Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/internet-archive-forced-to-remove-500000-books-after-publishers-court-win/

by cratermoon • 2 years ago

530 428 2 years ago

TylerE4• 2 years ago

They should fire what even nitwit thought this obviously illegal plan was a good idea in the first place. The fallout will likely tank the entire archive in the long term.

ranger_danger2• 2 years ago

90% of the "archive" is just mass piracy anyway

crest• 2 years ago

95% of the Internet Archive is a useful service to society even if it pisses of a few companies. It should be legal even if they sometimes act as "holy fools".

cft• 2 years ago

Piracy means that something was taken by force from someone. What was it that was taken that's no longer there?

a1o• 2 years ago

It was through lending, this was due to a change of policy of lending during COVID-19 to ease access

TylerE4• 2 years ago

It lending done flagrantly in violation of the licensing. They were taking a copy licensed to be lent ONCE and giving it to thousands of people at once.

dylan6042• 2 years ago

Yeah, it's like these people are Google to be able to get away with this. If you're going to do it, it better be for a self benefiting reason, and damn well better not be for the good of all man kind. This is capitalist society and not some sort of benevolent society. What kind of moron would think that would ever be a good idea? /s

riffic2• 2 years ago

I love how the Hacker ethos has shifted from information wants to be free[0] to this sort of predictable HN (the H stands for Hacker doesn't it) reply.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free

EDIT: looks like the "this is the law" crowd is out in full force on this summer Friday night. All the cool people are doing something else, elsewhere obviously.

TylerE4• 2 years ago

It’s somewhat hypocritical to believe otherwise when one’s employment (or if that offends you, the effectiveness of copyleft licenses) depends on the existence of intellectual property. That sort of nuance tends to be lost on the “information wants to be free” crowd.

prmoustache2• 2 years ago

Archive.org looks a bit like astalavista these days.

andybak• 2 years ago

I've no idea what you're trying to say.

snvzz2• 2 years ago

Likely a reference to an old search engine (altavista), which of course sucked next to google.

Yet, it ironically gave better results than Google does today.

prmoustache2• 2 years ago

Astalavista was the main warez search engine in the pre-google era and it was a play of words with altavista which was the most popular search engine at the time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astalavista.box.sk

metadat• 2 years ago

Recently discussed:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40707084 (4 days ago, 48 comments)

jesprenj2• 2 years ago

Is there a communuty project that maintains a copy of the 500k books? Is there a libgen torrent or anna's archive torrent?

artninja1988• 2 years ago

I would bet that most of the archive books are already on Libgen, yes

crazygringo3• 2 years ago

They're not.

IA is mostly full-color scans of old library books.

I've never come across an IA scan on Libgen. Libgen is mostly EPUB's, native PDF's, and the occasional black-and-white high-contrast PDF scan.

mike_d2• 2 years ago

https://libgen.is/repository_torrent/

If you are upset about this, commit to seeding as many of these as you can until the IA service is restored.

crazygringo3• 2 years ago

Those are torrents for LibGen, not IA, correct?

Very different sets of books. I don't see how this will help. LibGen isn't going away, not that I'm aware of.

sixtyfourbits• 2 years ago

https://annas-archive.org/datasets/ia

jesprenj2• 2 years ago

Great, thank you!

pessimizer• 2 years ago

With this judgement, does this force them to write a tool that determines whether a book is in print or not? Are there any good webservices, or will they just have to scrape Amazon, etc.? I've noticed a lot of their lending library is definitely out of print; is "out-of-print and public domain" just the ars writer's interpretation of the judgement?

If it isn't, a tighter awareness of what is in print and out of print might be able to cut into those 500K, if at all possible. If lending is out, best to be aggressive with what's left.

TaylorAlexander13• 2 years ago

There is no greater folly of contemporary human society than the purposeful restriction of such vast and easily shareable repositories of knowledge. Perhaps these schemes made sense in the past but with the advent of the internet and independent groups willing to fund all hosting fees, we should move to models of publishing that do not require this restriction of information. Library genesis exists but necessarily must hide and create some friction in the discovery process. A legally unencumbered free library of all books for all people would be the greatest achievement in all of human history. We prevent this achievement due to our attachment to a specific economic system that serves as the current means of financially supporting authors. We must build alternatives to for-profit publishing, and the only resilient and widely acceptable system I can imagine is one where every community owns and controls the means of production upon which they depend for their survival. In such an economic system, the need for automation would be obvious and once implemented, all people would receive the benefits of automation. This would include such a wide allowance for leisure and free time that authors would no longer need to restrict access to their books to extract profits from their value their shared knowledge creates. All people would be free to do what they will.

It would take great effort to build such a system, but open source and digital repositories of machine designs would ensure that efforts are not duplicated. The effort would still be substantial, but what hangs in the balance is the opportunity to assure the freedom of all people and the creation of the most significant repository of knowledge humanity has ever conceived of. If we succeed it will be our greatest achievement as a species.

gerdesj• 2 years ago

Who wrote that (sorry - EDIT) errr am I holding it upright .... bollocks? 8)

"Library genesis exists but necessarily must hide and create some friction in the discovery process."

Really!

Personally speaking, I'm fucking incensed that ... <fill in usual argument here>

adolph2• 2 years ago

purposeful restriction of such vast and easily shareable repositories of knowledge

You don’t get more golden eggs by killing the goose who lays them.

Also the IA book UI was terrible.

SOLAR_FIELDS• 2 years ago

Is the goose here the publisher? Or the author? If it’s the latter, then would killing the publisher necessarily dictate that the author also must die?

ryandrake2• 2 years ago

I believe in hundreds, maybe thousands of years, after humanity has finally evolved past our current monkey mentality, future historians will look back at this time period in awe: "They had the technology to make the sum of all human knowledge available to everyone... And they blew it! Further, they had the means to feed everyone, clothe everyone, house everyone, but they just walked away in the other direction, purely to maintain existing economic power structures." The future historians are going to wonder how strong our ideology was that we sacrificed all of what we could have at the altar of our scarcity-based religion.

