Submitted by OutlandishnessOk2452 t3_11wnjms in technology
Comments
OutlandishnessOk2452 OP t1_jcz148l wrote
Me too ! It’s an important part of the internet.
fuck_your_diploma t1_jczkjh9 wrote
I frankly despise all authors daring to go ahead with this thing, as I fail to see this whole endeavor as anything but a money/15 min fame grab, since IA is only living to its name, for the sake of culture.
It just feels like good vs evil at this point.
cyrusm t1_jd0nh17 wrote
Well, if there's one thing I've learned, when it comes to a battle between good and evil, the winner is the one who had more money at the start usually.
w_cruice t1_jd0z4oo wrote
That would be evil. It takes the shortcuts, and sacrifices people when they're no longer useful, or become a liability. So, lots of short term gains, coupled with limited losses.
f-ingsteveglansberg t1_jd1ub56 wrote
Just so you know, IA had incoming revenue of 36 million in 2019. I doubt many authors come close to that.
Sarai_Seneschal t1_jd3vdpk wrote
I doubt any authors have websites the size of IA
f-ingsteveglansberg t1_jd3ws0g wrote
Well if they are positioning this as a fight between authors and IA, IA is the giant and individual authors are David.
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Livvylove t1_jd1kymk wrote
Me too, it's the only way I can see my old fansites I made back in the 90s and 00s
caroIine t1_jd1oz60 wrote
Seeing my forum posts from early 00s when I was cringy 13y/o is priceless.
I miss communities from that era.
simask234 t1_jd23zlo wrote
Pretty sure this case doesn't affect the website archive/wayback machine.
It seems to be related to their book library.
[deleted] t1_jd1nggg wrote
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M4err0w t1_jd2e4tu wrote
quick, download it now just in case
FruityWelsh t1_jd6vpb0 wrote
Doing the good the r/DataHoarder work out here.
[deleted] t1_jd0cgst wrote
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SomethingMatter t1_jcz7sc2 wrote
Thanks for posting this. My version that linked a blog was removed because I took the time out of the title. Hopefully this one stays up. Some comments that I posted in my one:
From: https://www.battleforlibraries.com/
> A major lawsuit against the nonprofit Internet Archive threatens the future of all libraries. Big publishers are suing to cut off libraries’ ownership and control of digital books, opening new paths for censorship. Oral arguments are on March 20.
and
> The Internet Archive has been scanning millions of print books that they own, and loaning them out to anyone around the world, for free. Other libraries like the Boston Public Library are using the same process to make digital books too. > > This is happening because major publishers offer no option for libraries to permanently purchase digital books and carry out their traditional role of preservation. > > Instead, libraries are forced to pay high licensing fees to “rent” books from big tech vendors that regard patron privacy as a premium feature and are vulnerable to censorship from book banners. Under this regime, publishers act as malicious gatekeepers, preventing the free flow of information and undermining libraries’ ability to serve their patrons. > > But it looks bad if publishers sue the Boston Public Library. So instead, they’ve launched an attack on a groundbreaking nonprofit, including a lawsuit with clear repercussions for every library in the US.
OutlandishnessOk2452 OP t1_jcz81bh wrote
This is the exact title so it should stay up 🙂
This is a very major event, people don’t réalisé the amount of data and history that is on Internet Archive
SomethingMatter t1_jcz9zw4 wrote
I agree. This is huge. The Internet Archive have a large number of donated books that they scan and make available. Some of these are no longer published or available for purchase. It's an amazing resource and would be a huge loss to everyone if we lost it.
Torifyme12 t1_jd1yv3r wrote
Some of these things are just fucking not found anywhere else, there's random shit that will be forever *lost* to time for the sake of some publisher's greed.
