The Internet Archive and a group of leading book publishers told a Manhattan federal court on Friday that they have resolved aspects of their legal battle over the Archive's digital lending of their scanned books.
‘“Covered Book” shall mean any in-copyright book or portion thereof, whether in existence as of the date hereof or later created, in which any Plaintiff (or any subsidiary or corporate affiliate of a Plaintiff) (a) owns or controls an exclusive right under the Copyright Act …’
‘the “Internet Archive Parties” … are permanently enjoined and restrained from engaging in any of the following acts in, from or to the United States … the distribution to the public, public display, and/or public performance, of Covered Books in, from or to the United States in Case 1:20-cv-04160-JGK-OTW Document 214-1 Filed 08/11/23 Page 3 of 6 any digital or electronic form, including without limitation on the Internet Archive website (collectively “Unauthorized Distribution”)’
So while backing up the entire lending library might have been a challenge, perhaps the books of just the plaintiff publishers can be backed up?
Might also be an opportunity to punish the publishers by distributing their copyrighted works and hurting their pocket (though it seems they’re still yet to prove that piracy actually hurts profits!)
Yeah, you know, that [checks notes] one copy of a book that the lending library was able to lend* was really eating into their profit margin. Honest to God, they probably spent more money on lawyers over this shit than they’ll ever recoup, and it just makes them look stupid, greedy, and stupidly greedy.
*I think it’s one copy per actually book that’s owned. Just like you can’t lend you friends more copies of a given book than you own.
The publishers have called the Archive’s program a front for mass copyright infringement.
Digital libraries are a front for mass copyright infringement, according to the publishers :)
But for real, what’s the difference between a digital library that artificially limits the amount of books they lend out to the amount of books they scan and a traditional library? I can go to my local library right now, take a book home, photocopy the book at home, and return the book to the library. Not as high quality as a digital copy, but still.
I thought it was individual authors suing and I could see why they wouldn’t want their works being on Internet Archive. Seeing how it’s actually the most popular book publishers…
A real library is expensive to maintain and adding new additions means even more money with fees and buying more copies if a title is very popular. The public libraries I’ve been to have been empty even right before COVID. I can’t see physical libraries lasting much longer, especially with book bans and defunding.
Most libraries are now hooked up to Libby and rely on ebook licenses for their own library. Ebook licenses are the worst because most popular books are leased on a time limit or cycles (amount of people that read the copy). So if they have something really popular like Harry Potter, that could add up really quick depending.
It’s just like how music streaming services are paying musicians and singers peanuts for their streamed songs while the companies get everything else. Authors already don’t make enough money on royalties as it is, so this is all to line the publisher’s pockets more than anything.
Hope that somebody else will preserve what the Internet Archive can’t in spite of these greedy companies. This along with old recorded music is getting ridiculous.
Internet Archive is not Library Genesis, the two organizations have very different functions and should be structured very differently.
Internet Archive is for preserving data, not necessarily distributing it as widely as possible. If distributing the data puts the preservation of that data at risk then don’t distribute it, keep it stashed safely away. Maybe a decade or two from now things will change and they’ll have the only copies, and keeping them snugly away out of sight will have been vital to preserving them after that point. Internet Archive has a public corporate presence that makes it easy to donate to and easy to run their servers, but also makes them easy to sue. So avoid doing anything that gets you sued.
Library Genesis, on the other hand, is piracy central. Their mandate is distributing this stuff and sticking their thumbs in the eyes of the publishers. So they’re structured entirely differently. They run on the shady side of the internet, making them hard to donate to but also hard to sue. They should be the ones “fighting the fight” right now. It would be sad if they got taken down but not an irrecoverable tragedy, a new Library Genesis can rise again.
Internet Archive are being idiots by poking the bear like they have been lately, it’s like they’re carrying a precious irreplaceable baby and they’ve decided to take a run through a minefield. I hope they learn from this debacle.
If they have the only copy and their datacenter goes belly up, lot of good it did to have the only remaining copy because now it’s lost to existence. Offsite backups and ideally by many different organizations is the only sure-fire way to preserve this stuff. I donate to archive.org because I believe on what they’re trying to do and I hope they can continue on as long as needed.
