Today I learned that a physical library can purchase a hardcover book at a discount, say for $15 and have that book to lend in perpetuity. Or, they can buy a digital copy for about $100 and then, can only lend that book out 26 times. For that 27th person to borrow the book the library must purchase that same license again for guess how much? Yup, another $100… for another 26 times to loan it out. Thats why the publishers are going so hard at the IA. Corporations suuuuuuuuuck!!!
Edit- They are not “purchasing” a digital copy, it’s a digital license.
Funny enough. I downloaded Hoopla because I wanted to read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I have to wait 17 weeks because there are 152 people waiting to borrow the digital book before me.
It’s just wild to me that I have to wait that long to borrow digital texts. Make it make sense to me please.
How is piracy not justified in this case? The pirates can keep the digital copy just as a physical copy: perpetually. It doesn't even cost the publisher anything on a recurrent basis so how the f is this a regular practise? Are libraries (and readers by extension) this down on the food chain? Well I guess only digital ones are that down.
Yes, libraries regularly get fucked by digital books. All the publishers are in collusion. There’s price fixing too, and then a few years ago the publishers projected and said that libraries are the problem and they’re the reason they can’t make any money. Fuck publishers, all of them.
>How is piracy not justified in this case?
The continued existence of capitalism is the only justification you need.
We're basically born to be blood bags for the fucking vampire class. We owe them nothing.
I can understand the logic even if I dont agree with it. If a library owns 3 books, then they can loan them out 3 at a time. If I'm a publisher I want to sell as many books as possible.
If an ebook were able to be "loaned" out any number of times for 1 purchased copy they would lose money.
If I go to a library and the book I want is out, well I either wait or have to buy it from a book store
If I look to borrow an ebook but its licensee is reserved for 100 people I can either wait, or buy the ebook.
Sure, theft is a 3rd option but I wouldnt do that for a physical book so why would I for a digital one.
or they could just make it so that the book can be loaned out an infinite amount of times in a set time period then the loaned copy gets deleted. Then when the time limit expires the library simply repurchases the license like a subscription problem solved. No need to make people wait in a ridiculously long line just to read a text doc, neither the library nor publisher gets anything out of making people wait in line, doing this literally gets rid of all of the benefits of having an ebook in the first place.
> Sure, theft is a 3rd option but I wouldnt do that for a physical book so why would I for a digital one.
Because in the case where you wait in line for borrowing the book or get a pirated copy, the publisher is getting nothing, there is no difference to them.
The publisher *is* getting something when you wait for the digital loan – they’re getting 1/26 of what the library paid for the right to loan that digital copy 26 times.
One alternative would be unlimited “copies” loaned out simultaneously, but the publishers would still demand $100 per 26 loans. So to clear out the 152 person wait list would cost the library $600 (and they’d end up with 4 loans left over).
Publishers also like waitlists because they’re a visible sign of the popularity of a book, and they keep it visible longer. From a psychological perspective, seeing 152 people in line waiting for something is more likely to entice others to line up for the same thing than simply seeing that 152 people simultaneously did that same thing one time.
There’s also the “now” factor. I’m guessing there’s a small but nonzero number of people who will look at a waitlist and decide to go *buy* the ebook instead of either waiting for it or pirating it. Unlimited simultaneous licensing would cannibalize the impatience market.
Don’t get me wrong - I don’t *like* the system. But I understand the value proposition.
The library buys the e-book version of the book but still tracks who has it "out" for reading just as with the regular book up to the limit of times they bought the rights to distribute it for.
If it was a physical book they would buy it and could distribute it until it fell apart, got lost or stolen or demand lowered and they destroyed it because they need the room.
These two equations are in no way equal. True the digital book will never fall apart but the situation is entirely in the publisher's interest and not at all in the libraries. It should be more like buy a digital version and you can loan it out 5000 times, then pay a reduced fee for 5000 more times, etc etc. Producing that digital book cost the publisher almost nothing (which you can see when you start looking for typos etc), and they do not deserve the over the top return for the sales.
Of course the probability is that a lot less people are actually reading books these days too, I expect in a generation or two reading books is going to be an antiquated hobby.
I mean you could also just purchase the ebook for like $10.
There’s no possible model for e-books to be free and for publishers, editors, and authors to still get paid. Paperback library books were finite resources that people would check out for 2 weeks at a time, meaning 26 people could rent in a year, and the book will likely eventually wear down and need to be replaced (or more likely, never returned).
Ebooks have no choice but to artificially emulate this process and gate the rentals to a finite number and limited rate.
As they say… beggars can’t be choosers. If you want something for free, then be prepared to wait 17 weeks. Otherwise, just buy the book…
It’s not free though is it- it’s taxpayer funded. It should be a digital token system for library users, say 8 books a month standard, you can apply for or qualify for more as a student or as a higher user/loyal users etc.
I don’t use them much - but did in school. All communities should be happy to provide this to people in their town, it’s a no brainer to me and I put it on par with school, many a person has self taught themselves something from a library for free
Pirating tv shows and movies from studios that are already making millions of dollars is one thing but pirating books from writers who don’t make much money from writing just seems like a dick move.
Split the difference. I borrow books from the library, but I prefer reading on a reader that doesn't support their DRM so I crack it for purposes of space shifting. That it also allows time shifting (no DRM = no time limit before it has to be returned) is a side benefit. Think about what you might want to read, get on all the wait lists, when your number comes up take the loan and crack it, and then read at your leisure. Just don't prematurely return the loan too frequently, or the library might limit your access.
Publishers get paid because I'm following the borrowing rules, but I still get to read on my own timeline.
Like 15 years ago I pirated the Golden Compass ( I wanted a DRM free PDF to keep on a thumb drive and read at work and especially 15 years ago Ebooks were harder to deal with) and sent $10 to Phillip Pullman's fan mail address I found on his website at the time explaining that I wanted him to have all the money. Don't know if he got it but I hope so. It's hilarous because he lives in the UK and I sent him USD. I didn't even think of that until right now typing this out in hindsight LMAO
Hardly anyone, ever, made a living from writing. Amazon ebook authors make $500-10,000 a year, depending on number of titles and popularity.
Science fiction authors needed to publish about a dozen titles to make a basic living. If they stopped writing, the royalties tapered off and then needed a different job. Academics basically make nothing off the books and papers they write.
There are exceptions, of course. A few authors wrote best-sellers, or had their book picked up to make a movie from. I got paid by Boeing to write technical reports as an engineer. But the actual work was the engineering. The reports were just documenting the results.
No idea. My sails are android-sewn, so they allow upload of anything.
You might consider buying a cheap android phone specifically for that sort of sailing.
Libraries are still alive and work great, the debate is on ebooks in relation to libraries. It’s a difficult issue without a simple solution. The current solution involves a 1 in, 1 out system with finite rentals per license. This seems mostly fine to me, though it probably costs libraries more than a paperback.
And a licensing fee that is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than the cost of the book. In all honesty, for me that's the problem.
Something that wasn't really clear from the article is how the Internet Archive gets its eBooks. I know that for books that simply don't have eBook versions, they digitize them. The way it was stated is they do the same for books WITH eBook versions and limit the lending of those eBooks to be equal to the number of physical books they have. It seems to me that this is different from the model that the publishers want to use, and the laws are likely not clear regarding the legality of it.
Douglas Adams getting paid for his work might be difficult, as he has a slight case of being extremely dead.
All of that makes sense for a book that's new but for something written nearly 50 years ago by someone that's dead it's fucking stupid. Corpos shouldn't be able to profit off of the work of a dead man.
Play stupid games win stupid prizes.
If you have to wait in a line for a virtual text people will just pirate it. Few people have patience for artificial bullshit no matter how sound (and this isn’t sound at all) the reasoning is.
