, e.g., ReDigi, 910 F.3d at 658 (“We are not free to disregard the terms of the statute merely because the entity performing an unauthorized reproduction makes efforts to nullify its consequences by the counterbalancing destruction of the preexisting phonorecords.”)."

	▲	card_zero 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Derivative works? That seems to translate as "because the books are digitized, it's strange and new and we can't allow it".

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Cthulhu_ 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah that was it; if I got this right, US libraries got the right to lend out one digital version of a book that they had in their inventory. Archive.org combined those digital versions so that people could check out a digital book if any library in the US had it (digitally) available. But during the 'rona they removed this limit and just lent out books regardless of it being "checked out" digitally from a library.

This wasn't a very smart move of them. I get why they did it but they put themselves at a huge legal risk.

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Incipient 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Publishers don't care if rare books get shredded?

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the-grump 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And, regrettably, The Archive lent books regardless of physical possession.

Publishers had accepted the prior arrangement before The Archive decided to push it, if not explicitly then implicitly by not suing.

I'm a believer in The Archive's mission, and I wish they had treated the goodwill they'd accumulated as something worth preserving and not a currency to be spent.

It has been stated by many before me: lending books should have been handled by a separate entity, especially when they removed the physical backing requirement.

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kmeisthax 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Just to be clear, publishers hadn't accepted the "controlled digital lending" (CDL) premise, not even with the one-to-one ratio. Their position was always "first sale ends when the atoms do". There was even controlling precedent: a few years before IA tried their online lending library thing, there was an "MP3 resale" company called ReDigi that had lost on very similar grounds. The publishers suing IA even made sure to sue in the same venue that had decided the ReDigi case so it'd be controlling precedent.

Furthermore, in the discovery for the Internet Archive case, publishers had already found a case where IA had lent out books despite knowing their partner libraries wasn't actually withdrawing loaned-out copies from circulation. The CDL premise was always just a suggestion, and IA would have still lost their case if they hadn't done the National Emergency Library (NEL) stunt or if they'd been sued in another venue that hadn't had the ReDigi case as precedent.

It's important to note that whenever a company decides to sue for copyright, it is often late, because the company is banking infringements up to the 3-year statute of limitations and because building a meritorious case takes time. The lack of a timely lawsuit proves almost nothing about the intent of a publisher with a valid case against you.

The thing is, I don't even think the whole stunt damaged much of the IA's goodwill? I know of a few people who withheld donations to IA, but that was mainly under the assumption that publishers would be getting a billion-dollar damage award that would immediately bankrupt IA and result in it's archives being sold off to Lexis-Nexis or something. The funny thing is, IA wound up settling for a sum so small they had to promise never to reveal it, and the danger is gone, so the only thing people complain about now is just that the NEL stunt maybe pushed them "above the radar" or something.

It's still insane that shredding books for AI training is legal, but this isn't.

	▲	TeMPOraL 6 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The big insanity is tying this to AI. Shredding books is about format shifting; it's a concession hard-won from copyright establishment, which would otherwise be more than happy to deny you the option to convert the media you owned from physical to digital. AI training happens to be one of the fields exercising that option, but since it's the current favorite topic for people to hate on, here we are.

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azan_ 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, why would it be bad for publishers? If anything they'd most likely encourage more book shredding!

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infinite_spin 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

of the rare books, which was the rarest of them all? What year was it published?

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JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> That's why archive.org should have never been sued for lending books they had physical copy of. This is the result

How are these things remotely related? If anything, Archive.org’s callous, thoughtless approach nuked the hands of legitimate archival efforts.

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redsocksfan45 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]