Fuck them. the IA is the purest form of the "Old Internet" left online these days.
zUdio t1_jd17sr9 wrote
> libraries are forced to pay high licensing fees to “rent” book
Everything is a fucking “rent” these days. Can we terminate the “landlords” yet?
danielravennest t1_jcziaew wrote
I've been borrowing IA books that have "two week loans", downloading the Adobe Digital Editions pdf, using a Calibre plug-in to remove the restrictions, then "cleaning up" the copy (remove blank pages, reduce page background or increase contrast, add bookmarks if needed, and optimize file size). If the IA ever goes down, I'll have a backup.
I'm not against buying books, I have thousands of physical ones. But I believe sharing knowledge is an absolute good.
SomethingMatter t1_jczjbfk wrote
Just to be clear to anyone reading this. You can do the same with books rented from other sites or ones you get from Amazon Unlimited. I am not advocating for this. I am just saying that this is possible with all digital rental/loan books, not just archive.org, so it shouldn't be used as a reason to target archive.org for allowing piracy.
professorlust t1_jd11jtf wrote
FWIW it’s basically impossible to strip DRM from Amazon files published after January 1.
It’s been a major issue in the ereader community
KairuByte t1_jd15s26 wrote
It’s just a matter of time.
[deleted] t1_jd3tiob wrote
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UnderwhelmingPossum t1_jd17cx2 wrote
> FWIW it’s basically impossible to strip DRM from Amazon files published after January 1.
Best time to stop buying books from Amazon was the day they started selling them. Second best time is right now. Amazon is a cancer.
waaarg t1_jd3hr7j wrote
It’s a shame that they’ve got easily my favorite hardware. The Kindles really are in a class above the rest. I tried to move from Kindle to Kobo last year, and despite the open source support and bookstore being way better, and something’s in the software better, I found myself gravitating back to the ole Kindle Paperwhite after a few months anyway. And I hate that.
JohanBroad t1_jd1iw7k wrote
Publishers are fighting to keep their monopoly against a technology that has rendered them obsolete.
Somebody, somewhere, has made or is working on a tool to strip DRM from amazon ebooks as I type here.
Hachette and all the other Big Books companies are gonna lose in the long run, and there is nothing they can do about it.
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Torifyme12 t1_jd1yx5x wrote
Does DeDRM and the kindle for PC trick no longer work?
professorlust t1_jd2mrlb wrote
No the DeDRM maintainers couldn’t keep up with Amazon’s constant patching the protection.
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reallyfuckingay t1_jd2lhmv wrote
Despite the recent developments in AI suggesting otherwise, OCR tools, at least ones available to the general public without the need to pay for licenses, are still imperfect enough that some amount of manual cleanup is required afterwards, and in larger bodies of text, this is often an unmanageable for a single person to do in a small timeframe. There's a reason people are actually paid for this.
[deleted] t1_jd39nnk wrote
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reallyfuckingay t1_jd7m3b1 wrote
Late reply. I think you're overestimating the reliability of these tools based on a anecdote. Google Lens can achieve such accuracy on smaller pieces of text because it has been trained to guess what the next word will be based on what words precede them, the OCR itself doesn't have to perfect so long as the text follows a predictable pattern, which most real life prose does.
When dealing with fictional settings however, with names and terms that were made up by the author, or otherwise are literary in nature and uncommon in colloquial English, this accuracy can drop quite significantly. It might mistake an obscure word for a much more common one with a completely different meaning, or parse speech which has been intentionally given an unorthographic affection on purpose as random gibberish.
I've used tesseract to extract text from garbled PDFs in the past, it still took a painstaking number of reviews to catch all the errors that seemed to fit a sentence at a glance, but were actually different from the original. It definitely can cut down on the amount of work needed, but this still isn't feasible to instantly and accurately transcribe bodies of text as large as entire books, otherwise you'd see it being used much more often.
teh_saccade t1_jdytnc6 wrote
re-recording onto traditional media works
Carbidereaper t1_jd0x13a wrote
Sounds easier to just download a book from Z-library
danielravennest t1_jd4kie4 wrote
Z-library is good for new stuff, but the Internet Archive is better for old or obscure books.