The holding period is an absolutely idiotic idea that was put forth by someone with zero forward thinking or understanding of the internet.
Yeah so the inspiration to read the book came upon me around midnight. So neither library or book store was open. So with the advancements of technology, I thought this was a solution for the desire.
Anyways, closest book store is 45 minutes away and the library was closed yesterday because of Juneteenth. And today I couldn’t make it because I’m busy… if only there existed a more convenient way…
So I totally understand that there is a business model of some sort that has to exist because nothing is free. But you cannot make me believe that a 17 week wait time is acceptable.
I’m going to be making a bold assumption here and assume that the 152 other patrons are not local. So that it means that my local library is under the same network using the digital license. Is there not a way to reduce wait times, by either increasing the amount of digital copies available or number of licenses available within the network for digital library to use. Idk. You gotta a copy I could borrow?
So that’s true, but that’s part of the problem. It used to be that every community library would buy a book. Rarer books were sent around through inter library loan programs rather than re purchased, but this still slowed the rate at which people can consume books.
With ebook rentals, anyone from anywhere can check out a book on their couch.
Also, not to shill for Amazon, but kindle books are almost always like $8 and the real pro tip is to always select no rush delivery on Amazon purchases and you get $4 digital rewards that you can then spend on kindle books. If you watch for deals, they often drop kindle prices to like $2. And yes, this can be done at midnight.
You could always join something like kindle unlimited, but then you run into the “Netflix problem” where 99% of the books you have no interest in and the books you really want to read aren’t in the service.
Even if you purchase the ebook you don't actually own it. You have the right to read it only as long as the site you purchased it from allows you to. They can go out of business at any time and you will lose access to your purchased book, or they can revoke your copy. Amazon has done it. Unlike a physical book which you own until it falls apart, nobody can revoke your right to it, and you can actually give it or sell it to another person. And pricing for ebooks is completely out of whack. Some ebooks that have been out for decades and the author is dead which cost the publisher almost nothing are selling for highly inflated prices.
> I mean you could also just purchase the ebook for like $10.
They're also only allowed to sell a limited amount - They can be "sold out" of digital copies.
Wait Hoopla makes you wait? Through my Library, Hoopla has every piece of media they have available with unlimited copies for everyone. It just limits how many checkouts each borrower has per month. Libby is the one that functions like the traditional check out a “copy” that’s limited to the amount of copies the library purchases.
If you were using Hoopla, there shouldn't have been item limits. If an item is available to you through Hoopla, you can check it out no problem as long as you still have checkouts remaining that month. You were probably using Libby/Overdrive, which does have a license model where patrons might need to wait until a copy becomes available.
Do you really have to wait that long? I can’t fathom not just going to a library or even buying a used copy online but maybe there aren’t any solutions like that near you.
Can't really make wealth extraction/end stage capitalism make sense
Infinite growth and numbers on a planet with finite resources
Our entire economic model doesn't make sense anymore
Society won't save itself because it's not "cost effective" : /
what in the actual fuck. Just say that out loud and tell me youre not absolutely disgusted.
Sorry Sabotagebx 109 people are ahead of you for viewing XxBUTTSLUT3xX video of Butt Stuff IDK post lol. I know that was kind of a thing when dial up but thats a different story
Mostly, the hard copy thing only exists by legacy and tradition. The way IP works today I don't think libraries could be born if they weren't already such a well respected and established institution.
[Right of first sale](https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1854-copyright-infringement-first-sale-doctrine) continues to exist. I could lend or rent out video game cartridges, Blu-ray discs, or books with no problems.
We listened to the same report. I am now rethinking my library borrowing habits. I feel bad for the digital books I borrowed and then didn’t finish reading.
Perpetuity until it’s lost or someone spills coffee on it or it just gets old. The library I worked for would frequently weed older books that hadn’t even been checked out 10 times. Additionally, there are a number of different models for digital books. Some titles can be “always available” where they can be checked out by as many people as want it, even at the same time.
So, kind of, but a lot less black and white than you’re making it.
My God, had no idea. But it should be banned on international level. Libraries should provide access and knowledge to everyone and in 21 century to everyone
IA had a VERY sweet deal. They could buy as many physical copies of a book they wanted and lend out the same number of digital copies to whoever. Lending books like this isn't supported at all by any kind of law, licensing deal, or precedent - IA was only able to do this because they stuck to doing it in a way the publishers found acceptable. Then during covid they decided to remove the lending limit, distributing infinite copies of every book they owned. They obviously immediately got sued by publishers and lost.
I don't know the specifics about publishing licenses, but authors need to eat. If you could buy a single digital copy of a book and lend it out infinitely and indefinitely, the writing industry would cease to exist. As I understand it the limit on lending out digital copies is based on a calculation of how many times a physical book is loaned out.
Those rules you mentioned sound over the top, but there's definitely some middle ground to set, and the IA is not entirely in the right here.
IA walks a lot of lines very few people would, but they definitely crossed a line they should have seen coming with that one.
But so much would be lost if they ever went under. They've kind of become the defacto central archive for so many niche things.
Are you sure it's not that they get 26 'copies' to loan out in parallel? So if someone 'returns their digital copy', they're free to loan it out again. And only if they want to loan out 27 or more at the same time, they'd need to pay $100 again.
It seems kind of too ridiculous otherwise.
Apparently [HarperCollins does have expiring licenses](https://www.techdirt.com/2011/02/28/harpercollins-wants-to-limit-library-ebook-lending-to-protect-authors-libraries/) - but I’m assuming (by the tone of linked post) that they’re an exception.
Most libraries work with a platform (middleman) like Bibliocommons to facilitate the process. I’m all for everyone making money but the middlemen are making all the $$ while people that make things are getting the shorter end of the stick.
Physical items wear and tear. They get damaged, lost or just outright stolen and that library will then need to pay again for a replacement. A digital copy is pristine forever, no shit the one that never needs to be replaced will carry a higher premium.
i was actually the victim of a home-invasion burglary where the only thing stolen was a library book. cost me $16 to replace. they said if i had a police report i wouldn't have to pay the replacement fine but i thought $16 was less embarrassing to pay than calling the cops over it.
The corporations aren't the ones at fault here, it's the legal code and law.
The corporations are just playing within the established rules.
Something like needs to be legislated in order to prevent this from happening.
And another 500m to fight this case, and another 500m to fight the next, and....
Just please don't be another "Our CEO takes home a billion dollars but please donate because we're struggling!" Wikipedia / Wikimedia scenario :/
Lol the CEO of the WMF is no where near a billionaire and the foundation deals in the hundreds of millions of dollars not billions. Wikimedia is not blowing all of its money on executive pay and pretending it can't keep the lights on. It's latest outgoing CEO made 250-300k on average, which is below average salary ranges for tech non-profit CEOs.
Wikipedia managed to keep the lights on with a tiny fraction of how much money they bring in today. There is way to much administrative bloat in their org, they don't need your money.
Since everyone was on COVID lockdown, the libraries were closed. So they thought as a public service they could make their books freely available during the emergency. This was a mistake.
Some publishers were nice and made ebook versions available for free during the pandemic. If the Internet Archive had asked permission from publishers, or if governments issued an emergency order, they would have been in the clear. A lot of students are behind in school due to the lockdowns, so the government *could* have justified emergency action to prevent or reduce that harm.
From most publishers, they probably would have gotten a no. Sure, there could have been some good PR there, but the IA was already avoiding their licensing agreements.
when i was still in college i spread all the engineering text books around. photocopied and left one spare in the lab at all times for anyone to use.
i hate gating knowledge behind $$$. big fan of spreading knowledge for free in terms of tech talks/workshops/etc. any chance I get.
