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Are America's Courts Going After Digital Libraries? (reason.com) 43

A new article at Reason.com argues that U.S. courts "are coming for digital libraries." In September, a federal appeals court dealt a major blow to the Internet Archive — one of the largest online repositories of free books, media, and software — in a copyright case with significant implications for publishers, libraries, and readers. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that found the Internet Archive's huge, digitized lending library of copyrighted books was not covered by the "fair use" doctrine and infringed on the rights of publishers. Agreeing with the Archive's interpretation of fair use "would significantly narrow — if not entirely eviscerate — copyright owners' exclusive right to prepare derivative works," the 2nd Circuit ruled. "Were we to approve [Internet Archive's] use of the works, there would be little reason for consumers or libraries to pay publishers for content they could access for free."
Others disagree, according to some links shared in a recent email from the Internet Archive. Public Knowledge CEO Chris Lewis argues the court's logic renders the fair use doctrine "almost unusuable". And that's just the beginning... This decision harms libraries. It locks them into an e-book ecosystem designed to extract as much money as possible while harvesting (and reselling) reader data en masse. It leaves local communities' reading habits at the mercy of curatorial decisions made by four dominant publishing companies thousands of miles away. It steers Americans away from one of the few remaining bastions of privacy protection and funnels them into a surveillance ecosystem that, like Big Tech, becomes more dangerous with each passing data breach.
But lawyer/librarian Kyle K. Courtney writes that the case "is specific only to the parties, and does not impact the other existing versions of controlled digital lending." Additionally, this decision is limited to the 2nd Circuit and is not binding anywhere else — in other words, it does not apply to the 47 states outside the 2nd Circuit's jurisdiction. In talking with colleagues in the U.S. this week and last, many are continuing their programs because they believe their digital loaning programs fall outside the scope of this ruling... Moreover, the court's opinion focuses on digital books that the court said "are commercially available for sale or license in any electronic text format." Therefore, there remains a significant number of materials in library collections that have not made the jump to digital, nor are likely to, meaning that there is no ebook market to harm — nor is one likely to emerge for certain works, such as those that are no longer commercially viable...

This case represents just one instance in an ongoing conversation about library lending in the digital age, and the possibility of appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court means the final outcome is far from settled.

Some more quotes from links shared by Internet Archive:
  • "It was clear that the only reason all the big publishers sued the Internet Archive was to put another nail in the coffin of libraries and push to keep this ebook licensing scheme grift going. Now the courts have helped." — TechDirt
  • "The case against the Internet Archive is not just a story about the ruination of an online library, but a grander narrative of our times: how money facilitates the transference of knowledge away from the public, back towards the few." — blogger Hannah Williams

Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the news.


Are America's Courts Going After Digital Libraries?

Comments Filter:
  • Host digital libraries outside the USA.

    Problem solved

    • Host digital libraries outside the USA.

      Problem solved

      And there are plenty of them.

      For Pete's sake, nothing is easier to copy and redistribute than the simple written word. The only thing a crackdown accomplishes is driving people to the pirate sites.

    • Re:Just move (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Monday November 11, 2024 @08:47AM (#64936557) Homepage

      That sounds simple enough, and technically speaking it is. But in the end, nobody hosts sites for free. They all have to make money somehow. And when money is involved, it gets complicated, and the US legal system has a foothold to go after these "libraries" that are not on US soil. Remember Kim Dotcom? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] He and his MegaUpload site were not in the US, but the US successfully won his extradition to the US.

      Hosting on foreign soil, is not a get-out-of-jail-free pass.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        These are things that can be overcome though. Select a jurisdiction that doesn't extradite to the US for copyright stuff, or ideally at all. Internet Archive is a charity, that's the way to raise the funds.

        Even better would be to distribute it, much like how things such as Linux distros are widely mirrors. There is a lot of data to handle but if commercial CDNs can manage it, so can a charity.

        That all said, Internet Archive would be in a much better position if they got proper legal advice and listened to i

        • So that solution sounds "simple" to you? Just decide you want to live in an oppressive country, or a banana republic, and you're all set! You go for it.