If Star Trek Replicators were invented today, we're so stupid we'd outlaw them.

coliveira5• 2 years ago

Europeans and Americans are now taxing green technology, which they said in the past they want, because it is built in another country...

deaddodo• 2 years ago

If Star Trek Replicators were invented today, we're so stupid we'd outlaw them.

You're so optimistic to think the law would even be this fair. More like limit access to corporations as "the only custodians responsible enough to wield them", while still allowing the developing world to starve and further increasing their profit margins simultaneously to decreasing working wages and employment levels.

winter_blue• 2 years ago

If Star Trek Replicators were invented today, we're so stupid we'd outlaw them.

Something like this already happens with housing and NIMBYism.

m3kw92• 2 years ago

The country that allowed replicators would be no.1 fairly quickly

WalterBright16• 2 years ago

they had the means to feed everyone, clothe everyone, house everyone, but they just walked away in the other direction, purely to maintain existing economic power structures.

Your idea has been tried over and over. It just makes things worse, far worse.

emporas• 2 years ago

I believe in 5 years time, digital information will be so easily transformable, that copyright holders (and patent holders) will have a very difficult time enforcing the property rights.

When a book can be readily transformed into audiobook, or even a song, a movie and anime, a sketch, a scientific diag or anything else, how you define property in that environment? Pretty impossible.

I think a useful analogy is when we lived in caves. A cave is given as is, no way to transform it, to evolve it and optimize it. As long as we found new ways to create an enclosure, then technology advancement really took off. Houses made of rocks, clay, concrete, wood started popping off everywhere.

The same way with books. A printed book is not transformed to anything else really. As long as written words can be represented in a more flexible way, then they are on to the race for technology advancement.

sneak• 2 years ago

Replicators can produce so much mass so quickly, they pose an existential threat to public health and safety.

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Jensson• 2 years ago

If Star Trek Replicators were invented today, we're so stupid we'd outlaw them.

History shows the labor unions and leftists would also be against replicators. We see that today with how people are very against AI advancements that would put artists out of jobs, they would rather halt progress than lose their jobs.

Of course corporations that stand to lose out are also against it, but don't kid yourself labor movements are just as greedy and anti progress when progress would inconvenience them.

berniedurfee• 2 years ago

We’re in the middle of “The Dark Ages II” and we don’t even know it.

I’ve been thinking for a while about how historians will view our chunk of history and it ain’t too good.

There will be some bright spots, but for the most part humans have been behaving pretty terribly, at scale, since harnessing the power of electricity.

tim333• 2 years ago

The sum of human knowledge in written form is largely available on pirate sites like scihub or libgen. And the feed clothe house stuff is coming along. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prevalence-of-undernouris...

ben_w• 2 years ago

If Star Trek Replicators were invented today, we're so stupid we'd outlaw them.

Related, I'm surprised how fast people stopped worrying about 3D printers making guns.

spankalee4• 2 years ago

Why should an author be forced to give away their work for free?

They can already choose to give it away for free if they wish. We already have the Creative Commons licenses, and there are many open textbook projects.

PostOnce• 2 years ago

Dead authors can't choose to give away their works, they're dead. Yet someone still owns the rights 60 years later.

jrm42• 2 years ago

This is a deeply unserious way to frame this; it presumes the unnatural (even if useful/positive) present state of copyright as a naturally occurring thing. It ain't.

"Why should we lessen or diminish the legal right of authors to control how copies of their work are distributed; the way we've been doing it works well."

is what you SHOULD have said. Doesn't sound as sexy, but here, the accuracy matters.

hliyan3• 2 years ago

I think a lot of the problems being discussed in sibling comments can be solved to an extent if we limit copyright to its original 14 years. That number was decided in a much, much slower age (1790). In today's world, 14 years should be ample time to monetise most creative work.

account4227• 2 years ago

The author author can always choose not to give their work away if they don't want to. The question is why should everyone else give up their right to free speech for the benefit of the author? That needs a convincing argument that the restrictions actually benefit everyone and not just the author.

FpUser3• 2 years ago

Most financially successful humans only care how to increase their already huge amount of money. they do not give a flying fuck about advancing humanity as a whole.

encomiast9• 2 years ago

[citation needed]

WalterBright16• 2 years ago

The neato thing about free markets is in order to make more money you have to please other people so those people will freely give you their money.

Aurornis• 2 years ago

we should move to models of publishing that do not require this restriction of information.

It’s interesting how this comment veers into a completely hypothetical overhaul of society in which money doesn’t matter, for reasons which of course are hand-waved away.

On one hand: Sure! Sounds great! If someone can reinvent all of society in a way that everyone is free to do whatever they want and not worry about getting paid, then by all means let’s go for it.

On the other hand: These proposals are so fanciful and far-fetched (at least in our lifetimes) that these comments read more like a tacit admission that the current system is indeed necessary.

vineyardmike2• 2 years ago

Spotify has a free tier where you can listen to any song for free. YouTube lets you watch almost anything for free. Both of these also pay the creators. There are many more services peddling free content and even covering hosting costs.

Libraries are free.

We have plenty of completely non-hypothetical non-society-overhauling ways to access information for free. Lots of information is free, lots of it is accessible.

the current system is indeed necessary.

Not all of the current system is equally necessary. Maybe not necessary at all, it just so happens to be the system we have now. There have been plenty of radically different models of society over the years. Yea, they're gone now, but this current one isn't particularly old either.

Just to be more concrete - if you stop using and protecting your trademark, you can lose it. If you just hoard and don't use a copyright, you won't lose it. We already have systems in place that can provide similar info exchange for free.

aprilthird2021• 2 years ago

Yes, I agree with you about this comment specifically. But on this issue in particular, we do not need to overhaul society so drastically. We have laws about lending out books one has purchased. We have laws about how long copyright should last. We can change these laws but still retain much of their benefit while allowing much more freedom to access knowledge.

There is a line here and we may be walking too far on one edge of it. But the comment you replied to does have a utopian tone far from the pragmatism this case actually revolves around.

geysersam8• 2 years ago

The US book market is 0.5% of the GDP. The government could subside every author with the same salary they make today and it would only be a small fraction of the amount we spend on the military.

incompatible• 2 years ago

Why should we turn information into a "product", introducing scarcity where none is required? It's just a misguided attempted to force every part of society into a capitalist system, regardless of whether it makes any sense. It will probably fail in the long run anyway, since who wants to pay for something that they can get for free, even it involves circumventing the rules. How many here would pay $30 to take a casual look at a journal article, when they could get it from Sci-Hub?

