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The Internet Archive (IA) went before a three-judge panel Friday to defend its open library's controlled digital lending (CDL) practices after book publishers last year won a lawsuit claiming that the archive's lending violated copyright law.
In the weeks ahead of IA's efforts to appeal that ruling, IA was forced to remove 500,000 books from its collection, shocking users. In an open letter to publishers, more than 30,000 readers, researchers, and authors begged for access to the books to be restored in the open library, claiming the takedowns dealt "a serious blow to lower-income families, people with disabilities, rural communities, and LGBTQ+ people, among many others," who may not have access to a local library or feel "safe accessing the information they need in public."
[...] IA has argued that because copyright law is intended to provide equal access to knowledge, copyright law is better served by allowing IA's lending than by preventing it. They're hoping the judges will decide that CDL is fair use, reversing the lower court's decision and restoring access to books recently removed from the open library. But Gratz said there's no telling yet when that decision will come.
[...] McSherry seemed optimistic that the judges at least understood the stakes for IA readers, noting that fair use is "designed to ensure that copyright actually serves the public interest," not publishers'. Should the court decide otherwise, McSherry warned, the court risks allowing "a few powerful publishers" to "hijack the future of books."
When IA first appealed, Kahle put out a statement saying IA couldn't walk away from "a fight to keep library books available for those seeking truth in the digital age."
Previously on SoylentNews:
Internet Archive Forced to Remove 500,000 Books After Publishers' Court Win - 20240627
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 03 2024, @10:56PM (3 children)
I like the Internet Archive, but this is the kind of trouble they court just by being an organization. Napster had the same problem. Bit Torrent has been much harder for copyright trolls to attack, but it too has some centralization that can be targeted. Copyright trolls evidently feel that attacking torrent sites isn't enough, they also pursue individuals. There's such things as Usenet's alt.bin groups, but that is so decentralized it is unfortunately all too easy to flood that with spam.
It is amazing how much easier copying has become. In the 1980s, it was floppy disks and paper copier machines. Also cassette and video tapes. And PKARC. Those were the first technologies that individuals could use to copy data mechanically. The printing press is a fantastic invention yet not nearly as accessible to individuals, not suited to the making of only a few copies. Today, copying is orders of magnitude easier, faster, more capacious, more various, and all around better than it was in the 1980s. Now individuals can use flash drives, terabytes of storage, and all kinds of formats and codecs and encodings such as zip, JPEG, mp3, Opus, MPEG4, AV1, LaTeX, EPUB, HTML, PDF, and UTF-8. And we have the Internet and WiFi. And, emulators such as MAME and DOSBox, and open recreations of much popular software, such as LibreOffice. And smartphones. Now in a few seconds, either by downloading or by flash drive, an individual can copy hundreds of e-books, or dozens of songs, or a movie, something that was not possible in the 1980s.
In the future (if we have one), we may have brain or body implants that make copying even more convenient, fast, and easy. It's hard to guess what will be possible, except that copyright law won't.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday July 04 2024, @09:35AM (2 children)
That implant will have an AI in it that charges the appropriate license fees every time you look at anything.
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday July 04 2024, @01:49PM (1 child)
On the contrary, the AI will be capable of making a derivative with enough changes that copyright is not violated.
AI will also break what little skill based monopoly artists still have. Anyone will be able to direct AI to make a high quality realization of whatever they envision. No more need of a professional human sketch artist to draw the graphics for a graphics novel. Also can generate videos of good production quality, won't even need an animation studio such as Pixar, let alone recordings of live action. Whole lot more people will be able to do art themselves.
People already are making art, what with all these amateur vids of people playing around or working. Speedruns and high score runs of computer and arcade games. There's how-to videos for every somewhat common task imaginable. How to take apart laptops and smartphones to replace the batteries. How to fix a problem with a car or a home. How to fill out forms. How to cook all kinds of meals. Anyone can view all this without having to purchase a copy on some physical medium.
(Score: 2) by Ox0000 on Monday July 08 2024, @03:39PM
Only corporations will be allowed to create derivative works or run AIs. You will be "allowed" to pay for/subscribe to the dreck it generates.
What? You think that little people will have the ability to run AIs? What planet did you grow up on?