The Internet Archive is ending its free books program | Hacker News Reader

The Internet Archive is ending its free books program

nytimes.com

67 pointsKairon52 comments

The decision to do what they did is mind boggling.

I can only assume they were caught up in the atmosphere of unknown that was COVID... and somehow decided that their actions made sense.

It was poor judgment executed on a huge scale that potentially puts the whole Internet Archive at risk.

I would love to have been able to hear what the discussions were surrounding that decision and if / how they dealt with the obvious objection of "hey guys this is illegal".

They published a blog post explaining why they saw this as legal, and at the least it doesn't seem as clear cut as you imagine.

I really don't think that "unprecedented global and immediate need for access to reading and research materials" is a real legal justification, or if their reasoning would even be seen as an obvious fact.

> they saw this as legal

Yeah, that's not really how the law works, as demonstrated by this incident.

That is exactly how the law works. Having a lawsuit filed against you doesn't prove that you are guilty, the courts hear the case, interpret the written law and rule whether the action was legal.

What you describe is not the same as "we think this is legal so YOLO"

>"we think this is legal so YOLO"

I don't know why you think my post could be summarized like that. There's no real way to show if it's legal other than settle the matter in court, and they presumably consulted a legal team before the program started.

I said that your post is _not_ "we think this is legal so YOLO," whereas the Internet Archive's actual behavior _is_.

You haven't provided any reason why it is, which is why I'm confused.

The original model (lending out one digital copy per physical copy held) has merit [0]. It's called "controlled digital lending."

The issue is that the Internet Archive is lending out unlimited digital copies if they hold even one physical copy. At best, that's a legally dubious position. The Internet Archive even admits this practice wouldn't qualify as "controlled digital lending." [1]

[0]: https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360042654251-Nati...

[1]: https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360042654251-Nati...

>At best, that's a legally dubious position.

Hence the lawsuit. The internet Archive is arguing this as part of the CDL's "fair use" portion. Presumably they view the program as allowing libraries to continue offering their "vital function to society" while being closed.

http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/30/internet-archive-responds...

Everything the Internet Archive does is legally sketchy. The wayback machine making copies of web sites available without a prior agreement with the copyright owners? Their game and video archives?

Edit: I get it, it's an unpopular opinion. But as far as I can see, it's true: IA operates on a very broad definition of fair use that would be difficult to support legally. You can't have it both ways.

I just donated $100 to IA and refrained from making a $200 order for new books.

I think web scraping has been trending towards being established as more "legal" as time goes on.

It has, in the sense that it trending toward web scraping itself is not per se illegal, even if the site has terms of service that says you won't do it.

That's orthogonal to the question of whether or not in any particular case it is copyright infringement.

> the obvious objection of "hey guys this is illegal"

I figured the same was true for Google Books, but that's still around.

This whole copyright case is a whole load of bollocks. Hope that Internet Archive will fend that off, because otherwise it would be a very tragic loss for the internet.

I wonder how they can fend it off?

It seems like their actions were illegal in the most obvious way. I don't think there's much grey area here.

Imo the goal for the IA must be to haggle down the ridiculous damage claims to something that they can pay via donations.

I'm hoping that's the case. I'd like to see it settled in a way that preserves IA.

I do too, but my modest annual donations will stop. My support for the organization is about it's mission to preserve material that has lasting importance, not to contribute to a legal make-work program.

Why the Internet Archive would risk the entire org in this way is mind boggling. I wonder who on the board or in charge is falling on the sword, which needs to happen.

It's ending its unlimited free books program, and going back to the old version, which is limited.

To be more precise, it is returning to Controlled Digital Lending https://controlleddigitallending.org, where it lends out one digital copy for each physical copy it has purchased or acquired. CDL is unlikely to face major legal challenges, because it's effectively lending the digital copies exactly as if they were print copies.

The issue that caused all the outrage was the National Emergency Library program, where the Internet Archive was simultaneously lending out an unlimited number of digital copies of a book, regardless of whether it only possessed one physical copy.

This is (on its face) a violation of copyright. Under the first-sale doctrine, you're free to lend out a copy you've purchased. But you aren't free to make unlimited copies of a copy you've purchased and lend them out.

The publisher's believe the CDL is illegal too, and are suing on this basis too. From the article:

> The lawsuit, filed June 1, does not just object to the National Emergency Library but to the way Internet Archive has long operated. Traditional libraries pay publishers licensing fees, and agree to terms that restrict how many times they can lend an e-book. Internet Archive, by contrast, takes books that have been donated or purchased, scans them and posts them online.

I am an author, and three of my books were published by one of the Big Four publishers who are suing the Internet Archive.

I fully support the publishers' complaint against the National Emergency Library program. Lending out more copies than you own is the same as making unauthorized copies of copyrighted works, and it should be stopped.

But I do not share their opposition to Controlled Digital Lending. I think it is a reasonable system of lending that attempts to achieve parity with lending of physical copies, and I think it has a good chance of being defensible in court.

Of course, I know why these publishers oppose CDL. E-book licensing is an income stream they don't want to dry up. And it's quite possible that losing that income stream might mean that they will need to make cutbacks or reduce the number of titles they publish, which could be bad for authors. But I can't see how CDL can be a violation of copyright when lending physical copies under the same terms is not.

