Internet Archive vowed to appeal after a U.S. district court judge on Friday sided with four major publishers who sued the nonprofit for copyright infringement.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Internet Archives operated a controlled digital lending system, allowing users to digitally check out scanned copies of purchased or donated books on a one-to-one basis. As the public health crises forced school and library closures, the nonprofit launched the National Emergency Library, making 1.4 million digital books available without waitlists.

Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House sued Internet Archive over its lending policies in June 2020. Judge John G. Koeltl of the Southern District of New York on Friday found in Hachette v. Internet Archive that the nonprofit "creates derivative e-books that, when lent to the public, compete with those authorized by the publishers."

A future in which libraries are just a shell for Big Tech's licensing software and Big Media's most popular titles would be awful—but that's where we're headed if this decision stands.

Koeltl's ruling came just two days after the American Library Association released a report revealing that in 2022, a record-breaking 2,571 titles were challenged by pro-censorship groups pushing book bans, a 38% increase from the previous year.

Meanwhile, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed the so-called Parents Bill of Rights Act, which education advocates and progressive lawmakers argue is intended to ban books and further ostracize marginalized communities.

CDFingers wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 11:57 am Buy 'em in print. Fuck big tech.

CDFingers

highdesert wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 12:59 pm It's a copyright infringement case, just because the Internet Archive owns one copy of a book, doesn't give them the right to pass digital copies along to others. This is US law, you could probably procure a copy from a foreign country without strict copyright laws.

TrueTexan wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 2:54 pm Consider that public libraries are not free. They are paid for by tax dollars collected by the government entities that subsidize them. So even if I don’t use the library I still have to pay my share for it.

sikacz wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 12:03 pm

CDFingers wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 11:57 am Buy 'em in print. Fuck big tech.

CDFingers

Yep, buy it once and you can read it as many times as you want. Also public libraries still exist and you can reserve books online.

Internet Archives does movies as well. I suspect that will be curtailed eventually too.

sikacz wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 4:50 pm

TrueTexan wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 2:54 pm Consider that public libraries are not free. They are paid for by tax dollars collected by the government entities that subsidize them. So even if I don’t use the library I still have to pay my share for it.

Sure, but that’s true with anything for the public good. The institution is not making a profit off of loaning you a book or movie. It’s a public owned institution giving free access to everyone. Are you objecting to publicly owned institutions? We all pay for services we don’t use. How do you feel about public hospitals, would it be so bad to be able to walk in and get aid without someone making a dollar? Walk in and out without needing to pay just showing perhaps a medical card or a social security ID. Pick and choose, but if we live collectively we need to decide which services we want given, health care, education and libraries or something else. So even though public funding pays for the services regardless of my personal use it is for the common good. The key is access and if the copyright is used to deny access that’s wrong. Consider that to some extent copyrighted material is a theft of commonly given resources. Perhaps copyrights shouldn’t exist at all.