
Authors, Publishers Condemn the 'National Emergency Library' as 'Piracy' - smhenderson
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/30/823797545/authors-publishers-condemn-the-national-emergency-library-as-piracy
======
comex
I worry that the Internet Archive is playing with fire. There are other things
it's doing that are clearly a public good, yet extremely dubious from a
copyright law perspective:

\- Their e-book library during normal times, with the one-borrower-at-a-time
restriction (the one whose temporary removal is at issue here). Even with that
restriction, "it seems like a stretch" from a legal perspective. [1]

\- Their online emulators for old computer software and games. Copyright lasts
for around a century, so those are all still copyrighted unless explicitly
released by their authors. Some of them are orphan works, which might make a
difference under EU law [2], but not under US law, and some of them aren't
even that.

If someone sues the Internet Archive over the National Emergency Library,
there's a good chance they could get a ruling that lending e-books without
permission from the copyright holder is illegal regardless of restrictions,
effectively forcing them to shut down the library completely.

The emulators probably wouldn't be directly affected by a lawsuit over the
library, since there are different issues and different copyright holders
involved, so I'm less concerned about them. Still, I fear that a lawsuit could
lead to increased scrutiny and criticism of the Internet Archive in general,
which could possibly lead to someone else suing over the emulators.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/internet-
archive...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/internet-archive-
offers-thousands-of-copyrighted-books-for-free-online/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_Works_Directive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_Works_Directive)

~~~
lwf
Their online emulators are explicitly authorised via a DMCA exception granted
by the Library of Congress, c.f.
[https://archive.org/about/dmca.php](https://archive.org/about/dmca.php)

> Following deliberation, the Copyright Office ruled in late October 2003 that
> four exemptions should be added to the anti-circumvention clause of the
> DMCA, to be valid until the next Copyright Office rulemaking in 2006,
> including two that are related to the Internet Archive's original comments:
> >

> Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to
> malfunction or damage and which are obsolete. > Computer programs and video
> games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the
> original media or hardware as a condition of access.

~~~
comex
The DMCA exemption process is specifically for the DMCA's anticircumvention
clause, basically a ban on circumventing DRM. Actual copyright infringement is
a separate offense (and in fact largely orthogonal), and the exemptions don't
apply to it.

------
dang
Recent and related:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22716923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22716923)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22715009](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22715009)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22681132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22681132)

Edit:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22731472](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22731472)
is on the front page and is the next step in the sequence.

------
8bitsrule
If it weren't for libraries, those publishers and authors would have a lot
lower visibility and readership.

And, as Internet Archive points out in its rebuttal, published today [0], "On
March 17, the American Library Association Executive Board took the
extraordinary step to recommend that the nation’s libraries close.... In doing
so, for the first time in history, the entirety of the nation’s print
collection housed in libraries is now unavailable...."

Considering how the publishing industry has treated libraries that buy
e-copies, labelling IA's action "a cynical play" is ironic. Maybe those
publishers which can most afford it can double their payments to authors
during this time.

The so-called 'Great Recession' managed to kill off most of the used
bookstores I shopped in where I live. If this event killed off commercial
bookstores, I'd shed no tears.

[0] [https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/30/internet-archive-
respond...](https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/30/internet-archive-responds-why-
we-released-the-national-emergency-library/)

------
mcguire
" _" With mean writing incomes of only $20,300 a year prior to the crisis,
authors, like others, are now struggling all the more — from cancelled book
tours and loss of freelance work, income supplementing jobs, and speaking
engagements," the Authors Guild, a professional group that provides legal
assistance to writers, said in a statement released Friday._"

Maybe if the Authors Guild spent more time pushing publishers to raise their
rates rather than backing publishers....

------
didericis
I wish more authors would self publish. I know this isn’t about academic
authors specifically, but the fact that we still rely on libraries and
journals for access to that makes no sense to me: I don’t understand why you
couldn’t get all the benefits of peer review, publicity, access, money, and
prestige simply by getting the right endorsements or having your article
linked to in some sort of compilation site (a journal with links rather than
the articles themselves), and just have people pay you a small fee directly
for access (supplemented by donations and organizations that compile papers).
The same thing should apply to non academic authors as well.