If we are sticking with a mostly capitalist system so that money is so important to get things created, then a government can provide some for this purpose (and they often do already). It's not like they don't borrow or print money in whatever quantity is needed.

I suspect that it's the same issue that has led certain neoliberals and libertarians to denying that various forms of pollution are a problem. There's just no way that it can be fixed within capitalism, so better just deny that there's any problem at all.

TaylorAlexander13• 2 years ago

I don’t really understand this logic. Are you saying that multi generational projects are… well I don’t really know what you’re saying. When the world was dominated by the divine right of kings, and changing that was going to take hundreds of years… should people not have discussed what to do to move down a better path?

My plan as a robotics engineer is to prove that open source robotics can be a viable industry by building open source farming robots (see my profile) so that a generation of children grow up understanding that community owned community built robotics are a perfectly viable option, and we don’t need venture capital for robotics infrastructure development.

There’s a generation of adults today who grew up watching Carl Sagan’s COSMOS from 1980 and are now adults working in law to combat climate change - a major call to action in his show the fruits of which Sagan would never live to see.

I fully believe that the world I advocate for will never be fully realized by the time I die. This does not discourage me from laying the ground work and having the conversations. Just as I am working on open source robotics for farming, I encourage other people to contribute to open culture so that we can some day build a better world.

In fact that’s what the people at the internet archive are doing too. Building a better future by fighting now to establish precedent and prove to people what is possible. Human lifetimes are short and I see no reason to restrict our projects to things which can be achieved today.

dylan6042• 2 years ago

There is no greater folly of contemporary human society than the purposeful restriction of such vast and easily shareable repositories of knowledge.

This is exactly how people stayed in power. Knowledge is power, so keep the masses uneducated so they are subservient. I once asked an Englishman why if the British Empire was so great did all of its colonies revolt against it. His response was not what I expected when he said they taught them how to read.

So watching how the school systems keep getting dumber really does get those conspiracy theory synapses firing. Make great again by taking power away from people really goes towards that.

WalterBright16• 2 years ago

Knowledge is power

Actually, knowledge is freedom.

so keep the masses uneducated so they are subservient

Terror makes them subservient. See the Soviet Union's gulags, full of educated people.

afh1• 2 years ago

Feel free to start, just don't force anyone into it, and take a honest look at past examples and their outcomes.

throw109206• 2 years ago

There is no greater folly of contemporary human society than the purposeful restriction of such vast and easily shareable repositories of knowledge

This is objectively false. There zero actual harm being done here. There is very little, if any, evidence that the vast majority of the 500k removed books contain information that actually provides value to people, as opposed to being fiction and political advocacy non-fiction (for instance, the vast majority of the list of 1300 "banned and challenged books" (that contains many duplicates and is shorter than IA claims)[1] that the IA is clutching their pearls over are almost exclusively non-informational) that result in zero harm when taken away from people.

You also pointedly ignored the fact that the greatest repository of knowledge in human history, by orders of magnitude, is the Internet - even if you restrict yourself to the parts that people have voluntarily made free, you still have the ability to learn everything you need to live a comfortable life, and learn more than you have time for in a thousand lifetimes.

Demanding that the entertainment works that authors wrote with the express intention of making money (and who did not consent to their work being put on IA) be made freely available, regardless of the massive amount of information already voluntarily made free on the Internet that serves almost every need you have (learning to sew, fixing a leak, doing your taxes, getting the equivalent of a PhD in math), is the absolute peak of entitlement.

The only vaguely reasonable vector adjacent to your argument is that academic publishers make their papers freely available, because that's actual human knowledge (and because the funding for the research doesn't come from the publishers).

We prevent this achievement due to our attachment to a specific economic system that serves as the current means of financially supporting authors.

Now you're just advocating communism, which is one of the actual greatest human follies of all time, and has resulted in tens of millions of deaths and the suffering of hundreds of millions more.

This comment is utterly inappropriate for HN. It is naked political advocacy that is emotionally manipulative, factually incorrect, and contains zero content that aligns with HN's goals of "stimulating intellectual curiosity".

[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/e/2PACX-1vR_xj-6S...

selimthegrim• 2 years ago

There was a Wiley translation of an 80s Russian textbook I needed for my research that was nowhere on libgen and which I could only get via ILL. The library yelled at me for making physical copies but IA had it.

Ekaros2• 2 years ago

Maybe we should do software first. I see no reason why I should not get copies of all binaries and all source code for any and every service I use upon request. And even copies of databases backing them when requested. Then I could simply replicated it in my own environment or roll up competing service. And as for data, what is privacy anyway. If you want the data be private don't generate it... /s

johnnyanmac25• 2 years ago

Sadly I feel like Poes law hits here. I do see a few borderline argue such a case.

They must have no products of their own nor care how the people behind the knowledge they consume make a living.

WalterBright16• 2 years ago

I can imagine is one where every community owns and controls the means of production upon which they depend for their survival. In such an economic system, the need for automation would be obvious and once implemented, all people would receive the benefits of automation. This would include such a wide allowance for leisure and free time that authors would no longer need to restrict access to their books to extract profits from their value their shared knowledge creates. All people would be free to do what they will.

This has been imagined many times. It's called Marxism. It's been tried, too, innumerable times. But the anticipated utopia never happened, and the people were far worse off than for-profit free markets.

However, the idea of "intellectual property" is a pure invention. There's zero evidence that IP laws actually promote the creation and distribution of creative works. But there is evidence that the free flow of ideas enhances prosperity.

I assert this as a person who made his living creating IP.

monero-xmr3• 2 years ago

It might take decades and billions of dollars to prove a molecule can cure disease XYZ. Once you know the molecule, copying it is cheap. Only intellectual property rights can provide the incentive to find said molecule, safe in the knowledge that once it is found, all of the costs can be recouped plus profit.

