The borrowing feature is an amazing way of working around utterly broken copyright law, which is in its current form more or less a tax and brake on scientific and cultural progress.
From the internet archive I can now search through and read 60-year-old self-published technical manuals, obscure Hungarian journal papers, historical archival material only kept in one French museum, soviet math and physics textbooks, etc. which is difficult or expensive to find physical copies of, and not being published and distributed anymore.
Even better, people can use those links as sources in their own work (e.g. in Wikipedia articles) and anyone else interested can follow-up with original sources instead of just taking things on faith because the references are too much bother to track down.
All of this material from the past ~century is otherwise locked away by copyright law even though nobody was making any money from it.
> The borrowing feature is an amazing way of working around utterly broken copyright law
If lending had exceeded the number of available purchased/physical copies, then it wouldn't be "working around", it would be "violating" copyright law. I agree with you that copyright law is horribly broken as-is, but I think it's irresponsible of the Internet Archive to play so fast and loose with it. A monetary judgment against them could be devastating to their effort to preserve history.
Where? I completely agree with IA's argument that the emergency library was legal, but even they say that it temporarily removed the 1-1 lending ratio on books.
Where? The judgment says that the number of books loaned never exceeded the amount out of circulation due to the pandemic, but it does not say it never exceeded the 1-1 ratio.
> but I think it's irresponsible of the Internet Archive to play so fast and loose with it
I don’t think that they did. But for the sake of discussion, I also don’t think it’s irresponsible. If copyright law is horribly broken (I agree), the most likely remedy is in court. You can’t get to that remedy with a case which has a reasonable chance of success if you don’t take that chance.
So you're saying that challenging copyright law by breaking it is worth the (IMO fairly probable) possibility of being hit with a fine that could destroy IA's ability to continue their primary mission of preserving digital and physical history?
I really just cannot agree with that. IA shouldn't be broadly challenging copyright law; at most they should be challenging laws that interfere with their primary mission.
> I think it's irresponsible of the Internet Archive to play so fast and loose with it.
That's what I think too. Despite what the HN hivemind wants to think, this was a crystal clear act of piracy and the Internet Archive will suffer for it. I have no idea what they were thinking. They would need to demonstrate they had a strict license counting system in place where libraries put in what they had and the system counted how much it borrowed which clearly they didn't have , they just said "go ahead and borrow". Say, they borrowed out 10 copies of a work at a time, this would be allowed if they had 10 licenses of it and if they can't show they had it which I bet dollars to doughnuts they didn't then they will be forced to damages for each of those. I do not even know where the damages will stop. This will be a terrible massacre.
Dura lex, sed lex!
The judge will throw out the argument "there was in theory this many copies or even more at closed libraries" -- just because it is true, the law simply doesn't allow for this.
I only wish the best for IA but they completely botched this. I can't understand how, they have good lawyers.
> When CDL is appropriately tailored to reflect print book market conditions and controls are properly implemented, CDL may be permissible under existing copyright law.
It does not say "it is".
Ps. if you are downvoting for this, where am I wrong? Where is this allowed in the Berne Convention or US Code 17? What do you think applies here if not https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108 ?
> Except as otherwise provided in this title and notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement of copyright for a library or archives, or any of its employees acting within the scope of their employment, to reproduce no more than one copy or phonorecord of a work,
No more than one copy. Go ahead, show me the carve out for, I dunno, inaccessible works or something that overrides this. This is the law, your preferences -- which are the same as mine which loves the Internet Archive and doesn't much book publishers -- have zero relevance here. You downvote because you don't like what I say or think that I want harm for the IA and it's not true -- but they will suffer for this. How can you not see this?
>Go ahead, show me the carve out for, I dunno, inaccessible works or something that overrides this.
The IA's argument is that it's covered under section 107 as "fair use" as it's a nonprofit educational act with seemingly no negative effect on the value of the work.
You can disagree but you're tone is that you're absolutely right and anyone who doubts it is denying reality.
> They would need to demonstrate they had a strict license counting system in place where libraries put in what they had and the system counted how much it borrowed
They already do have such a system. If they "have" multiple copies of a book edition, then the "borrow" period is 14 days. If they have only one copy, then it's only one hour, so that the book remains more available to others.
This means that they are aware of how many "licences" they hold and reference count the accesses to each edition against that figure.
Whether they indeed bypassed that system for the NEL and provably allowed excessive accesses being their holdings, well, that's for the court to hear.
> The Internet Archive’s belief that the NEL’s loaned copies would be fewer than the number of existing non-circulating physical copies proved to be correct.
So the Internet Archive claim it didn't, though it's not providing complete and concrete proof that no title went over the limit. Then again, it's on the prosecution to demonstrate that they actually did.
Keep reading after that line. They're talking about the total number of out-of-circulation copies of a book in all closed US public libraries, not the ones they have the explicit right to use. And earlier they say the emergency library temporarily lifted the 1 to 1 ratio controls, which is openly admitting they did.
From the internet archive I can now search through and read 60-year-old self-published technical manuals, obscure Hungarian journal papers, historical archival material only kept in one French museum, soviet math and physics textbooks, etc. which is difficult or expensive to find physical copies of, and not being published and distributed anymore.
Even better, people can use those links as sources in their own work (e.g. in Wikipedia articles) and anyone else interested can follow-up with original sources instead of just taking things on faith because the references are too much bother to track down.
All of this material from the past ~century is otherwise locked away by copyright law even though nobody was making any money from it.