Publishers, Internet Archive Agree To Streamline Digital Book-Lending Case (reuters.com) 6
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Internet Archive and a group of leading book publishers told a Manhattan federal court on Friday that they have resolved aspects of their legal battle over the Archive's digital lending of their scanned books. If accepted, the consent judgment would settle questions over potential money damages in the case and the scope of a ban on the Archive's lending and would clear the way for the Archive to appeal U.S. District Judge John Koeltl's decision that it infringed the publishers' copyrights.
The proposed order would require the Archive to pay Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, News Corp's HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons and Bertelsmann SE & Co's Penguin Random House an undisclosed amount of money if it loses its appeal. The order would also permanently block the Archive from lending out copies of the publishers' books without permission, pending the result of the appeal. They asked Koeltl to resolve a dispute over whether the order will apply only to the publishers' books that are already available for electronic licensing or books commercially available in any format.
The Internet Archive said in a blog post that the fight was "far from over," and founder Brewster Kahle said in a statement that "we must have strong libraries, which is why we are appealing this decision." Maria Pallante, the CEO of the Association of American Publishers, said in a statement that the plaintiffs were "extremely pleased" with the proposed injunction, which will "extend not only to the Plaintiffs' 127 works in suit but also to thousands of other literary works in their catalogs."
The proposed order would require the Archive to pay Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, News Corp's HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons and Bertelsmann SE & Co's Penguin Random House an undisclosed amount of money if it loses its appeal. The order would also permanently block the Archive from lending out copies of the publishers' books without permission, pending the result of the appeal. They asked Koeltl to resolve a dispute over whether the order will apply only to the publishers' books that are already available for electronic licensing or books commercially available in any format.
The Internet Archive said in a blog post that the fight was "far from over," and founder Brewster Kahle said in a statement that "we must have strong libraries, which is why we are appealing this decision." Maria Pallante, the CEO of the Association of American Publishers, said in a statement that the plaintiffs were "extremely pleased" with the proposed injunction, which will "extend not only to the Plaintiffs' 127 works in suit but also to thousands of other literary works in their catalogs."
Perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
Here we have an industry in what appears to be rude health - at least from the rising numbers of books being published ever year - trying to close down a group dedicated to reducing the profits they are making.
As usual what we really need is for legislatures to draw up clear rules for cyber space. In the absence of any action from Congress and others, it is not a surprise, but still not the right answer, for the courts to step in and legislate instead.
The UK went through this process in miniature by granting authors payments for physical books borrowed from public libraries; I'm not clear if this includes digital lending, which a number of council public libraries and universities are getting rapidly better at.
https://www.bl.uk/plr/plr-paym... [www.bl.uk]
Note the maximum payment; this has the effect of meaning that successful authors are not getting massive payments from the taxpayer. This raises the fundamental question about what libraries are for; to the extent they are a way for cheapskate members of the middle class to indulge in reading the latest best sellers free, this doesn't seem like a really worthwhile activity. Meanwhile in the internet age the old classics are now available on line anyway, so the role of providing access to those for the penurious also has disappeared.
We need some clear thinking; sadly a court is not the right place for the conversation, though because our legislatures are such total failures, it may be the only solution...
Re:Done (Score:5, Insightful)
This (the Bono copyright act) was done almost entirely to protect Disney's profits on Mickey Mouse, which had been about to go out of copyright. The hundred million other works it affected were just collateral damage.
I agree that this is a problem, but the solution is to admit that this was a mistake and go back to a shorter term of copyright.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Disney is now using "Steamboat Willie" as a trademark, rather than a copyrighted cartoon. He appears in the studio intro in recent Disney films. Trademarks never expire as long as they are in use.
Digital = DEC (Score:2)
So sad to see that DEC's Digital logo is now used for generic 'digitial' ...
And I wrote about this three years ago, almost to the day, in Slashdot's Downward Slope Continues: Ignorance of icons/logos [baheyeldin.com].