[HN Gopher] Internet Archive responds: Why we released the Natio...
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Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency
Library
Author : sp332
Score : 56 points
Date : 2020-03-30 19:37 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.archive.org)
| thelean12 wrote:
| Why reimplement waitlists later if this is legal?
|
| Is the answer that it probably isn't legal and they're just
| hoping for the best here?
| sgift wrote:
| Things can be legal in specific situations even if it's illegal
| in others. It's up to courts to decide on that.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| 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?
| btilly wrote:
| 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.
| sp332 wrote:
| Copyright infringement is generally a civil matter. That means
| someone has to bother to sue you before there are legal
| consequences. They're betting that publishers won't take the PR
| hit of suing a non-profit providing a public service during an
| emergency. And since the opt-out is so easy, the amount of
| damages someone could claim are probably pretty darn small.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Anyone know which authors have opted out? It would be interesting
| to hear their reasons why in their own words.
| mirimir wrote:
| One would hope that there's a notice to that effect, when users
| attempt to access their works.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| > What about those who say we're stealing from authors &
| publishers?
|
| Has any normal human being who is _not_ a publisher or an author
| actually made this claim?
| Veen wrote:
| If you look around, you'll also find photographers, painters,
| videographers, illustrators, designers, and musicians making
| similar arguments.
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22716923
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22731637
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22715009
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22681132
| jfengel wrote:
| So under ordinary circumstances, when they do their Controlled
| Digital Lending, for each copy they lend out there's an actual
| dead-tree book sitting on a shelf somewhere?
| btilly wrote:
| Exactly.
| ddevault wrote:
| That is _obscene_. Screw copyright.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I wouldn't call it obscene; having a physical copy is a
| good backup. Maybe we could say we're allowing digital
| lending libraries to violate copyrights enough to
| distribute copies over the internet as long as they
| contribute to physical conservation as well.
| marvindanig wrote:
| yikes, those dead trees mean zero backup or conservation
| as opposed to distributed storage off of the web. this is
| a lame miscarriage of a copyright law that is outdated.
| jfengel wrote:
| In this case, it's not about backups. It's about
| extending the notion of a "library" to Internet. The
| publisher still gets all of the usual money that they'd
| get from selling a book, and the library gets to lend it
| out subject to the same constraints they'd have on
| lending out a physical book. They "lend" one digital copy
| per physical copy.
|
| That's still not entirely in keeping with the limited
| domain that libraries used to have, where lending out a
| book came with a physical cost of getting it to the
| patron. But it's close enough for reasonable opinions to
| differ.
|
| So it's about preserving the structure by which book
| people (not just authors, but editors, publicists,
| publishers, layout, cover artists, etc) get paid.
| textfiles wrote:
| Yes, there are a number of warehouses with millions of books
| in boxes, indexed down to the book (hence the metadata of a
| book has a physical location in it).
| fenwick67 wrote:
| Fun fact, there is a service called Console Classix that does
| this with classic game ROMs (NES, SNES etc). The cartridges sit
| around on shelves, then if you play a game they basically
| reserve that copy for you, which they say clears them of any
| copyright issues. It sounds sketchy but they've been in
| business renting ROMs for over 10 years and they're still
| around.
| dvduval wrote:
| There are lots of children still going to school, and there's no
| simple way for them to obtain books that previously would have
| been available for free. It is sort of a reading emergency!
|
| Now where I live the library system is awesome, and I found the
| selection was way better than Barnes & Noble.
|
| Libraries purchase a lot of books every year and it's no small
| amount of money. That being said it's also wasteful for many
| people to buy a book only to read it once. So we need to put more
| thought into how we can do this so we aren't so wasteful.
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(page generated 2020-03-30 23:00 UTC)