That is the clear-cut case for intellectual property, but it’s the same principle for books. I’m not going to write a book that takes tons of effort and exposes my hard-won knowledge if I can’t profit from it, despite how easy it is to copy text. Food for thought

zjuventus143• 2 years ago

It’s true that copyright and patents make pursuing certain risky (from a monetary perspective) innovations that are valuable to society worthwhile. But they’re only one way of solving that problem. We choose to apply copyright almost universally, even to innovations and ideas that don’t suffer from high capital risk, and would be worthwhile to pursue without copyright or with shorter copyright. Why not instead subsidize R&D for successful drugs (a lot of drug research in the U.S. is already publicly funded).

It seems to me that it’s an exceptional case that there’s some idea that’s would benefit society but is only economically viable under the current copyright regime. But our laws apply protections that are only needed in this rare instance to all ideas. I highly recommend “Against Intellectual Monopoly” by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine. It changed how I view IP a great deal, and the final chapters are dedicated to how we could practically transition away from our current system.

vwkd• 2 years ago

In such an economic system, the need for automation would be obvious and once implemented, all people would receive the benefits of automation. This would include such a wide allowance for leisure and free time that authors would no longer need to restrict access to their books to extract profits from their value their shared knowledge creates. All people would be free to do what they will.

Oh, hello there, dear communism. Same dream, same problems. No, this time around you don’t work either.

joquarky14• 2 years ago

This subjective labelling contributed nothing to the conversation. Back up your statement.

throwthrowuknow5• 2 years ago

Your obvious conclusion that automation is the answer would be anathema to others who wish to maximize the number of people under their control and the amount of “work” they are doing. It’s a relatable mistake, many people including myself assume everyone thinks like they do before they are sorely disillusioned by rough contact with reality. Don’t make the mistake of thinking your side is in the majority either and that removing opposition or changing minds would be an achievable task.

If you want to build something you’ll need to strike out on your own and take only those who follow you into the wilderness.

chx2• 2 years ago

Oh this appeal to the public, pithy empty words about openness and shit.

Here's the plain truth: IA ran a gigantic book piracy site during covid. They should've known they won't get away with it. I remember several authors begging them not to do this because it affected their income. I personally thought it monumentally stupid to put the Wayback Machine at risk.

They said, there are enough physical books in closed libraries to cover their lending. That's not how this works. They should've asked the publishers for permission first if necessary putting pressure on them via public. This is not a case of it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission because they must have known they won't be forgiven for this. I can't even.

I am not saying this is by any means moral or right. I am saying: this is the law. They actually got relatively lucky for not being fined to oblivion for this.

misnome• 2 years ago

Yes - if the only penalty is having to remove the books, then this should be considered a win for IA.

This dumb move was an existential risk putting all their other work in danger.

9999000009992• 2 years ago

The best part had to be the whole moral grandstanding they had when doing it.

Controlled digital lending was tolerated. It was never legal.

I can't buy a bunch of DVDs and start a streaming service even if a each copy can only be watched by a single person at a time.

It really sucks since they do a lot of good work aside from this.

vessenes• 2 years ago

Nitpick - I think if your DVD streaming service is free and single-person only, then you probably can - it would qualify under space or time shifting concepts. I don't think you have the right to monetize a DVD you purchase in general in the US, though.

jordanb• 2 years ago

The emergency library wasn't what publishers sued over. They used it perhaps as a rhetorical cover but what they were actually suing to prevent is IA offering digital versions of scanned hardcopy books.

With IA's loss, publishers get to control the way libraries lend digital media because you can't take a hardcopy and legally "scan" it into a digital copy, so the only way to get a digital copy for lending is as a DRMed product from a publisher that does things like, for instance, expire after a certain number of loans.

Publishers considered scanned digital copies controlled by libraries to be a threat to their monetization efforts surrounding digital lending and they would eventually have sued IA regardless of the emergency library.

Moreover, the DRMed digital lending schemes that the publishers are "offering" libraries are very expensive compared to what a hardcover copy of the same work would have been, and publishers are increasingly vacuuming up libraries' entire budgets with excessive digital lending fees.

It's been observed that libraries would be illegal if they didn't already exist, and I think we're starting to walk down the road where they are illegal in the digital world.

austinjp• 2 years ago

Did you ever hear of Zediva?

"Zediva thought it could circumvent the need to be licensed by literally renting customers a DVD and a DVD player, with your computer, tablet or Google TV as the remote control. Unlike the other streaming movie services, Zediva didn't turn a movie into a file on its servers that it can serve it to as many users as care to see it at once. Instead, Zediva’s servers had DVD drives and actual DVDs. So when you rented a movie, that disc goes out of circulation until you release it back to the company, just like in one of those increasingly rare real-world video stores."

https://www.wired.com/2011/08/zediva-shuts-down/

More: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Entertainment_I....

snapetom• 2 years ago

Controlled digital lending was tolerated.

The comments here about the lawsuit not being about the Emergency Library completely are technically true, but ignore this sentence. IA poked the bear with it's brazen actions.

It was never legal.

Before this lawsuit, we weren't sure about this, but by provoking the lawsuit, we've forced the courts to make this decision.

groby_b• 2 years ago

Yup. Worse, people told them what that meant in terms of risk and begged them to reconsider, for the benefit of the larger archive.

And even worse, it was an epic strategic blunder. A campaign of "in this emergency, we would love to share books, but publishers don't agree" would've put massive pressure on publishers. They could've had a shot at advancing the legal situation of digital lending. Instead they opted for a publicity stunt.

Yes, sure, people couldn't go to libraries. That's when you collaborate with Project Gutenberg to address the actual need for reading material, highlight great free books, and keep hammering "and we could also lend you XYZ, if publishers only worked with us".

Then you reach out to publishers like Tor, who are already leaning further on the "unencumbered access" spectrum. And work out a deal with them. Promoting their books in return for larger lending count. Giving people the opportunity to buy additional copies for the digital library. (There's plenty of folks in the donor list)

And you continue saying "Hachette, HC, Wiley, and Penguin still don't want you to read their books".