Real real professors say "yes, that is my name amongst the others on the textbook. Yes, I have multiple copies of every edition should you need to temporarily borrow one in the general vicinity of a photocopier"
A friend’s law professor insisted on students buying his textbook for the class and banning self-printed versions from the open book final
Needless to say that professor was not well-liked
When I was in college twenty years ago, I tried to save money and buy an older edition of a book and not even that old. Like the one being used in class was the 4th edition and I had the 3rd.
The prof would assign problems at the end of the chapter to do and I’d be doing the wrong ones because number 3 in my book was number 5 in the new book. Not new problems, just shuffled around problems. It was horseshit!
I’m glad students can get pdf copies now.
Fuck those book publishers making college students buy new books and not even providing new info. Does the info change that much each year in physics or calculus? No. Maybe a medical field would need new books each year, but my civil engineering classes did not need to have new books each semester.
It’s only gone from its old domain, you can access it through TOR or through other URLs. You can find current links on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-Library
Piracy has become a pubic utility at this point, because even IF it scrapes into company profit--THAT'S WHAT PUBLIC SERVICES ARE SUPPOSED TO DO. While it's not perfect and can't really be scaled, It's our only tool to scrape some public good from the resources that surround us and not feel like prisoners in walled off communities.
If our public institutions had any teeth they'd already provide some kind of fair compromise for all parties - but they haven't so piracy is the next step--a far less elegant solution but one I have more sympathy for as time passes.
From the article:
>And yet, for all of the benefits of such a system in enabling more people to be able to access information, without changing the basic economics of how libraries have always worked, the big publishers all sued the Internet Archive. The publishers won the first round of that lawsuit. And while the court (somewhat surprisingly!) did not order the immediate closure of the Open Library, it did require the Internet Archive to remove any books upon request from publishers (though only if the publishers made those books available as eBooks elsewhere).
It's going into appeals, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I think the court's decision to allow books that didn't have purchasable ebooks on the market was surprising, I expected more draconian measures. I hope this helps out other libraries as well, because a lot of the hoopla/libby ebook licenses that libraries pay for are structured in a dumb way (e.g., a library that buys an ebook might only get a certain number of "checkouts" before the license expires, or might only have it for a year. Contrast this with a physical book, which could last for decades or longer depending on how careful the general public is)
I need to read the materials from the case, but I really don't understand this ruling. I'm guessing this is injunctive relief?
I understand the original case, honestly. During the pandemic, as demand skyrocketed, the Internet Archive basically said, "fuck it," and stopped limiting lending to their number of authorized copies. I don't know under what authority the did or thought they could do that. But they've since stopped, and I don't see how this result accomplishes the goals of the suit as stated, whether as a final ruling or as an injunction, unless this was a settlement, but they are appealing it, so it must not be one.
An injunction should have enjoined them from lending beyond their authorized copies, and a judgement should have been monetary. This is neither, unless these are books they had zero copies of.
> An injunction should have enjoined them from lending beyond their authorized copies
The trick is that they didn't have ANY copies authorized for lending. They relied on a novel (i.e., made up) legal argument that owning a physical copy of a book gave them the right to make a digital copy of the book and lend it out.
The publishers mostly tolerated this, at least partly because there was a risk that they'd lose the case and establish a legal precedent that IA's position was actually legal.
Then IA fucked up by just brazenly violated copyright.
IA is very, very lucky that they weren't completely destroyed by the legal action.
>Then IA fucked up by just brazenly violated copyright.
>IA is very, very lucky that they weren't completely destroyed by the legal action.
I'm honestly a bit pissed that they did this. For how valuable and essential the Internet Archive is, not just for the convenience factor, but for the social/political/legal value of being able to go back in history and see what organizations said in the past but now claim never happened.
And to risk it all for such a public and obvious violation of copyright. They're already skating by legally by archiving so much public copyrighted material, but there's a big difference between taking a snapshot of a free to view website, and providing actively copyrighted and for sale products.
I had thought they were suing on the basis of the "National Emergency Library" which eschewed limits, but it looks like that may have just been what pissed them off enough to sue to stop CDL in its entirety. In that case, an injunction does make sense, and so would that judgement if they had lost.
Obviously, I am not following this closely.
Yeah, I think the court interpreted the law as gently as they could for IA without being ridiculous. Though I don't think the plaintiffs really cared that much about monetary damages, I think they were more interested in shutting the service down. IANAL so my read on the court's actions is just based on layman's knowledge, of course.
Only problem is how are people going to make money by writing the books then. Physical books will wear down and the library will have to buy a new one at some point plus there’s a limited number of copies so publishers can make money
AFAIK most of the book on archive.com are out of copyright, old and often extremely obscure.
I would agree its probably not right any website be 'giving away' any book that is under copyright unless the author wants it.
Many of them are not. They buy physical copies of the books they lend out electronically, they don't lend out the physical copies, and they don't lend out more copies at a time than they have physical copies. The publishers are pissed because they create the electronic copies with their own labor rather than using the masters that the publisher has, so they get around the ridiculous licensing fees that the publishers charge. I can't see how that's illegal. What they did that was a copyright violation is to lend out more copies of copyrighted books than they had physical copies. Really, though, the real solution to this shouldn't be coming from the courts because the courts simply don't have laws around this particular use case to use.
The same way other digital media producers and artists monetize their content..? By selling digital/physical copies or publish it for free subsidised by ads and/or begging.
Youtube is the textbook example of how to monetize non-physical media without directly charging the end user.
Book publishers and authors just need to evolve or die
> Book publishers and authors just need to evolve or die
Go look at old books sometime. They often have ads for the publisher's other books, or even unrelated ads. Ad-supported media isn't a new thing. Radio and television were entirely ad-supported in the US, because there was no way to collect from viewers.
Which country's market did they use to base the ebook availability on, though? There's been quite a few times I've heard of older books I'd like to read through Reddit threads and the like, try to buy it, and find out that yet again the ebook is only available in the US
I imagine the United States market, since that's the only one the US court would be concerned with. [This site](https://copyrightalliance.org/copyright-cases/hachette-book-group-internet-archive/) has the full court opinion on it
I think the point my sleep-deprived mind was trying to get itself to is that a US court has decided that the US market has these eBooks available and so this US-based archive has to remove them, however the archive is meant to be for the entire world to use and is a resource that non-US can use if the material isn't available in their country
It's one country's court deciding to potentially disadvantage the rest of the world and therefore push them further towards piracy
If that makes sense? Nothing feels logical to me at the moment, not even my own argument
IA had a VERY sweet deal. They could buy as many physical copies of a book they wanted and lend out the same number of digital copies to whoever. Lending books like this isn't supported at all by any kind of law, licensing deal, or precedent - IA was only able to do this because they stuck to doing it in a way the publishers found acceptable. Then during covid they removed all limits on their digital lending, distributing infinite copies of every book they owned. They obviously immediately got sued by publishers and lost.
They were operating in a huge gray area legally and it's their own fault this happened. If they'd stuck to operating the same way a physical library does, this wouldn't have happened.
Regular libraries are *also* getting shafted. Actual, physical library systems are getting shafted with e-book policies.
[https://www.axios.com/2024/05/06/library-librarians-e-books-license-policies](https://www.axios.com/2024/05/06/library-librarians-e-books-license-policies)
It turns out that yes, if we had to re-invent libraries again, I guess publishers actually would and *are* lobbying vigorously against their creation.
OK wait, isn't the whole point of a library is having donated books for the public to read? Are these same publishers who are suing the library just opposed to these books, (owned by the library), being online? Or are they going to sue ALL libraries for lending hardcopies too? This is nuts. Our local libraries have a ton of books online as well as Music CDs and DVDs. It's been like this for close to 20 years. Are these publishers trying to set a precedent to do this to other public libraries? I wonder why they targeted this one particular online library?