          Distributed, you mean like Bitcoin? That doesn't stop the Feds either.
          https://www.cjonline.com/story... [cjonline.com]
          https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]
          https://markets.businessinside... [businessinsider.com]

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Obviously if you live in the US that's difficult, but there are librarians in Europe too you know.

            • And most European countries cooperate with the US in taking down, suing, and criminally prosecuting people who flout copyright laws.

              • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                Do you have any examples of that? It seems like many of them don't.

                • It does vary by country, however, the EU in general does enforce US copyrights.

                  https://www.trade.gov/country-... [trade.gov]

                  • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                    Sure, but there is a difference between recognizing them and zealously enforcing them, extraditing people to face criminal charges etc.

                    • It's true, extradition is rare. But enforcement is something the EU does, if anything, more zealously than the US.

                      It's also true that most copyright infringement is not prosecuted, whether in the US or elsewhere. Prosecution generally happens only when done on a massive scale.

                      To whatever extent that copyright infringement is prosecuted, hiding in another country may or may not save you.

                • I commented but I cut in. Sorry.

                  Maybe moving them will work for now, but online is more international, isn't it? There was one lawsuit from ...Sweden or similar where it was legal to share the book( or diary?) within the country but not without.. I think it was on on Slashdot but my brain leaks ;P

                  I don't think moving it would be bullet proof, especially with U.S. leverage but it might be a great start. I guess it would depend on how well libraries in Europe (or wherever) and how well those laws have extende

                  • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                    That's why I think distributing it would be a good idea. Stuff that isn't allowed in one jurisdiction can be kept in another.

    • I doubt it.

      It may be changing but Hollywood movies are huge world wide and have been. So these big studio companies [wikipedia.org] and the Music publishing companies (mostly consolidated with the studios companies?) i.e. DRM companies have the lobbyist to push our government to pressure other governments to go after DRM "violations" hard.

      I don't think this will be any different.

      From my understanding brick and mortar libraries have been battling for years. With the current environment in the U.S. i.e. "Profit over People

  • by davecb ( 6526 ) <davecb@spamcop.net> on Monday November 11, 2024 @09:12AM (#64936607) Homepage Journal

    Courts aren't after the Internet Archive, publishers are. Just like they were after he first public lending libraries in Britain.

    And they still are to this day: see the reference to Kenneth Whyte’s “Overdue: Throwing the Book at Libraries”. in Are Libraries the Enemy of Authors and Publishers? [hughstephensblog.net] in the Hugh Stephens Blog.

    • by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      +1.

      All courts do is interpret laws. Sometimes they can get it wrong, but in any outcome of a case, 99 times out of 100 you can change further outcomes with a new or updated law.

      • You have a lot more faith in our courts, and of our government to be willing or able to legislate responsively, than do I.
        • You can watch courts, and congress. The vast majority of judges I watch are pretty level headed and clear in their legal thinking. Even if you disagree with one of their rulings, they can point to a law, or case law, and explain how they got there. There are exceptions, of course, but you read about those in the papers because they are relatively rare.

          Now go watch congress debate a law or bill. They'll rail against a bill then vote for it. They'll all agree a bill is a great idea and it will die in committe

          • Re:Watching (Score:5, Informative)

            by doc1623 ( 7109263 ) on Monday November 11, 2024 @01:04PM (#64937289)

            You may be right, but I can't help thinking that your describing a bygone era.

            The Supreme Court may be the most obvious, but there is also the 5th circuit court of appeals.

            Both are almost always ruling very conservatively, seemly bending over backwards to do so.From everything I read, what the Supreme Court did with abortion was unprecedented. They essentially decided a case that wasn't in front of them and they went out out of their way to do so, ignoring all precedent i.e. Judicial overreach/activism contrary to the claims of being strict "constitutionalist". The same can be said for every decision that has given companies rights based on the 14th amendment that was meant for people and never mentions anything but. They flip from judicial activism to strict constitutionalism, when it favors their views. If they weren't so predictable, there wouldn't be as much judge shopping e.g. the fifth circuit.

