The argument is whether actions like this are the best way to "return sanity to copyright law," though, right? It seems to me there's a lot of space between "eternally extending copyright to keep the first Mickey Mouse cartoons from entering the public domain" and "anyone should be able to do whatever they want with other people's work at any point regardless of the creator's objections."

There is a lot of space, which is why you anchor with the opening salvo and then find middle ground. Keep in mind, the Internet Archive only opened the “National Emergency Library” during a global pandemic. Under business as usual, they put limits on access to scanned works.

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.

An "opening salvo" has to be more than just throwing ammunition at your enemies. The "but global pandemic" argument will not be very convincing when they roll out authors that also wanted to eat during the pandemic.

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.

> when they roll out authors that also wanted to eat during the pandemic.

This is a tired argument. Please prove authors experienced lost sales due to the emergency library IA offered.

I don't have to. The publishers do. And I'll bet they can make a better legal argument than "oh we just wanted to because pandemic".

Seems to be overreaching to me. They have put themselves into a position where they are likely to be sued into the ground, and force others into a position where the only choice is to lose their income or sue them into the ground. They weren't forced into creating this standoff, so at least share the blame.

I'm not sure what the point of owning a digital copy of a book is if I can, at any time, "loan" one from the IA in <15 seconds. In a way it's even more convenient than owning a copy, your basically using IA as cloud storage.

>"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...

>> "I'm an author" or "Think of the publishers!" is no excuse for supporting unjust laws.

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