
Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early - ingve
https://blog.archive.org/2020/06/10/temporary-national-emergency-library-to-close-2-weeks-early-returning-to-traditional-controlled-digital-lending/
======
shervinafshar
Also discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23485182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23485182)

------
geofft
> _We moved up our schedule because, last Monday, four commercial publishers
> chose to sue Internet Archive during a global pandemic._

Did this come as a surprise? Did Internet Archive not expect publishers to
sue?

The Archive launched the emergency library during a global pandemic. Lots of
people, myself included, said that this was a risky move because they would
obviously get sued and it would put not only the Archive but the _existing_
idea of Controlled Digital Lending - which hasn't been clearly established as
legal in caselaw - at risk.

They're trying to imply that the publishers are somehow bad people for suing
in a pandemic, and sure, the publishers may very well be bad people _in
general_ , but IA launched this effort on the grounds that, more or less, the
law doesn't matter any more in a pandemic.

> _However, this lawsuit is not just about the temporary National Emergency
> Library. The complaint attacks the concept of any library owning and lending
> digital books, challenging the very idea of what a library is in the digital
> world._

That's precisely why we said they shouldn't have done this.

Controlled Digital Lending matches the existing operations of a physical
library - there is one paid physical copy per loaned title. Publishers and
authors alike like physical libraries because when more people check out books
from libraries, more copies get purchased. It stands to reason that they
shouldn't mind digital libraries that follow the same principle.

Internet Archive said, the same legal analysis that makes Controlled Digital
Lending permissible also makes uncontrolled lending permissible when we decide
the world needs it. We can give people unlimited electronic copies of books
for one physical copy. The more people who read our books, the fewer purchases
happen.

 _That_ challenges the very idea of what a library is in the digital world -
it breaks the balance that has historically governed how physical libraries
work. If I go to my local library and the librarian says "Actually don't
bother checking this out, I'll just photocopy the whole book for you and you
can keep it," I'm not sure I'd call that a library. It's a useful service for
me, of course, at least provided I figure out some way to make sure that the
people who write the books I want to read keep getting paid, but it's now
something entirely different from a library.

~~~
jawns
I'm an author, and from my perspective, CDL seems like a reasonable way (if
not the most reasonable way) to apply the first sale doctrine in the digital
age.

Publishers would prefer to instead license ebooks and pretend first sale
doesn't apply at all for digital books. I understand why that irritates a lot
of people.

The Internet Archive, on the flip side, is pretending that copyright
infringement doesn't apply during a pandemic and that the first sale doctrine
is much more expansive than it actually is.

My hope is that both sides will come to accept CDL as a compromise system. It
hurts publishers and authors no more than print lending does, and it's on much
more solid legal ground than the IA's uncontrolled lending.

~~~
lostmyoldone
I can agree that uncontrolled digital lending for all future wouldn't be in
the best interest of society under the current economic system, but while the
letter of the law might not change during a chrisis, how it is interpreted
very well might. After all, the law is but a contract between us and ourselves
throught a governing body, nothing is fixed, and nothing is entirely
objective.

But, more importantly, the characterization of libraries as something that
actually hurts publishers and writers, as implied by writing that CDL would
hurt publishers "no more" than ordinary lending, is something I feel compelled
to oppose.

Libraries, and lending of some form has been part of society since likely even
before anything we would call a book were first written.

While it is true that some of the first libraries were not exactly public, and
that you probably wouldn't be allowed to carry the book home from most, but
this doesn't take away from the fact that libraries as part of society owes
nothing to publishers. If anything, it's the other way around.

If the absurd idea that seems prevalent in digital publishing that one book
would only be allowed one reader had been around when the first books were
written, it's fairly likely almost no books would have been written.

While publishers might feel lending is inconvenient, if they continue trying
to get rid of lending, they are no wiser than a runner in a headwind wishing
for the air to go away.

