This just in: making digital copies of copyrighted books is in fact illegal
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The Internet Archive has lost its first fight to scan and lend e-books like a library
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Publishers win in federal court.
Clickbait video with more details:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp2aowF0jUw
I always wondered how it's legal for Internet Archive to do what they're doing. Turns out it isn't.
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It should be noted, they own the physical books and don’t lend copies more than the number of physical copies they own.
Which, in the eyes of the law is perhaps still not an exception, but if I own a physical book I can sure as shit lend it to you and the publisher can’t do a damn thing about it.
But you know the publishers would restrict that if they could, so, maybe, fuck ‘em.
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@Arantor said in This just in: making digital copies of copyrighted books is in fact illegal:
It should be noted, they own the physical books and don’t lend copies more than the number of physical copies they own.
Which, in the eyes of the law is perhaps still not an exception, but if I own a physical book I can sure as shit lend it to you and the publisher can’t do a damn thing about it.
When you lend a physical book, you don't have it anymore until it's returned. Not the case here - even though only one person at a time can digitally borrow it, the original physical copy is still in IA's possession. So they made 2 copies out of 1 they bought.
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@Gustav that’s the technically part in it, I’m sure IA doesn’t let people access the original copy of the book so in their view it’s not an extra one per se.
Libraries are generally supposed to reimburse publishers for copies leant, which I’m sure is part of the issue here, because gotta get paid even if the book wouldn’t otherwise be available or accessible because out of print and no copies in libraries.
While I get the argument about infringement, on some level I feel the publisher argument is not entirely on the level, similar to how games publishers cracked down on second hand sales a few years ago.
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@Arantor said in This just in: making digital copies of copyrighted books is in fact illegal:
if I own a physical book I can sure as shit lend it to you and the publisher can’t do a damn thing about it.
I definitely ANAL but this reminds me of the annoying splash screen on DVDs that says "this DVD is licensed for personal use only, not for showing in movie theatres, oil rigs and prison."
So, assuming those restrictions have an actual legal force (it wouldn't be the first time legalese is used to try and prevent people from doing something that's actual legal), the publisher can limit what you do with your physical copy of the media. Now it's not quite the same as "lending to a single person" but it illustrate the fact that restrictions can be put. Therefore, it doesn't strike me as impossible that an e-book could have a restriction of "you may not lend this e-book?"
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@remi the bigger problem is that "lending an e-book" isn't defined by law, and isn't really a thing in physical terms - a digital work cannot really be moved, only copied. So it's questionable whether their DRM scheme can really be called lending in the first place.
BTW, the trigger for the lawsuit was that they lifted the "1 borrower per book copy" limit for the duration of the pandemic, allowing everyone to access every book at the same time. Even if they had some very shaky legal ground before, they lost it all with that.
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@Gustav oh, that part I actually didn’t know - about the restriction lifting. Yes, that I have sadly less sympathy for even if it was in a “good cause” I guess.
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@Gustav said in This just in: making digital copies of copyrighted books is in fact illegal:
a digital work cannot really be moved, only copied. So it's questionable whether their DRM scheme can really be called lending in the first place.
Sure, they can and probably will argue that. In the meantime, publishers using their own DRM for lending will absolutely argue that the copy they sent you you are not allowed to keep and it was lending only. Unfortunately, you cannot tell them to battle that out, they can win both with opposing definitions.
In the end, it doesn't matter one way or the other. They just hate the first-sale doctrine and want to move to a world where you have to pay them, always. Just like the NFT idiots claim, you resell the stuff you bought, you have to pay the publisher again. Buy the download-only version of a game, for 99 cent cheaper even though the physical media probably cost more than that, and good luck reselling or lending that.
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@topspin said in This just in: making digital copies of copyrighted books is in fact illegal:
In the meantime, publishers using their own DRM for lending will absolutely argue that the copy they sent you you are not allowed to keep and it was lending only.
They're probably going to use the even simpler argument that they're not selling or lending anything, only providing service of you being able to read their digital books. That gets rid both of the contradiction and any consumer rights.