Yes, what they did was the most idealistic approach. Sometimes, pragmatism is better in the long run.

boomboomsubban3• 2 years ago

This isn't about their pandemic actions, this is about the controlled digital lending they did for like a decade before COVID.

If it were just over the emergency library, the court would end the restrictionless lending and likely issue a fine. Instead, the court ruling was that CDL was illegal, and only mentioned the National Emergency Library to say "as CDL was already illegal, it was also illegal." There also would likely be a fine, but the case is being appealed.

chx2• 2 years ago

The suit was filed 2020 June. It's quite plain the uncontrolled lending triggered it even if it was about CDL.

Rebelgecko• 2 years ago

IMO it's telling that publishers ignored the controlled limited lending that as you mentioned had been going on for a decade before COVID, and didn't file a lawsuit until IA started doing unrestricted lending.

My impression is that publishers were willing to look the other way when IA was distributing a small # of rare/out of print books, but once IA's homepage became unlimited copies of Harry Potter they felt like a line had been crossed.

2OEH8eoCRo02• 2 years ago

It hurts but I agree, they fucked up by doing that.

Willish42• 2 years ago

AFAIK, the "borrowed" books on this platform weren't downloadable on the library site, merely viewable. Per TFA:

"We use industry-standard technology to prevent our books from being downloaded and redistributed—the same technology used by corporate publishers," Chris Freeland, IA's director of library services, wrote in the blog. "But the publishers suing our library say we shouldn’t be allowed to lend the books we own. They have forced us to remove more than half a million books from our library, and that’s why we are appealing."

Is the "lend the books we own" part somehow inaccurate? I'm assuming IA has some sort of claim to the books they're lending and scanned, similar to any physical library. This seems very different from "a gigantic book piracy site".

Furthermore, I'd argue removing access to those books on IA will likely lead to one of the following:

A. people will fall back to actual piracy through other means to get the same content "even less legally" through well known alternatives

B. people simply not being able to access the content, e.g. if it's out of print , not available locally, or only available used for some exorbitant cost that wouldn't go to the publisher

C. people will spend whatever the publisher charges by buying from them directly

My understanding is that A and B are way more likely than C, since the vast majority of books on IA's website include out of print and hard to get books.

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

[dupe]

Actual article: https://blog.archive.org/2024/06/17/let-readers-read/

Some more discussion, including some IA folks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40707084

zouhair• 2 years ago

This is why Piracy is good for humanity.

gwright• 2 years ago

Does your theory apply to the content consumed during the training of LLMs? If not why not? Where should we draw the line regarding intellectual property rights?

thedevilslawyer• 2 years ago

1. Absolutely.

2. Information and knowledge is for all.

3. The line to draw is 10 years to commercialize, and then release into public domain. Statute of Anne was 14 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne), but 10 is better for today's age.

CaptainFever3• 2 years ago

1. Yes.

2. LLMs are an incredible step forward in humanity's progression.

3. 10 years from publishing, then public domain afterwards. The content must be commercialised to have copyright; if it's available for free, it should already be public domain, because copyright is supposed to help you make money, not help you control the use of information.

mjburgess• 2 years ago

The view across both is the same: people should be paid for their labour. So authors should be paid for the books they write. The line isnt that hard to draw.

The issue here isnt the IA's provision of brand new books that are still being published; this few would say should be legal. We're talking dead authors, books no longer in print, or books published so long ago that the second-hand market (which offers no pay to the author) is the place to find them.

As soon as works transition to "second-hand markets" we're no longer talking about the labour of the author being remunerated. At this point, it's pretty clear that it's a net benefit to society to make creative works publically available.

beej71• 2 years ago

I don't think I'd blanket it so far, but I'm this case, the greater good was probably being served by IA, true.

One of my books is on Anna's Archive. Since I give them away for nothing on my website, it's more flattering than anything. :)

hbbio2• 2 years ago

Looks like the publishers are doing their best for libgen/ipfs to succeed.

Makes you wonder: Do they even have data on their business growth factors? I don't but I'd guess that:

1. nobody is printing downloaded books

2. instead, people like me _buy_ printed books after browsing through them online

crazygringo3• 2 years ago

They're actually pretty different sets of books.

LibGen/IPFS is heavily biased toward books from the past ~3 decades, especially books that are cracked EPUB's and PDF's.

IA seems to be much more scans of library books from ~1930-1980, many of which are out of print and probably only available to you via interlibrary loan, which you might wait a month for.

IA is a huge boon for academic research when you need to go back to midcentury books. I don't know which 500K the IA is being required to remove, but I'm very worried.

hbbio2• 2 years ago

Extremely grateful for IA indeed, and as you say they have more scans that for sure are super useful for research, LLM training, etc.

Like this: https://archive.org/details/landau-and-lifshitz-physics-text...

Where LibGen only has the first volume in French and Portuguese only...

kjkjadksj2• 2 years ago

Even being good for it I can’t stand how most books are like $19.99, knowing I can find it in very good condition on ebay for $6 and get it from the library for free. If they want to sell a lot more books out of the little shops at the airports or wherevers left that books are sold today, make them cheap enough to be a spontaneous purchase again. I have some old paper backs that were like 99 cents new.

Mindwipe• 2 years ago

So, when is the IA's incredibly inept board going to stand down, before their stupidity burns down the entire project?

2OEH8eoCRo02• 2 years ago

DamnInteresting2• 2 years ago

I am an author who relies on copyright for part of my living, yet I agree that copyright protection lasts too long. I feel like it should protect the work for a reasonable time--say 20 years--after which one must pay an initially modest but exponentially increasing fee to renew the copyright every X years. Big players like Disney could afford to keep their stuff out of the public domain for a while, but not forever. And many deceased artists' work would slip into the public domain when their estate could no longer afford the renewal fee.

joquarky14• 2 years ago

This is an excellent solution. We also need to dial back the domain of conditional restrictions that authors can place on works that they release to the public.

I'm tired of watching old shows that have had music redubbed because of the labyrinthian copyright conditions that inherently arise in composite works.

SanjayMehta• 2 years ago

Why does Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer (for example) show up in their 1300 banned books list? It’s not under copyright and is available on Gutenberg.

Is this some legal angle I’m missing which benefits the plaintiffs in some way?