I'm not saying authors shouldn't get paid, but I am saying that pinning any
loss of income on libraries is devaluing libraries and lendings role in
history - and society - immensely.

~~~
nordsieck
> After all, the law is but a contract between us and ourselves throught a
> governing body, nothing is fixed, and nothing is entirely objective.

Sure.

But the basic idea of law is that the contract between us now and us in the
future is relatively fixed. Otherwise, there is no difference between a system
of written law and judges deciding cases at their whims.

> But, more importantly, the characterization of libraries as something that
> actually hurts publishers and writers, as implied by writing that CDL would
> hurt publishers "no more" than ordinary lending, is something I feel
> compelled to oppose.

> ... [bunch of text that does not actually oppose the previous statement]

I think most reasonable people can recognize that:

1\. Libraries are a good and useful component of modern society

2\. Their lending may economically hurt authors and publishers

------
DecoPerson
The Internet Archive is so incredibly important.

There’s a lot of different views about the purpose of life or lack thereof,
but for all except a few beliefs, having access to past writings is very
important.

Humanity is only at the very beginning of its existence. The success or
failure of projects like the Internet Archive will drastically change our
future.

If you think the loss of the Internet Archive won’t significantly current day
activities, you’re wrong. Besides the fact that the IA holds the only easily
accessible copies of many websites from the 90s and early 2000s, there is the
“my legacy” factor.

Do you think people would have commissioned statues of themselves if they knew
they were going to be vandalized and torn down in a protest 100 years later?

Even though we may try to stop our egos affecting our decisions, they still
play a huge role. Mathematicians don’t just write papers to further the field,
they also do it to gain notoriety and leave a legacy.

I know that if I write a blog post, it will be unavailable from its original
source within 20 years. But that’s OK! The Internet Archive will store a copy
and someone many generations from now will be able to read my humble writings.
Oh... but the IA was shut down because its leadership decided to be
philanthropic during a period of human history that lacked freedom of
information. I’m going for a walk instead.

Perhaps the “my legacy” effect has only a marginal influence on how many
authors decide to put pen to paper, but it’s still something. It’s hard to
measure, so if it’s plausible that it could be significant, we should act
appropriately.

~~~
jawns
> the IA was shut down because its leadership decided to be philanthropic
> during a period of human history that lacked freedom of information

Philanthropic by massively infringing on copyright. Giving away something you
own and have a right to give away is one thing. But critics of the emergency
library allege that because the IA doesn't own the copyright to these books,
they don't get to make and lend unlimited copies. Under the first sale
doctrine, they can only lend out as many copies as they own.

~~~
Aeolun
I don’t think they actually make more copies? They just allow multiple people
to look at the same copy at the same time?

~~~
grayfaced
Copyright law is not caught up to how computers operate. There are still
arguments that executing a program is creating a copy (into memory) in
violation of copyright law. That it is only allowed since the EULA permits it.
There is no way to display a picture on two different computer on internet
without making many copies in process. Arguments can commence on whether
they're transitory or tangible copies according to law.

------
linuxhansl
Is it just me or are DRM controlled ebooks a complete scam?!

Consider:

1\. Ebooks go through great length to make the information behave like a
physical book.

2\. Libraries have to buy as many licenses as they can plan to lend our
concurrently

3\. Licenses will even expire after a bit, because that's what real book do,
they wear of.

So far so good (if your goal is to simulate real books). But now:

1\. Wanna give your ebook to a friend? nada

2\. Wanna lend your ebook to a friend? nada

3\. Wanna use the book after companies decide to disable their license
servers? nada

4\. Imagine a few hundred years from now. We can still look at old books
because they exist and their content is not controlled. That would not be
possible.

Of course it is always possible to remove the DRM protection, but that is
illegal.

We've been duped.

Edit: Layout.

~~~
m4rtink
Yeah, the idea of enforcing such artificial limitations on an digital book are
disgusting not to mention dangerous, as these can very easuly be missused to
surpress undesired works.

------
andrewmunsell
Are there any technologies today that would enable a distributed backup of IA?
Something like BitTorrent, but where I can specify I want to host XXX GB of
data, and all the nodes in the swarm would provide a redundant, distributed
backup in aggregate?

I realize things like IPFS exist, but as far as I'm aware those require manual
file pinning. I want to just donate storage and bandwidth to back the files
up, not have to specify _which_ ones to back up.

~~~
jmeyer2k
IPFS works based on files visited. I wonder if you could write a script that
crawls randomly until it hits a certain threshold stored...

~~~
andrewmunsell
Just a cursory look at the CLI, it looks like you have the ability to get
stats on each block (including size,
[https://docs.ipfs.io/reference/cli/#ipfs-block-
stat](https://docs.ipfs.io/reference/cli/#ipfs-block-stat)), and pin them
([https://docs.ipfs.io/how-to/pin-files/#three-kinds-of-
pins](https://docs.ipfs.io/how-to/pin-files/#three-kinds-of-pins)).

I'm betting someone could create an open source project to traverse the Merkel
tree, choose random blocks, and pin them... It could be made smarter by also
checking the number of peers per block and prioritize the least pinned blocks.

Edit: And a related discussion I found:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ipfs/comments/b4he2m/idea_partialse...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ipfs/comments/b4he2m/idea_partialselective_pinning/)

------
peterburkimsher
What's the best way to help? Is it better to donate to Archive.org, or the
EFF?

I know that Brewster Kahle is involved in both, and I imagine that the defence
team will be staffed by EFF lawyers. I think both the Internet Archive and EFF
are good causes, I just want to know which way will cause less paperwork for
them to receive a donation.

------
efiecho
A big part of the books in NEL are out of print and no electronic versions are
available elsewhere, and never will, so had it not been for Internet Archive,
it would have been impossible to read these books and many of them had been
lost forever.

If it's impossible to buy the book, why is NEL a problem for the publishers?
Would they rather have that no one ever read the book again?