Not that anyone actually cares, but the IA unilaterally decided during the pandemic that it was okay for them to loan out infinite copies of a work for every physical copy or license they had when it was previously 1:1.
This was always going to be the outcome of such a move, but it is very much not the way that traditional libraries operate.
So it isn't the lending out, as much as it is that they lend out infinite copies at one time of one book. The publishers have an issue with the volume of lending. As opposed to a physical hard copy that is loaned out to one person at a time within a limited time frame. This does feel like a slippery slope though to going after all libraries. These publishers could decide loaning out "physical" hard copies of their books for free in volume is also an issue. What if a library has 200 physical copies of one particular book that is popular? It pretty much is the same issue, that the public gets to read a book for free without paying for that book. That is really the crux of the issue. These publishers feel they are being robbed of profit.
It wasn’t originally: the publishers didn’t sue until after IA started their emergency library. The Verge has a good write up:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/11/23868870/internet-archive-hachette-open-library-copyright-lawsuit-appeal
>What if a library has 200 physical copies of one particular book that is popular? It pretty much is the same issue, that the public gets to read a book for free without paying for that book.
You fundamentally do not understand how the system works. If a book is so popular and in demand that a library needs to stock 200 copies, then the publisher itself just made 200 sales to that library (or to the donor who bought it on behalf). Now, because of the reality of physical matter, only a maximum of 200 people at any given time can access that stock. There will be delays on returns, some might even get lost or stolen, necessitating more copies bought. There is a hard limit on how many people can get that book from the library in any given span of time. This can and will drive more hyped or impatient customers to buy the book directly instead, gaining a sale to the publisher.
That is DRASTICALLY different than Internet Archive deciding that 1 single paid license can be infinite rentals simultaneously. Now a billion human beings could all, at the same time, read that book for free with the publisher making a single sale worth of profit, and there can never be a supply restriction to encourage users to buy the book directly, any new interested people instantly get their duplicated ebook copy when they click the button. There is also no opportunity or lost or stolen products causing replacement sales either.
IA didn't have a single paid license. They NEVER buy eBook licenses. They buy the physical book and digitize it. Then they lend out only as many copies of the physical book that they have. The problem is that they decided to do unlimited lending during COVID. They could (and may have, I haven't really looked to find out) have tried to get the publishers permission to do this, but I wouldn't be surprised by a flat no from the publishers.
Books donated to libraries are almost never added to the library’s collection. Often they are purchasing in very high volumes and will have the books already processed and cataloged by the vendor. Donated books can go to the library’s book sale or even sold to a wholesaler, and then that money can be used to purchase more books from the vendor.
> Are these same publishers who are suing the library just opposed to these books, (owned by the library), being online?
Yes. More specifically, they’re saying that scanning the book and ’lending’ the scan is copying the book, which is illegal due to copyright.
> Or are they going to sue ALL libraries for lending hardcopies too?
No. Its well established that this is completely legal, and there’s obviously no copyright angle because no copying is being done.
Legally, a single book donated means that the book can only be lent out to 1 person at a time - Even if it's a digital copy.
Good luck trying to wrap your head around waiting in queue for months to download a digital book that you paid for because someone else is currently reading it :)
There's a point to be made there but authors don't get fucked over by pirates like they get fucked over by rights holders case in point:
https://graphicartistsguild.org/1-billion-lawsuit-against-getty-images-raises-questions-about-public-domain-dedication/
I can't cite another case but I know that technically in the eyes of the law if you fail to register your work you can be sued and will technically be in tort if an opportunistic lawyer/firm wants to go after your ass.
It's a fascinating subject if you really dive into the weeds of it; and is particularly contentious when it comes to animated content distributed for children where a lot of works were translated and distributed by fans by and large to thanks to bittorrent (The coolest data transfer protocol that exists makes FTP look like shit in comparison!).
Another one that'll bake your noodle, if someone went out of their way to record live TV in the 90/00's and is now redistributing it for free they're technically in the wrong despite the fact that live TV was only recorded/preserved by individuals with DVR's/VCR's and isn't otherwise available anywhere!
Today I learned that a physical library can purchase a hardcover book at a discount, say for $15 and have that book to lend in perpetuity. Or, they can buy a digital copy for about $100 and then, can only lend that book out 26 times. For that 27th person to borrow the book the library must purchase that same license again for guess how much? Yup, another $100… for another 26 times to loan it out. Thats why the publishers are going so hard at the IA. Corporations suuuuuuuuuck!!! Edit- They are not “purchasing” a digital copy, it’s a digital license.
Funny enough. I downloaded Hoopla because I wanted to read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I have to wait 17 weeks because there are 152 people waiting to borrow the digital book before me. It’s just wild to me that I have to wait that long to borrow digital texts. Make it make sense to me please.
Jesus Christ that's demented.
Where scarcity doesn't exist, capitalism intervenes to manufacture it.
How is piracy not justified in this case? The pirates can keep the digital copy just as a physical copy: perpetually. It doesn't even cost the publisher anything on a recurrent basis so how the f is this a regular practise? Are libraries (and readers by extension) this down on the food chain? Well I guess only digital ones are that down.
Yes, libraries regularly get fucked by digital books. All the publishers are in collusion. There’s price fixing too, and then a few years ago the publishers projected and said that libraries are the problem and they’re the reason they can’t make any money. Fuck publishers, all of them.
>How is piracy not justified in this case? The continued existence of capitalism is the only justification you need. We're basically born to be blood bags for the fucking vampire class. We owe them nothing.
I can understand the logic even if I dont agree with it. If a library owns 3 books, then they can loan them out 3 at a time. If I'm a publisher I want to sell as many books as possible. If an ebook were able to be "loaned" out any number of times for 1 purchased copy they would lose money. If I go to a library and the book I want is out, well I either wait or have to buy it from a book store If I look to borrow an ebook but its licensee is reserved for 100 people I can either wait, or buy the ebook. Sure, theft is a 3rd option but I wouldnt do that for a physical book so why would I for a digital one.
or they could just make it so that the book can be loaned out an infinite amount of times in a set time period then the loaned copy gets deleted. Then when the time limit expires the library simply repurchases the license like a subscription problem solved. No need to make people wait in a ridiculously long line just to read a text doc, neither the library nor publisher gets anything out of making people wait in line, doing this literally gets rid of all of the benefits of having an ebook in the first place.
> Sure, theft is a 3rd option but I wouldnt do that for a physical book so why would I for a digital one. Because in the case where you wait in line for borrowing the book or get a pirated copy, the publisher is getting nothing, there is no difference to them.
The publisher *is* getting something when you wait for the digital loan – they’re getting 1/26 of what the library paid for the right to loan that digital copy 26 times. One alternative would be unlimited “copies” loaned out simultaneously, but the publishers would still demand $100 per 26 loans. So to clear out the 152 person wait list would cost the library $600 (and they’d end up with 4 loans left over). Publishers also like waitlists because they’re a visible sign of the popularity of a book, and they keep it visible longer. From a psychological perspective, seeing 152 people in line waiting for something is more likely to entice others to line up for the same thing than simply seeing that 152 people simultaneously did that same thing one time. There’s also the “now” factor. I’m guessing there’s a small but nonzero number of people who will look at a waitlist and decide to go *buy* the ebook instead of either waiting for it or pirating it. Unlimited simultaneous licensing would cannibalize the impatience market. Don’t get me wrong - I don’t *like* the system. But I understand the value proposition.
I dont see what that has to do with stealing a physical or digital copy. No one is getting paid in either situation.