Kye2• 2 years ago

A republication of something in the public domain can be copyrighted.

Dalewyn2• 2 years ago

Not sure why this is being downvoted because it is correct.

The product of public domain materials can be copyrighted. For example, if someone were to publish a new book of Tom Sawyer whose text is in the public domain, that book can be copyrighted. Everyone can still publish their own new books of Tom Sawyer using the public domain materials, but noone can copy that book of Tom Sawyer.

mhh__• 2 years ago

Is there some technicality whereby one could still hold rights to illustrations and the colour of the bindings and so on.

owisd• 2 years ago

Not sure if it applies in this case, but yes the exact typesetting is a separate copyright.

troad2• 2 years ago

Should it be legal for IA to offer this, especially for older and out of print books? Yes, almost certainly.

Is it legal? No, not as the law currently stands. You can support Robin Hood, but you shouldn't be shocked when Robin Hood is caught and sent to jail. It was a mistake and a huge legal risk for IA to do this. It could easily have brought down the whole organisation, and all that they've archived to date.

I wish a fraction of the people who are upset about this would actually commit a portion of their time to lobbying and organising for copyright reform. Copyright terms are too damn long, by half a century and then some. This isn't some iron law of nature, this could easily be changed if there were enough of a push for it.

iandanforth• 2 years ago

Are you a lawyer? Can you point to the relevant statutes? I don't ask this flippantly as there exist many forms (private / public / academic) of library which allow for both physical and digital lending of owned assets and are not subject to lawsuits like this. It's not at all obvious that IA's interpretation of the law is in error.

repiret• 2 years ago

Are you aware of a form of library subject to US law that lends copyrighted digital assets without either a license from the copyright holder or legal trouble from the copyright holder?

badlibrarian5• 2 years ago

You really don't need to be a lawyer to understand the extent to which Internet Archive really screwed up here. For starters they lost on Summary Judgment, which means they couldn't come up with a single issue of fact that the judge thought deserved a trial. Read the Order, the Judge obviously has it straight. Then check archive.org's Form 990s and see how little money they run on, how much they pissed away on legal fees so far, and also infer the amount they had to pay in damages, which was obviously very tiny.

You are welcome to argue it as a matter of culture (and I'm inclined to agree and cheer you on) but from a legal perspective, Brewster should be removed and they need to find competent people to put on the board because they really did put the entire organization at risk over an idiotic decision. And the ramifications continue.

Internet Archive's "we own a copy of a book, we scan it and loan out one digital copy" policy was already on shaky ground. When Covid hit and everyone lost their minds, letting homeless people sleep on the stairs of their building apparently wasn't enough so they just turned into The Pirate Bay and loaned out infinite copies of everything.

In discovery for the case, it turned out they weren't even tracking the "we own one copy" part to begin with correctly. None of this should be surprising to anyone who actually attempts to use the site. The whole thing is duct tape and string.

They have a tiny budget and the do amazing things with it, but it really deserves to be treated like a business and not be run like an art project. If they wanna stick your neck out and push for CDL reform, great. Just do it under a different LLC so you don't tank the 50 other important things you've got going on. And it's time for Brewster to move on. In any other non-profit he'd be gone by now.

Dalewyn2• 2 years ago

Can you point to the relevant statutes?

IANAL, but:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117

What the Internet Archive did (loan many digital copies based on one physical copy) is illegal as the law stands today.

troad2• 2 years ago

The relevant statute provision is 17 U.S.C. § 501.

On March 24, 2023, the Internet Archive was found liable for copyright infringement under that section by a federal court, in an order granting a motion for a summary judgment.[0] A summary judgment means that there is no genuine dispute about facts, and the plaintiffs (the people suing the Internet Archive) are entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.[1]

It is your prerogative to feel that you're better qualified to interpret federal law than a federal court is, but it is fairly misleading to say that it is not at all clear what the law is here, when a court decision exists on these exact facts.

Should the law be changed? Yes, in my opinion. Is there much dispute over what the law is? No, not really.

[0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.53...

[1] Other common law jurisdictions use clearer language to describe summary judgments: in the UK and Australia, for example, a summary judgment is granted when a party has "no reasonable prospects of success" and there is no point in going to trial. These exact words aren't used in the US, but they give a reasonable indication of how summary judgments are used in practice.

None of this is legal advice.

thefringthing• 2 years ago

Can you point to the relevant statutes?

This is about sound recordings rather than books, but one of the more insane features of US copyright law is that the copyright status of sound recordings made before 1972 is governed by state rather than federal law, and many states are thought to have no applicable statute. Some of these states determine copyright status for these works by deferring to federal law, which does not cover them.

paulcole5• 2 years ago

Should it be legal for IA to offer this, especially for older and out of print books? Yes, almost certainly

No, not “almost certainly.”

I think they pushed the limit of what should be legal, especially since they were digitizing print books and lending those out as ebooks.

franga20003• 2 years ago

Actually, the digitising part is what I find the most acceptable. Why shouldn't they be allowed to do this? Would you have the same problem if they bought ebooks in MOBI, converted them and then lent out EPUB versions.

The lending out more copies than they bought part is what there are some good arguments against.

account4227• 2 years ago

It was a mistake and a huge legal risk for IA to do this. It could easily have brought down the whole organisation, and all that they've archived to date.

Agreed. But the problem here is not the daring action but linking it to a sadly unique resource.

You can support Robin Hood, but you shouldn't be shocked when Robin Hood is caught and sent to jail.

You can however still protest robin hood being sent to jail and you can shame the fat nobles calling for robin hood to be hanged and you can grab the pitchforks and make sure they loose more than they gain. The law is meaningless if it doesn't have the support of the people. Copyright is already routinely ignored by almost everyone when its convenient (outside commercial activity).