EROSENTINEL t1_jd2dkdq wrote
you have thousands of actual books? 😅
danielravennest t1_jd4lpvz wrote
Yes. The three previous houses I lived in needed reinforcement, since that many books are heavy. My current home is 70 years old, and was built stronger. Even so, I have to spread the books around the house to avoid overloading the floor.
Side benefits are noise reduction across the house, and the thermal mass reduces heating and A/C cost as the house temperature varies less.
wrgrant t1_jd39151 wrote
Quite possible. My wife and I live in a 2 bedroom apartment and have 13 full sized book shelves. We read a lot :)
Mr_ToDo t1_jd31p86 wrote
I've got a few ebooks from microsoft press. The DRM on the PDF's there is just watermarks. If they ever die I still have my books no extra work needed.
I've also bought from other stores that have at least some outright DRM free ebooks(it seems that it's often up to the author/publisher if it gets DRM).
So it's not like they don't exist. They might not exist for the books you want, or in the format you want but I guess you don't always get everything.
danielravennest t1_jd4mniy wrote
Quite a few of my ebooks are open-source textbooks, unrestricted ones from the National Academies, or older ones out of copyright. But they don't cover everything I'm interested in.
toxictenement t1_jczkg8g wrote
Its time to download the torrents of what you can from IA. If the ship sinks torrents are going to be the fastest way to repopulate and reshare what we can.
Adventurous_Ideal849 t1_jd1kej7 wrote
There's a program called readarr, coupled with jackett and qbittorrent it will build you a library of ebooks very quickly. readarr manages the downloads, monitors your authors for new releases etc, jackett indexes the torrent sites it looks for downloads on, and qbittorrent does the actual download.
https://github.com/Jackett/Jackett/releases
After installation open jackett's url to select torrent sites to index. Then open readarr's url to add those indexed sites using the torznab urls and api key jackett gives you. Then inside readarr add the qbittorrent url/username/password as download client. Then add authors you like and enjoy.
inasuma t1_jd1o0zh wrote
I’m not saying this isn’t useful info to share, but I’d remove it in the morning so IP snakes don’t see it and begin weaponizing the resources and sending out DMCAs.
I don’t even know if they can. But the less they know the better.
Acceptable_Owl_4737 t1_jd1rnz6 wrote
Commenting so i can find this again later, thanks!!
[deleted] t1_jd1xc2c wrote
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[deleted] t1_jd1wrey wrote
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autotldr t1_jcz6ndg wrote
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 91%. (I'm a bot)
> Book publishers and the Internet Archive will face off today in a hearing that could determine the future of library ebooks - deciding whether libraries must rely on the often temporary digital licenses that publishers offer or whether they can scan and lend copies of their own tomes.
> In a response, the Internet Archive says it's received around $5,500 total in affiliate revenue and that its digital scanning service is separate from the Open Library.
> Digital rights organization Fight for the Future has supported the Internet Archive with a campaign called Battle for Libraries, arguing that the lawsuit threatens the ability of libraries to hold their own digital copies of books.
Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: library^#1 Book^#2 publishers^#3 digital^#4 Archive^#5
Mapmaker51 t1_jczc93i wrote
Disgusting that they want to take it down, but what do you expect of censors
Trax852 t1_jd0yrn8 wrote
> A 2014 ruling found that fair use covered a massive digital preservation project by Google Books and HathiTrust, which scanned a vast number of books to create a database with full searchable text.
Google started this almost as soon as they showed up. One has to hope it's survives.
Pulsing42 t1_jd1cxds wrote
This is like going the the Louvre and burning it down.
eikenberry t1_jd1wsrn wrote
They already did worse when they shut down what.cd.
routledgewm t1_jczwrkn wrote
Far too much censorship..please please let the archives stay
PlayingTheWrongGame t1_jd0xgwq wrote
I think the court is probably going to split the baby, rule that unlimited lending was a violation but one-to-one digital lending is fair use.
geekynerdynerd t1_jd15p9v wrote
I hope so as that would be the rational position to take. However copyright law is often anything but rational from what I have been able to see, so it wouldn't surprise me if they just rule the entire thing is in violation of copyright.
ipsedixo t1_jczp430 wrote
Thanks capitalism
MonkeeSage t1_jd1pls9 wrote
Unironically, thanks capitalism for allowing Brewster to create the Internet Archive and Open Library from the profits of selling his companies to Amazon.
