Online-Books Lawsuit Tests Limits of Libraries in Digital Age 63
A federal judge on Monday will weigh pleas by four major book publishers to stop an online lending library from freely offering digital copies of books, in a case that raises novel questions about digital-library rights and the reach of copyright law that protects the work of writers and publishers. From a report: Nonprofit organization Internet Archive created the digital books, building its collection by scanning physical book copies in its possession. It lends the digital versions to readers worldwide, with more than three million digitized books on offer. Titles range from Stephen King's scary bestseller "It" to Kristin Hannah's historical novel "The Nightingale." The archive expanded its digital lending during the Covid-19 pandemic, temporarily lifting limits on how many people could check out a book at one time. The move helped prompt the publishers' copyright infringement lawsuit in 2020, which is pending before U.S. District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan.
The plaintiffs are Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, John Wiley and Sons, Bertelsmann SE's Penguin Random House, and HarperCollins Publishers, which like The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp. They argue the Internet Archive book platform "constitutes willful digital piracy on an industrial scale" and hurts writers and publishers who rely on consumers buying their products. William Adams, general counsel for HarperCollins Publishers, said the archive's approach has no basis in law. "What they're doing is supplanting what authors and publishers do with libraries and have been doing for a long time," he said. The Internet Archive says its lending practices are a fair and legal use of the books, in the same way that traditional bricks-and-mortar libraries have a right to share their collections with the public.
The plaintiffs are Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, John Wiley and Sons, Bertelsmann SE's Penguin Random House, and HarperCollins Publishers, which like The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp. They argue the Internet Archive book platform "constitutes willful digital piracy on an industrial scale" and hurts writers and publishers who rely on consumers buying their products. William Adams, general counsel for HarperCollins Publishers, said the archive's approach has no basis in law. "What they're doing is supplanting what authors and publishers do with libraries and have been doing for a long time," he said. The Internet Archive says its lending practices are a fair and legal use of the books, in the same way that traditional bricks-and-mortar libraries have a right to share their collections with the public.
Diebrary? (Score:2, Insightful)
Since most books will be only digital in the future, this could spell the end of libraries except as "ancient paper-based document archivers", and eventually those will wear out with use, leaving a Dustbrary behind.
Re: (Score:2)
Do we really care about saving the massive flood of AI generated books that amount to little more than bound up used toilet paper?
I scan books and upload them to archive.org, I'm all for preservation. There is a limit though. And fortunately digital books take up only tiny amounts of storage space anyway.
Biting the hand that feeds (Score:4, Interesting)
These book publishers should be THANKING libraries (digital and physical alike) for reminding the reading public how much crap they pump out at industrial scale all whilst greedily reducing whatever compensations they originally promised to authors of all kinds -- for the sole purpose of double- and triple-dipping into the printing and publishing pipelines.
And don't get me started on the price of their unrevised (and re-printed and updated editions and upscaled pricing) of TEXTBOOKS. Ugh!
Ridiculous (Score:2, Troll)
Re: (Score:1)
Neither the summary nor TFA mention Cervantes. What is the relevance?
Annotation copyright (Score:3)
Study editions of Don Quixote or Pinocchio are not much different from study editions of The Bible. Copyright subsists in the translation into English and/or the annotations added by the textbook author. An un-annotated edition in the public domain should be available through Project Gutenberg or wherever else.
Note: This is provided you don't live in a country that seeks to abolish the public domain, such as Britain with its perpetual tax on Peter Pan derivatives benefiting GOSH (an NHS children's hospital)
Free link to the article (Score:2)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/o... [wsj.com]
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Nope, that's the same article with its "subscribe to read the rest" after the first half-paragraph.
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Nope, that's the same article with its "subscribe to read the rest" after the first half-paragraph.
Really? it shouldn't be. The link was obtained by clicking the "copy free link" button on the article, which is a feature made available to subscribers.
I just tested it in a different browser, not signed in, and it works fine
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You need to turn off your script blocker.
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You're right. It works if you allow the script to run.