Yes, that would be preservation. I don’t think they’d have ever got in trouble for doing that, even if it was technically a copyright violation. Probably not even if they had some sort of limited “lending” system so that rare texts could be read by the few who were interested in them. The problem came when Internet Archive flung their gates wide and let everyone download freely, at that point they became a piracy site and got hammered like a piracy site. That’s counter to their goal of simple preservation.
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Yeah, you know, that [checks notes] one copy of a book that the lending library was able to lend* was really eating into their profit margin. Honest to God, they probably spent more money on lawyers over this shit than they’ll ever recoup, and it just makes them look stupid, greedy, and stupidly greedy.
*I think it’s one copy per actually book that’s owned. Just like you can’t lend you friends more copies of a given book than you own.
Feature, not a bug
Digital libraries are a front for mass copyright infringement, according to the publishers :)
But for real, what’s the difference between a digital library that artificially limits the amount of books they lend out to the amount of books they scan and a traditional library? I can go to my local library right now, take a book home, photocopy the book at home, and return the book to the library. Not as high quality as a digital copy, but still.
I thought it was individual authors suing and I could see why they wouldn’t want their works being on Internet Archive. Seeing how it’s actually the most popular book publishers…
A real library is expensive to maintain and adding new additions means even more money with fees and buying more copies if a title is very popular. The public libraries I’ve been to have been empty even right before COVID. I can’t see physical libraries lasting much longer, especially with book bans and defunding.
Most libraries are now hooked up to Libby and rely on ebook licenses for their own library. Ebook licenses are the worst because most popular books are leased on a time limit or cycles (amount of people that read the copy). So if they have something really popular like Harry Potter, that could add up really quick depending.
It’s just like how music streaming services are paying musicians and singers peanuts for their streamed songs while the companies get everything else. Authors already don’t make enough money on royalties as it is, so this is all to line the publisher’s pockets more than anything.
Hope that somebody else will preserve what the Internet Archive can’t in spite of these greedy companies. This along with old recorded music is getting ridiculous.
Who would’ve thought it’s the publishers themselves that’s doing the Fahrenheit 451-ing
Frankly, good. As it always should have been.
Internet Archive is not Library Genesis, the two organizations have very different functions and should be structured very differently.
Internet Archive is for preserving data, not necessarily distributing it as widely as possible. If distributing the data puts the preservation of that data at risk then don’t distribute it, keep it stashed safely away. Maybe a decade or two from now things will change and they’ll have the only copies, and keeping them snugly away out of sight will have been vital to preserving them after that point. Internet Archive has a public corporate presence that makes it easy to donate to and easy to run their servers, but also makes them easy to sue. So avoid doing anything that gets you sued.
Library Genesis, on the other hand, is piracy central. Their mandate is distributing this stuff and sticking their thumbs in the eyes of the publishers. So they’re structured entirely differently. They run on the shady side of the internet, making them hard to donate to but also hard to sue. They should be the ones “fighting the fight” right now. It would be sad if they got taken down but not an irrecoverable tragedy, a new Library Genesis can rise again.
Internet Archive are being idiots by poking the bear like they have been lately, it’s like they’re carrying a precious irreplaceable baby and they’ve decided to take a run through a minefield. I hope they learn from this debacle.
If they have the only copy and their datacenter goes belly up, lot of good it did to have the only remaining copy because now it’s lost to existence. Offsite backups and ideally by many different organizations is the only sure-fire way to preserve this stuff. I donate to archive.org because I believe on what they’re trying to do and I hope they can continue on as long as needed.
Yes, that would be preservation. I don’t think they’d have ever got in trouble for doing that, even if it was technically a copyright violation. Probably not even if they had some sort of limited “lending” system so that rare texts could be read by the few who were interested in them. The problem came when Internet Archive flung their gates wide and let everyone download freely, at that point they became a piracy site and got hammered like a piracy site. That’s counter to their goal of simple preservation.