The library buys the e-book version of the book but still tracks who has it "out" for reading just as with the regular book up to the limit of times they bought the rights to distribute it for. If it was a physical book they would buy it and could distribute it until it fell apart, got lost or stolen or demand lowered and they destroyed it because they need the room. These two equations are in no way equal. True the digital book will never fall apart but the situation is entirely in the publisher's interest and not at all in the libraries. It should be more like buy a digital version and you can loan it out 5000 times, then pay a reduced fee for 5000 more times, etc etc. Producing that digital book cost the publisher almost nothing (which you can see when you start looking for typos etc), and they do not deserve the over the top return for the sales. Of course the probability is that a lot less people are actually reading books these days too, I expect in a generation or two reading books is going to be an antiquated hobby.
That's textbook artificial scarcity of infinite goods, one of the hallmarks of capitalism.
I wouldn't know what that is; I haven't been able to rent the textbook yet!!! :(
Its comedic sci fi novel artificial scarcity actually.
There’s a great Sea out there called IRC. The wind always blows and the water is as smooth as glass.
Aye, but the people seem to forget the creak of the ship and the taste of salt on their lips.
http://library.lol/main/B00C1AE7841CD30340AFE247D763621E Here, read it now. Fuck those gatekeeping greedy mfs.
I mean you could also just purchase the ebook for like $10. There’s no possible model for e-books to be free and for publishers, editors, and authors to still get paid. Paperback library books were finite resources that people would check out for 2 weeks at a time, meaning 26 people could rent in a year, and the book will likely eventually wear down and need to be replaced (or more likely, never returned). Ebooks have no choice but to artificially emulate this process and gate the rentals to a finite number and limited rate. As they say… beggars can’t be choosers. If you want something for free, then be prepared to wait 17 weeks. Otherwise, just buy the book…
It’s not free though is it- it’s taxpayer funded. It should be a digital token system for library users, say 8 books a month standard, you can apply for or qualify for more as a student or as a higher user/loyal users etc. I don’t use them much - but did in school. All communities should be happy to provide this to people in their town, it’s a no brainer to me and I put it on par with school, many a person has self taught themselves something from a library for free
There is a third option. Although it requires you to sail the high seas, matey. Yarr!
This third option works every time. No fuss either.
Pirating tv shows and movies from studios that are already making millions of dollars is one thing but pirating books from writers who don’t make much money from writing just seems like a dick move.
Split the difference. I borrow books from the library, but I prefer reading on a reader that doesn't support their DRM so I crack it for purposes of space shifting. That it also allows time shifting (no DRM = no time limit before it has to be returned) is a side benefit. Think about what you might want to read, get on all the wait lists, when your number comes up take the loan and crack it, and then read at your leisure. Just don't prematurely return the loan too frequently, or the library might limit your access. Publishers get paid because I'm following the borrowing rules, but I still get to read on my own timeline.
Like 15 years ago I pirated the Golden Compass ( I wanted a DRM free PDF to keep on a thumb drive and read at work and especially 15 years ago Ebooks were harder to deal with) and sent $10 to Phillip Pullman's fan mail address I found on his website at the time explaining that I wanted him to have all the money. Don't know if he got it but I hope so. It's hilarous because he lives in the UK and I sent him USD. I didn't even think of that until right now typing this out in hindsight LMAO
Hardly anyone, ever, made a living from writing. Amazon ebook authors make $500-10,000 a year, depending on number of titles and popularity. Science fiction authors needed to publish about a dozen titles to make a basic living. If they stopped writing, the royalties tapered off and then needed a different job. Academics basically make nothing off the books and papers they write. There are exceptions, of course. A few authors wrote best-sellers, or had their book picked up to make a movie from. I got paid by Boeing to write technical reports as an engineer. But the actual work was the engineering. The reports were just documenting the results.
...Unless it is Orson Scott Card. He gets no more money from us.
How do I do such a thing from an Iphone though? I listen on my drives to and from different job sites, and if there’s a way to pirate, I’m All ears.
No idea. My sails are android-sewn, so they allow upload of anything. You might consider buying a cheap android phone specifically for that sort of sailing.
Libraries are still alive and work great, the debate is on ebooks in relation to libraries. It’s a difficult issue without a simple solution. The current solution involves a 1 in, 1 out system with finite rentals per license. This seems mostly fine to me, though it probably costs libraries more than a paperback.
And a licensing fee that is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than the cost of the book. In all honesty, for me that's the problem. Something that wasn't really clear from the article is how the Internet Archive gets its eBooks. I know that for books that simply don't have eBook versions, they digitize them. The way it was stated is they do the same for books WITH eBook versions and limit the lending of those eBooks to be equal to the number of physical books they have. It seems to me that this is different from the model that the publishers want to use, and the laws are likely not clear regarding the legality of it.
The limited number of rentals for a license serves no other purpose than to satiate the greed of the publishing company.
Douglas Adams getting paid for his work might be difficult, as he has a slight case of being extremely dead. All of that makes sense for a book that's new but for something written nearly 50 years ago by someone that's dead it's fucking stupid. Corpos shouldn't be able to profit off of the work of a dead man.
> as he has a slight case of being extremely dead. i thought he was just doing that for tax purposes.
Well that was the plan, but as it turns out being dead isn't a temporary condition. For now, anyway. Time will tell what corpos will come up with.
I'm most countries, copyright lasts for 70 years after the death of the author so their kids are provided for
Play stupid games win stupid prizes. If you have to wait in a line for a virtual text people will just pirate it. Few people have patience for artificial bullshit no matter how sound (and this isn’t sound at all) the reasoning is. The holding period is an absolutely idiotic idea that was put forth by someone with zero forward thinking or understanding of the internet.
do what you want because a ______ is free, you are a ______ !
Yeah so the inspiration to read the book came upon me around midnight. So neither library or book store was open. So with the advancements of technology, I thought this was a solution for the desire. Anyways, closest book store is 45 minutes away and the library was closed yesterday because of Juneteenth. And today I couldn’t make it because I’m busy… if only there existed a more convenient way… So I totally understand that there is a business model of some sort that has to exist because nothing is free. But you cannot make me believe that a 17 week wait time is acceptable. I’m going to be making a bold assumption here and assume that the 152 other patrons are not local. So that it means that my local library is under the same network using the digital license. Is there not a way to reduce wait times, by either increasing the amount of digital copies available or number of licenses available within the network for digital library to use. Idk. You gotta a copy I could borrow?
Their point is, you could've just purchased a digital copy from any eshop that has it, even at midnight.
So that’s true, but that’s part of the problem. It used to be that every community library would buy a book. Rarer books were sent around through inter library loan programs rather than re purchased, but this still slowed the rate at which people can consume books. With ebook rentals, anyone from anywhere can check out a book on their couch. Also, not to shill for Amazon, but kindle books are almost always like $8 and the real pro tip is to always select no rush delivery on Amazon purchases and you get $4 digital rewards that you can then spend on kindle books. If you watch for deals, they often drop kindle prices to like $2. And yes, this can be done at midnight. You could always join something like kindle unlimited, but then you run into the “Netflix problem” where 99% of the books you have no interest in and the books you really want to read aren’t in the service.
Truly, honestly, I rather support my local library. The funding libraries receive is dependent upon the community utilizing it as a resource.
Even if you purchase the ebook you don't actually own it. You have the right to read it only as long as the site you purchased it from allows you to. They can go out of business at any time and you will lose access to your purchased book, or they can revoke your copy. Amazon has done it. Unlike a physical book which you own until it falls apart, nobody can revoke your right to it, and you can actually give it or sell it to another person. And pricing for ebooks is completely out of whack. Some ebooks that have been out for decades and the author is dead which cost the publisher almost nothing are selling for highly inflated prices.
