The Electronic Frontier Foundation is proud to join with our co-counsel Morrison and Foerster to represent the Internet Archive in challenging the district court’s ruling in this case.
For centuries, libraries have served their patrons by purchasing books and lending them for free. In the United States, libraries predated the founding of the nation – in fact they contributed to it by improving access to knowledge. Today, libraries serve many purposes, providing Internet access, meeting spaces, and even community pantries. But the heart of their mission remains the same: lending.
What has changed is how that core mission is accomplished. Like copyright law itself, library lending has evolved as new systems and technologies have created new ways to meet patron needs. For the past decade, that evolution has included controlled digital lending—a modern, more efficient version of lending that is used by libraries across the country. Controlled digital lending allows libraries to lend books via the internet subject to strict controls, for a limited time, to one patron at a time.
But four giant publishers claim that this service violates their copyrights and threatens their businesses. They are wrong: Libraries have paid publishers billions of dollars for the books in their print collections. CDL merely helps libraries better serve their patrons, but still lending just one book at a time. It is fundamentally the same as traditional library lending and poses no harm to authors or the publishing industry. In fact, the concrete evidence in this case shows that the Archive’s digital lending does not and will not harm the market for books.
The district court gave short shrift to that evidence, one of many flaws in the ruling. Another was that it concluded that the Internet Archive’s free public library is actually a commercial activity. According to the court, a nonprofit has a commercial purpose if it derives virtually any benefit connected to its a work – including ordinary nonprofit activities like attracting new members, receiving recognition from its community, or having a donate button its website. That definition of “commercial” runs contrary to well-established precedent. What is worse, it would apply to almost every library and public interest organization in the country. It doesn’t make sense.
Our brief explains why the court was wrong, and why controlled digital lending is a lawful fair use. But the core problem is this: The publishers are not seeking protection from harm to their existing rights. They are seeking a new right: the right to take advantage of technological developments to control how libraries may lend the books they own.
They should not succeed. The Internet Archive and the hundreds of libraries and archives that support it are not pirates or thieves. They are librarians, striving to serve their patrons online just as they have done for centuries in the brick-and-mortar world. We are confident the Second Circuit will see that, and rule according.
the numbers are small enough that an instance cannot be pointed to where new intellectual property + awareness of Archive.org connected + there was an accidental Denial of Service on the website because millions of users were all trying to access the same file
The Archive is not OLD ENOUGH or experienced enough to put up a legal case establishing a bad precedent for the day a life-altering phenomenon debuts, the bookstores have run out of copies, there are readers lining up around the block, and so forth + Archive illegally comes to the rescue. I would not want society deprived of just such a moment.
We may enter a golden age at any time so long as society has access to learning. Right now it is being controlled. But one day hopefully continents of people will have the brain power to perhaps cause a ruckus. Kudos for stealing the debate. But you do not deserve it.
Somebody needs to use the borrow button on one of these single-copy offerings and then come in under a proxy to test if you can borrow it simultaneous with the other borrow to truly test the system. I don’t believe you when you say that there is only one digital copy to each physically housed book. I don’t believe a lot of that.
You look down with total McSherry face at words that were presented to you. You forgot 2 things: 1, you are not a Library, and 2, you did not speak in 8743tyuhfjefaknmf aseventyoufjefaknmf faknemphf ayseventy faknemphf to you
if you looked into the camera and said: “faknemphf”, I would know exactly what you are saying. The faknemphfs are stockpiling English.
Would I be convinced that you were right, if you spoke a made-up language? You would be using redundant instances of supposed meaning to arrive at a codified language. I think you might be double-checking English itself.
You took the beautiful language of the faknemphfs and sold it down the river to speak English instead.
The court needs to look at this and ask itself whether or not the Archive was able to prove that there are rules to speaking English. There are mostly rules. This might be your book. The entire development of English instances might be your novel.
Hey, You look down with total McSherry face at words that were presented to you. You forgot 2 things: 1, you are not a Library, and 2, you did not speak in 8743tyuhfjefaknmf aseventyoufjefaknmf faknemphf ayseventy faknemphf to you
if you looked into the camera and said: “faknemphf”, I would know exactly what you are saying. The faknemphfs are stockpiling English.
Would I be convinced that you were right, if you spoke a made-up language? You would be using redundant instances of supposed meaning to arrive at a codified language. I think you might be double-checking English itself.
You took the beautiful language of the faknemphfs and sold it down the river to speak English instead.
The court needs to look at this and ask itself whether or not the Archive was able to prove that there are rules to speaking English. There are mostly rules. This might be your book. The entire development of English instances might be your novel.
Hey, The typesetting guild needs to ask for money, each instance, because you used scans instead of volunteers to type these manuscripts, you stole their art without asking permission, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc
Hey, Hey, The typesetting guild needs to ask for money, each instance, because you used scans instead of volunteers to type these manuscripts, you stole their art without asking permission, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc
You should try more for the fair use of books and reform the copyright law
Dan Brown fought for the fair use of Holy Grail ,Holy Blood + The Da Vinci Code, it’s been done. The original copyright was only supp;osed to last 21 years originally, they’ve changed it a couple times. What the site needs is a Buy button.
J. K. Rowling sued and won against the Harry Potter Lexicon, she went on to stab her agent and publishers in the back. She’s with Little Brown now, an imprint of Hachette. Dirty business.
Hey, J. K. Rowling sued and won against the Harry Potter Lexicon, she went on to stab her agent and publishers in the back. She’s with Little Brown now, an imprint of Hachette. Dirty business.
Thank you for your continued work to defend knowledge and information in the digital age for present and future generations. #netneutrality