Instead they allowed unlimited borrowing. They fundamentally broke the "controlled" part.

Whoever "took" the book at that time lost the access to it long ago already, thanks to the DRM protection remaining and working.

Edit: answering "I'm not sure I'd call what they're doing "DRM". Read the court case: explicitly Adobe DRM technology for encrypted e-book formats is mentioned, implemented in different e-book readers and used in this case.

There was always a fixed limit on how long the book remains checked out, and it must have already expired to all that checked it out at that time. The DRM protection remained active.

Edit: answering the post below:

> They had a limited number of licenses to produce works and they produced more than that.

It was at the times that all the physical libraries were closed, one can argue that the demand wasn't bigger than what the public libraries would have been able to handle, and even it had been bigger, it was only because of that exceptional emergency happening.

But I agree it would have been much clearer had they made some fixed limits corresponding to the estimated number of the books in the physical libraries.

By this logic, I can speculate that there is probably at least one copy of the Star Wars ep V DVD sitting in some library's bookshelf not being watched right now. So it's completely ok if I "lend" myself a copy and watch it without paying. Since the demand was probably not higher than what could have been satisfied with the number of phyiscal copies of the DVD present in the libraries of the world today. Or maybe it was, who knows man?

This is, to put it mildly, not how copyright works. Internet Archive will have to learn that the hard way now in court. Which sucks, because I really like IA. I wish they will refrain from pulling any more crap like this.

If I own a DVD and distribute more than copy simultaneously even if it’s time limited and even if I keep the DRM I’ve still violated copyright.

Most libraries work with publishers to buy lending rights directly but IA is arguing that if I hold one physical copy of a work and promise not to "perform" (copyright jargon is odd) it while it's in my possession then I may transmit that work digitally to another person kinda bridging first sale and seats of digital lending licenses.

I guess we'll find out if the court buys it. Because under normal circumstances this is open and shut copyright violation.

Sure enough, the Internet Archive chose to "innovate" libraries with the National Emergency Library, by simply not following copyright laws.

That's ridiculous. Copyright exists becauce in the past bad actors misused the liberty of culture to exploit poor creators by selling their work without paying them anything at all. In the grand picture copyright is good, because it enables cretors to live from their work, and let's them invest into bigger pieces of culture of higher quality.

What we need is to ensure a balance between the commercial interessts and societies interesst.

Should we have a copyright system as it is today? Now that's a completely different question. And I don't think what they did helps at all in changing it for the better, at best they're just helping in testing and defining the limits of the current system.

Lets say I hire a plumber to fix my sink. Afterwards I refuse to pay because I have decided plumbing work should be free and plumbers should instead make their income by selling branded merchandise. This would just be breach of contract.

The plumber is not a psychopath by insisting on getting paid according the originally agreed contract. Maybe the plumber don't want to make income by selling branded merchandise but just want to get paid for plumbing. That is not for me to decide. I am free to look for a different plumber who will work for free.

Yes, they can. It's weird that you think that people can't demand that any aspect of any business change (or end) because they don't like it. That's basically an argument against law and democracy.

Your example is about someone entering a contract, accepting the fruits of that contract, then refusing to hold up their end of that contract. Completely unrelated.

For entertainment, I agree. But only insomuch as entertainers need to eat too.

For science, I disagree. Science benefits society most when everyone, even the poor, have access to it.

Sure, but should scientists work for free?

I think the premise of the question is flawed.

I think science should be free and scientists should be paid a liveable wage as any other person should be.

People can write stories all day long, even stories that will be read by nobody. Scientists can do science all day long even science that benefits nobody.

But writing stories all day long practices the art without worry about a paycheck. Scientists doing science practices the art without worry about a paycheck.

Both can be done with personal computers these days. Personal computers are extremely cheap to have and to maintain. There's nothing stopping it other than politics.

I just read it for free!!!

Sure they do, that's what libraries are for.

If you mean "viable" business-wise, that's a tautology. If you mean "viable" as in "writers feel compelled to write books", that's simply false. Writers write. Many writers like writing books, and would do so even if it didn't put a single cent in their pockets.

Writing books can be turned into a business, but it's not inherently a business.

Also, a book is not its physical form. An electronic book is no less of a book than a paper book.

Unless you are independently rich, you need an income to survive.

The falsehood here is "no writer will be insane enough to write without a business model".