Publishers are suing the libraries for lending (Score:3, Insightful)
Their biggest argument is because the digital libraries are doing too-good of a job making books available for their patrons (read: society at large) to borrow a copy of out-of-print books. Books the patrons wouldn't have access to because the printers stopped printing them, and I guess it's the patrons' fault for not being alive (and spending money buying books) when those titles were actually in-print.
Did I get that right?!
Re:Publishers are suing the libraries for lending (Score:5, Interesting)
The publishers are suing the digital libraries for being libraries.
Did I get that right?!
Yes. From TFA:
“A real library pays for their books,” said Mary Rasenberger, chief executive of the Authors Guild.
Nonprofit organization Internet Archive created the digital books, building its collection by scanning physical book copies in its possession.
The article is more even-handed than I would have expected, given that the publication's sibling company is party to the suit.
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The archive expanded its digital lending during the Covid-19 pandemic, temporarily lifting limits on how many people could check out a book at one time.
It seems that, temporarily at least, they weren't paying for all of their books.
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Hmm.
Can I go to the Internet Archive to check out a copy of this WSJ issue which is behind a paywall?
Hmm
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There's a no-paywall link upthread [slashdot.org] to the whole article. That's how I read it, anyway. I don't subscribe to the WSJ.
"Hmm"
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Oh, thanks that's helpful. Ironically, the no-paywall link was still paywall-y with NoScript enabled.
I was poorly trying to make a joke about libraries having copies of newspapers for people to read ... but I was far from successful. Hmm.
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That's a weak argument because many libraries accept donated books, and some are entirely stocked with donations.
What they really object to is making books accessible. My city's library service does have a website where you can look up books, but it's not well indexed by Google. If I want to borrow a book I also have to physically go and get it.
The Internet Archive often comes up in search results, and borrowing only requires a few clicks.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a weak argument because...
Agreed, that argument is not what they really care about. Their big concern is how far civilization veers toward the pathological case of "only selling as many copies as necessary for desired concurrent readership anywhere in the world," for reasonable values of "desired." That's a genuinely interesting situation, and I don't have the crystal ball to know what might happen to authorship if it happens. The printing industry obviously becomes extremely niche.
The publishing industry's hope is to kill the servi
Depends (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
What you say makes sense, but probably isn't legal, hence the lawsuit.
The whole "business model" of libraries is based on physical materials. Physical materials are explicitly permitted to be shared/resold under the law, which makes it such that a library can get a single copy of something and share it with the entire community. I think libraries are a worthwhile thing to protect, as they provide access to materials to people who may not be able to afford those materials. Probably the solution is some so
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The whole "business model" of libraries is based on physical materials.
Public libraries have had digital materials for a long time. My local library's "Virtual Library" web page has existed since 2013 according to archive.org. I have no clue how long they had digital assets before that.
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Public libraries have had digital materials for a long time.
They're licensed. They can't do it without permission from the copyright holders (or for public domain works, which can be freely copied and shared)
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As long as the loans of digital copes are serialized so that only one person can have it out at a time, then this is no different than lending dead tree copies.
From the article:
The archive expanded its digital lending during the Covid-19 pandemic, temporarily lifting limits on how many people could check out a book at one time. The move helped prompt the publishers' copyright infringement lawsuit in 2020, which is pending before U.S. District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan.
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One needs to remember why they did this.
It was because with real physical libraries closed, those libraries could not lend out their digital books either. Many libraries do not have an online lending system - if you want a digital e-book, you have to visit the physical library and borrow it that way - either by borrowing the associated e-reader or having it loaded on your e-reader.
In other words, what was happening is practically every library in the US could not lend out books at all - physical or virtual
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As long as the loans of digital copes are serialized so that only one person can have it out at a time, then this is no different than lending dead tree copies.
Except it's not.
Copyright prohibits making additional copies and distributing copies that were not legally made.
On the other hand it allows distributing copies that were legally made, so long as they were initially distributed by the copyright holder (i.e. the first sale).
That the number of copies being lent at any one time might not be different doesn't matter. If you're making copies and then you're distributing them, you're infringing.