The internet was built specifically for this problem, and that 402 payment
required status code was introduced way back in http 1.1 ->
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402)

There’s something deeply ironic about the fact that we can distribute and run
fully featured modern applications on the web, but the academic papers it was
originally designed for always seem to be in pdfs locked down behind paywalls.
I can run powerful physics engines in the browser, but I can rarely click a
link in an academic document.

------
Der_Einzige
Oh boo hoo. I'm playing "my heart goes out for you" on the worlds smallest
violin.

The dramatically expanded access to information and the positive benefits of
this far outweighs the benefits of the profits to publishers (and the
minuscule subset of those profits which filter down to the authors). It's not
even in the same ballpark.

The standard deviation of author profits is massive. Don't trust their claim
that most authors are hardly earning more than 20k a year as evidence that
small time authors gets screwed over. The ones who earn that much are almost
never targeted for piracy. Pirates go out of their way to minimize the impact
that their actions have on small time authors. It's the same with video game
piracy. It's the ones who are making hundreds of thousands a year who are
going to lose out.

Make this library permanent for the good of society.

~~~
chx
This is patently untrue. I looked up the wife of my colleague who is the
epitome of small itme author and sure enough it's there. You go on mobilism,
it's there. Do not try to paint pirates in a positive light. I know them
inside out: I have been a software pirate since 1985, I have been the co-sysop
of the one of the largest warez FTP sites in Central Europe in what now seems
a different life (this was decades ago, it was mostly over by 2003 and fully
over in 2004). Noone, absolutely noone cares what they steal. And these days I
still pirate my ebooks but then I order the physical book and donate it to the
local library and then delete the pirated copy. Only way to deal with DRM and
lack of physical space.

~~~
Der_Einzige
It's one thing for the book to be available on this library.

It's another for one to directly lose out on potential sales due to that
availability.

~~~
chx
This has been the argument for software piracy for the longest time and it's a
convincing one: a student can't afford Adobe Photoshop but if they use a
pirated copy once they are at a company they will want to use it. Or, in less
charitable terms, you can't get blood from a stone, so why bother.

This argument is so untrue for books it's not even funny. There is a huge
treasure trove of free ebooks available and very often you can get a used mass
paperback for less than a dollar. And there's no win from a pirated copy.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Books, like movies, videogames and often software tools, aren't substitutable.
If I like Photoshop, or want to use it because it's popular, I'm unlikely to
accept GIMP as a free alternative. If I want to read or watch The Expanse, I'm
100% not going to read some random free e-book or dollar paperback, because
_that 's a different book_. You can't substitute Shrek for Star Wars, nor
Slime Rancher for Call of Duty.

Commodities don't get pirated. Commodities get market competition.

~~~
chx
So you decided on not just merely passing the time with reading but reading a
specific book and because you can't afford to pay for it, now you think you
are entitled to it for free because why? If I want to buy a Vuis Luitton
suitcase but can only afford American Tourister then I can just help myself to
it? How is that right?

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _If I want to buy a Vuis Luitton suitcase but can only afford American
> Tourister then I can just help myself to it? How is that right?_

If you could 3D-print yourself a copy that looks just like the original, then
sure, I'd say it's absolutely right to do. But that's my opinion, I'm not a
fan of the concept of intellectual property. Regardless, what you did here is
trying to equate piracy with theft, which is incorrect. Copying does not make
the original disappear. Copyright infringement may be a crime, but it's a
_different_ crime than theft, both legally and morally.

> _but reading a specific book and because you can 't afford to pay for it,
> now you think you are entitled to it for free because why?_

Well, if I can't afford it, I'm not going to buy it anyway. The publisher
loses nothing over me making a copy. And there's an argument to be made that
popular works of art are essential, because they form a shared cultural
background; not having access to them means being excluded from the
discussions your society is having.

