Seen a couple takes about the Hachette case along the lines of “the Internet Archive should’ve stuck to just archiving the Internet and not testing new theories of copyright” and uhhh... I’m not sure what it is you think the Internet Archive does, outside of testing new theories of copyright.
People have gotten so used to the existence of the Internet Archive’s web archive that they forget how revolutionary and subversive it is. The idea that that is somehow safe while the book lending was not is completely flawed. They were just up against a more powerful group.
@molly0xfff I still think it's pretty reasonable to be annoyed that they jeopardized one service by making a really risky move with a different service. They probably could've predicted that "unlimited free access to books that are actively being sold" would've upset book publishers. Honestly I struggle to see a good legal or ethical argument for their actions unless you're opposed to copyright as a concept. There's a difference between bending the rules and ignoring them.
@williamoconnell how do you support their mass archiving of (mostly copyrighted) websites, then?
@molly0xfff I see a big ethical difference between archiving web content that the author has chosen to make available for free, and distributing digital copies of books that authors are actively trying to make a living from selling. I'm not a lawyer so I can't really comment on the legality of either, but it also seems obvious that the second one is more likely to attract lawsuits.
@molly0xfff Like, if someone says "I'm archiving your blog post in this database to preserve it for future readers" I think that's probably ok. If they bought a copy of an app I was selling and then "archived it" by letting everyone else in the world download it from their site without paying me, obviously I would be unhappy. Of course some people think both should be legal or both should be illegal, but surely everyone can agree those are two different things?
@williamoconnell How do you feel about libraries?
@williamoconnell @molly0xfff libraries don't normally duplicate their books for multiple patrons at once... i love the internet archive, but wasn't the "emergency" unchecked lending in 2020 pretty unambiguously illegal?
that said, it seems wildly unfair that they're being blocked from controlled lending as well...
@williamoconnell @molly0xfff @a it's an E-book, who the fuck cares if there's no limit to the lending