            Political decisions have become blatantly obvious. In 2010 [wikipedia.org] the supreme court effectively ended our democracy. It gave the richest and most powerful undue influence [www.eods.eu] in our government and elections. It's been disastrous and will continue to be for the majority. Since then we have fallen in the democracy index [wikipedia.org] to "flawed". I have very little faith we will be back to a full "democracy" before we are listed as "failed".

            • by JBMcB ( 73720 )

              The Supreme Court may be the most obvious, but there is also the 5th circuit court of appeals.

              That's an interesting observation, since the supreme court overrules 5th circuit court decisions more often than any other.

              Also, in the 2022 supreme court session, only 12 of the 80 cases were split directly along ideological lines. Half were unanimous, and the rest were mixed, which is fairly common.

          • The vast majority of judges I watch are pretty level headed and clear in their legal thinking.

            That doesn't really matter given the ability of litigants to shop for a judge [slashdot.org] who will rule in their favor, and when the Supreme Court itself abandons basic principles of jurisprudence [go.com] so they can manufacture reasoning to come to the conclusion [americanbar.org] they started with.

    • Yes, the publishers give gifts to the presiding judges and those judges rule in favor of the parties that gave the best gifts. It's evolutionarily pure anyway. Justice must be meted out due to its scarcity. And money is the most flexible form of determining the merits of a case.

  • Like older ebooks where there is no copyright protection, or try out stories on royalroad.com or similar sites, or *gasp* physically go to a library and check out a physical book. Or go to a library sale and pay $1 for two books.

  • If you have the capacity make backups of wikipedia, and internet archive. It's only a matter of time before stuff on there starts getting banned.

    A backup of English wikipedia --current (no edit history or talk pages) would fit in a terabyte. If you want the full Wikimedia archive with everything it's half a petabyte.

    Internet archive is 40 petabytes. You'd probably need to physically hand them ]a storage array to make a backup.

  • Opinion (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ElizabethGreene ( 1185405 ) on Monday November 11, 2024 @10:50AM (#64936895)

    Reason is being far too soft on the Internet Archive here. They were fine doing *controlled* digital lending, where they would lend a digital/scanned copy one-at-a-time for each copyrighted *physical* book they owned. Publishers didn't like it, but this was completely defensible.

    Then, during the COVID pandemic, they switched to uncontrolled lending. They allowed as many people as desired to borrow digital copies of books simultaneously. This was an intentional decision to shit on copyright laws and they intentionally set themselves as a legal target for publishers.

    When you FA&FO, you don't get to whine about the FO. More generally, when you operate a service as critical as the Internet Archive that is already on the bleeding edge of what's permitted by copyright, you should generally avoid FA as a standard business practice.

    • by Budenny ( 888916 )

      Yes, this is quite right. Unrestricted lending was legally indefensible and was exactly the justification for action that the publishers needed to attack the previous policy, which was legally fairly defensible. IA has now rescinded the unrestricted landing policy, but it may be too late.

      The thing people never seem to understand is that we need IA as a weapon against piracy. It seems strange, but its really true. Unrestricted piracy is a very bad thing, in the end it makes authoring unprofitable and so

  • by Turkinolith ( 7180598 ) on Monday November 11, 2024 @12:22PM (#64937193)
    "Additionally, this decision is limited to the 2nd Circuit and is not binding anywhere else — in other words, it does not apply to the 47 states outside the 2nd Circuit's jurisdiction."

    Got it, so just do the exact same thing in a state that is not part of the 2nd Circuit.
  • by ElitistWhiner ( 79961 ) on Monday November 11, 2024 @12:54PM (#64937273) Journal

    to lever free-access to libraries. It amounts to knocking libraries off their foundations to sit squandering with brittle and worn paper assets until crumbling into rubble heaps. In a digital age, content rises not on its value but its medium of exchange. The 1990s maxim” Content is King" derived from the triad distribution, content, context is masquerading over the other two monopolies Internet and Browser. Two wars won - yet one is here still up for grabs.
    Keystone to public libraries, Internet Archive being the Library of Alexandria target to burn to the ground forshadows the fate of all libraries. Starbucks is frothing its franchise at the prospect of saving all libraries by worldwide goevernment-private partnership turning every last one into the last best place to catch a read and latte anytime.

FORTH IF HONK THEN

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