this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
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Everyone that wants context should read this: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-internet-archives-last-ditch
Listen, I love the IA and everything they stand for, but they're not winning this. They fucked up and gave away copyrighted content, for free, in unlimited amounts during covid. They then proceed to melt down in court because they know it's impossible to win. Now they're seeking empathy from everyone and not talking about why they got sued - which is giving away potentially millions of copies of other people's work...
And everyone that wants unbiased context should read the wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachette_v._Internet_Archive
The judgment basically completely ignored IA's arguments towards fair use. EFF filed an amicus brief that explains how baseless the judgment was. Assuming the entire US court system isn't in the corporate pocket yet they will win this on appeal.
It's ridiculous to assume that an organization whose main purpose is data archival would knowingly and blatantly ignore copyright law. IA didn't ignore it, they did they homework and saw that their use qualified as fair use. Then they met a judge who doesn't give a shit about that. Nobody can prepare for that in advance.
I love your optimism
Their argument towards fair use wasn’t ignored. It was inapplicable.
Except that’s exactly what they did. They knowingly and blatantly violated copyright law. They had a system in place to ensure fair use compliance. They intentionally disabled that system, in violation of fair use, to allow unlimited free downloads of the books they had archived.
IA’s entire argument was basically “but we’re a library” and totally missed the part where even public libraries need to comply with copyright law. Even with ebooks, they can’t simply distribute an unlimited number of copies; They have licensing agreements in place, for a specific number of specific ebooks to be checked out at any one time. And they have to use time-locked DRM to ensure compliance, by automatically revoking users’ reading ability when their check-out time is up. IA did precisely none of that.
Huh. TIL. I always wondered why libraries treat ebooks like physical books.
In this case, they absolutely did. They had a CDL in place specifically to comply with copyright law, and they willfully and intentionally disabled it.
The publishers also had arrangements with local libraries to expand their ebook selections. Most libraries have ebook and audiobook deals worked out with the publishers, and those were expanded during the lockdowns. Many of the partner libraries preferred those systems to the CDL because they served their citizens directly. A small town in Nebraska didn't have to worry about having a wait list of 3000 people ahead of the local citizen whose taxes had actually bought the license the Internet Archive wanted to borrow.
The Internet Archive held a press conference right before the ruling comparing the National Emergency Library to winter-library lands, but that's simply not accurate. The CDL they had in place before and after was inter-library loaning. The CDL was like setting up printing presses in the library and copying books for free and handing them out to anyone.
Under the existing CDL, they could have verified that partner libraries had stopped lending their phycical copies of the books and made more copies of the ebooks available for checkout instead of just making it unlimited and they'd have legally been fine, but they did not, and the publishers had every right to sue.
The publishes also waited until June to file suit: well-after most places had been re-opened for weeks.
IA does important work, but they absolutely broke the law here, and since they did it by intentionally removing the systems designed to ensure legitimate archival status and fair-use of copywritten works, they have pretty much zero defense. It wasn't a mistake or an oversight. And after reopening they kept doing it for weeks until they were sued and were able to magically restore the legal system the same day the lawsuit was filed.
You're using the publisher's arguments in your comment. If anybody's interested, here's the IA's counter-argument. It boils down to the fact publishers are challenging practices that used to be considered fair use... just because they can.
This decision has wide-reaching implications that will affect all libraries, not just the IA.
Ultimately we'll just have to see what the appeal decision will be.
In that counter argument they are essentially admitting that 99% of their content was distributed without the copyright holder's consent.
Was it fair use in the past to redistribute reprints/format-conversions of works without the copyright holders consent?
I agree that copyright law sucks.. but that's why it needs to change so it actually serves "the greater public good". The judiciary system is not the right place to advocate for that (they don't make the law, just interpret it), so I don't really think there's much hope in them winning this. Sadly.
Their counter-argument isn't a legal argument. They're saying they did it because they think the publishers aren't being fair.
And they're talking mostly about format-conversion, which isn't the problem here.
You can absolutely make format conversions to digital for archival purposes. What you cannot do is them make a bunch of copies and give them away for free simultaneous use. That is not fair use. That's 100% piracy.
The CDL was built specifically to ensure that only one digital copy was on loan for each owned copy of the material because the IA absolutely knew that was the law.
Assuming they don't win, is there any contingency in place to preserve all their data? I don't know how exactly because I assume there's an absolute fuckton of it, but it would be such a shame if all of that was lost forever.
I'd love to see it become like the Pirate Bay, where they squish one and ten more pop up to replace it, but I don't know if that's even possible.
That worked for pirate bay because they were storing a miniscule amount of actual data. Torrents are really small. The actual data is stored in the peer to peer network. The torrents are just tracking where in the p2p stuff is.
IA isn't like that. They probably store exabytes of data.
@[email protected] Thoughts?
@Cracks_InTheWalls @CrabAndBroom I think there are tons and tons of yummy little square boxes that will take all of the letters you type into a keyboard and then put them somewhere for everybody to see.
Lol, fair. I'm still not well versed in inter-service ActivityPub stuff. I don't know if you'll see this or see any of the parent comments here on Lemmy.
Contingency plans if IA loses the appeal about the library stuff, or in general has something happen that puts IA's collections at risk of being lost. Any thoughts on the matter? Also cool if it's not something you want to talk about, I know you don't speak for the whole org.
How do we archive the archive?
@Cracks_InTheWalls I'm quite aware of the thread you are connecting me to. My answer stays the same.
Ah, understood. Thanks!
That's not the full article, see https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5556650/the-internet-archives-last-ditch-effort-to-save-itself
I don't know what happend the last few years with Lunduke, but it seems like he went down the conservative/conspiracy rabbit hole and now I don't trust anything he writes anymore. Please see for yourself, this article is a good starting point: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-tech-industry-hates-you?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
I think this explains his stance a bit https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=rRDEkMAcwrQ I agree with some bits (because code quality does matter more than being nice when it is your profession), disagree with some (because being a grumpy idiot will harm your ability to build on collaborative projects).
PS: but yea, then there is also the video about the tech industry where he cherrypicks outrage and contradicts himself and agrees that Linus is rude and divisive...which sort of discredits him, because he only seems to like angry but competent people when they agree with him.
Yeah, pretty much everyone who understands copyright agreed that this was the dumbest idea imaginable. But IA stupidly proceeded anyways, and now they’re finding out that the long studded dildo of justice rarely arrives lubed.
I love IA. I use it all the time. But this was just a blatantly stupid move. No amount of crying about it is going to change the fact that they seriously fucked up and angered the most well-established copyright holders in the world.