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Comment by ComputerGuru | Hacker News Reader

They know (and wouldn't deny) it's against normal copyright law and an infringement of the IP of the authors/publishers; they are hoping that courts would side with them as a "war-time emergency measure taken in the national interest."

I am deeply appreciative of the Internet Archive which is why I probably wouldn't have taken that bet. It would be horrible if their solvency and future relied on the outcome of the inevitable lawsuits to follow, and I don't think the risk (of losing IA) is worth the benefit (and this is why things this important should be government-backed so that they can ignore some laws with impunity in time of need, or at least without risking their very existence).

Personally, I'd have switched to shorter waitlists first (e.g. 24 hours or even 4 hours). But I'm not a domain expert; what do I know?

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More than that, I would guess that they will defend themselves with an argument like the following.

They will claim that they are lending out copies of books locked up in other libraries. And there are librarians from said libraries willing to testify that they have agreed to allow this. They have ceased tracking inventory because getting a detailed inventory under current conditions is challenging. But they believe that the number of copies that they have available exceeds the number that will get lent.

If challenged, they will have the number of book X lent out on file. As long as they can find more libraries willing to say "We authorize them to lend the copy we can't lend physically because of quarantine" than they lent copies, this argument has a shot.

> It would be horrible if their solvency and future relied on the outcome of the inevitable lawsuits to follow

I wonder if the wheels are already coming off. Otherwise it seems a bit excessive for IA to suddenly bet the whole house on this.

> Otherwise it seems a bit excessive for IA to suddenly bet the whole house on this.

What is the proper and proportionate response to a pandemic? I think that no-one knows, and, if I were in their shoes, then I'd rather history see me as the one who went too far in pursuit of the public good than the one who didn't do what I could have for fear that it was too much.

A lot of terrible things have been done by people who went too far in pursuit of what they thought was the public good.

One potential proportionate response, in my opinion, would have been to lean harder on the existing model of Controlled Digital Lending (where each lent e-book is backed by a physical book), and instead of saying they're going to move to uncontrolled lending, put out a call for people to buy more backing copies for the duration of the pandemic, specifically identifying the books that were in more demand. Then they could have gotten those books into the hands of more people while also paying authors more.

This comment hardly adds anything productive here and makes a heck of an accusation. What damage has sharing books freely during a national emergency ever done to anyone? The authors lose nothing and gain readers.

It seems quite clear to me - the authors lose their livelihood. Authors can (and generally do) write at home, and they can (and generally do) sell e-books. Their livelihoods are not inherently at risk because of a quarantine. This action puts their livelihoods at risk. You can certainly argue that they shouldn't have such a livelihood for whatever reason, but the fact remains that they do.

You may as well ask, what damage has sharing food freely during a national emergency done? What damage has sharing housing? Money? All are at least as important as books, and all are worth sharing during certain forms of emergency, but I hope we'd agree it would be quite wrong for me to walk into my local grocery store and walk out with everything without paying, saying "For the public good!", and then give things out. Perhaps we should nationalize the grocery stores and the apartment buildings and the banks - but such a decision should (at most) be made by the government, not by some individual non-profit.

Again, there are less drastic measures that don't cause this. Expanding Controlled Digital Lending would actually mean the authors lose nothing, and gain them readers. (Or, you know, do this except only for orphan works or not-available-in-ebook works or something. That would also meet the stated goals.)

Or simply have the Internet Archive contact authors, say "We scanned your books into e-books, want to make them freely available? You'll lose nothing and gain readers," and then make it their decision.

Why must you twist everything to make victims where you are the theoretical aggressor while comparing your desired outcome against what could conceivably happen should your proposed solutions be ignored? Is this a trick of some sort? A legalese technique? I am legitimately confused.

I dunno, I genuinely care about the well-being of people who make a living by writing books. Maybe that's weird and confusing?

I don’t see them twisting anything. Their arguments are the most basic standard knowledge on the economics of IP, and you just continue to refuse engaging with them with anything but superficial slogans.

> I'd rather history see me as the one who went too far in pursuit of the public good

What people think after you're dead shouldn't outweigh the public good in this.

They have a responsibility not to recklessly take on existential risk; it's in the best interest of their cause that they continue to exist. This is doubly true in a time of crisis where people need stable institutions to rely on.

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