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Halaku OP t1_jdsndam wrote

>U.S. District Court Judge John G. Koeltl said that the Internet Archive was making “derivative” works by turning print books into ebooks and distributing them.

Right call? Wrong call? Thoughts?

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rkalo t1_jdtj8l6 wrote

Obvious conclusion. It's idealistically nice that books could be free but it's plainly against the law.

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Flimsy_Demand7237 t1_jdu9w1o wrote

I guess my days as a librarian are numbered.

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ItsCalledDayTwa t1_jduang7 wrote

I mean, that may be true, but not because of this. Libraries pay for each copy of a book they lend.

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Daktyl198 t1_jdueuqe wrote

Libraries pay for each copy, and they pay about 30x as much per copy. And each copy can only be lended a certain number of times (40 or 50 times) before it has to be repurchased.

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Flimsy_Demand7237 t1_jdug9et wrote

Yeah ebook restrictions are often absolutely absurd, which is why I disagree with this ruling on principle. Physical books are not 'licensed' to be artificially withdrawn and repurchased year on year. These virtuous publishers make more profit % than Walmart, Bank of America, Toyota, they all go barely 10% profit. Ebook publishers? -- 35%-40% profits. On average, ebook cost has 37% upmarked just for profit. It's an artificial greed market where none should exist.

Excellent doco on the academic papers and textbook ebook side of this issue: https://vimeo.com/273358286

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Artanthos t1_jdupl20 wrote

Walmart actually has a very low profit margin, <2%.

Walmart makes its money on volume.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/profit-margins

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cheeseybacon11 t1_jdv11ye wrote

So they're still correct. Just a weird way to prove their point.

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Artanthos t1_jdwxzgx wrote

I wasn’t disagreeing so much as reinforcing with more accurate information.

People like to shit on Walmart.

While a lot of the points are technically correct, the whole point is to bring lower prices to the consumer.

Walmart simply cannot correct many of their issues without raising prices, because they already have a very low profit margin. It would quickly flip from making money from volume to losing billions.

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skttsm t1_jdvfo3q wrote

Digital media often has a 3 year or 30-50 ish licensing. And they pay roughly 3x for ebooks and audiobooks from what I've seen. I haven't seen or heard of anything near 30x before though

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thepsycholeech t1_jdunawu wrote

Woah really? Why are the library versions so expensive? Is it an option for libraries to purchase retail copies instead?

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Daktyl198 t1_jdusheg wrote

No, it’s not an option for them to purchase retail copies. They are legally required to purchase special “lending license” variants of books because book publishers lobbied that libraries cost them too much money by just existing.

Afaik, the lending limit only applies to digital copies of books, as physical copies naturally wear out or get lost with time, and thus will require repurchase either way unlike a digital copy. The physical copies are still hellishly expensive.

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Trashytelly t1_jdw7iyg wrote

Physical library books are unlikely to be loaned as much as 50 times before being withdrawn from the shelves. Both age and wear and tear will cause them to be withdrawn long before that number is reached.

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Denziloe t1_jdvs1db wrote

You're a librarian and you think library books are free?

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Flimsy_Demand7237 t1_jdvtgoc wrote

Very odd that you've had to pay to loan books out from your library.

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kwalshyall t1_jdvvcw7 wrote

It's certainly cheaper than that bureaucratic crook, The Wallet Inspector, at least.

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Denziloe t1_jdw4476 wrote

Not really. Many libraries work that way. And the ones that don't, you're paying for through taxes. The books are paid for.

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Flimsy_Demand7237 t1_jdxituc wrote

And IA paid for these books as well. They usually have a 1 to 1 digital lending system but the court struck that down as well, so they can't digitally lend at all. Again it's sort of disturbing that you're advocating a library function the same as a bookstore. Libraries do not function this way. A non standard patron or patron of a niche library might pay for membership but as you say, most standard libraries are covered by taxes. They are a public good. I would not expect the homeless or poor to have to pay to loan a book -- libraries are one of the few places they can go and not be charged for use of service.