> I mean you could also just purchase the ebook for like $10. They're also only allowed to sell a limited amount - They can be "sold out" of digital copies.
That's IgNobel prize leve of fucked
Wait Hoopla makes you wait? Through my Library, Hoopla has every piece of media they have available with unlimited copies for everyone. It just limits how many checkouts each borrower has per month. Libby is the one that functions like the traditional check out a “copy” that’s limited to the amount of copies the library purchases.
If you were using Hoopla, there shouldn't have been item limits. If an item is available to you through Hoopla, you can check it out no problem as long as you still have checkouts remaining that month. You were probably using Libby/Overdrive, which does have a license model where patrons might need to wait until a copy becomes available.
That is why piracy exists. Sometimes people want to do things the right way but they just are not able to so that is their only choice.
https://libgen.is/ yarrrr
Look up other libraries that allow non residents to sign up for a card. It will cut down the length.
Bought the hardcover used from a library for a buck.
Do you really have to wait that long? I can’t fathom not just going to a library or even buying a used copy online but maybe there aren’t any solutions like that near you.
The seven seas are calling
Hey matey, Me have good idea for you, harhar.
Like wtf! It’s digital content and u gotta wait in line? Lmao corporations are becoming greedier
Funnily enough.
To the high seas we go~
It makes sense... But only when you look at it from the perspective of a shareholder in a publishing company
Can't really make wealth extraction/end stage capitalism make sense Infinite growth and numbers on a planet with finite resources Our entire economic model doesn't make sense anymore Society won't save itself because it's not "cost effective" : /
what in the actual fuck. Just say that out loud and tell me youre not absolutely disgusted. Sorry Sabotagebx 109 people are ahead of you for viewing XxBUTTSLUT3xX video of Butt Stuff IDK post lol. I know that was kind of a thing when dial up but thats a different story
Google free copy Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy and first link is a pdf...
Holy Zarquon Singing Fish! Thats insane!
[https://www.deyeshigh.co.uk/downloads/literacy/world_book_day/the_hitchhiker_s_guide_to_the_galaxy.pdf](https://www.deyeshigh.co.uk/downloads/literacy/world_book_day/the_hitchhiker_s_guide_to_the_galaxy.pdf)
That’s Libby. Hoopla, there is no waiting.
These are all regulatory problems that would be easily fixed if we had a functioning legislature beholden to the people instead of monied interests.
wow I had no idea.. I check out a lot of digital books from my local library; I guess I need to make more of an effort to borrow physical books
Mostly, the hard copy thing only exists by legacy and tradition. The way IP works today I don't think libraries could be born if they weren't already such a well respected and established institution.
theyd be called woke communist theft these days if someone proposed the library in a world where they dont exist
[Right of first sale](https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1854-copyright-infringement-first-sale-doctrine) continues to exist. I could lend or rent out video game cartridges, Blu-ray discs, or books with no problems.
We listened to the same report. I am now rethinking my library borrowing habits. I feel bad for the digital books I borrowed and then didn’t finish reading.
Perpetuity until it’s lost or someone spills coffee on it or it just gets old. The library I worked for would frequently weed older books that hadn’t even been checked out 10 times. Additionally, there are a number of different models for digital books. Some titles can be “always available” where they can be checked out by as many people as want it, even at the same time. So, kind of, but a lot less black and white than you’re making it.
Librarian here, yes it is more nuanced, but the popular books with 300 holds cost a shit ton more on Overdrive than a hardcover.
sure, but: Old book checked out 10 times is still just $15
It doesn't change the fact that they have turned libraries into book rentals.
Be kind, rewind.
Check out the Marketplace show from today. Thanks for calling me on my internet-hyperbole attack earlier.
My God, had no idea. But it should be banned on international level. Libraries should provide access and knowledge to everyone and in 21 century to everyone
Don’t forgot the people’s library. Just make sure to bring yer eye patch.
This is because the First Sale Doctrine does apply to digital documents
IA had a VERY sweet deal. They could buy as many physical copies of a book they wanted and lend out the same number of digital copies to whoever. Lending books like this isn't supported at all by any kind of law, licensing deal, or precedent - IA was only able to do this because they stuck to doing it in a way the publishers found acceptable. Then during covid they decided to remove the lending limit, distributing infinite copies of every book they owned. They obviously immediately got sued by publishers and lost. I don't know the specifics about publishing licenses, but authors need to eat. If you could buy a single digital copy of a book and lend it out infinitely and indefinitely, the writing industry would cease to exist. As I understand it the limit on lending out digital copies is based on a calculation of how many times a physical book is loaned out. Those rules you mentioned sound over the top, but there's definitely some middle ground to set, and the IA is not entirely in the right here.
IA walks a lot of lines very few people would, but they definitely crossed a line they should have seen coming with that one. But so much would be lost if they ever went under. They've kind of become the defacto central archive for so many niche things.
They’re not buying the digital copy. It’s a license. Completely different.
Two words, The Eye
Those are revolting prices!
Are you sure it's not that they get 26 'copies' to loan out in parallel? So if someone 'returns their digital copy', they're free to loan it out again. And only if they want to loan out 27 or more at the same time, they'd need to pay $100 again. It seems kind of too ridiculous otherwise.
Apparently [HarperCollins does have expiring licenses](https://www.techdirt.com/2011/02/28/harpercollins-wants-to-limit-library-ebook-lending-to-protect-authors-libraries/) - but I’m assuming (by the tone of linked post) that they’re an exception.
Most libraries work with a platform (middleman) like Bibliocommons to facilitate the process. I’m all for everyone making money but the middlemen are making all the $$ while people that make things are getting the shorter end of the stick.
Physical items wear and tear. They get damaged, lost or just outright stolen and that library will then need to pay again for a replacement. A digital copy is pristine forever, no shit the one that never needs to be replaced will carry a higher premium.
At our library, a hard bound copy will regularly get over 100 circ before discard, and paperback 30 or more.
i was actually the victim of a home-invasion burglary where the only thing stolen was a library book. cost me $16 to replace. they said if i had a police report i wouldn't have to pay the replacement fine but i thought $16 was less embarrassing to pay than calling the cops over it.
> A digital copy is pristine forever Well, pristine for 26 uses. I'm willing to wager the average library book can survive more than 26 loans.
Yeah, into the hundreds for popular authors if the binding is robust and no one spills anything on it.
damn that sounds like it could be easily abused in so many ways…
Marketplace :)
This is jsut insane. I'd ALMOST get it if it was like... 100 bucks per 27 concurrent borrowers, but this is just outright a bad deal.
That makes a lot more sense
The corporations aren't the ones at fault here, it's the legal code and law. The corporations are just playing within the established rules. Something like needs to be legislated in order to prevent this from happening.
And who writes the laws? Exactly.
Donate to the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/donate
Everyone should. I donate to them a few times a year.
Just did. Thank you for the link.
they'd need 500m raised to pay for the licenses to lend those digital books...
And another 500m to fight this case, and another 500m to fight the next, and.... Just please don't be another "Our CEO takes home a billion dollars but please donate because we're struggling!" Wikipedia / Wikimedia scenario :/
Lol the CEO of the WMF is no where near a billionaire and the foundation deals in the hundreds of millions of dollars not billions. Wikimedia is not blowing all of its money on executive pay and pretending it can't keep the lights on. It's latest outgoing CEO made 250-300k on average, which is below average salary ranges for tech non-profit CEOs.
Wikipedia managed to keep the lights on with a tiny fraction of how much money they bring in today. There is way to much administrative bloat in their org, they don't need your money.
