Man, I love the IA, but they really stepped over the line this time. Handing out unlimited copies of in-copyright media is clearly wrong and illegal. It's literally piracy. There is no way to argue that it's fair use.
If they'd been more tactful and discreet, they might have gotten away with it. There are plenty of other copyrighted works freely available on the IA, and most don't attract enough attention to provoke legal action. The sheer scale and brazenness of this move is what's got them in trouble.
IA did wrong, and they know it. They should at least have the good grace to acknowledge it instead of wasting a ton of resources on a legal battle they have no hope of winning.
I fear this will be the beginning of a long and drawn out death of the IA, which would be a huge shame.
What we really need to happen here is for them to lose the case (to avoid setting an absurd precedent) but for zero damages to be awarded due to the exigent circumstances of the pandemic.
That would really be the best outcome that reflects good spirits.
What you're implying is that they should win the case on the grounds that it was an emergency, setting the reasonable precedent that you can't do the emergency thing all the time.
The only way a settlement happens that doesn't destroy the IA is for the IA to throw itself at the mercy of the publishers, and ask them how it can change to remain existing with the publishers' support as a public good.
This, of course, won't happen. Brewster Kahle doesn't believe in copyright, and is clearly willing to burn everything to the ground in the hopes of scoring some win against it. And everyone else knows that isn't going to happen.
The only way for the IA to survive is Kahle to leave it.
If anyone did something with the deliberate goal of destroying the IA, it was Kahle himself. Everyone told him that the day he launched the NEL and I'm guessing some people who knew prior to the announcement told him before that day too.
It would be practically corporate malfeasance for the publishers not to sue considering how blatant the abuse was.
The thing is, though, during the pandemic a lot of seemingly rational people became very odd and - to use a front 242 song title - gripped by fear.
I've witnessed this with a member of my own extended family, a married business owner with a child, who became so fearful that we as an extended family had to assign them what was basically a rotating watch, because without someone to reassure them that things were okay they were becoming unhinged and would try and euthanise their pets because they were so convinced we were all going to die.
I do not know why some people became so susceptible to this while others just 'kept calm and carried on' but having witnessed it with my own eyes and heard reliable testimony from others I'm very reluctant to assign blame to an individual.
It's possible that this guy really did think that doomsday was coming and that it was his duty to make sure that everyone could read freely in their last days on the planet.
It was a very odd time and a lot of people are still not able to convincingly explain their actions during that time.
That is certainly a fair point from a psychological effect view, and the meat of the pandemic era was indeed a very weird, very surreal time, but I am unsure "I thought we were all going to die" is a court-admissible defense for illegal behavior. Certainly if you think humanity will be wiped out in a day or two, you could reasonably expect to murder someone without facing recrimination for it... but if society survived, you would definitely not be exempt from responsibility for it.
I mean, not guilty by reason of temporary insanity is a valid legal verdict, so yes, if you really have become unhinged and gripped by fear to the extent that you don't act rationally you are, by the law, exempt from responsibility for your actions.
If they'd been more tactful and discreet, they might have gotten away with it. There are plenty of other copyrighted works freely available on the IA, and most don't attract enough attention to provoke legal action. The sheer scale and brazenness of this move is what's got them in trouble.
IA did wrong, and they know it. They should at least have the good grace to acknowledge it instead of wasting a ton of resources on a legal battle they have no hope of winning.
I fear this will be the beginning of a long and drawn out death of the IA, which would be a huge shame.