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Originally Posted by Quoth
Proper libraries pay a licence fee per simultaneous loan and in some countries a per loan royalty for ebooks.
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My local county library mostly pays a fee to Overdrive for each copy they want to lend out -- could be roughly $120.
Libraries cooperating with Internet Archive libraries purchased a paper copy for each simumtaneous eBook loan, and did not loan the held paper book. The payment to the bookseller for each copy thus could have been roughly $30.
They both are arguably proper, or at least would be without a final ruling on a disputed legal point.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
Exactly who funds IA and their mirror site in Eqypt?
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My Pennsylvania State Library has helped fund them in the past. Now my national library, the Library of Congress, does:
https://archive.org/about/credits.php
For legal reasons, the judge did not look at it the way I did. But the way I see it, the Internet Archive pays a lot less to the publisher, indirectly, than the local libraries do with Overdrive or a smaller competitor. And the Internet Archive in return provides a lower-quality eBook. This is fair for now, but might not in the future as improvements are made in scanning.
Note that the Internet Archive has a queuing system, and uses DRM to limit days for each borrow, just like Overdrive does.
I've defended Overdrive, in the past, for charging libraries much higher prices for eBooks than paper copies. However, the Internet Archive is a legitimate nonprofit organizaton and I cannot support attacking it.
The judge did not rule on monetary damages, but it sounds to me that he is open to the damages being zero due to the Internet Achive being nonprofit. If upheld on appeal, and if the Internet Archive kept on operating the same way, I think that then there would be some sort of punishment for them, such as contempt of court.
However honorable a place Egypt is, the Internet Archive is located in the United States, and will follow clear American court orders.