The legal ruling against the Internet Archive has come down in favour of the rights of authors.
I hope all the writers who support this lawsuit understand that they are contributing to a long standing effort to outlaw libraries in general. Nobody makes direct money off of sharing things. Get ready for DRM involved in every single thing that you do.
I still can’t believe IA took this risk, however. I agree it should’ve been fine, but they and we know it isn’t. They basically begged for this to happen and I don’t understand why when they clearly don’t have their ducks in a row to pick this fight (unlike TPB which plays the game well).
I don’t understand why they kept the “emergency library” open after COVID restrictions were lifted. I think they might have had a better shot in court if they had gone back to the normal digital library protocol.
The article says it was shutdown in June 2020, a few months after it started. Is that inaccurate?
Was the emergency library consensual in the first place? If not, then I would assume lockdown was irrelevant, legally speaking… and it would easily explain why the IA is in hot water right now.
No it was not I believe. But it doesn’t mean that the COVID aspect wouldn’t be weighed into the matter. Still likely would have ended up with them losing, either way in my opinion unfortunately.
I am way too liberal about this sort of stuff and I think you should only be able to go after sharing/pirating if you can definitively prove it’s causing greater harm to your product then it’s benefit.
I often borrow/pirate something to end up paying for another related book, game, Shows or movies, etc. I would have never even bothered if I couldn’t have borrowed/pirated in the first place as I am not going to throw money at shit that is likely going to be crap. Pirating and free lending allows for people to get an intro to something, if it’s good it will lure users into the book/show or whatever’s universe. Causing them to be much more likely to purchase in the future.
Then once the actuaries calculate out that number the only damages you should be able to claim are the difference, if there even is a difference.
I think you should only be able to go after sharing/pirating if you can definitively prove it’s causing greater harm to your product then it’s benefit.
The problem is that while most of us agree, we all also know that isn’t how the world works. IA is a major name, they are obviously not operating under the radar. They picked a fight they weren’t ready to take on and they should’ve known better, but instead they decided to jeopardize the entire project.
If you want to be The Pirate Bay, then you need to play it smart like The Pirate Bay. This was reckless and short sighted.
Just because its not how it currently works, doesn’t mean it can’t be changed. We do have an entire branch of government to do just that. I am not optimistic positive changes will be made in that regard, but it doesn’t hurt to talk about it.
People at the internet archive literally gave away all the books they had in the library for free to as many people who wanted them, basically pretending they had a right to copy the books as many times as they desired as long as it was under the guise of being a library.
Not only did they deserve to lose this case, they displayed such arrogant weaponized stupidity in making that decision that I’m surprised they weren’t trying to screw themselves over.
The internet archive is awesome, their decision in 2020 was fucking stupid
I agree it was stupid. I just know that media companies are foaming at the mouth to use this decision to destroy online lending all together. And many writers are being tricked into thinking this will somehow help them. It won’t. This will help Amazon. People renting your book from the internet archive is not why you’re failing to make money.
Every day I lose a little more faith in humanity. Still holding out hope we might turn it around though 😞
And I hope people who sides with IA in this eill accept to stop collecting their wages and start working for free.
Because this is what you’re proposing.
Which artist involved in this suit is working for free?
How old are the copyrights being upheld?
I’d need to know those two pieces of information before coming to a conclusion. No one should work for free, I can agree with that, but is that is what is occurring?
Copyright and patent laws need to die.
5 years protection should be the limit. If you can’t make back costs and get a tidy sum in 5 years, you fucked up. Especially as most sales are within the first few months
Nah. I think if you can’t defend your own secrets, you shouldn’t have taxpayer resources to do it for you.
I remember my aunt (lawyer) coming up with some insane conspiracy-level solution to this problem:
The Supreme Court has ruled in Allen v. Cooper that Congressional attempts to make US state governments liable for copyright infringement are unconstitutional. In other words, US states can’t be sued for copyright infringement under US federal law without their permission. Under standard federal jurisprudence, all subdivisions and departments of a state are considered to be the state they are a part of for the purposes of sovereign immunity. This also applies to organisations that receive most of their funding from and are wholly dependent on state government agencies as well.
The solution would be to have a friend state government either:
- donate a copious amount of money to the Internet Archive to make it “financially dependent” on that state government, or
- in cooperation with the Internet Archive, pass a law that makes the Internet Archive an independent state agency of that government (probably safer in terms of keeping the IA independence)
This would make the IA fully immune from copyright lawsuits because they would benefit from their patron state’s sovereign immunity. But it comes at the cost that the patron state has a lot of power over the IA. A considerable trade-off.
Your aunt should write spy novels with tbe level of conspiracy present in this. But its not QAnon conspiracy, its James Bond type conspiracy.
QAnon would have made for an excellent action movie plotline if only people didn’t subscribe to it in real life. Swap in some fake politicians and it’s almost Hollywood-ready.
Fuck copyright
damn
Among other issues that’s going to make it harder for them to do other stuff.
I love capitalism
