Re:Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive
by sah2ed on Monday June 01, 2020 @03:15PM
(#23382497)
> I don't know what they were thinking. I'd love to hear how they arrived at the decision to just brazenly flout copyright law like this.
In a previous HN discussion [0], @Apocryphon linked to [1] speculation on a possible explanation: that the IA leadership is perhaps hoping for a landmark court ruling [2] that challenges the first-sale doctrine as it applies to ebooks.
Physical books can be lent out freely by libraries but digital goods like ebooks cannot because they are exempted from the first sale doctrine [3]. This forces libraries to enter into separate licensing agreements with rights holders, which is why the IA is purportedly trying to challenge the rent extraction from libraries, albeit in a less than ideal way.
In a previous HN discussion [0], @Apocryphon linked to [1] speculation on a possible explanation: that the IA leadership is perhaps hoping for a landmark court ruling [2] that challenges the first-sale doctrine as it applies to ebooks.
Physical books can be lent out freely by libraries but digital goods like ebooks cannot because they are exempted from the first sale doctrine [3]. This forces libraries to enter into separate licensing agreements with rights holders, which is why the IA is purportedly trying to challenge the rent extraction from libraries, albeit in a less than ideal way.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22731472
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22734145
[2] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1244257620548038656.html?...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine#Applicatio...