The legal ruling against the Internet Archive has come down in favour of the rights of authors.

  • srasmus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • hoodatninja@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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).

      • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • bioemerl@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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

      • srasmus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • stevehobbes@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • NateNate60@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • FatCrab@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          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.

        • stevehobbes@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • NateNate60@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            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).

        • FlowVoid@midwest.social
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • stevehobbes@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • NateNate60@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              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.

        • AnonTwo@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          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?

    • Arakwar@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      And I hope people who sides with IA in this eill accept to stop collecting their wages and start working for free.

      Because this is what you’re proposing.

      • stembolts@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        Which artist involved in this suit is working for free?

        How old are the copyrights being upheld?

        I’d need to know those two pieces of information before coming to a conclusion. No one should work for free, I can agree with that, but is that is what is occurring?