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Comment by ghusto | Hacker News Reader

> Publishers are arguing that it is not okay to scan a copyrighted book, keep the paper copy in storage, and loan out the digital file in a one-to-one ratio just like any library loans any other kind of book. This practice is called Controlled Digital Lending. A New York judge will decide the case soon.

Should have started with this. I agree with everything being said, despite my slightly right political leanings, but that's only because these kinds of issues are close to my heart.

Other politically right leaning people would likely have switched off before they got to that paragraph. Make these things less emotionally charged and political, and you'll get more support.

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> Make these things less emotionally charged and political, and you'll get more support

Are we using the same Internet? Clickbait, outrage and emotionally-charged drivel triumphs over measured rational discourse every day of the week

You're right. I make videos on youtube yelling at people but using science and reason, but I know that being calm and Garfield-eyelided doesn't do CRAP, so I'm constantly throwing in personal insults.

Not for effect. Not to be gratuitous - but because I genuinely cannot stand misinformation spreaders who have the same internet as me but they prefer to get things wrong and stick with it.

Some people insist that those lights in the sky are not jupiter and instead are drones following them. Mr. Rogers isn't going to cure these broken brains.

>> Make these things less emotionally charged and political, and you'll get more support

> Are we using the same Internet? Clickbait, outrage and emotionally-charged drivel triumphs over measured rational discourse every day of the week

Yeah ... for ad-driven content and messaging about wedge-issues meant to hold together electoral coalitions. Is this one of those things?

If you actually are about issue X, it's probably not a good strategy to let it get polarized along political lines, you might slightly increase your support with one polarization, but you'll increase opposition from the other. That's a recipe having your issue stagnate.

Thank you, it was a bit frustrating that the website did not clearly explain what the actual suit was about.

Controlled digital lending seems to me like a misguided attempt to enforce the limits of dead tree books on bits.

Current copyright law may be good for (some) authors and publishers, and it may provide some incentive for writing new books, but it seems like a huge loss for humanity as a whole, who miss out on the benefit of being able to read any book via the internet, essentially for free.

It's sad that Google scanned entire university libraries, only to lock them up and only allow access to small snippets. And it's nothing less than absurd that students and faculty don't even get access to scanned books from their own library.

Though there are some real digital libraries that are less observant of copyright law. They may not be as easy to get to as the internet archive, but they're often much better in terms of access policies.

During the pandemic IA announced the National Emergency Library. Theory was so many books were locked in closed libraries it was fair for them to decouple from their physical count and make all their books available for unlimited digital download. The publishers responded by suing, and basically threw the book at them.

I don't agree with the publishers opposition to CDL, but it's disengenous of IA not to mention that nobody sued them over it until they went much further.

Edit: And when they first announced the NEL plenty of people pointed out that their announcement was heavy on ethical arguments, light on the law, and threatened to blow up an ok status quo.

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