Are you a lawyer? Can you point to the relevant statutes? I don't ask this flippantly as there exist many forms (private / public / academic) of library which allow for both physical and digital lending of owned assets and are not subject to lawsuits like this. It's not at all obvious that IA's interpretation of the law is in error.
The relevant statute provision is 17 U.S.C. § 501.
On March 24, 2023, the Internet Archive was found liable for copyright infringement under that section by a federal court, in an order granting a motion for a summary judgment.[0] A summary judgment means that there is no genuine dispute about facts, and the plaintiffs (the people suing the Internet Archive) are entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.[1]
It is your prerogative to feel that you're better qualified to interpret federal law than a federal court is, but it is fairly misleading to say that it is not at all clear what the law is here, when a court decision exists on these exact facts.
Should the law be changed? Yes, in my opinion. Is there much dispute over what the law is? No, not really.
[1] Other common law jurisdictions use clearer language to describe summary judgments: in the UK and Australia, for example, a summary judgment is granted when a party has "no reasonable prospects of success" and there is no point in going to trial. These exact words aren't used in the US, but they give a reasonable indication of how summary judgments are used in practice.
You really don't need to be a lawyer to understand the extent to which Internet Archive really screwed up here. For starters they lost on Summary Judgment, which means they couldn't come up with a single issue of fact that the judge thought deserved a trial. Read the Order, the Judge obviously has it straight. Then check archive.org's Form 990s and see how little money they run on, how much they pissed away on legal fees so far, and also infer the amount they had to pay in damages, which was obviously very tiny.
You are welcome to argue it as a matter of culture (and I'm inclined to agree and cheer you on) but from a legal perspective, Brewster should be removed and they need to find competent people to put on the board because they really did put the entire organization at risk over an idiotic decision. And the ramifications continue.
Internet Archive's "we own a copy of a book, we scan it and loan out one digital copy" policy was already on shaky ground. When Covid hit and everyone lost their minds, letting homeless people sleep on the stairs of their building apparently wasn't enough so they just turned into The Pirate Bay and loaned out infinite copies of everything.
In discovery for the case, it turned out they weren't even tracking the "we own one copy" part to begin with correctly. None of this should be surprising to anyone who actually attempts to use the site. The whole thing is duct tape and string.
They have a tiny budget and the do amazing things with it, but it really deserves to be treated like a business and not be run like an art project. If they wanna stick your neck out and push for CDL reform, great. Just do it under a different LLC so you don't tank the 50 other important things you've got going on. And it's time for Brewster to move on. In any other non-profit he'd be gone by now.
The world locked down u necessarily precisely because the population has not been getting smarter the past 50 years because copyright has poisoned our information wells.
There's absolutely no courage in putting that's been built and used for almost 2 decades on the line because of the wave of "we must do something" that was so common in March and April 2020 even when in most cases, doing nothing would've been more helpful.
It would be like if Mozilla decided to stop taking any google funding overnight because they felt like their values didn't fit with Google's. Sure, it would be well intentioned. But then you also guaranteed that Firefox won't be able to exist for more than a few weeks. Deciding to unilaterally reproduce (by way of unlimited lending without the copies to back said lending) books is the legal equivalent to doing that. It would be a nice thing to have, but it's not something you get by just getting wrecked in an open and shut case in court.
> It would be like if Mozilla decided to stop taking any google funding overnight because they felt like their values didn't fit with Google's.
That would be the best thing that could happen to Mozilla becose then the vultures would move on and the project could get back to its mission without the MAJOR conflict of interest fucking up their incentives.
> But then you also guaranteed that Firefox won't be able to exist for more than a few weeks.
Firefox doesn't need Mozilla to continue existing. But even if it died that would at least make space for an alternative that isn't just controlled opposition doing the bare minimum to protect Google from antitrust lawsuits while continuuously disrespecting user choices and preferences.
Literally everyone here has already stated that they agree with you on this. There's no controversy upthread about whether copyright law needs to be reformed, the controversy is over whether it made sense to risk the entire Internet Archive (whose most important contribution to the knowledge of mankind has nothing to do with online lending) or if it should have been fought by an organization that was built to fight it.
Their instinct to help is admirable, but their lack of restraint shows a major lack of judgment and very well could have put their archives of the internet at risk. Not every nonprofit organization can do everything.
When a CEO pulls some nonsense and gets his ass handed to him in court, it's not an act of bravery, it's hubris. He set the result both you and I want back ten years by running his organization in such a sloppy manner. Even before the lawsuit they didn't keep accurate records of what they were lending, full stop.
It may be a fight worth having, but that wasn’t the way to fight it. There was zero chance this was going to end with a favorable court decision. It only carried risk for the organization - no upside at all.
If you want to fight that fight, instead of putting hundreds of thousands of books on the internet, you start with a few books and get sued over that. That way, if you lose, the actual damages are minimal. Right now, the Internet Archive could go bankrupt because of the millions of dollars in potential damages now that they've lost.
Finding representative cases to fight over and create precedent is a common strategy that exposes you to less risk if you lose.
> from a legal perspective, Brewster should be removed and they need to find competent people to put on the board
I don't like that the IA risked the actual internet archive with this or that they chose to engage in DRM at all but let's be reall: "competent people" would have sold the IA to the advertisement moloch or another horror of modern civilization long ago. The IA does need a leader that puts principles above financial security.
> it really deserves to be treated like a business
That would be the absolute worst thing that could happen to the IA.
> And it's time for Brewster to move on. In any other non-profit he'd be gone by now.
Consider doing something worthwile of your own instead of trying those who have but aren't perfect enough in your opinion.
Stockpiling assets on an active fault line, opening a Credit Union, failed activism, obviously shitty tech... it's time to put a grownup in charge of the thing. They're an archive. It needs consistent funding and boring tech and to focus on three things, max.
Are you aware of a form of library subject to US law that lends copyrighted digital assets without either a license from the copyright holder or legal trouble from the copyright holder?
This is about sound recordings rather than books, but one of the more insane features of US copyright law is that the copyright status of sound recordings made before 1972 is governed by state rather than federal law, and many states are thought to have no applicable statute. Some of these states determine copyright status for these works by deferring to federal law, which does not cover them.
