Archive.org Guilty of Copyright Violations

[sonnymax]

Hey all,

I saw this article about archive.org this morning and thought it might be of interest to others. Some members have mentioned using the site for music research, enjoyment, etc. I saw no evidence of similar challenges being made against musical content. Still ....

Internet Archive's digital book lending violates copyrights, US judge rules

Edited March 25, 2023 by sonnymax

[Dub Modal]

Ugh. Terrible ruling from the judge. 

[Dan Gould]

2 hours ago, Dub Modal said:

Ugh. Terrible ruling from the judge. 

I completely disagree, I think the judge is right on the law. When libraries pay for the right to license e-books and lend them out, the Internet Archive turns that on its head by skipping that part. They should have offered PD books only. I also wonder why they started this up at the start of the pandemic, and have since stopped? If their theory of "fair use" is unquestionably correct, they should have kept doing it.

I also note that when Google decided to digitize books they settled a lawsuit by limiting the number of pages available for free.  That is fair use.

[Rooster_Ties]

6 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

I completely disagree, I think the judge is right on the law. When libraries pay for the right to license e-books and lend them out, the Internet Archive turns that on its head by skipping that part. They should have offered PD books only. I also wonder why they started this up at the start of the pandemic, and have since stopped? If their theory of "fair use" is unquestionably correct, they should have kept doing it.

I also note that when Google decided to digitize books they settled a lawsuit by limiting the number of pages available for free.  That is fair use.

Much as I might personally hate to say it — I tend to agree, Dan (agree with you, Dan, that the judge probably got it right on the law).

Doesn’t mean that I don’t think some details of the law couldn’t use some updating to provide some sort of more reasonable access to some kinds of things — out of print works still under copyright, but otherwise inaccessible.

But as the law stands, this ruling is probably more correct than otherwise.

[danasgoodstuff]

47 pages from the US District Court for the Southern District of NY, yeah, they probably got the law exactly right.  Will have to read in full when I have time.