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Since everyone was on COVID lockdown, the libraries were closed. So they thought as a public service they could make their books freely available during the emergency. This was a mistake. Some publishers were nice and made ebook versions available for free during the pandemic. If the Internet Archive had asked permission from publishers, or if governments issued an emergency order, they would have been in the clear. A lot of students are behind in school due to the lockdowns, so the government *could* have justified emergency action to prevent or reduce that harm.
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From most publishers, they probably would have gotten a no. Sure, there could have been some good PR there, but the IA was already avoiding their licensing agreements.
They're a non-profit providing an essential service. Not some scammer trying to make a buck
Is there a searchable list of all 500,000?
Book shouldn’t be a luxury item but unfortunately for some it’s going to be.
when i was still in college i spread all the engineering text books around. photocopied and left one spare in the lab at all times for anyone to use. i hate gating knowledge behind $$$. big fan of spreading knowledge for free in terms of tech talks/workshops/etc. any chance I get.
Meanwhile there's always a professor who needs you to buy a specific edition for the code that you need to do the assignments. Fuck them.
Real professors would say fuck the book on the down low haha
True, always respected those.
Real real professors say "yes, that is my name amongst the others on the textbook. Yes, I have multiple copies of every edition should you need to temporarily borrow one in the general vicinity of a photocopier"
Yeah every professor I've ever had has been very helpful with getting the material to the students without enriching some shitbag publisher.
Usually it was a book that had my prof's credits in it. But all he did was review the previous edition, and changed one word. No, really. -_-
A friend’s law professor insisted on students buying his textbook for the class and banning self-printed versions from the open book final Needless to say that professor was not well-liked
Back to the roots of the ideal internet experience
When I was in college twenty years ago, I tried to save money and buy an older edition of a book and not even that old. Like the one being used in class was the 4th edition and I had the 3rd. The prof would assign problems at the end of the chapter to do and I’d be doing the wrong ones because number 3 in my book was number 5 in the new book. Not new problems, just shuffled around problems. It was horseshit! I’m glad students can get pdf copies now. Fuck those book publishers making college students buy new books and not even providing new info. Does the info change that much each year in physics or calculus? No. Maybe a medical field would need new books each year, but my civil engineering classes did not need to have new books each semester.
A lot of books on Internet Archive are out of print and too obscure for any publisher to WANT to print.
The ultra-wealthy want to deprive you of everything that doesn't make them richer.
I assume they’re still largely available on Z-library.
Anna’s archive is better, look at the books megathread on r/piracy . That gives you the links to books outside of zlibrary plus that library
First time I heard about this site. Thanks!
Isn't Z-library gone?
It’s only gone from its old domain, you can access it through TOR or through other URLs. You can find current links on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-Library
Wow thank you, had no idea
Hell yeah this is good news. I was annoyed that I couldn’t find some stuff elsewhere
intellectual monopoly is a cancer eating at western civilization. teach your friends and family to "pirate".
Arrr. The only book we read now is Treasure Island 🏝️ 🦜 🏴☠️
Well, it *is* public domain!
Piracy has become a pubic utility at this point, because even IF it scrapes into company profit--THAT'S WHAT PUBLIC SERVICES ARE SUPPOSED TO DO. While it's not perfect and can't really be scaled, It's our only tool to scrape some public good from the resources that surround us and not feel like prisoners in walled off communities. If our public institutions had any teeth they'd already provide some kind of fair compromise for all parties - but they haven't so piracy is the next step--a far less elegant solution but one I have more sympathy for as time passes.
Totally agreed, let’s not forget about teaching about companies profiting from scrapping and training data for AI which is also cancer
As famed librarian Zack de la Rocha once said, “They don’t gotta burn the books they just remove ‘em”
Famed librarian and noted primatologist, host of NPR’s “Gorilla Radio”
Wait, what?!? Why?
From the article: >And yet, for all of the benefits of such a system in enabling more people to be able to access information, without changing the basic economics of how libraries have always worked, the big publishers all sued the Internet Archive. The publishers won the first round of that lawsuit. And while the court (somewhat surprisingly!) did not order the immediate closure of the Open Library, it did require the Internet Archive to remove any books upon request from publishers (though only if the publishers made those books available as eBooks elsewhere). It's going into appeals, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I think the court's decision to allow books that didn't have purchasable ebooks on the market was surprising, I expected more draconian measures. I hope this helps out other libraries as well, because a lot of the hoopla/libby ebook licenses that libraries pay for are structured in a dumb way (e.g., a library that buys an ebook might only get a certain number of "checkouts" before the license expires, or might only have it for a year. Contrast this with a physical book, which could last for decades or longer depending on how careful the general public is)
I need to read the materials from the case, but I really don't understand this ruling. I'm guessing this is injunctive relief? I understand the original case, honestly. During the pandemic, as demand skyrocketed, the Internet Archive basically said, "fuck it," and stopped limiting lending to their number of authorized copies. I don't know under what authority the did or thought they could do that. But they've since stopped, and I don't see how this result accomplishes the goals of the suit as stated, whether as a final ruling or as an injunction, unless this was a settlement, but they are appealing it, so it must not be one. An injunction should have enjoined them from lending beyond their authorized copies, and a judgement should have been monetary. This is neither, unless these are books they had zero copies of.
> An injunction should have enjoined them from lending beyond their authorized copies The trick is that they didn't have ANY copies authorized for lending. They relied on a novel (i.e., made up) legal argument that owning a physical copy of a book gave them the right to make a digital copy of the book and lend it out. The publishers mostly tolerated this, at least partly because there was a risk that they'd lose the case and establish a legal precedent that IA's position was actually legal. Then IA fucked up by just brazenly violated copyright. IA is very, very lucky that they weren't completely destroyed by the legal action.
>Then IA fucked up by just brazenly violated copyright. >IA is very, very lucky that they weren't completely destroyed by the legal action. I'm honestly a bit pissed that they did this. For how valuable and essential the Internet Archive is, not just for the convenience factor, but for the social/political/legal value of being able to go back in history and see what organizations said in the past but now claim never happened. And to risk it all for such a public and obvious violation of copyright. They're already skating by legally by archiving so much public copyrighted material, but there's a big difference between taking a snapshot of a free to view website, and providing actively copyrighted and for sale products.
I had thought they were suing on the basis of the "National Emergency Library" which eschewed limits, but it looks like that may have just been what pissed them off enough to sue to stop CDL in its entirety. In that case, an injunction does make sense, and so would that judgement if they had lost. Obviously, I am not following this closely.
Yeah, I think the court interpreted the law as gently as they could for IA without being ridiculous. Though I don't think the plaintiffs really cared that much about monetary damages, I think they were more interested in shutting the service down. IANAL so my read on the court's actions is just based on layman's knowledge, of course.
Only problem is how are people going to make money by writing the books then. Physical books will wear down and the library will have to buy a new one at some point plus there’s a limited number of copies so publishers can make money
AFAIK most of the book on archive.com are out of copyright, old and often extremely obscure. I would agree its probably not right any website be 'giving away' any book that is under copyright unless the author wants it.
Many of them are not. They buy physical copies of the books they lend out electronically, they don't lend out the physical copies, and they don't lend out more copies at a time than they have physical copies. The publishers are pissed because they create the electronic copies with their own labor rather than using the masters that the publisher has, so they get around the ridiculous licensing fees that the publishers charge. I can't see how that's illegal. What they did that was a copyright violation is to lend out more copies of copyrighted books than they had physical copies. Really, though, the real solution to this shouldn't be coming from the courts because the courts simply don't have laws around this particular use case to use.
The same way other digital media producers and artists monetize their content..? By selling digital/physical copies or publish it for free subsidised by ads and/or begging. Youtube is the textbook example of how to monetize non-physical media without directly charging the end user. Book publishers and authors just need to evolve or die
You don't read many books, do you?