Millions of fanfiction writers would like to have a word with you... Not to mention all the authors of comments on this very site, some of which are, at least, good enough to be paid articles somewhere, or in cooperation with other commenters could be turned (as whole threads) into short books in their own right.

Put another way: the music industry could entirely vanish overnight, and people would still sing in the shower and when drinking with their buddies.

Some people tend to express themselves in some way, and they would do it regardless of literally anything. We've achieved high literacy rates, which gave a tool of expression that is writing to a correspondingly high number of people. It's not exactly surprising that we now have a flourishing environment of Web novels and all kinds of written content outside of the "market" and publishing industry as a whole.

But it's not something specific to our times. Plenty of writers in history did starve do death. One of "the three greatest" poets of my country did precisely that: he wasn't published, he wasn't even read much, and when he was, he was ridiculed for it. Yet he had been writing anyway; then, he died in extreme poverty, leaving just a lot of paper behind. It took some 40 years IIRC for someone to "rediscover" the stash of hand-written poems, and now his works are being taught in highschools.

In yet other words: no, not everything has to be related to money. Many things are, yes, but not all. Writing as a profession that published (and paid) authors do is all fine and good, but it's just one side of writing, not its definition.

> Norwid led a tragic and often poverty-stricken life (once he had to live in a cemetery crypt). He experienced increasing health problems, unrequited love, harsh critical reviews, and increasing social isolation.

...and yet his works are easily (IMO) the best among the three of them (the two others would be Mickiewicz and Słowacki).

Getting paid is fine and dandy. What's false is that "without a business model", nobody would be "insane enough" to write books (or programs).

The conflation between doing a thing and getting paid for doing a thing -- or even worse, claiming that without monetary compensation said thing wouldn't exist -- is annoying and misleading.

The best software is usually already the one written by volunteers.

You mean written by people who are not professional software developers? I highly doubt that. Can you provide some examples?

I meant the best software is written without expectation of remuneration.

My impression was that most successful open source projects (Linux, Mozilla etc) are driven by paid contributors.

I'm sure you can find some examples, but depending on your opinion on what the "best software" is, I doubt most of it is developed by people working for free.

Being paid for writing is great. It's just that the paid writing is not all writing - some people write simply to be read, without needing or wanting to be paid for it.

Writing code is different, because it's a means of self-expression only in small part.

And you are using this as an argument why authors don't need income? Surely they didn't write anything after they starved, so it seem lack of income did affect the output.

Getting paid by publishers for writing books is a powerful motivator, but not the only one. In a world without a way to sell books, writers would still write.

I can agree with that. We have stuff like fan fiction which people write and share for free. I guess 50 Shades of Grey is the preeminent example of writing as a passion and as a calling rather than a professional skill.

There are authors whose main body of work was only published after their deaths and who are considered literary masters nonetheless, and not fanfiction writers.

All in all, I agree with a sibling comment: we must divorce the business of writing with the art of writing. They are related, of course, but the latter doesn't require the former. Once one understands this, one is less inclined to claim things such as "if writers don't get paid, books won't get written".

That is kind of the definition of professional though.

Writing, like any other skill, takes time and practice to master. If you can't dedicate yourself full time you will not reach your highest potential. And it requires some form of income to be able to dedicate yourself full time. Just like a professional pianist will be better than an amateur.

The second sentence here doesn't really follow from the first. I mean, assuming that only time and practice are needed for mastery, then practicing less-than-full-time only makes it correspondingly longer to reach mastery - it doesn't make it impossible, like you claim.

In reality, time and practice are not the only factors, though. You have to account for talent, which not only sets the upper bound on the quality of your writing, but also influences the rate of improvement with practice. It's not exactly unheard of for a debutant's work to be "way better than the latest work of established master X", isn't it? Talent is hard to capture and define, but it's a real thing, especially in the arts, although it also plays a part in trades and crafts (that's where the "10x programmers" and similar concepts come from...)

But you need an income to be able to write.

Yes, you need to be able to have a means of living in order to write. Selling your books is one such way, but not the only one. Lots of writers would still write without a business model.

That was my only point, really. It's false that one would have to be "insane" in order to write. We can argue about ifs and buts all day long, but that bit which I was replying to was hyperbolic and false.