Ironically, thanks capitalism for allowing the publishing vultures to try and shut it down.
Semi-Hemi-Demigod t1_jczxj7t wrote
alexmelyon t1_jd01lx2 wrote
Copyright holders as always...
GeekFurious t1_jd262eo wrote
In my experience, the people who downloaded my book for free were way less likely to read it or reach out to me that they read it than those who paid for it. This just goes to my decades-long theory that "piracy" has barely any actual effect on LIKELY purchases because people who download things for free were unlikely to buy them anyway... or even use them.
Full_Economics6430 t1_jd1nzty wrote
Could someone sum up why the internet achieve should survive and why people/authors are against it? Thanks! :)
sirbruce t1_jd1qm97 wrote
Traditionally, libraries would buy copies of physical books and lend them out. As these books are physical, only one at a time could be lent. Libraries were not allowed to make photocopies of books and lend out multiple at a time.
When ebooks came along, making digital "photocopies" became potentially much easier. Thus, many ebooks came with DRM attached to prevent copying. As digital rights are different from the rights to physical goods, authors and publishers would generally provide a license for lending of ebooks in exchange for a fee. Libraries could still buy ebooks and lend them out, but the number of times they could lend them was restricted based on how much they paid for those rights.
The Internet Archive came along, bought a bunch of books, made ebook versions of them, and then lent them out -- usually one at a time, but for a while they lent out unlimited copies. Their argument is that buying a physical book once should allow them to lend it in ebook form one at a time, just like it allows them to lend it in physical book form one at a time, without paying any licensing fee for those electronic rights.
The Internet Archive should survive because it does a lot of good and useful stuff. It will survive even if it loses this case. At issue is whether or not this particular lending library practice should survive. Those who argue that it should generally don't think ebooks should have any copying restrictions anyway and think everyone should be able to get any book for free without paying the authors or publishers anything, because they see publishers as already too rich and too powerful and evil, and they believe authors will benefit more from the "increased exposure" of freely pirated ebooks and more people will buy their books as a result. They are generally also the same people who think copyrights are too long anyway and think that long copyrights only serve to benefit the publishers and not the authors.
People who support individual rights, authors, and publishers are generally against it, because they believe digital lending rights are different from physical lending rights and this is an important revenue stream for both authors and the publishing industry. Creating a new right that allows ebook copying not only denies individuals a right over the control of their work, but hurts them financially. They believe libraries are doing just fine with the current lending scheme and that there's no need to create a new giant free ebook library.
Full_Economics6430 t1_jd20bl2 wrote
Wow, thanks for the explanation! Truly appreciate it!
DeadlyResentment10 t1_jd0wuwe wrote
I hope it survives the many lawsuits that will be aimed at it due to copyright issues.
NittyGrittyDiscutant t1_jd1081u wrote
this shit is highly controversional, i understand both sides, of course personally leaning to archive side
SrewTheShadow t1_jd1kro9 wrote
If this goes down I will make an effort to find a torrent and do my duty to keep the archive alive. I pray I do not need to.
No_Jackfruit9465 t1_jd1n1xe wrote
Pro Tip: almost any paywall article has the full unlocked article on the Internet archive.
Edit: my point is, instead of tricking google so you rank well you should actually have a paywall. Or if you want to rank, make your content free. Specificly those site that don't need to have a paywall because the unlocked content is a grand total of 200 words.
Iapetus_Industrial t1_jd2x2oe wrote
Is someone seriously trying to burn down the Internet Archive?
Fuck's sake - humans never learn.
photorooster1 t1_jd2xv74 wrote
The Internet Archive exists as a beacon of what once was and never will be again. It is a glimmer of what the internet hoped to achieve but never did. Leave it the fuck alone.