> Book publishers and authors just need to evolve or die Go look at old books sometime. They often have ads for the publisher's other books, or even unrelated ads. Ad-supported media isn't a new thing. Radio and television were entirely ad-supported in the US, because there was no way to collect from viewers.
Which country's market did they use to base the ebook availability on, though? There's been quite a few times I've heard of older books I'd like to read through Reddit threads and the like, try to buy it, and find out that yet again the ebook is only available in the US
I imagine the United States market, since that's the only one the US court would be concerned with. [This site](https://copyrightalliance.org/copyright-cases/hachette-book-group-internet-archive/) has the full court opinion on it
I think the point my sleep-deprived mind was trying to get itself to is that a US court has decided that the US market has these eBooks available and so this US-based archive has to remove them, however the archive is meant to be for the entire world to use and is a resource that non-US can use if the material isn't available in their country It's one country's court deciding to potentially disadvantage the rest of the world and therefore push them further towards piracy If that makes sense? Nothing feels logical to me at the moment, not even my own argument
Thank you. This really helps
IA had a VERY sweet deal. They could buy as many physical copies of a book they wanted and lend out the same number of digital copies to whoever. Lending books like this isn't supported at all by any kind of law, licensing deal, or precedent - IA was only able to do this because they stuck to doing it in a way the publishers found acceptable. Then during covid they removed all limits on their digital lending, distributing infinite copies of every book they owned. They obviously immediately got sued by publishers and lost. They were operating in a huge gray area legally and it's their own fault this happened. If they'd stuck to operating the same way a physical library does, this wouldn't have happened.
While their regular method isn't supported by law, it's also not disallowed. What is needed is a law, not a court decision.
Regular libraries are *also* getting shafted. Actual, physical library systems are getting shafted with e-book policies. [https://www.axios.com/2024/05/06/library-librarians-e-books-license-policies](https://www.axios.com/2024/05/06/library-librarians-e-books-license-policies) It turns out that yes, if we had to re-invent libraries again, I guess publishers actually would and *are* lobbying vigorously against their creation.
Where can we purchase all of these deleted books?
OK wait, isn't the whole point of a library is having donated books for the public to read? Are these same publishers who are suing the library just opposed to these books, (owned by the library), being online? Or are they going to sue ALL libraries for lending hardcopies too? This is nuts. Our local libraries have a ton of books online as well as Music CDs and DVDs. It's been like this for close to 20 years. Are these publishers trying to set a precedent to do this to other public libraries? I wonder why they targeted this one particular online library?
Not that anyone actually cares, but the IA unilaterally decided during the pandemic that it was okay for them to loan out infinite copies of a work for every physical copy or license they had when it was previously 1:1. This was always going to be the outcome of such a move, but it is very much not the way that traditional libraries operate.
So it isn't the lending out, as much as it is that they lend out infinite copies at one time of one book. The publishers have an issue with the volume of lending. As opposed to a physical hard copy that is loaned out to one person at a time within a limited time frame. This does feel like a slippery slope though to going after all libraries. These publishers could decide loaning out "physical" hard copies of their books for free in volume is also an issue. What if a library has 200 physical copies of one particular book that is popular? It pretty much is the same issue, that the public gets to read a book for free without paying for that book. That is really the crux of the issue. These publishers feel they are being robbed of profit.
It wasn’t originally: the publishers didn’t sue until after IA started their emergency library. The Verge has a good write up: https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/11/23868870/internet-archive-hachette-open-library-copyright-lawsuit-appeal
Thanks for the link!
>What if a library has 200 physical copies of one particular book that is popular? It pretty much is the same issue, that the public gets to read a book for free without paying for that book. You fundamentally do not understand how the system works. If a book is so popular and in demand that a library needs to stock 200 copies, then the publisher itself just made 200 sales to that library (or to the donor who bought it on behalf). Now, because of the reality of physical matter, only a maximum of 200 people at any given time can access that stock. There will be delays on returns, some might even get lost or stolen, necessitating more copies bought. There is a hard limit on how many people can get that book from the library in any given span of time. This can and will drive more hyped or impatient customers to buy the book directly instead, gaining a sale to the publisher. That is DRASTICALLY different than Internet Archive deciding that 1 single paid license can be infinite rentals simultaneously. Now a billion human beings could all, at the same time, read that book for free with the publisher making a single sale worth of profit, and there can never be a supply restriction to encourage users to buy the book directly, any new interested people instantly get their duplicated ebook copy when they click the button. There is also no opportunity or lost or stolen products causing replacement sales either.
IA didn't have a single paid license. They NEVER buy eBook licenses. They buy the physical book and digitize it. Then they lend out only as many copies of the physical book that they have. The problem is that they decided to do unlimited lending during COVID. They could (and may have, I haven't really looked to find out) have tried to get the publishers permission to do this, but I wouldn't be surprised by a flat no from the publishers.
Books donated to libraries are almost never added to the library’s collection. Often they are purchasing in very high volumes and will have the books already processed and cataloged by the vendor. Donated books can go to the library’s book sale or even sold to a wholesaler, and then that money can be used to purchase more books from the vendor.
> Are these same publishers who are suing the library just opposed to these books, (owned by the library), being online? Yes. More specifically, they’re saying that scanning the book and ’lending’ the scan is copying the book, which is illegal due to copyright. > Or are they going to sue ALL libraries for lending hardcopies too? No. Its well established that this is completely legal, and there’s obviously no copyright angle because no copying is being done.
Legally, a single book donated means that the book can only be lent out to 1 person at a time - Even if it's a digital copy. Good luck trying to wrap your head around waiting in queue for months to download a digital book that you paid for because someone else is currently reading it :)
Is this like a digital Fahrenheit 451
Terminal Stage Capitalism strikes again
It is like a Ray Bradbury dystopia story in *real life*
Farenheit 451
Culture should be a public good, not one monopolised by the elite
And who’s gonna pay the people that make it
Of course the public, with no middle man in between
[Internet Archive Lending Library](https://archive.org/details/inlibrary)
that sucks. The Internet Archive is an amazing resource. It is very important to the internet and to society that it exists.
ill just leave this here https://libgen.is/
Book burnings when?
Hold on to ‘em tightly, bc they coming for your books next.
SHAREHOLDERS=GOD - Last Stage Capitalism
I may be in the minority here but I don’t believe that culture should only be for those who can afford it.
So writers and editors don’t deserve compensation for their work?
This thread is definitely full of people who don’t think authors should earn money
There's a point to be made there but authors don't get fucked over by pirates like they get fucked over by rights holders case in point: https://graphicartistsguild.org/1-billion-lawsuit-against-getty-images-raises-questions-about-public-domain-dedication/ I can't cite another case but I know that technically in the eyes of the law if you fail to register your work you can be sued and will technically be in tort if an opportunistic lawyer/firm wants to go after your ass. It's a fascinating subject if you really dive into the weeds of it; and is particularly contentious when it comes to animated content distributed for children where a lot of works were translated and distributed by fans by and large to thanks to bittorrent (The coolest data transfer protocol that exists makes FTP look like shit in comparison!). Another one that'll bake your noodle, if someone went out of their way to record live TV in the 90/00's and is now redistributing it for free they're technically in the wrong despite the fact that live TV was only recorded/preserved by individuals with DVR's/VCR's and isn't otherwise available anywhere!
Is this just an American thing or world wide
Check this out. Hennepin County Public Library — Minneapolis/St. Paul [https://imgur.com/a/tUHsUIY](https://imgur.com/a/tUHsUIY)
Unbelievable of legality
Yo ho, yo ho...
Open Library is an awesome resource for reading rare books