"Painting. Sculpture. Composing. Singing. Acting. The playing of a musical instrument. Writing. Enough books have been written on these seven subjects alone to sink a fleet of luxury liners. And the only thing we seem to be able to agree upon about them is this: that those who practise these arts honestly would continue to practise them even if they were not paid for their efforts; even if their efforts were criticized or even reviled; even on pain of imprisonment or death."

He struck gold, of course, but note the sentiment he expressed. By his own admission, had he never been paid for it, he would have kept writing anyway, because that's what he does. And when he was starting he had other jobs -- and a family to support -- and really struggled with money, but kept going anyway.

Second, as has been mentioned to you in another comment, mastery is not directly related to having been paid for your art. There are acknowledged poets whose work was published posthumously. They didn't live off it.

(The quote was by Stephen King, by the way. Regardless of what you think about his literary skill, the man sure can speak about writing).

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/nov/24/arts.highe...

I don't think anyone suggested that. Society may be better off despite Glass never becoming a professional composer, though.

I meant that, while Glass not becoming a professional composer would have been bad by itself, it may be a reasonable loss compared to the advantages.

> Plenty of writers have been "insane enough" to write and publish without a business model for as long as written language has existed.

Only in the case of independently wealthy authors, which historically typically means nobility. Most non-wealthy authors have been depending on patronage, which means some other wealthy person decide what you write.

Copyright was revolutionary because it meant an author could exist without catering to rich or powerful patrons.

You're mistaking publishing for writing. You need money to publish, because publishing is selling decorated paper. Or rather, you did need money to publish. Now you don't, but instead we throw up artificial barriers in order to preserve the status quo.

Not only that. Plenty of struggling people write because they like writing. Writing is a calling which some people happen to be able to turn into a business.

But do note the post I was replying to. I wasn't arguing about copyright. I was arguing about the hyperbole of "no writer would be insane enough [...]" which is simply untrue. And it's untrue by a lot, not by a little.

Imagine if, the day they closed their doors for the pandemic, all the libraries figured that access to knowledge is still essential and the best way to keep loaning books is digitally. So the libraries mailed all their books to IA on loan, or maybe they digitized them themselves and loaned copies one-for-one to IA. IA would then have more than enough copies to lend out, one at a time per physical book like normal, to everyone who's needed them.

The books exist, they're just behind closed doors now.

The problem is that they skipped that part and just assumed both that

1) libraries would transfer ownership to them. I could see them getting away with this. Inter-library lending is common.

2) the number of copies in partner libraries equalled the number of copies taken out. This is a massive assumption.

The problem is, did the books actually exist in the quantities being lent? IA has no proof that they do and had not transferred the rights for them even if they did.

Had they asked for libraries to upload their locked in inventory, sign away the rights to the inventoried books, and limited lending to that number, they could credibly call it controlled digital lending.

Instead they threw away the "controlled" aspect.

IIUC that's not how this works, legally. The publishers have to prove damage; the defense isn't just automatically assumed to have injured the plaintiff. Even if IA has been proven to infringe, the judge can massively reduce awarded damages if they weren't actually hurt.

Furthermore, even if they didn't preregister, and they somehow cannot prove actual damages, it's still infringing conduct. They could, say, get a permanent injunction barring Internet Archive from operating their library program. This might actually be what they really want, moreso than money damages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._Thoma...

Did they publish stats how often their most popular books were borrowed?

Don't libraries know the books they own? That seems unlikely, since they need to know that when they lend them out.

Just reaching out to all the libraries and getting them to submit the data would take a lot of time.

Every library I’ve used in the states (from rural Georgia to Seattle metro) already has a digital lending system.

The IA merely allowed people to borrow books that exist in physical form with the convenience that modern digital technology allows.

[0]https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/publishers-should-be-m...

Publishers have been kinda OK with libraries because copies are physically separate and inconvenient, the copies get dirty, and it's a status symbol to own your own copy. If those restrictions went away (digital copies are convenient and fast, they never get dirty, and it's the exact same as ownership), they'd definitely lobby against it.

Pirate Bay is exactly like a local libruary which is like a book store. The only difference is physical books vs digital, if you have to give it back and when and the cost.

Book stores will let you violate the publishers copyright as long as you don't leave the store. Want to read that entire book, sit on a chair and read.

A libruary will let you read at the place or at home but you have to bring it back in a week.

Piratebay lets you read it forever but it's a digital copy.