~~~
arkades
Because plenty of them _aren 't_ out of print.

Publishers may or may not give a shit if you put forward a book in a fashion
that does not impact them monetarily. They give a shit if you do. They
definitely don't care what the ratio between the two is; they care that the
latter is non-zero.

------
iJohnDoe
This might be an unpopular opinion, but here goes anyways. I know there are
some on HN that share this unpopular opinion.

The IA treated this situation and decision like they’ve treated all their
decisions. They archive data without permission. They share this archived data
without permission. They have no official instructions on how to remove data
from their archive. There are some flimsy instructions about robot rules, but
it’s not clear if they work.

Not everyone agrees to have their old forum posts, yahoo posts and other info
from the early days of the Internet still available in an archive that’s
searchable by the government, employers, etc.

~~~
a1369209993
Yes, that's what a library _is_. We don't give book-burners a pass just
because they pressured the author into agreeing with them. Why should we make
a exception just because it's a website being destroyed rather than a book?

------
Aeolun
I think it’s sad that it comes to this. It’s not as if they were distributing
perpetual licenses to these books, and anyone getting a book off the internet
archive almost certainly wouldn’t have bought the book anyway.

Large publishers are the worst. And the writers aiming to profit off off the
fact people cannot go to a normal library can be dumped in the same bucket.

I’d like to see some numbers from a writer that actually lost income due to
this, and maybe I’ll reconsider. As it is, I just see them screaming bloody
murder over something that’s completely theoretical.

------
rblatz
The internet archive was an interesting experiment, too bad they made such a
reckless move. Hopefully they don’t get shutdown, but they risked their very
existence on this silly move.

~~~
pawelk
I don't think it was silly, but it was probably too rushed. As I said when it
was announced, there is a valid, IMO, line of reasoning: as a digital library
you can lend one digital copy per one physical book you have in your
inventory. Before the lock down people could choose if they want to go get a
physical copy or a digital one, but now they don't have a choice: their local
library is closed and there are only so many options to borrow digital. This
is where IA steps in and says: we will act as a proxy between you, and the
physical copy of the book that is locked in the library you lost access to.
When I say it was rushed I mean they could have implemented a system where any
closed library would be able to submit their physical book inventory asking IA
to act as a proxy, extending the number of digital copies backed 1:1 by
physical ones. But instead of that Interned Archive decided that the locked
down supply is effectively limitless, so let's just lend as many as people
demand.

~~~
rblatz
Massive public copyright infringement was silly, and it put their whole very
important operation at risk. If they at least went through the motions, and
signed up the libraries like in your example that’s at least defensible in
court.

------
jl2718
I’m inclined to admit the possibility that the library model doesn’t work in
the electronic world, and maybe it’s a bad idea. Perhaps money for community
spaces should not be used to pay for electrons.

------
jMyles
Figuring out how to move projects like IA to a configuration where they are
beyond the reach of the state, but still universally accessible, is one of the
most important open issues of the internet today.

~~~
geofft
Since we'd be moving from legal protection to technical protection, would we
also figure out some technical means whereby this would be accessible by
Internet Archive only? Or would all of us be given a way to publish anything
we want in a way that makes it accessible to the whole world but no government
can impede? Would that then include sealed court records, intimate photos,
performance reviews, credit card numbers, and so forth?

~~~
generationP
We have such havens already, and if the choice is between the Internet Archive
plus everyone's naked pics or none of the two, I'd still vote for the former.

~~~
geofft
And I'd vote for the latter - but since we're talking about moving things
beyond the reach of any government, it's not like I'm actually able to _vote_
on it, am I?

------
walterbell
If the "library" division of Internet Archive is engaging in book-related
activity that puts the 501c3 non-profit donation-funded web and public domain
ARCHIVE at risk, perhaps IA should be legally separated into two
organizations.

There is no reason for humanity's digital web of Alexandria to be burned for a
dispute with book publishers who have no legal claim on the contents of the
Wayback machine.

The many people who donated to Internet Archive were doing so primarily to
preserve materials that were unavailable elsewhere, e.g. lost websites. They
were not primarily donating money to enable lending of currently published
books, which are widely available via multiple channels.

------
techntoke
If companies, including movie companies, don't want their content getting out
for free then don't mass market it. Stop advertising it. Don't sell it in
every retail store in America and put out displays with the characters. Don't
create billboards. Otherwise these companies are trying to psychologically
manipulate you and your kids and pay for something before seeing it usually
with negative messages about how alcohol, affairs and violence will somehow
make your life better and more exciting.