As I've said elsewhere, there will come a time when physical libraries become either outdated or irrelevant. Then we will only be able to lend ebooks, and if this 1 to 1 system is not in place, publishers will make sure libraries cease to exist through unaffordable fees and conditions. They are already holding libraries hostage to their ebook collections through extreme pricing we have to pay for access. Especially so at academic libraries where Elsiever and the rest have libraries over a barrel on pricing and access.

Publishers want us gone. It's that simple.

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pornplz22526 t1_jdtidvj wrote

Right call. IA was in blatant violation of copyright law. Even as somebody who wants copyright law heavily reformed, what they were doing was a step too far.

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scutiger- t1_jdv0s08 wrote

Agreed, just like you're allowed to rip a DVD movie to your computer, but doing so does not make it a derivative work and doesn't give you the right to distribute it willy nilly.

By the IA's rationale, printing an ebook would also be derivative and would negate copyright protections.

They were doing nothing wrong until they started "lending" more than one copy of a given book.

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pornplz22526 t1_jdvh7qt wrote

You can't lend copies, full stop. By law, you may only lend the exact item you purchased. They would have to be mailing physical books to people in order to be following the law.

FSD also doesn't protect PC software.

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RubyGuy12 t1_je2glrc wrote

The people who try and pretend the IA are entirely blameless in this drive me insane. Yes, they do a lot of incredibly important work in the preservation and spreading of knowledge. That is exactly why it was so fucking stupid of them to put it all at risk with such a massive, obvious, and public violation of copyright law when they pulled their "emergency library" stunt.

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scutiger- t1_je331kg wrote

Yeah, I think the IA is great, but this seemed like a dumb move. A real library would never have tried it, I don't know why they thought they would get away with it.

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[deleted] t1_jebjqf2 wrote

[deleted]

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RubyGuy12 t1_jeborb6 wrote

In this instance it's when an incredibly important and otherwise legitimate institution for the preservation of knowledge and culture decides that COVID means they can just publically become a full-on piracy site for ebooks, freely providing infinite copies of any book they have in their database. A noble idea, sure, but also 100%, unambiguously illegal.

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___-Enjoyer t1_jdvdn8s wrote

Technically correct (the best kind) but an IP lawyer would have to clarify about legally correct. The E-book definitely isn't a copy because of the change in medium (it's a series of bits on a drive not ink on paper) but there might be more important legal distinctions.

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sirbruce t1_jdu0t06 wrote

Right call. Buying a physical book doesn't automatically give you an ebook lending license, let alone an infinite number of them.

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Flimsy_Demand7237 t1_jdua9bf wrote

Would this apply if book is out of print? There's no way to buy the book from the publisher and for the publisher/author to make money.

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sirbruce t1_jdue471 wrote

The book being OOP may be exactly what the author or publisher wants. The right of copyright includes the right NOT to have your work sold.

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Flimsy_Demand7237 t1_jdug64f wrote

Bye bye second hand books then haha!

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Griffen_07 t1_jdul9ni wrote

No that is right of first sale. If you have a physical object it is yours to with as you please. You have the explicit right to resale it.

The issue is that that right goes away as soon as things go digital as you can’t prove who has the one true paid for copy.

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pornplz22526 t1_jdvg60h wrote

Only if you're trying to sell a photo copy of the book...

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sirbruce t1_jdykqg1 wrote

The right of first sale has nothing to do with the right not to print more copies.

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lingenfr t1_jdwnmuc wrote

You would think that people in a books sub would have read at least one book and hence have a brain. Why do idiots here keep downvoting factually correct answers that at not antagonistic?

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sirbruce t1_jdykyrk wrote

I'm more shocked that so many professed book-lovers are anti-author. Yes, I'm sure if you're a Cory Doctorow acolyte you hate copyright, but pretty much everyone else would find the majority of the authors they enjoy are lined up against the IA on this issue.

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princetonwu t1_je3hjhm wrote

they're free-book lovers. they care about their ability to leech but not at all about the authors they read.

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