Gregory's Server@ernie That's what they started out doing. And if they had kept doing that, they probably never would have been sued, or if they were, there's a good chance they would have won.
But then they started entering into agreements with libraries all over the country: let us integrate with your online card catalog, and then we can let people check out one digital copy of any book your currently have on your shelves. Qualitatively different, much more questionable in terms of copyright law.
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 @jik It wasn’t a shitty, stupid overstep. It was a well-intentioned overstep at a time when people couldn’t go to the library. Was the result damaging and ultimately out of bounds? Yes. But I absolutely draw the line at calling it dumb. The publishers moved out of bounds too here—they didn’t have to go after the whole thing. That was their choice. Let us not lose context here. @ernie Ah, so now we're moving the goalposts. @jik @ernie Fully scanning, storing electronically, and distributing a work protected by someone else's copyright is out of bounds of legality and fairness. The Internet Archive pirated someone else's property in the name of a purported social cause or closeted authoritarian socialism. They held no entitlement to do so. This is where I stand on this. And all I was honestly trying to say to @jik before he kind of went left. I wasn’t trying to piss him off, just to say the program was to some degree defensible. @AndersBaerbock @jik You clearly disagree, but this is my view. The Internet Archive should be able to scan books and lend them. Fair use should extend in this way. @ernie @jik If most people, after a healthy discussion, agree with you, your idea will become incorporated as law. If democracy is nowadays broken, IMHO is better to fix it rather than embracing the law of the jungle like the IA attempted. @AndersBaerbock @jik I disagree. That frames the content owner as having fewer rights in a digital realm. Fair use should bend more than that. Libraries should work exactly the same in the digital era as they do the physical one. It's the belief that they're somehow different feels like a warping of the library’s intent, as well as the intent of fair use It's possible the case in front of the court may go either way on this point. @AndersBaerbock @jik You totally misread what I said. The content owner is the person who bought the object. I specifically did not say copyright owner. |
@ernie And then COVID happened and they removed all borrowing limits and let anyone check out any book, infinite copies. And that's when the publishers noped out, decided they had gone too far, and sued.
What they did during COVID was clearly theft and clearly deprived authors of income. There was no ambiguity. It was a shitty, stupid overstep.
They got sued and established a shitty precedent because they went too far and pissed off the publishers too much. It was dumb.