The publishers' lawsuit against the Internet Archive (Hachette v. Internet Archive) has resulted in the removal of more than 500,000 books from our lending library, including over 1,300 banned and challenged titles. We are actively appealing this decision to restore access for all our patrons. We want to hear from you! How has losing access to these books affected your reading or research? What does it mean to you that these 500,000+ books are no longer available? Please share your story below. Your feedback may be featured in our blog posts and other communications to highlight the impact of this significant loss on our library community.
  • Flying SquidEnglish
    8•5 months ago

    It does not recognize CCLs because there is no legal mechanism in place to recognize them. They depend on copyright to function in the sense that copyright allows them to function in the nebulous grey area in which they exist and it hasn’t been challenged yet.

    Because, again, terrible PR.

    Also, I accused you of lying when you said this:

    The lawsuit was the result of bear-poking. It’s a result of their “National Emergency Library” that they briefly rolled out in 2020 where they took all the limits off of their “lending” and let people download as many copies as they wanted. Was “legitimate academic study” not possible before, with the old limits that weren’t provoking lawsuits?

    Because the lawsuit wasn’t the result of that, the lawsuit created a window of opportunity for publishers to do something they wanted to for years and sue them for something unrelated to that. Which you claim you knew. It’s victim-blaming because I’m sure you also know that they would have been sued eventually regardless of what they did or did not do.

    So yeah, that makes what you said a lie by your own admission.

    • FaceDeer
      -6•5 months ago

      It’s victim-blaming because I’m sure you also know that they would have been sued eventually regardless of what they did or did not do.

      No, I “know” no such thing. How do you “know” that?

      In fact, I think the IA wouldn’t have been sued if they’d continued to keep a low profile and stuck to the common practice of limiting their “digital lending” to one copy at a time. I don’t “know” it because you can’t know the future, only predict it, but I think that’s most likely given how many other libraries get away with exactly that same practice and how IA itself was getting away with it for years before they blew it.

      So yeah, that makes what you said a lie by your own admission.

      You are imagining that I “know” I’m lying, and then using that to claim that I’m lying “by my own admission.” This is so blatantly fallacious it’s actually kind of remarkable.

      • Flying SquidEnglish
        8•5 months ago

        You were lying by admission because you admitted you knew that it was a window of opportunity to sue them for something unrelated to that.

        Please read more carefully before having such silly knee-jerk reactions.

        • FaceDeer
          -3•5 months ago

          You were lying by admission because you admitted you knew that it was a window of opportunity to sue them for something unrelated to that.

          I honestly have no idea what you mean here.

          It wasn’t a “window of opportunity”, it was a provocation that couldn’t be ignored. The publishers have had the opportunity to sue for a long time, as you’ve said. They just didn’t want to for PR reasons, again as you’ve said.

          The lawsuit isn’t for “unrelated” reasons. It’s for copyright violation due to their practice of distributing ebooks without permission.

          You’re clearly very passionate about this matter, but you’re only paying attention to things that support one view of it and are instantly dismissing anything that might challenge that as being “supporting the enemy” or outright lies. I like the Internet Archive, I want them to survive and flourish. That’s not going to happen if the keep tilting at windmills and picking unwinnable fights. I don’t cheer them when they’re charging headlong into a meatgrinder.

          • Flying SquidEnglish
            6•5 months ago

            No, I’m paying full attention to your claim that the Internet Archive provoked publishers into suing them for something unrelated to that supposed provocation.

            • FaceDeer
              -4•5 months ago

              The Internet Archive was distributing unlimited copies of ebooks whose rights were held by major publishers.

              The major publishers sued them for distributing copies of ebooks whose rights were held by them.

              Yeah, totally unrelated.

              • Flying SquidEnglish
                6•5 months ago

                Me:

                But the lawsuit was about CDL as a whole, not what happened in 2020.

                You:

                Yes, the lawsuit is about CDL as a whole.

                So is it about what happened in 2020 or is it about something public libraries do too?

                For example: https://blc.org/controlled-digital-lending

                • @gaylord_fartmasterEnglish
                  1•5 months ago

                  You are both speculating about what triggered the lawsuit because the only people that know for sure what triggered the lawsuit are the publishers and they aren’t talking.

                  If all public libraries are using CDL and the publishers have only sued IA, who flagrantly violated CDL, and they sued them only 2 months after they started violating the CDL, then that certainly seems like a very possible factor in the lawsuit, right?