IIRC this all came about because the IA decided to increase their lending beyond the limits of the licenses they had during covid, when more people were trying to use their services due to being stuck inside.
Also of note is that the is only the district court. We'll have to see if the EFF appeals to the circuit next.
> IIRC this all came about because the IA decided to increase their lending beyond the limits of the licenses they had during covid
That's the excuse the publishers are pushing, but ultimately they disagree with, and have successfully argued in court it seems, against the entire principle.
Ultimately, controlled digital lending should be as lawful as format shifting an album: this is format shifting from a physical book to an ebook.
> Also of note is that the is only the district court
But in this case, it wasn't controlled, right? Even with DRM to "expire" the lent ebook after a certain amount of time, they still ended up distributing the books without restriction on availability.
I don't really care about the publishers, but I still wouldn't expect to seriously get away with arguing that I wasn't distributing copyrighted material if I started offering movies online for free in unlimited numbers... because it was just controlled lending since the movie files were set up to probably become unreadable in 3 weeks.
I'm sure they have competent lawyers that would've predicted an outcome like this, which makes the decision to do it even more baffling. Especially for an organization that ought to be conservative by design, considering they want to be a very long-term archive.
>That's the excuse the publishers are pushing, but ultimately they disagree with, and have successfully argued in court it seems, against the entire principle.
Which is why it's really dumb that the IA pushed it blatantly violating copyright laws.
This lawsuit covers the limited lending they did before COVID, but that either flew under the publishers' radar or perhaps they knew but didn't care enough to respond until IA started doing the more blatant "unrestricted lending"
IIRC this all came about because the IA decided to increase their lending beyond the limits of the licenses they had during covid, when more people were trying to use their services due to being stuck inside.
Also of note is that the is only the district court. We'll have to see if the EFF appeals to the circuit next.