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Top-level
@realn2s @eishiya yeahhh my understanding is it went like this: 1) Internet Archive has rights to X ebooks and operates a digital library to lend them out, limited to X copies lended at a time. 2) COVID hits, IA decides to lend out infinite copies at a time, arbitrarily ignoring the X limit 3) Publishers sue 4) Court agrees with Publishers 4 comments
@realn2s @eishiya there’s a robust discussion on HN, which includes the perspective that what I consider the existing value of the Internet Archive came from fighting similar battles years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41449965 I don’t have enough evidence to reject that. All I know is this: 1) the marginal cost of reproducing digital information products (books, movies software) is practically zero 2) the fixed costs of producing them, with quality, remains high. 3) we don’t have good systems for rewarding high-quality production in this regime. For more on this, read Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier.  @PeterBronez As I recall it, your summary is broadly correct *except* for (1) which should be more like "for each book, Internet Archive legally possesses X copies, and operates a digital library to lend them out as ebooks, limited to the corresponding X copies lended at a time". In other words, very close to loaning an item under first sale doctrine, except the intermediate step of digitizing the work and being able to loan it out at a distance. |
Gregory's Server
@realn2s @eishiya Honestly I’m pretty annoyed with the Internet Archive about this.
The Internet Archive is too important to expose it to avoidable problems like this. Lending books is outside their core value, and these legal problems drag down the whole organization.