Lobbying is all well and good but that's the corporations' turf. Nothing wrong with deciding not to play their game and choose other ways to fight the absurd copyright laws.

roody15• 2 years ago

I hope they do a data dump or leak of the archive before they comply. It’s a shame to lose so many actually scanned hardcover books.

badlibrarian5• 2 years ago

The books are still there, and if you're disabled you can even read them. They don't delete anything, even when they say they do. They "dark" it and let it sit, waiting for changes in the law, or for it to fall out of copyright, or some admin on an information-wants-to-be-free bender to push a button assuming nobody will notice.

liendolucas3• 2 years ago

What I will never understand is why this is needed at all. The books that I do find interesting I buy them. Sure, you can bypass paper by having ebooks. But is it really a replacement for a printed book? There is nothing like a printed book. No power needed, nor devices needed, you can go back to any page, any chapter instantly and if you have stomach even write on them. On the other side having the possibility to just quickly browse through a digital file to check if that title is of your interest or if it will serve you well if a technical book is invaluable. I have literally saved myself hours and money from not purchasing titles that turned out to be not of my interest. Imagine paying ridiculous amounts of money for technical books that then you find out the way a topic is approached is not really for you. Go ahead and check prices of for example Springer, Wiley, Addison Wesley books. And if out of print you pay a leg for a second hand one, effectively limiting access to knowledge only to people with big pockets.

tombert• 2 years ago

Meh, I have a lot of trouble reading small print. I'm not dyslexic (I've been tested), but my brain just doesn't like small text, I have trouble parsing it and retaining stuff I'm reading. I might just be dumb, but sadly I cannot change my brain so thems the breaks.

Something I really like about ebooks and e-ink displays is that I can set the font as big as I want and it updates instantly. I read a lot better, and as a result I enjoy it a lot more. For me, the Kindle was kind of revelatory.

I borrow books from my library, which allows me to read the Kindle version, and I don't need to pay anything (outside of my taxes, I suppose).

liendolucas3• 2 years ago

E-readers for me are one of the best gadgets ever invented. Prices though are still high compared to few years ago. I own a Kobo Aura H20 and almost every time take it with me, possibly the best purchase I ever made. They are great for reading regular books, but I repeteadly find online that in general technical books still do not render properly and a lot of people complain after purchasing them.

DamnInteresting2• 2 years ago

I like ebooks because wherever I go, I always have the book I'm currently reading right in my pocket. If I get stuck waiting somewhere, I can read some diverting, thoughtfully-composed material instead of scrolling through reddit or playing a mindless game. Screens aren't quite as pleasant to look at as a printed page, but it's a worthwhile tradeoff for me.

blackoil• 2 years ago

This is very lazy argument. You may love paper book or hardbound or whatever, that is orthogonal to the discussion about copyright and lending.

liendolucas3• 2 years ago

You're correct. I've realized that I what said adds little to nothing to the discussion. Nevertheless I truly hope that the IA appeals this decision and a favorable outcome revokes this kind of actions from shameless publishers. Restricting such a basic thing as books and knowledge is truly a disgusting move.

slackfan• 2 years ago

Thanks, Chuck Wendig!

poikroequ2• 2 years ago

"I understand that publishers and authors have to make a profit, but most of the material I am trying to access is written by people who are dead and whose publishers have stopped printing the material," wrote one IA fan from Boston.

This really is the crux of the problem. Copyright should be "use it or lose it." If you don't make your books readily available, then you should have no right to demand copies of your book be removed from places like IA. It's not like these publishers are losing any money from books that literally nobody can purchase.

vineyardmike2• 2 years ago

Copyright should be "use it or lose it."

Which is basically how trademarks are. So we even already have a system in place to manage something like this.

CSMastermind3• 2 years ago

If you don't make your books readily available, then you should have no right to demand copies of your book be removed from places like IA

What if an author explicitly doesn't want to distribute their works or to distribute an alternative version of their works? There was the recent case of the company that owns the rights to Dr. Suess choosing not to publish old versions of books they felt had racist depictions.

And who sets the standard for readily available? If I offer my book for sale for $100 is it readily available? At what price is something no longer readily available? Does it depend on the type of book? What if it's for sale broadly but not in the state where you live? What if it's free but must be read in person and cannot be taken home with you?

cwillu• 2 years ago

Authors should have that inalienable right, and it should not transferable via contract or any other means. Publishers, on the other hand, should have no such rights: they own the presses, their inalienable right should be to refrain from using them.

Dylan168077• 2 years ago

What if an author explicitly doesn't want to distribute their works or to distribute an alternative version of their works?

Too bad. Once you publish it the first time, the cat is out of the bag. Eventually it's going to go into the public domain whether you like it or not.

And who sets the standard for readily available? If I offer my book for sale for $100 is it readily available? At what price is something no longer readily available? Does it depend on the type of book? What if it's for sale broadly but not in the state where you live? What if it's free but must be read in person and cannot be taken home with you?

Good question but can definitely be decided. $100 is probably fine. Regulators can decide. Yes. Not good enough. Not good enough.

We have frameworks for mandatory music licensing, we can do more things like that.

lolinder2• 2 years ago

There was the recent case of the company that owns the rights to Dr. Suess choosing not to publish old versions of books they felt had racist depictions.

This is actually exactly why I agree with OP. See also the changes made to Roald Dahl books. Future generations deserve to be able to read the content that their forebears produced as they produced it.

I'm supportive of an author's right to not initially publish something that they at the time are uncomfortable with being made public. There should be protections for that. But once something has entered into the public consciousness in a particular form, I'm not okay with a cultural censorship wave being able to memory hole the original copy and replace it with a sanitized version (or wipe it out entirely). They shouldn't be obliged to print content that they find objectionable, but that content needs to be accessible or we lose our history.

Messy and uncomfortable as it is, future generations have a right to see us as we were and are, not as the second-generation holder of our too-long copyright wishes we had been.

account4227• 2 years ago

What if an author explicitly doesn't want to distribute their works or to distribute an alternative version of their works?

Then they should lose the rights of the originals. The point of copyright is to enrich society not to satisfy any want of the author.

KennyBlanken• 2 years ago

No, it really isn't. That person, and you, don't understand how publishing - or mass production of any kind, it seems - works.

A publisher "stopping printing" of a book is completely normal - books are like any other mass-produced good, in that there are fixed and variable costs to production and a factory can't economically crank out more than a certain number of different things at once.

Sp, there are "printings" - ie a production run - and then that inventory is sold to distributors. When the inventory is sold out, it is "out of print." That does not mean it's not available - there's still stock at distributors. And likely on shelves.

