Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
We're talking slightly at cross-purposes.
There are (at least) three different types of books at archive.org.
1. Scans of public domain books, which are perfectly legal.
2. Copies of copyrighted books which can be loaned. This is what the disputes mentioned previously are concerning.
3. Unregulated uploads of books by third parties. This is where the pirated material is.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Correct.
Use case number 2 is what the ruckus is over. The IA assert fair use allows them to create and lend out one ebook copy for every physical copy they own.
Authors and publishers disagree.
They are not necessarily wrong: fair use doctrine is meant to cover limited uses for personal, educational, or critical use.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use |
Good we're back to my point :-): archive.org is not a piracy site, and people should use it.
I believe that items (2) and (3) in this list were (unintentionally) being conflated by folks earlier. Archive.org is NOT a piracy site, any more than Amazon or Google are piracy sites just because occasionally somebody manages to upload some illicit pirated (category 3) stuff into their bookstores. In fact, Amazon has a problem with illegal knock-offs of various retail products making it into their store (I have firsthand knowledge of illegal copies of US branded knives being made by China and sold as the authentic item on their store, for example). Still, preventing this 100% is like asking Amazon to filter the entire ocean for pollution--it can't be done at 100%, when you operate at their scale. I don't hear anyone in the thread (yet, anyway) suggesting we should label Amazon a piracy site and boycott them.
If the discussion above is all about category (2), that is NOT the same thing as piracy, and it appears has not even been legally challenged yet, although they've been doing this for years. Remember the facts of the case: archive.org is a
non-profit, buying one copy of a book and digitizing it, then loaning it to one person at a time. To meet their goal of using the web to make information globally and freely available. And the author is still getting paid. I have no problem with that UNLESS there is eventually a legal ruling against them on that issue. In that case, of course the books should come down. Unless or until that legal ambiguity is resolved, I don't feel it's fair to conflate that issue with 'piracy' and use it to label their whole effort and site. Those guys are doing God's work, they're the closest thing avialable to a library-for-all on the Internet.