Kali_404 t1_jd3cdha wrote
It's capitalism trying to dismantle free speech into paid speech only, supported with ads and monthly subscription or they take your house
DreadEconomistRobert t1_jd08nqd wrote
We stand with you
coreyman317 t1_jd1x68d wrote
I use this function all the time
averageadviceguy t1_jd29hso wrote
If anyone wants a play by play or alerts of the court hearing
Hachette Book Group, Inc. v. Internet Archive (1:20-cv-04160)
District Court, S.D. New York
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17211300/hachette-book-group-inc-v-internet-archive/
nofrankandbeans2 t1_jd3073g wrote
Internet Archives is fantastic and always earns a place on my phone's home screen. Down with Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House! John Wiley in particular can suck it after all the money they charged me for text books!
Ok-Discount-6133 t1_jd35qav wrote
Put archive and the website decentralized chain like avalanche. Let them try to shut down😂
Leathman t1_jd3blza wrote
It’s useful for stuff that hasn’t been made available any other way or isn’t available anymore.
cybernaut_two t1_jd3nq8c wrote
I think I’m of the unpopular opinion that it should be going back to the 1:1 or at maximum 1:3 rather than 1:N book downloads. They’re a business, and yes they do have to make money even if they already have a lot.
Limiting the number of downloads would be helpful for the individual authors, they need to make money too or they will have done everything for nothing potentially. If a person really wants a book, try going to the physical library, use Libby or just torrent it. There is also Project Gutenberg on the internet, www.gutenberg.org
Captain-Griffen t1_jd5g55a wrote
Paying an author a dollar to buy a book that then gets lent out a thousand times is not a viable business model for authors.
zorbathegrate t1_jcz95rp wrote
“Yeah but I said it in the past, so it shouldn’t count. And after this legislation you shouldn’t be able to prove anything you meddling kids!”
[deleted] t1_jczq8uw wrote
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DisgustingCampaign90 t1_jd77fq6 wrote
I stand with you.
TeachersLens t1_jd8qsni wrote
I have always wanted to scan the stacks in the library, use the LMS to search across the entire texts available in the library. With tools like Chatgpt this could get incredibly dynamic. The Internet Archive is the right idea, we just need new models for funding writers and publishers. Otherwise, this is just another example of Disaster Capitalism.
teh_saccade t1_jdytxk4 wrote
I'll tell you where to find god if you stop messing around and bumping sales of dupes above the knowledge to generate new sales by dupes.
ToolemeraPress t1_jd2r31b wrote
So how do authors earn a living? Make every ebook free and all authors, fiction, non-fiction, technical, write for free?
danielravennest t1_jd50pp3 wrote
They could follow Disney and Spotify, and make all the content available for a reasonable monthly subscription.
The Internet Archive doesn't have a lot of new books. Most of the physical books that were donated and scanned were library discards or other old copies.
sirbruce t1_jd1omvc wrote
I happen to think that EFF and the IA are in the wrong here. I as a creator have the right to decide how I want to license the digital rights to my book. If I decide to control that, or sell that right to my publisher to control, that's my right as a creator. The IA does not have the right to decide to ignore my digital rights and decide that just because they own a physical copy of my book that gives them the right to distribute digital copies, even if they only do so "one at a time".
littlethommy t1_jd21lml wrote
How is lending a physical copy different from lending a digital copy?
Just because the industry decided to consider digital both digital and physical at the same time does not mean it makes sense. Just because they lobbied to limit the scope of digital copies to be way more narrow that what can be imposed on physical copies?
Some sell digital copies at the same price as a physical copy. But unlike the physical you only rent it, not own it, since it's only a perpetual license at best. In case of some DRM only until they decide to pull the plug on whatever online DRM service they were using. Then you are stuck with a bunch of one's and zeros you paid full price for, but can never legally access.
Just like they consider every pirated copy of a digital IP a theft of a full priced physical item while it is just a license violation. You can't have it both ways.
