Publishers sue to shut down books-for-all Internet Archive for 'willful digital piracy on an industrial scale'
- Reference: 1591046948
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/06/01/publishers_sue_internet_archive/
- Source link:
On Monday, the Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House [1]sued the non-profit, better known for its Wayback Machine archive of web pages, for copyright infringement: infringement they argued is “intentional and systematic.” The publishers hope to shut down the dot-org, we understand.
The Internet Archive invited the ire of publishers and authors back in March when it decided to lift restrictions on the digital copies of library books it has acquired and scanned. Anyone that registers with the site can take out any of 1.3 million books, the complaint states - although the Internet Archive [2]claims the real figure is 1.4 million.
The Internet Archive is registered as a library but has asserted an untested (the publishers say “invented”) theory called “Controlled Digital Lending” (CDL), that argues libraries are not infringing copyright when they make digital copies of books they possess. Publishers and authors have been unhappy about this approach, but held fire while the Internet Archive restricted the number of e-books it would make available at any given time to the number of physical books it possessed.
Under coronavirus lockdown Archive opened up
That restriction went out the window in March, however, when the Internet Archive decided that due to the coronavirus it would make all its e-books available without a waiting list. That abandons the library principle of limited e-book access, the publisher's claim.
The Authors Guild said the organization “has no rights whatsoever to these books, much less to give them away indiscriminately without consent of the publisher or author,” and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) called the move “the height of hypocrisy,” and “a cynical play to undermine copyright.”
The [3]lawsuit [PDF], filed in New York, is caustic about the Archive’s CDL theory, claiming that it has been “concocted from whole cloth,” and calling the electronic copies of books it has made “digital bootlegs.”
It goes on: “IA not only acts entirely outside any legal framework, it does so flagrantly and fraudulently. And it proceeds despite actual notice that its actions constitute infringement.”
At the heart of the issue is the right of an author or publisher to decide how and when their work is made available publicly. By claiming that by simply getting hold of a book the Archive is then allowed to reproduce and distribute that content how it sees fit is a theory that the internet has made possible in seconds, but it remains legally questionable. Publishers have clearly decided that a line has been crossed and are willing to put the theory to legal challenge.
Internet Archive opens National Emergency Library with unlimited lending of 1.4m books for stuck-at-home netizens amid virus pandemic [4]READ MORE
In a foreshadowing of the battle to come, the lawsuit argues: “IA creates nothing. IA plays no role in the hard work of researching, writing, or publishing the works or, for that matter, in creating or sustaining the overall publishing ecosystem and its distinct partnerships and markets.
“In short, Defendant merely exploits the investments that publishers have made in their books, and it does so through a business model that is designed to free-ride on the work of others. Defendant pays for none of the expenses that go into publishing a book and is nothing more than a mass copier and distributor of bootleg works.”
In response, the Internet Archive’s founder, Brewster Kahle, has posted a [5]brief blog post in which he notes that the organization is “disappointed” by the lawsuit and claims to be supporting publishers, authors and readers.
“Publishers suing libraries for lending books, in this case protected digitized versions, and while schools and libraries are closed, is not in anyone’s interest,” the post argues, adding: “We hope this can be resolved quickly.”
We have asked the Internet Archive if it intends to fight the lawsuit and whether it will reintroduce its waitlist in response to it. We will update this story if it gets back. ®
[1] https://publishers.org/news/publishers-file-suit-against-internet-archive-for-systematic-mass-scanning-and-distribution-of-literary-works/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/01/internet_archive_justifies_its_vast/
[3] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/06/01/publishers-lawsuit-internet-archive.pdf
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/03/24/internet_archive_ebooks_national_emergency_library/
[5] https://blog.archive.org/2020/06/01/four-commercial-publishers-filed-a-complaint-about-the-internet-archives-lending-of-digitized-books/
Re: Welcome to the mordern world
If you'd kept copyright at sane terms (duration and license agreements) you might have an argument.
But, as it stands, you're reaping exactly what you've sown. You made the deal to keep things legal so terrible that society is simply ignoring you now.
Note I don't condone the piracy any more than I condone what copyright has turned into, but I will say that if I can't buy a paper copy, one on physical media (no Internet connection or authentication required), or a non-DRMed digital copy, I don't "buy" the work at all. I support open content as a means (really the only legal means) of protest as a direct result of DRM and related restrictions.
You have no one to blame but yourself.
Let's be clear here. This is theft on a biblical scale. I don't know what the IA was thinking. As a published author, they have stolen from me. I'm not impressed.
I frequently give free electronic copies of my books away, more or less to anyone who asks, but that's very different from me grabbing a million of other people's books and handing them out to anyone who can find a website.
Hey comrade, what happened to "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"?
> As a published author, they have stolen from me.
They certainly may have breached your copyright privileges. I'm not sure how you can claim that they have stolen from you. What do they now possess that you do not?
If you're one of the few that allows an un-DRMed ebook purchase, I applaud your efforts and would purchase those works and abide by the copyright on them.
Obviously what IA is doing here is not legal, I'm not sure how they managed to come to the conclusion that this was acceptable. That said, most publishers and authors have taken such a hardline stance on rental only content that something has to give somewhere, the copyright social contract has been repeatedly violated by the publishers via technology at this point, and I wonder if this is the first salvo in the coming war over what the new social contract for content will look like.
In the absolute worst case. i.e. if publishers refuse to compromise and return to at least some semblance the pre-digital status quo, it's very possible for society to choose to reject the legacy publishers entirely. I wonder if IA did this on purpose to challenge the current abuses by the industry, though I suspect they just screwed up here.
This is an issue that has been bothering me for a while now. One book I wanted access to costs well over £250 for the hardcover dead tree version, if you can get it at all, while the digital DRMed Windows-only spy-on-you-as-you-read Internet-linked version is only £30 or so. Nothing exists in between. Because I value my privacy and the permanence of my collection, I had to pay 9x more to read the work. If that's considered "fair" by publishers, it's no wonder society is starting to ignore copyright en masse.
Unusually
Sometimes copyright is painfully and incorrectly applied as a money grab. I don't think that's the case here and I'm with the big publishing houses on this one. Libraries will eventually buy more copies of the books as they wear out, and not all books are available in all libraries.
They have to protect their claim and this is a real infringement. You should have to pay while a copyright is held, but I would add that in my opinion copyright should not extend beyond a human lifetime.
But what about...
...books that are unavailable any other way than as unlicensed electronic downloads? Surely authors should welcome the exposure (yes, I know about the "for the exposure" scam) if their publisher is no longer making the work available, I have often chased a book by a favourite author only to discover that the only way to get a copy is to download it.
Welcome to the mordern world
Books, music, images, all created by artists who get paid a little and then lose control as they float about the world on the internet. At least if you are a musician you can get something back from live performances (it works for The Grateful Dead), artists can move to the graffiti world like Banksy, but all authors can do is keep writing new books...
As for the rest of us, there's no much we can do, you can print your own money but that doesn't normally work well.