That's fair. But the consequences should have been obvious. Part of launching a test case is segregating the liability.
If IA wanted to launch a legal challenge, they should have segregated the risk from the main organization. Setting precedent with out-of-copyright and licensed works would have been one way. Allowing a third party to run the National Emergency Library would have been another.
Instead, it seems they thought of an idea and ran with it. For an organization aiming for longevity, that's poor process.
They already did allow out-of-copyright works to be downloaded as many times as anyone wants, without DRM. They're out of copyright. That's unambiguously legal and always has been. There, they've done what you wanted them to, they "segregated the risk from the main organization" (you'd have to have a pretty warped worldview to imagine it makes a difference, but nothing in your comment would have actually done that).
Allowing a third party to run the National Emergency Library would have been another.
I've read this line over and over again. Is this what you meant by it? "The organization that has all of the books and is registered as a library shouldn't have run the library that's legally grounded in them being legally-recognized as a library and having all of the books that they have."
If so, I completely disagree with you.
This makes way more sense than you're giving credit for. IA isn't run by a five year old.
As it is, the entire IA infrastructure could be torn apart overnight.
Wouldn't be legally recognized as a library, which was something the IA spent years clawing to be recognized as.
but has no access to the rest of the IA's assets
This would be incredibly stupid and would require a complete restructuring of how the IA works (despite the belief of seemingly many people in this thread, the IA is significantly more than the Wayback Machine).
Then, in the event of a lawsuit, the only thing the publishers could seize would be the actual books.
Which would still be bad and morally wrong, and is more likely to happen when it's its own, non-library entity.
As it is, the entire IA infrastructure could be torn apart overnight.
No, it couldn't. Not a bit more than it could be five months ago.
That's an important nuance that I and others missed.
> No, it couldn't.
Why not? The publishers win a judgement for a value that exceeds that of the IA's total assets, and all of the IA's infrastructure gets seized and auctioned off in the bankruptcy proceedings.
The data is backed up in many ways (including to some extent in a fully-distributed fashion, though I'm not in the know enough to give you an idea of how vast it is: https://dweb.archive.org/ ), and a non-profit can't be forced into bankruptcy in the way you're implying (which is another reason it's so important the IA is non-profit), so the physical assets are safe:
https://www.abi.org/member-resources/blog/a-non-profit-entit...
Your link is about substantive consolidation, a process where the bankruptcy court combines multiple related legal entities into one. This can benefit the creditors of Entity A, since it may frustrate the debtor's attempt to shield assets by placing them in a related Entity B. Your link correctly notes that a nonprofit can't be forced into bankruptcy, and thus can't be forced into substantive consolidation. So if the IA used the two-entity strategy, then your link implies it would be quite effective--worst case, the publishers take all the assets of the library entity, and they have no way to touch the Wayback entity.
If both the Wayback Machine and the library are under the same entity, then that single entity still can't be forced into bankruptcy, because it's a nonprofit. But the creditor (i.e., the publishers with their hypothetical judgment) can still just collect against the single nonprofit entity, bankruptcy or no bankruptcy. If the judgment is for more than the entity's assets then the creditor gets everything.
The point of bankruptcy is to consolidate multiple creditors' claims into a single case, to be resolved more fairly, while destroying less value, etc. It seems like you might be thinking that no bankruptcy means no ability for the creditors to collect? But that's exactly backwards--bankruptcy is primarily a set of protections for the debtor (like the "automatic stay", which stops creditors from trying to collect outside the bankruptcy), with a few smaller benefits for the creditor (like that substantive consolidation) thrown in.
ETA: And I see that the IA describes itself as "recognized as a library by the government", but I'm not aware of any specific legal benefit from that. Regardless, if that's somehow important then they could leave the books in the library entity and split out the Wayback, instead of splitting out the library.
I mean... a little blame goes to the folks that made the massive over-reach beyond any plausible deniability or defense, right? Maybe most of the blame? All of the blame?
IA lofted the jolly roger and thought fear of bad press would protect them, and it's the publisher's fault for not saying, "never mind, you guys destroy the entire economic foundation of the publishing industry, no worries"?
I'm rarely in the anti-pirate camp, but defending IA in this context is pretty extreme.
Copyright isn’t an inalienable right. It was established for the public good, and up for renegotiation at any time. Now is one of those times.
No matter what you consider to be the morally correct outcome here, this seems to have been a very risky way to go about things.
This is a tired argument. Please prove authors experienced lost sales due to the emergency library IA offered.
>"I'm an author" or "Think of the publishers!" is no excuse for supporting unjust laws.
Authors want to get paid, this stops them from getting paid...
What is sad is most of the people that use that excuse do not believe copyright laws are draconian enough, they want STRONGER copyright laws for publishers, they want it to not only be civil but criminal, they want to put people in jail in a cage if you happen to share your favorite song with a friend.
In short, copyright maximalists are insane
You realize this undermines the ability of our society to produce the actual written works that we're arguing so damn valuable that we can't abide locking them behind a paywall?
So why is the current copyright system the exact correct system for getting people paid to write, where any stronger or weaker would be bad? I can think of at least a few other possible systems that would get people paid to write as well - maybe an entirely different set of people, so some things would get written that aren’t today and some things that would get written today aren’t under that system. How can we evidence that our current system works best?
Civil disobedience is a form of peaceful protest.
> You realize this undermines the ability of our society to produce the actual written works
Creators aren't going to stop. They'll find a way. The solution is to somehow get paid for the act of creating rather than the finished work. Patronage and crowdfunding could be the answer.
I blame the politicians that do nothing to change the rules of the game in the first place, and the people that elect them.