Think about it this way: a library is offering a service to make books available at a fee as a social service. They've been doing the same for decades with physical copies. Just because of the greed of publisher, this should not be allowed anymore for digital copies just because they decided so cause they could make more money?
sirbruce t1_jd3wwrn wrote
> How is lending a physical copy different from lending a digital copy?
Because the "license" to lend a physical copy is included in a physical copy of the book. The "license" to lend a digital copy of a book is not included in a physical copy of the book and must be purchase separately according to the price I (or my publisher) set.
> Just because the industry decided to consider digital both digital and physical at the same time does not mean it makes sense.
Fundamental rights exist regardless of whether or not they "make sense" in some utilitarian analysis.
> Just like they consider every pirated copy of a digital IP a theft of a full priced physical item while it is just a license violation. You can't have it both ways.
I would agree you can't have it both ways so I consider it a license violation. Just because someone else makes an invalid argument on a different issue doesn't render my argument invalid on this issue.
littlethommy t1_jd4vgn7 wrote
If the license to lend is included in a physical copy, not in a digital, how does that explain the same pricing for either in a lot of cases. How about I buy a physical copy and digitize it, and lend it out as such? Again, not allowed, but for different rules they designed.
Rights that were acquired trough spending a lot on legalized bribery (called lobbying). Just because something was made legal, does not mean it's right or just. You only care about it being so is because you have more to gain from it.
If you have no choice to play the game, but people with more money can actively stack the rules against others, you cannot claim "utilitarian"
The IP system as a whole is rotten, and I'm talking broadly here: music, patents, copyright, academic publishing,... IP protection is necessary, but as it is now, it's built on rules designed by companies to further their interests, not to serve the intended purpose. While it's riddled with protections for them and not for the others. While copyright and patent trolls, misuse the system to deny others theirs. And this is another one of those situations.
sirbruce t1_jd5pw3n wrote
> If the license to lend is included in a physical copy, not in a digital, how does that explain the same pricing for either in a lot of cases.
The pricing is entirely up to the creator and the publisher. No explanation is necessary simply because the price does not match your perception of value.
> Rights that were acquired trough spending a lot on legalized bribery (called lobbying).
Rights in this case are what I consider natural rights.
> The IP system as a whole is rotten
While I agree there are problems with it, I do not agree that one problem is that people who buy physical copies of a work should be allowed to make one digital copy and lend it out ad infinitum to people, whether it be one at a time or not.
SomethingMatter t1_jd23jp1 wrote
> just because they own a physical copy of my book that gives them the right to distribute digital copies, even if they only do so "one at a time".
They aren't distributing digital copies, they are loaning the copy that they have out. At the end of the loan, the person can no longer use the copy.
The big issue that you (and the publishers) are missing here is that you think that this is losing you income. There is no guarantee that the people that are loaning books will be buying a copy instead. The publishers haven't given any proof that they even lost a cent in revenue.
I buy a lot of digital books but I also use IA from time to time to loan out an obscure book that I have no interest in purchasing. I will never buy those books. This case is making me rethink my decision to buy book digitally. I am far less likely to buy any digital copies now and will try and visit my local library instead to read physical books or buy books from traditional book sellers and not places like Amazon.
I am doing this for 2 reasons:
- The greed of the publishers (and some authors)
- The fact that the contents of my digital copy, that I have purchased, can change any time in the future when the publisher decides to "update" the book.
sirbruce t1_jd3wlf3 wrote
> They aren't distributing digital copies, they are loaning the copy that they have out.
Incorrect. They have no digital copy that they paid to "loan out". They have a physical copy, which they argue entitles them to loan out a digital copy.
> The big issue that you (and the publishers) are missing here is that you think that this is losing you income.
While that is a factor, I don't care if I don't lose income. I care that I'm losing my rights.
SomethingMatter t1_jd4140y wrote
> Incorrect. They have no digital copy that they paid to “loan out”. They have a physical copy, which they argue entitles them to loan out a digital copy.