When it sells out at distributors, then it is backordered.

It is completely normal for a publisher to wait until they feel there is enough pent-up demand for another printing - increasing the size of the printing to improve per-copy profit (or make it economically viable at all), and then sell it to distributors because the distributors think they can sell the inventory at a high enough rate.

Distributors don't want to keep around books that don't sell very fast, because that means they don't have warehouse space for books that do sell quickly. And if they have books that don't sell and need the warehouse space, the books might get remaindered (sold to a low-budget distributor for sale at well below original price) or destroyed (cover stripped as proof of destruction and the rest destroyed/recycled.)

Things have changed with digital press technology improvements, opening the door to more print-on-demand books - but printing one copy will never be anywhere close to as cheap as printing, say, 1000 copies.

There are also other reasons it might not be for sale, despite the author trying / wanting to sell it.

If you know nothing about how book printing, publishing, distribution, buying, and retail works - you probably shouldn't be forming opinions on how it should be subject to radically different regulation, much less offering them up.

https://pinestatepublicity.substack.com/p/book-distribution-...

nanomonkey• 2 years ago

Internet Archive isn't printing books, they are lending out digital copies. A publisher would have no reason not to sell a digital copy of their own. There are no production runs necessary on digital copies.

poikroequ2• 2 years ago

I never said the books have to be physically printed. Digitize the book and sell it online. Make it available through a kindle unlimited subscription. It doesn't matter, as long as it's readily available. Until then, they should have no right to sue to remove the books from IA.

Also keep in mind that, for many of the books, the authors are dead.

account4227• 2 years ago

Authors want
Publishers want
Distributors want

So? I too want a golden goose protected with force by the government at no cost to me. What does the rest of society gain from this deal?

rml• 2 years ago

And even when IA temporarily stopped limiting the number of loans to provide emergency access to books during the pandemic—which could be considered a proxy for publishers' fear that IA's lending could pose a greater threat if it became much more widespread—IA's expert "found no evidence of market harm."

I feel that IA erred very badly in lifting the one-to-one correspondence that is at the heart of "controlled digital lending" (https://controlleddigitallending.org). It is frankly annoying that they did that, and then still purport to be doing CDL, even though the CDL website clearly states the 1:1 "owned-to-loaned" ratio is a key part of the CDL platform.

For the record I'm extremely pro CDL, but I feel the IA did not do any favors to the CDL movement with this boneheaded "activist" implementation of CDL

account4227• 2 years ago

The main error here was embracing DRM in the first place.

nanovision• 2 years ago

This is sad. If this was indeed copyright infringement, what was the rationale behind the Internet Archive initially adding these books? The Internet Archive has never been a pirate site, so there must have been some logic or justification for indexing these books.

CSMastermind3• 2 years ago

what was the rationale behind the Internet Archive initially adding these books

They believed they had the legal right to distribute the books.

You can read the whitepaper about it here: https://controlleddigitallending.org/whitepaper/

Ekaros2• 2 years ago

It is a pirate site... I think in the end they are just enabled data hoarders who will hoard nearly everything... Including stuff nearly everyone would consider as piracy.

Zuiii2• 2 years ago

This will backfire against publishers so hard. Now everyone has to resort to piracy.

joquarky14• 2 years ago

The increased uncertainty to retain access to obscure and out of print works does seem to give one a desire to begin digital hoarding.

m3kw92• 2 years ago

Arichive the internet archive, hopefully someone there has done it

xvilka• 2 years ago

It's a digital equivalent of burning books. Those publishers have the same tactics as Nazi.

sourcecodeplz• 2 years ago

Whatever, there are so many things on IA, that a "couple of books" will not make much difference to the experience. Besides, if you're an avid reader, you will find the books somewhere else also for free.

interloxia• 2 years ago

My daughter's favourites list has shrunk by 50 books, about 10%. We read a few every day.

It's a great source of English books for us. Our city library is good, but it doesn't have thousands of picture books.

Libby has about 15 books. We borrow them often enough that it gives the error message that they are unavailable to borrow :/

Hnrobert42• 2 years ago

Seems like the “Borrow Unavailable” message should be replaced with “Borrow prohibited by publisher.”

account4227• 2 years ago

Or with a magnet URI.

deknos2• 2 years ago

This is outrageous. it's difficult not to start hating this cannibalism-capitalism.

healthyusa• 2 years ago

Possible to set up a server somewhere out there? Just host? What’s stopping that from happening?

evah• 2 years ago

Robert Miller, global director of books for the internet archive, stated in a documentary in 2013 that there had been an estimated 100 million books published in the world, that the archive had an initial target of 10 million, and that their book warehouse had space for 3 million. Based on those figures, 500k is a rather large number. Maybe some of those 500k are duplicate scans?

[1] https://archive.org/details/archive_documentary_internet_arc...

Mr_Minderbinder• 2 years ago

During the early Covid period there was a general sense that “the rules don’t apply” or “the rules are insufficient” for this crisis and therefore can be safely ignored when they conflict with Covid counter-measures. Even those in authority were breaking some laws to respond to it. In addition any action that could be perceived as “combating Covid” was seen as an automatic good. Combine all that with the extreme fear and uncertainty and you have the perfect environment to make a stupid move. The IA should just admit the “emergency library” was a mistake, move on and stop wasting money and risking the entire project on this.

rldjbpin• 2 years ago

as sad as this ruling is, simultaneously i see a wave of authors who have made their works freely available online, while selling hardcopies. this too from major technical publishers. see for instance ISLR (https://www.statlearning.com/).

speaking from a myopic view, in an age where source code can be freely distributed while maintaining ownership and rights*, why do literature have so much gatekeeping digitally?

while the authors that make their digital versions freely available bestow some trust on the other end (please don't print our work and sell it), simultaneously they can often benefit during the editorial process (many books are available this way before final publishing). moreover, if you write a work of fiction, nobody can run and create a movie based on it just because you can read the book for free.

this was a good opportunity to set precedence, but it has gone the other direction.

deadlast2• 2 years ago

Why cant another country that des not have copyrite laws host this.

Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

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