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The Internet Archive just lost its appeal over ebook lending
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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My understanding is that the IA had implemented a digital library, where they had (whether paid or not) some number of licenses for a selection of books. This implementation had DRM of some variety that meant you could only read the book while it was checked out. In theory, this means if the IA has 10 licenses of a book, only 10 people have a usable copy they borrowed from the IA at a time.
And then the IA disabled the DRM system, somehow, and started limitlessly lending the books they had copies of to anyone that asked.
I definitely don't like the obnoxious copyright system in the USA, but what the IA did seems obviously ~~wrong~~ against the agreement they entered into. Like if your local library got a copy of Book X and then when someone wanted to borrow it they just copied it right there and let you keep the copy.
ETA: updated my wording. I don't believe what the IA did was morally wrong, per se, but rather against the agreement I presume they entered into with the owners of the books they lent.
They disabled drm during lockdown so people had something to do
Which was nice of them, but that doesn’t mean they should’ve done that, especially in the eyes of the law. (Also, if you’re after free ebooks, why are you pirating them on archive.org instead of libgen?)
Where did I say that find it good that they got sued or lost their appeal? I just said that the reason why they lost the appeal is because according to the law they’re bound to, what they did was wrong. And maybe they should’ve left that to a platform that enjoys a little more immunity from said law, because there are plenty of those. It was stupid of them. They painted an unnecessary target on their back that doesn’t help their cause and I‘d prefer them not to have to shut down at some point because I’m all for the Internet archive archiving anything and everything. They should’ve stayed a legitimate library and everything would have been fine and would have served their cause sufficiently well.
Ah, so you‘re one of those people that would be well at home at lemmygrad. And what fate are you talking about? Not getting sued?