Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
When you go shopping at a B&M store and see something with a designer label, say, do you think it's up to you to check whether it's counterfeit merchandise?
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To give Harry his due, here's one difference: It's extremely unlikely I would know that clothing I was buying had an intellectual property issue. However, I do know that if I see a mainstream book, first published after 1963 (no copyright renewal needed), at archive.org site openlibrary.org, there is an intellectual property issue. And, if published between 1923 and 1963, there probably is an intellectual property issue.
Of course, there are big differences the other way. I'm sure there is case law on counterfeit clothing. There isn't, AFAIK, on precisely what archive.org does. It may seem obvious to some that the legal arguments archive.org might make (non-profit, educational, print book held during borrowing period, EPUB's are full of errors and missing material, benefits visually impaired etc.) would be losers in court. But I don't know enough law to make it obvious to me.
Isn't it likely that some of the
hundreds of US state and local libraries endorsing OpenLibrary (and many Canadian and Australian libraries as well) ran this by their house attorney and were told that there's a good possibility of archive.org/openlibary.org being upheld in a US court?
US fair use is broader than equivalents in other countries. One of the factors in US fair use law is
the effect of the use upon the potential market. By never, to my knowledge, offering proofread EPUBs, archive.org greatly reduces the impact of what they are doing on publishers.
The fact that they are non-profit, as noted in my last link, will be a big plus for them if they ever are taken to court.