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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The Internet Archive was recently found guilty of copyright infringement in a case related to its Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) service, which provides users with free access to a digital library of books. US District Judge John Koeltl decided that the IA infringed the copyright of four publishers when it relaxed its CDL limitations during the pandemic, but now the Archive has seemingly reached an agreement with said publishers which could clear the way for an appeal.
The consent judgment between the Archive and Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House will require the IA to pay an unspecified amount of money to the four publishers if the appeal is unsuccessful. The publishing companies are "extremely pleased" with the proposed injunction, as it extends the copyright controversy to thousands of books still in their catalogs.
The IA was sued in 2020 after it started lending free digital copies of its books during the pandemic, a practice the Archive compared to book lending from traditional, physical libraries. The CDL service was protected by the fair use doctrine, the Archive argued, but Koeltl decided otherwise. The Archive was lending free ebooks that were being licensed to traditional libraries, the judge determined.
If accepted, the consent judgment will provide the Archive a chance to overturn Koeltl's unfavorable decision in the appeal. The publishers defined the CDL service as a mass copyright infringement operation, but the Archive now says that its fight is "far from over." The IA team firmly believes that libraries should be able to "own, preserve, and lend digital books" outside the limitations of temporary licensed access (i.e., copyright).
[...] Current efforts to curb the strength and presence of digital libraries – and the Internet Archive itself – are cutting off the public's access to truth "at a key time in our democracy," [Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle] said. Strong libraries are paramount for a healthy democracy, and that's why the IA is appealing Judge Koeltl's decision.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Common Joe on Thursday August 17 2023, @09:34AM (4 children)
Well, yes and no. Both you and ElizabethGreene are correct. Ultimately, it's a huge problem because we, the everyday people, are the ones who are most affected by these shenanigans. And that's the biggest problem. (Honestly, we should have more than one entity saving the information stored on the Internet Archive.)
(Score: 3, Funny) by kazzie on Thursday August 17 2023, @11:05AM (2 children)
Maybe recursion is the answer? Time to start the Internet Archive archive...
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Thursday August 17 2023, @11:12AM
The term you're looking for is "distributed data".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Thursday August 17 2023, @01:30PM
Project Gutenberg has a way to do it: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/offline_catalogs.html [gutenberg.org]
They're a fair bit smaller than the Internet Archive and are operating in a different capacity. Project Gutenberg is hosting Public Domain book/magazines/etc. While the Internet Archive is run much more like an Abandonware site which isn't exactly legitimate.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of what Internet Archive and even potentially the Google Books scanning project (if that even exists anymore) are doing. It's just not necessarily codified in law.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2023, @09:51AM
archive.is is another site I use.
As for archive.org there's lots of stuff that have vanished just because of a robots.txt https://archive.org/post/406632/why-does-the-wayback-machine-pay-attention-to-robotstxt [archive.org]
So if you want to keep copies of stuff, you can't just rely on archive.org - keep your own copies.