It’s already been established that this isn’t a problem. Libraries have created and loaned out braille books based on the OCR’d contents of their physical copies. That was deemed legal. This is exactly the same thing. They are creating a digital copy from the physical one (by scanning it in) and lending that out. It’s part of the fair use doctrine.
> While that is a factor, I don’t care if I don’t lose income. I care that I’m losing my rights.
What rights are you losing and what is the personal harm with the loss of those rights? There is a balance between personal rights and those of the public at large.
sirbruce t1_jd5pfwe wrote
> It’s already been established that this isn’t a problem.
Whether or not it's a "problem" is irrelevant. If slavery wasn't a "problem", it would still be wrong. Creators have a right to control their work.
> Libraries have created and loaned out braille books based on the OCR’d contents of their physical copies. That was deemed legal. This is exactly the same thing.
There's a specific carve-out for such use in existing copyright law. There is no such carve-out for digital copies of physical books -- yet.
> What rights are you losing and what is the personal harm with the loss of those rights?
The right to license the digital reproduction of my work as I decide. The right not to be obligated to allow digital reproduction of my work simply because a physical copy was sold.
> There is a balance between personal rights and those of the public at large.
That is a popular argument under the social contract theory of rights, but much of modern law (particularly US law) is founded under the natural law theory of rights, to which I morally abscribe.
ThreeToMidnight t1_jcz6db0 wrote
While I think preserving knowledge is a noble goal I cannot possibly see how the Internet Archive can win this one. They are not simply scanning books for preservation but
> As physical libraries closed their doors in the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, the Internet Archive launched what it called the National Emergency Library, removing the “own-to-loan” restriction and letting unlimited numbers of people access each ebook
previously they were lending 1 digital copy for each physical copy they owned creating a gray area of book lending. But unlimited lending without having rented or owning the physical copies is piracy.
On top of that they actually profit from ads on the site, so the publishers are also using those profits to strengthen their case.
blobdylan t1_jcz8k4w wrote
What ads are on the site? They don’t accept advertising.
ThreeToMidnight t1_jcz8x2p wrote
Among other things, publishers argue that the organization is a commercial operation that’s received affiliate link revenue and has received money for digitizing library books. In a response, the Internet Archive says it’s received around $5,500 total in affiliate revenue
blobdylan t1_jczah4x wrote
So they don’t profit from ads on the site then, because there aren’t any.
Here’s the last part of your quoted source, it seems to have been left off:
“and that its digital scanning service is separate from the Open Library.”
In case anyone wants to read the response, you can see it here: Internet Archive response
ThreeToMidnight t1_jdwrrwl wrote
blobdylan t1_jdxdbs9 wrote
Okay, but that doesn't really apply to my point. My issue was with your statement that, "On top of that they actually profit from ads on the site, so the publishers are also using those profits to strengthen their case."
There are no ads on the Internet Archive. That's it, my whole point, nothing else. If you still don't believe me, go to the Internet Archive and look around. I'm not looking to argue about it.
SomethingMatter t1_jcz8ds3 wrote
That was only for a temporary time and only included a subset of books. This was to help out the schools during early Covid. I am not sure that it was the smartest move but I can understand why they did it.
From https://blog.archive.org/national-emergency-library/
> The National Emergency Library was a temporary collection of books that supported emergency remote teaching, research activities, independent scholarship, and intellectual stimulation while universities, schools, training centers, and libraries were closed due to COVID-19. The National Emergency Library launched on March 24, 2020, and closed on June 16, 2020
[deleted] t1_jd0wjox wrote
The thing is whether it was a good idea motivated by altruism or not is really irrelevant as to whether it's legal or not. There's a reason why entities that did similar things were historically very careful to keep things on a 1:1 ratio with a physical copy.
SomethingMatter t1_jd22zum wrote
I agree that it could come back to bite them which is why I said that I didn't think it was the smartest move. I didn't see the publishers bringing it up in the oral arguments today so hopefully it won't hurt them.
CratesyInDug t1_jcz116l wrote
Hope Internet Achieve wins/survives