According to this post, they did not break the 1:1 ratio of physical to digital books, but expanded the pool of physical books to include those unlent at libraries across the country. That is certainly a debatable point, though.

More to the point, the lawsuits are in effect and moving forward now, long after the NEL has ceased operations. They are directed at the CDL now.

It's less debatable if the libraries they partner with have records showing that said books were on the stacks behind locked doors and that they used these records to change the number of each title that can be loaned out.

But it is still a pretty big shift in "how to count" that maybe would have gone over better if discussed first. But let's be realistic, the publishers would have done the same thing. They do it over and over again. A lawsuit seems like an unfortunate but probably only sane way to determine if this new counting method is legal enough to pass muster.

I think counting books in libraries you have formally partnered with that are literally locked behind closed doors is extremely reasonable, but I also think copyrights should last like 20-30 years tops so I doubt that I'm in the mainstream.

> I also think copyrights should last like 20-30 years tops

Seriously, I can't fathom why anyone would say that copyright should last longer than patents

One reason I consider for that is that technical progress and inventions are much more valuable and therefore need to be a public good sooner.

I don't mind disney having copyright on mickey mouse for 100 years. I do mind locking away a promising technology for 50.

Simple it is money . It is hard to make money on patents twenty years after initial filing or invention . It is considerably easier to do so with copyright.

But in most cases, it's not considerably easier to make money, at least significant amounts of it, several decades after publishing a creative work. Who is paying the same price for software from 20 or 30 years ago that they pay for the equivalent today, or even 10% as much? Most big movies make the lion's share of their revenue during the initial phase of distribution in theatres and then the second phase of availability via streaming and physical media over the next few years. A lot of big games make a large chunk of their money in just the first few weeks after launch. Traditionally, a book that wasn't still making a lot of money would go out of print, which meant that for anything but the classics or best-selling authors, you'd have to look for a bookshop that still had a copy on the shelves or some second-hand source after a few years.

If copyright is primarily an economic tool, intended to create market forces similar to other products and services in order to promote activity within the creative sector, then a much shorter copyright period is perfectly justifiable. The few works that still make significant money after several decades usually also made huge money in the decades before, so copyright would still provide a strong incentive to create and share such works.

One interesting thing about modern economic models supported by copyright is that they do make more of the long tail viable: a work aimed at a relatively small niche or with unusually high production costs can still be economic to produce if you can recoup the costs over a longer period, and with digital storage and distribution this becomes more practical. But even then, how many works would be viable after 40 or 50 or 100 years but not after 20 or 30?

I'm confused by your claim, of course it's hard to make money on a patent after it has expired.

Assuming you wanted to use the assumption that patents last as long as copyrights, I have a hard time imagining how a patent wouldn't be even easier to make money with given that a patent is far broader and inventions probably "remix" old inventions even more than cultural touchstones. Just imagine if "jet engines" or "wings" or "AC electrical grid" or "power transformer" were still under patent as broadly patented approaches to solving engineering problems.

Oof. Society might collapse, but I'm sure someone would make money hand over fist on the way down...

At least copyright allows fair use and remixing to an extent, no such luck with patents.

> According to this post, they did not break the 1:1 ratio of physical to digital book...

I think the article implies that without explicitly saying it. Their own announcements and FAQs about the NEL certainly didn't say that.

    Is this controlled digital lending?
    
    No. It is close to controlled digital lending but is significantly different while waitlists are suspended. This library is being mobilized in response to a global pandemic and US national emergency. It shares aspects of controlled digital lending by controlling the physical book that was scanned and the redistribution of files through digital rights management software, but differs by having no waitlists for users borrowing books.  Once the US national emergency is over and waitlists are back to their normal capacity, the service will return to full controlled digital lending.

https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360042654251-Nati...

It seems strange to loan a digital copy of ... someone else's book.

As for the lawsuit going on after they stopped lending, well yeah the legal matter wasn't settled, so it can go on.

Why should it seem strange? If you own stock I can lend it and sell it outright, and as long as I buy it back and provide it to you at the exit of the deal everything fine.

If you own a book and I buy it but under a deal that defines you should keep it locked up in a safe. I still own it and have the right to lend it out digitally under CDL, yet it's physically with you. Why is it strange to forgo that madness and just let me provide digital lending services on your behalf? I mean just because it's my lending system doesn't mean I should need to own everything that's being lend out. Amazon doesn't have to own everything they sell.

Ironically, the same thing happens with banks under a fractional reserve system. If the bank has $1000 in gold, they can lend out a virtual $9000 of that gold.

Did they actually make that deal about not lending out other people's books?

The article seems somewhat fuzzy on that...

Why? A library lending someone a book belonging to a partner library because that library is not easily accessible to the lendee is common practice.

But usually a van physically transports the book to the lendee...

I think the debate will be if making a digital copy and locking the original book in a safe is equivalent, and if I were a judge, I would say "no", because to say otherwise significantly weakens copyright in so many other ways.

It seems like "faster vans" and "more effective nagging people to immediately return books they have already finished" would also weaken copyright under that line of argument; both allow you to loan the same copy to more people in sequence.

Yeah, I don't think they're going to win this one, either.

Their best bet is probably to shame the publishers into dropping the suit, since they won't actually win if it comes down to it.

I assume that's what this is meant to do: shame the publishers.

Hopefully they can just settle it in a way that IA goes on, but maybe with some better guidance at the top of IA.

If I were them, I would be signing perpetual data-sharing agreements with other sister companies and archives, and prepare to protect as much of the archive as possible in bankruptcy...

Not really. As long as they are documented to be not in use, then the first party can lend them to whoever, and they can lend to whoever.. and so on as long as the chain links back to a real book paid for then it makes perfect technical sense.

> More to the point, the lawsuits are in effect and moving forward now, long after the NEL has ceased operations. They are directed at the CDL now.

They are directed at the CDL as a target of opportunity. Their raison d'etre is for damages from the NEL period.

> According to this post, they did not break the 1:1 ratio of physical to digital books, but expanded the pool of physical books to include those unlent at libraries across the country.

AIUI in all previous communications about the NEL, they claimed they were doing the former, i.e. "effectively" removing all limits to legitimate lending, regardless of the previous 1:1 ratio. But there was plenty of speculation that the real mechanism behind the NEL was the latter, i.e. partnering with outside libraries to expand the physical holdings they could lend out via CDL.

"We lent books that we own—at the Internet Archive and also the other endorsing libraries. These books were purchased and we knew they were not circulating physically."

I read this as not increasing the book pool, but saying, "We own Book A. Our endorsing libraries have a total of 9 copies of Book A." However, instead of now offering 10 copies of Book A (which would have adhered to 1:1), they offered unlimited loans, which certainly breaks 1:1.