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.
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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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?
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.
Listen, I love libraries as much as the next person. We have very clear laws that protect libraries.
Is copyright a little fucked and a little too slanted towards those rights holders? Yes.
Did anyone really think it was OK to start adding books and movies in? And provide those for free to everyone simultaneously? Libraries don’t do that.
Libraries can do that. Okay, technically, it's illegal, but under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, since US libraries are run by political subdivisions of US states, they can't be sued with the state's permission which means that a state government can literally not allow the library to be sued for copyright infringement and then they'd get away with it.
The trade-off is that this probably permanently burns all bridges between the library and publishers, who would likely not want to deal with the library any more.
Edit: The controlling US Supreme Court precedent is Allen v. Cooper. The State of North Carolina published a bunch of shipwreck photos. The copyright owner of those photos sued claiming copyright infringement. The Supreme Court ruled in favour of the state saying Congress can't abrogate a state's Amendment XI sovereign immunity using copyright law as a pretext, thus the photography firm needs the State's permission to sue it in federal court.
Even assuming that is a viable application of sovereign immunity, which I am not at all convinced, at a minimum you've described a very strong due process violation. No, libraries cannot just arbitrarily infringe copyrights.
Copyright is federal, not state law. The state or municipal library system would get sued and lose in federal court.
The applicable Supreme Court precedent here is Allen v. Cooper. The State of North Carolina published all pictures of a shipwreck within its custody on its website as "public record" and the photography firm that owned the copyright sued. The Supreme Court ruled that Congress cannot abrogate a state's sovereign immunity under its Article I legislative powers and thus ruled in favour of the state.
That case is still being litigated:
https://ipwatchdog.com/2023/02/23/allen-v-cooper-back-queen-annes-vengeance/id=156986/
Copyright is federal bub. They get sued in federal court. Or the FBI shows up and takes all their servers.
The congress could choose to alter copyright laws of course to make this legal. But they can’t just do it. And states definitely can’t.
Yes, it is federal. Congress can't abrogate a state's sovereign immunity to make them liable under copyright law. In fact, they tried and it was deemed unconstitutional (Allen v. Cooper). States can't be sued in federal court without their permission (Amendment XI).
If some library decided to infringe copyright then it could most certainly be sued for compensation under the Takings Clause.
Government has a Constitutional obligation to pay for any private property it takes, whether it's land for a new building or intellectual property.
It is fairly clear the parent isn’t a lawyer. It’s also fairly clear they have very little interaction with law in general. I’m guessing more of the sovereign citizen camp.
I'm not a sovereign citizen. This is just a point where the law isn't fair/doesn't work in the way that you'd expect. See the updated parent comment for sources + legal reasoning.
The trade-off is that this probably permanently burns all bridges between the library and publishers, who would likely not want to deal with the library any more.
To be fair how is that a tradeoff? Weren't other people contributing to the internet archive?
All the libraries I've ever been to in multiple states have books, magazines, movies and music.
You should probably go in one if you love them so much. Then you'd know what you're talking about.
I do frequently. If you’re going to be so smug, you should also be correct. They purchase a copy of each media that they loan at any single time.
If they have 5 copies of digital media, 5 people can use them simultaneously. Not more.
It’s why Libby has a waiting list.
The internet archive would have been legal if they had a) purchased the copy and b) had not lent it to more than a single person simultaneously (or purchased more copies). They weren’t doing that. They were acquiring (legally or not, I’m not sure) copies and putting on their website for as many people as wanted to read them.
That is not what libraries do.
It’s why libraries don’t photocopy infinite books so there’s never a waiting list. You can’t do it with print media, and you can’t do it with digital media.
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
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 independent)
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
I love capitalism
Can someone please scrape the Internet Archive before it gets shut down?
There's no backup. Imagine all that we'll lose.
damn
Among other issues that's going to make it harder for them to do other stuff.