This isn't new, either. ReDigi tried to do this with music files ten
I dunno (Score:2)
Is this actually a significant problem?
The internet archive is the only place I've even been able to find digital copies of at least one book. However, what was available was a very low-quality PDF... I eventually tracked down a physical copy of the book because the PDF was too annoying to read. And, from what I've seen (which admittedly is somewhat limited), the quality of other books on the archive is not good at all.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think "the quality of the copy is terrible" is a legally defensible position for fair use. The MPAA still sends DMCA notices to ISPs if you're caught sharing cam rips of current movies. While you'd assume with everyone packing a 4K camera in their smartphone these days that the quality would at least be tolerable, it's not. Modern cam rips make YouTube "potato quality" video look like IMAX by comparison, and on top of the blurry pixelated mess are usually a bunch of ads for online casinos and/or
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I was simply wondering if people were actually using these particular digitized books. Maybe others are more tolerant of crap quality than I am...
I do have to admit to, back in the day, collecting some pretty bad quality MP3s via limewire if that was the only way I could get a particular song... in digital format, I mean.
the mechanism of lending (Score:2)
Unfortunately, the mechanism of lending is also doing duplication, so it is doing more than just lending. The lender would have to have zero copies of the digital book on hand for it to not be considered a duplicate. How many paper book libraries make a whole copy of each book being checked out and hand you the copy? If they refer to what they transferred to you as "the original, not a copy" then they would need to get it back from you (even if late) and transfer that (those bits) to the next patron who
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Unfortunately, the mechanism of lending is also doing duplication, so it is doing more than just lending. The lender would have to have zero copies of the digital book on hand for it to not be considered a duplicate.
That isn't the issue at hand.
Under normal digital lending, that is in fact exactly how it works.
There can and are times when there are zero digital copies available for checkout.
They keep two groups of physical copies, one set on the shelf for physical lending, and another set locked up in storage where the number of physical copies matches the number of digital copies they make available for lending.
The issue at hand is that libraries want the law updated to make this entire process less burdensome and be
Re: (Score:2)
That is pretty much how the Archive works.
It encrypts the books using Adobe DRM, like any other library which does digital lending. After the period of the loan expires the book is no longer readable.
The period of the loan varies, from a couple of hours to a couple of weeks, and renewal if no other borrower is waiting.
The two hour loans are particularly useful if you are scanning a subject and want to get a quick overview of sources. If you live out of reach of a major university library, or don't have ac
Their excuse isn't going to fly (Score:5, Insightful)
The archive expanded its digital lending during the Covid-19 pandemic, temporarily lifting limits on how many people could check out a book at one time.
As much as I personally love what the Internet Archive does (it's especially useful when politicians remove things), they made the wrong move here. Copyright law was not suspended during Covid-19. I'd argue all day long that they absolutely have the right to lend digital copies of books they've legally purchased 1:1, but the moment they're lending more copies than they own, they've stepped into the realm of piracy.
Morally, I think they were in the right because people couldn't go out to their local libraries during Covid lockdowns, but a judge isn't going to see it that way. Plenty of people have tried the "I broke the law, but I had a good reason" defense and it rarely succeeds outside of fictional Hollywood courtroom dramas.
They can't see the forest for the trees (Score:1, Interesting)
and hurts writers and publishers who rely on consumers buying their products. William Adams, general counsel for HarperCollins Publishers, said the archive's approach has no basis in law.
[The Congress shall have power] to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
If WE the people gain no progress from science and the useful arts, WE the people have no reason to offer a worthless unused incentive such as limited exclusive rights.
If WE the people gain only decline and regression, those limited exclusive rights become a hinderance to our goals.
WE the people have tried
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
So politicians must act to change the law to FORCE them to follow it.
MPAA controls the news (Score:3)
So why haven't WE the people elected legislators willing to roll back some of the windfalls granted to publishers since the 1970s? I suspect it's that publishers also control the means for legislators to maintain name recognition in a reelection campaign. Universal owns NBC News, Disney owns ABC News, Paramount owns CBS News, and Warner Bros. owns CNN.
