Internet Archive Loses Landmark E-Book Lending Copyright Appeal Against Publishers

https://torrentfreak.com/internet-arch ... gainst-publishers-240905/

In spite of the original ruling, IA shows no signs of adhering to the decision and continues to allow users to upload with little to no oversight of what IA will host.

From in copyright books, such as The Art of the Hobbit (I am not linking it unless the editors would like me to send the link to them). Findegil and the publisher have had their rights to present this work (and others) as they see fit, taken away by IA. Among other forms of entertainment which IA make no provision to stop, are movies, comic books, audio recordings, artwork, even some ISO's of physical media. Almost all of it is in copyright.

The Wayback Machine is a brilliant thing, and I would be very sad if that, and legitimate public domain material were lost, but at this point I do firmly believe that IA should be taken down and its leaders charged with wholesale copyright infringement amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of potential lost revenue to copyright holders.

For those who do not know what IA are doing, I will link to one item to demonstrate, but MODS, please remove it as you see fit. I picked a random area of IA.

Invincible by Robert Kirkman, 3 compendiums, all digital editions which are in print and available from legitimate sources, more than 3000 pages. Freely downloadable. No loan system in place. Download in PDf, or even CBR/CBZ, help yourselves. That is not a library.

onthetrail wrote, "...but at this point I do firmly believe that IA should be taken down and its leaders charged with wholesale copyright infringement amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of potential lost revenue to copyright holders."

In theory, yes. But there are other websites out there hosting similar material. Library Genesis comes to mind. The problem with shutting down one website is that another will almost certainly pop up. And this doesn't even account for all the random websites that have small numbers of random copyrighted material available; for example, if you were to Google something like, "Fahrenheit 451 PDF."

I agree that this is wrong and illegal, but it seems to be inevitable IMO.

With music sharing in the late 90s/early 2000s, Napster is an early example of the government trying to stop music sharing; they hit Napster when there were loads of other websites employing similar music sharing technology--I think Lime Wire was one. Of course, this has all changed with the advent of streaming music. Perhaps we need a new model for eBooks; I'm not sure what that would look like.

All this to say, I just don't know how this can be completely stopped even if IA is shut down.

onthetrail wrote:

From in copyright books, such as The Art of the Hobbit (I am not linking it unless the editors would like me to send the link to them).

Please do send it to us. I can't find it in a search of IA, maybe it's a regional thing, i.e. not searchable in the U.S.

Wayne

I certainly will. I am out for the evening at the cinema so I will compile a list on my return later tonight. There is unfortunately more than that one title so I will gather it all and send it along before the end of the day.

Findegil wrote:

onthetrail wrote:

From in copyright books, such as The Art of the Hobbit (I am not linking it unless the editors would like me to send the link to them).

Please do send it to us. I can't find it in a search of IA, maybe it's a regional thing, i.e. not searchable in the U.S.

Wayne

The Art of the Hobbit is only borrowable for users with print disabilities and thus is unlisted in normal searches and unavailable to almost all users.

Anyway, its publisher provides no legit digital form of this book, therefore according to the court rule, IA could continue to provide such books.

Better examples would be Letters and Bio, there are several borrowable scans of them on IA, even though the legit digital forms are available on kindle.

It appears IA has limited most Tolkien books only available to users with print disabilities in the recent year. Last year there are thousands of scans out there for public users, now there are only about 1 or 2 dozens that violate the court rule (i.e. the scan is available for everyone, meanwhile the publisher provides a legit digital form).

Edit: links removed.

zionius wrote:

The Art of the Hobbit is only borrowable for users with print disabilities and thus is unlisted in normal searches and unavailable to almost all users.

Anyway, its publisher provides no legit digital form of this book, therefore according to the court rule, IA could continue to provide such books.

Better examples would be Letters and Bio, there are several borrowable scans of them on IA, even though the legit digital forms are available on kindle.

It appears IA has limited most Tolkien books only available to users with print disabilities in the recent year. Last year there are thousands of scans out there for public users, now there are only about 1 or 2 dozens that violate the court rule (i.e. the scan is available for everyone, meanwhile the publisher provides a legit digital form).

Edit: links removed.

I hope that is case, and thanks for pointing it out. I am print disabled, although the group has not seen it in our videos, I am half blind half of the time, and digital books do help me.

But more widely, there are plenty of examples of books, movies, comic books, etc on IA, available freely.

I have a sinking feeling to this. Universal Access to All Knowledge is a most high ideal and in time will be achieved,for how can it not with exponential growth in technology but,if the bulk of the library is lost,forever erased,like the scorched library in Alexandria,then we lose a priceless thing. This should be so simple. Access to books that are long out of print,out of copyright,and hard to come across is what The Internet Archive was set up for. Wasn't it? Or is there another agenda here. Is it just short term greed but no one is selling anything and there are no ads for it is an American nonprofit digital library. In-copyright works should ,of course,be completly out of bounds so why are there so many in-copyright titles now appearing? I so agree that the loss of Internet Archive would be a loss of historical proportions.What is really going on? Is this in any way connected to the AI revolution hungry for data bases? Are ALL public lending libraries,physical and digital,going to be closed with access to only paying subscribers.The implications are huge.

Olorin wrote:

I have a sinking feeling to this. Universal Access to All Knowledge is a most high ideal and in time will be achieved,for how can it not with exponential growth in technology but,if the bulk of the library is lost,forever erased,like the scorched library in Alexandria,then we lose a priceless thing. This should be so simple. Access to books that are long out of print,out of copyright,and hard to come across is what The Internet Archive was set up for. Wasn't it? Or is there another agenda here. Is it just short term greed but no one is selling anything and there are no ads for it is an American nonprofit digital library. In-copyright works should ,of course,be completly out of bounds so why are there so many in-copyright titles now appearing? I so agree that the loss of Internet Archive would be a loss of historical proportions.What is really going on? Is this in any way connected to the AI revolution hungry for data bases? Are ALL public lending libraries,physical and digital,going to be closed with access to only paying subscribers.The implications are huge.

The library system is a great thing, and should remain available for many generations to come. But the issue at hand here is that IA brand themselves as a library, while at the same allowing users to upload things which can have a detrimental effect on a publishers profits. And that profit is not a publishers alone. It is the editor, the author, the printers, etc. The list is endless of who is affected by piracy, which IA is doing. Let's not split hairs over what IA has become, they host in copyright material and don't care the effect on the industries who are harmed.

What IA was, PD works, the wayback machine, these were great features. They need to tidy up their act, remove all of the material which harms the copyright holders and then start fresh as a library. By that I mean they gain permission from the rights holders, and when they do not, they don't host that content.

“Access to books that are long out of print,out of copyright,and hard to come across is what The Internet Archive was set up for.”

The problem is that Internet Archive treats the “and” there as an “or” (and uses a very flexible, and so essentially meaningless, measure of “hard to come across”). If a work still in copyright — even if out of print or hard to come across — can legally be freely copied and distributed, then copyright has no meaning.