SomethingMatter t1_jcz8ds3 wrote on March 20, 2023 at 6:06 PM

Reply to comment by ThreeToMidnight in The Internet Archive is defending its digital library in court today by OutlandishnessOk2452

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 on March 21, 2023 at 12:50 AM

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 on March 21, 2023 at 7:53 AM

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.