The publishers' lawsuit against the Internet Archive (Hachette v. Internet Archive) has resulted in the removal of more than 500,000 books from our lending library, including over 1,300 banned and challenged titles. We are actively appealing this decision to restore access for all our patrons. We want to hear from you! How has losing access to these books affected your reading or research? What does it mean to you that these 500,000+ books are no longer available? Please share your story below. Your feedback may be featured in our blog posts and other communications to highlight the impact of this significant loss on our library community.
  • FaceDeer@fedia.io
    1431·
    5 months ago

    The lawsuit was the result of bear-poking. It’s a result of their “National Emergency Library” that they briefly rolled out in 2020 where they took all the limits off of their “lending” and let people download as many copies as they wanted. Was “legitimate academic study” not possible before, with the old limits that weren’t provoking lawsuits?

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
      327·
      5 months ago

      That is simply a lie.

      The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), with co-counsel Morrison Foerster LLP, is defending the Internet Archive against a lawsuit that threatens its Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) program.

      The Internet Archive is a nonprofit digital library, preserving and providing access to cultural artifacts of all kinds in electronic form. CDL allows people to check out digital copies of books for two weeks or less, and only permits patrons to check out as many copies as the Internet Archive and its partner libraries physically own. That means that if the Internet Archive and its partner libraries have only one copy of a book, then only one patron can borrow it at a time, just like other library lending. Through CDL, the Internet Archive is helping to foster research and learning by helping patrons access books and by keeping books in circulation when their publishers have lost interest in them.

      Four publishers sued the Archive, alleging that CDL violates their copyrights. In their complaint, Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House claim CDL has cost their companies millions of dollars and is a threat to their businesses.

      https://www.eff.org/cases/hachette-v-internet-archive

      Why you told a lie that was so obviously false I don’t know.

      • FaceDeer@fedia.io
        1420·
        5 months ago

        Here’s the Wikipedia article on the lawsuit. From the opening paragraph:

        Stemming from the creation of the National Emergency Library (NEL) during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, publishing companies Hachette Book Group, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Wiley alleged that the Internet Archive’s Open Library and National Emergency Library facilitated copyright infringement.

        IA was using the CDL without any problems or complaints before the National Emergency Library incident, with the one-copy-at-a-time restriction in place. It was only after they took those limiters off that the lawsuit was launched.

        What I said was true.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
          237·
          5 months ago

          Basically what you’re saying is big corporations found an opportunity and took it.

          But the lawsuit was about CDL as a whole, not what happened in 2020.

          Also, why you’re trusting Wikipedia over the EFF is beyond me.

          • FaceDeer@fedia.io
            719·
            5 months ago

            Yes, the lawsuit is about CDL as a whole. They could have sued IA years earlier. They could be suing libraries all over the place for using CDL. But they didn’t, because the people using CDL were doing so in order to placate the publishers. It was an unspoken truce.

            You can see a similar dynamic going on with fanfiction. A site like fanfiction.net is a gigantic pile of copyright violations, and yet you don’t see it beset with lawsuits. That’s because fanfiction.net isn’t doing anything that would harm the income of the copyright holders or otherwise “poke the bear.” You occasionally hear about fan projects getting shut down when they go “too far”, however. Like what IA did in the case of the National Emergency Library.

            Wikipedia has neutral point of view and verifiability policies. Everything written in their articles should be backed by external sources and if there are multiple sides to a story they should all be fairly represented. The EFF, on the other hand, is taking the IA’s side in this and is motivated to make them sound better and the publishers to sound worse.

            The Wikipedia article has 32 external sources cited for its contents. The EFF article has only two internal links, one of them leading to their lawyers’ homepage and one linking to the motion that the EFF filed.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
              155·
              5 months ago

              They sued the Internet Archive for doing the exact same thing libraries do, and only with books that are not in print. Much like why you trust Wikipedia over the EFF, why you think that’s something worth defending I don’t know.

                  • Ullallulloo@civilloquy.comEnglish
                    21·
                    5 months ago

                    Libraries buy licenses to do so from the publishers, but that’s unrelated to what I said.

                    I’m saying the judge found that IA violated its own CDL, so even if its interpretation of the law was correct, the IA would still be liable.

              • FaceDeer@fedia.io
                511·
                5 months ago

                So why aren’t they suing libraries for doing those “exact same things?” Why target the IA specifically, and not other libraries?

                Could it be that the IA did not in fact do the “exact same thing” as libraries?

                why you think that’s something worth defending I don’t know.

                I am not “defending” the publishers. They are the villains here. I think current copyright laws are insanely overreaching and have long ago lost the plot of what they were originally intended for.

                This is like a horror movie where there’s a slasher hiding in the house and the dumb protagonists say “let’s split up to find him more quickly”, and I’m shouting at the idiot who’s going down into the dark basement alone. The slasher is the publishing companies and the idiot going down the stairs is the IA. It’s entirely justified to shout at them for being an idiot and recommend that they just run away, without being accused of “defending” the slasher.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  123·
                  5 months ago

                  So why aren’t they suing libraries for doing those “exact same things?”

                  Because publishers suing every public library in America would take a lot of time since it would involve every separate library system and also wouldn’t exactly look good from a PR perspective.

                  You really don’t have a good eye for the obvious.

                  • FaceDeer@fedia.io
                    511·
                    5 months ago

                    Exactly, it’d be bad PR. I’ve argued this before in other threads, the publishers don’t want to destroy IA. They just want IA to not flagrantly interfere with their business. They only sued IA when IA poked them too hard for them to ignore.

                    You may note that the settlement agreement they reached with IA lets IA continue to host books that the publishers haven’t released as ebooks themselves, for example. Even now they’re not being as harsh as they could be.