The NEL was still operating under the model of Controlled Digital Lending. The only restriction that was removed was multiple users accessing the same book; each user was still limited to a DRM-enforced lending period, and could only be borrowing a few books from the Archive at any given time.

Only loaning simultaniously the number of copies you have in your possession is part of the CDL model, so no, they were not.

Cf https://controlleddigitallending.org/statement

Properly implemented, CDL enables a library to circulate a digitized title in place of a physical one in a controlled manner. Under this approach, a library may only loan simultaneously the number of copies that it has legitimately acquired, usually through purchase or donation. For example, if a library owns three copies of a title and digitizes one copy, it may use CDL to circulate one digital copy and two print, or three digital copies, or two digital copies and one print [...]

The issue that caused all the outrage was the National Emergency Library program

Not really: Publishers oppose controlled digital lending as well. The Emergency Library just painted a bigger target on the Internet Archive's back due to its more obviously questionable legality.

They may "oppose" it, but I don't think they've challenged its fair use status in court before?

Not as far as I'm aware, but they're doing so now. Who knows why they have waited so long, though one can speculate (eg. CDL might not have had enough momentum to be a real threat before, the Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc. appeal was only ruled on in Dec 2018, ...)

NEL aside, for CDL I'm curious what the bar is for possession. Could we have a community distributed library where people with purchased books can "give" their books sitting on their bookshelves to a CDL program but not have to physically ship anything? The donor then promises to check if their book is in use before cracking it open. Most of the time my books aren't being read anyway...

And it seems like a distinction without a difference. If the Internet Archive is lending out ten scanned copies of a book who knows whether they own one physical copy of the book or ten?

Are they scanning each (virtually identical) copy individually?

I wouldn't have minded the old version, except I could never get the DRM to play nicely with Linux.

Works fine in a browser. Otherwise, I've successfully ran Adobe digital editions in Wine.

You can strip the DRM with DeDRM and calibre.

This is very unfortunate. I agree they probably infringed on copyright, but I also think they were in the right. If we respected the law in this emergency when none of our social systems could cope with unprecedented crisis, the human costs would mount even higher.

The publishers will continue to do what's in their interest (immorally imo), but what they could have done instead was jump onboard and say yes these books will be offered for the duration of the crisis.

Of course, I feel that publishing should be at least partially publicly funded so that copyright wouldn't be a concern and we could read everything for free above production cost and authors would get paid. However, the private system should have at least tried to legitimize itself by providing necessary services for the public instead of continuing to deprive people of what they need out of concern for their own profits.

IA could have easily coordinated with publishers beforehand and got them on board as a good publicity opportunity. Instead they did it on their own, very clearly violating the copyrights.

Like it or not, copyright holders can set whatever terms they want on the material they own. That includes making choices that you think are dumb or bad for business. It’s not the job of copyright to ensure companies serve the public good or even do things that keep them in business. That’s up to the market.

we are the market, and the market is expressing its will (here and elsewhere), like it or not.

The only decision the market is allowed to make is “do I buy this, yes or no?” It (you) doesn’t get to change the rules whenever it feels like it when you don’t feel like paying for something.

no, that’s a pedagogical model of a market. real markets are rich in information channels going every which way that also inform price, product, etc. (i.e., marketing). real markets are highly and nonlinearly dynamic.

My contention is not that the pro-business choices are not merely dumb or bad for business, but amoral and obviously threaten the well being of society during a pandemic. One could make the argument that society would be better off of their ability to set terms was dramatically pared back even in non-pandemic times.

Interesting to see the HN community at large suddenly supporting copyright law status-quo...

I think most people agree that creators should be paid. It’s the greed of big publishing companies (especially in research) that drive people up a wall with anger.

IA likely also agree that creators should be paid.

And how did they expect them to get paid when they were giving away unlimited copies of the authors books?

I do not want everything else the archive preserves (including, full disclosure, reams of pages I scanned myself) to be lost because they decided to pick a fight they couldn't win.

People don't support the copyright status quo, people think it was stupid to risk a vital resource in an unlikely-to-be-won fight. It was delusional and irresponsible.

The free books program that they had already planned on ending on June 30th.

I can't say I'm surprised; it was a lot of legal risk. But also, not a fan of copyright as-is. It's a real mickey mouse game, and it's not authors walking away with the fat paychecks.

As discussed quite a bit:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23485182

I wonder if something like this could assist the archive. As legal costs mounts, they could scatter their library and make it all free forever - not even those lending limits with Controlled Digital Lending will remain. Might make the publishers come to a truce, since they must fund the lawsuit as there is no pot of gold in the archives to give a contingency law firm to take it on. Get China on board for the good it's billions of citizens!!

https://sci-hub.tw/

Transitioning to another pirate library is unlikely to be a benefit to anyone long-term.

"Let's say you wanted to back up the Internet Archive"

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/h02jl4/lets_sa...

Unfortunately, I think this is the right decision. Books can and will be archived by publishers; The Internet Archive is most important as a repository of culture that won't be preserved any other way.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com