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Comment by TylerE | Hacker News Reader

They should fire what even nitwit thought this obviously illegal plan was a good idea in the first place. The fallout will likely tank the entire archive in the long term.

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It was through lending, this was due to a change of policy of lending during COVID-19 to ease access

It lending done flagrantly in violation of the licensing. They were taking a copy licensed to be lent ONCE and giving it to thousands of people at once.

their lending scheme is timed by hour with the option to renew with some restraints, it is not lending to thousands at once

Then why did they just get their ass royally handed to them in court?

Because they didn’t pay publishers for separate “ebook” licenses.

Because the justice and political systems, particularly in regards to copyright, are deeply corrupt.

Because publishers are assholes.

Are all "rich monopolists" the same?

Because billion-dollar capitalist rent-seeking bullies got their panties in a wad and threatened to bankrupt them with legal fees that the bullies wouldn’t even feel if they lost. And the archive is just a non-profit that were offering a not-for-profit service for the betterment of society, with literally zero actual negative consequences.

Trying to normalize a DRM system is not advancing the betterment of society. If IA wanted to be pro-social scofflaws, they should have published DRM-free epubs/PDFs/etc for download, copyright law be damned. If they wanted to be law-abiding, they should have declined to offer this service, and informed users of the existence of shadow libraries.

Serious answer: it was judged that the act of scanning and delivering the book was ‘copying’ it - which copyright laws say they need permission to do. The whole ‘we only let one person at a time read it’ thing was deemed to be irrelevant.

Note that I’m not commenting on whether a reasonable person would also interpret copyright law this way, or on whether the laws are fair, just what the judgment was.

You’re confusing the COVID “emergency lending” period (which was highly dubious, I agree) with their normal lending system. They track borrows against physical copies of the books stored in their warehouse. Typically you can only borrow a book for one hour before having to renew in the viewer.

Under discovery in the case it turned out that nope, they weren't doing that right either.

True, but the judge's conclusion was "Even full enforcement of a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio . . . would not excuse IA’s reproduction of the Works in Suit." So even if they had done it right, this wouldn't have gone their way.

> taking a copy licensed

I'm curious what license applies when I buy a physical book, as a library does? Do you have a resource where I could learn more?

doctrine of first sale, it's a really interesting concept in the United States at least.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

I love how the Hacker ethos has shifted from information wants to be free[0] to this sort of predictable HN (the H stands for Hacker doesn't it) reply.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free

EDIT: looks like the "this is the law" crowd is out in full force on this summer Friday night. All the cool people are doing something else, elsewhere obviously.

It’s somewhat hypocritical to believe otherwise when one’s employment (or if that offends you, the effectiveness of copyleft licenses) depends on the existence of intellectual property. That sort of nuance tends to be lost on the “information wants to be free” crowd.

If society wanted to, it could most certainly choose to allow for the copying of any bits you are in possession of, while also forcing you to distribute additional bits in certain circumstances.

90% of the "archive" is just mass piracy anyway

>95% of the Internet Archive is a useful service to society even if it pisses of a few companies. It should be legal even if they sometimes act as "holy fools".

Piracy means that something was taken by force from someone. What was it that was taken that's no longer there?

that is not what software piracy means...

Legally speaking, software piracy does not exist.

Yeah, it's like these people are Google to be able to get away with this. If you're going to do it, it better be for a self benefiting reason, and damn well better not be for the good of all man kind. This is capitalist society and not some sort of benevolent society. What kind of moron would think that would ever be a good idea? /s

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