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Ho ho ho. Copyright has been absurdly biased in favor of publishers since at least the 1909 Copyright Act. It's not just because of movie studios and TV networks.
Who is morally right? (Score:1, Flamebait)
SHAME on the publishers.
I hope this comes back to bite them HARD when copyright terms are made REASONABLE again, i.e. years not decades.
Sheet music books (Score:2)
They have oodles of sheet music books.
I find what I want in those books, screenshot the pages with the piece that I'm looking for, and now I can study and/or play it.
Just like photocopying a page out of a book in a library, but I don't have to leave home to do it.
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For classical, that's right. The quality of the pdf's at imslp varies quite a bit, from perfect to barely readable.
archive.org has a relatively uniform quality when they scan books.
https://archive.org/details/co... [archive.org]
You won't find stuff like this on imslp.
If it's a Texas court, it's pre-decided (Score:1)
Who picked those two books? (Score:2)
"Stephen King's scary bestseller "It" to Kristin Hannah's historical novel "The Nightingale.""
REALLY?!
FFS.
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They have many more esoteric books too. The first book I checked out from them was 'Liquid Piston Stirling Engines' by C.D. West. It's been out of print for decades but won't be public domain within my projected lifetime.
The book has a nifty design for a small engine made from Acrylic/Plexiglass and a small resistor as the heater. It's quite lovely to watch in operation. TODO:I should make a 3-d printable version.
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Out of curiosity, I just entered its ISBN 0442292376 and found several copies for sale on Abebooks, Amazon, Ebay. Maybe you can now order your own paper copy. Also this paper in open access; some scholars at Georgia Tech made another acrylic model in 2014. https://aip.scitation.org/doi/... [scitation.org]
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Back when I read it the used copy on Amazon was around $40 and a new copy (... and I'm suspicious of a "new" 40 year old book) was over $200. I'm glad it's come down.
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A link to the offending ( or soon to be
A Judge Should Not Go Against the US Copyright Law (Score:2)
The Internet Archive (archive.org) is a public non-profit library, it does not have ads or anything related to profit on their site.
Why a Book Publisher can sell their digital books online and worldwide, but a non profit library should only remain in paper and in a local neighborhood?
Most physical books can be lent limited times (Score:2)
Data point (Score:3)
Here's a bit of esoteric library trivia. We generally think of libraries buying books and holding them for long periods of time. That does happen, but for the newest titles there is a good chance your library doesn't actually own the bestsellers sitting on the shelf. It is extremely common for libraries to lease books and return them to the publisher after they fall off in popularity. As part of this service the publishers will optionally curate the collection to track what's popular.
On a per-book basis, leasing costs a few dollars more vs. buying the books outright. I don't see the appeal, but I'm not in the industry. Maybe they can turn the inventory more frequently? I don't know.
We know how it would turn out if it reaches SCOTUS (Score:1)
the key legal issue may be this (Score:2)
I guess the key legal issue is the way the Archive works differently from Overdrive.
Overdrive is lawful and not contested by the publishing industry. A library offering it doesn't buy physical copy, scan it, and then lend the digitized copy. It must (correct if wrong) get its digital copy from the publisher or retailer.
It then does something similar to the Archive, it lends with a timed DRM loan. This involves providing the borrower with another local copy of the book, available on an e-reader, so it doe
The Policy Issue (Score:3)
The unique thing about the Archive is its huge stock of old, out of copyright, editions. This is a real service to independent researchers in the liberal arts, particularly literature.
It does also offer lots of loans of current, in-copyright material. But its unique value is in its huge collection of out of copyright old editions. No-one else is going to do this, if it is closed.
Its a segment neither the pirates nor Overdrive have any interest in, and it provides access to materials that if you had to access them physically would mean huge travel time and costs to university libraries which happen to have the editions you are looking for. If you could even find them and get access. I was interested recently in Prevost's 'Memoires et aventures d'un homme de qualite' and wanted to look at early editions. I've no idea how to go about that without the Archive.
We must hope that whatever the outcome of the suit, this part of the operation remains intact.
But not Scribd? (Score:3)
A pirate site that actually charges you for access is okay, then?