All scenerios you can read without paying.

There’s a reason libraries will buy multiple copies of popular books.

That depends. Most of the time the store has the option of tearing off the cover and reporting it to the publisher as "destroyed unsold" for a refund. That applies no matter how many people may have read it while it was sitting on the shelf.

And why must the entire book be treated as a unit? I see no legal reason why a library could not cut off the binding and lend out chapters or individual pages from the book to patrons on demand, which would allow multiple patrons to read (different parts of) the same book simultaneously. You could easily have 20 or more people reading the same book without major conflicts if you can pass the pages around quickly enough.

It doesn't necessarily want to be written, though. That's the part people who make this argument always seem to forget.

Whether it's through our existing copyright-supported frameworks or some other mechanism, there needs to be enough in it for authors (and editors and cover illustrators and printers and online distribution services and...) to be worth producing the work in the first place.

I disagree about the "less books, more quality" argument. Today, we have more books, more quality. Sure, there are lots of bad books today, but the volume of high-quality works today so far exceeds the volume of any books (good or bad) produced during the patronage era that it's like comparing a nuclear bomb to a match.

None of whom got their money from exorting readers of their books.

What you have there is a argument for basic income, not a argument for copyright.

History is filled with many authors who died young and penniless because they could not survive on their writing during their lifetimes. And that's exactly the system you're arguing for.

> And [authors dying young and penniless]'s exactly the system you're arguing for.

Bullshit. Your system is the one that produces that (see also fanfiction authors, who I'm sure aren't true Scotsmen to you). As I said:

> > What you have there is a argument for basic income, not a argument for copyright.

My system is the system that has enabled hundreds of thousands of artists and other creators to survive on their own without needing publishers or other entities to sell their work for them and pay them a pittance.

Basic income is a separate discussion. It would mean that artists wouldn't die, but it would also mean that corporations would get to exploit artists worse than they ever have before.

You really need to think of the consequences of your suggestions before you suggest altering other people's livelihoods for your own momentary convenience.

Sure. But it was a long period of time, and the number of pretty nice books produced during that time was relatively low, and the number of people they reached was also relatively low.

I'm no fan of content farms and their clickbait ad-spam, but there is still plenty of content written for love around if you step away from sources like Facebook and Google. However, much of it isn't edited or illustrated to professional standards, or covering subjects comprehensively, or accompanied by exercises, or based on years of demanding research and fieldwork. Commercial support can provide these benefits in a way that most people writing purely for fun as a hobby can't or won't.

And that is because lack of copyright?

People still write at a loss in many cases

Copyright isn't a wall around information. Copyright doesn't prohibit anyone from taking the information in a book and presenting it in their own way. For example, you or anyone else can take a copyrighted book, extract the valuable information like mathematical equations and methods and data, write your own explanations of the information, make your own diagrams, write your own exercises for readers, and then publish it and sell it. Copyright won't stop you or anyone else from doing that, because copyright only protects expressions of ideas, not the ideas themselves.

Copyright absolutely does place a wall around certain kinds of information. The fact that a certain book consists of a particular arrangement of words is just as much information as the meaning behind the words.

The key point of their response was "physical copies of digitized books do not circulate" during the emergency the Public Libraries where close, thus legal physical copies where not circulating

IMO the publishers need to prove the Lending Library loaned more companies of each claimed work, than what was locked away in physical libraries that were closed. if they can do that (they cant) then they have a case, if not they should be tossed out of court

The Internet Archive suddenly gets the right to distribute books owned by a public library simply because the public library is closed? Who struck up that deal?

The publishers need only show that the Lending Library loaned more copies of each claimed work than what the Internet Archive owned and had the right to lend. That is sufficient to establish they engaged in uncontrolled digital lending, which is indistinguishable from piracy for all practical purposes.

Obviously IA might have closer ties to libraries than I do, but it's not clear to me what exactly happened that allowed them to loan a ton more.

I love IA, but their explanation for what exactly happened regarding loaning library books that were not circulating seemed to me come about ... only after the lawsuit phase started.

Their initial announcement seemed to be that there was an emergency and they were loaning out books because libraries (and schools) were closed... but that's not the same thing as an orchestrated digital lending deal that suddenly allowed them to loan a lot more than they had in the past.

A lot of explanations from IA seem to have been either poorly communicated, or sort of dance around this idea that they were doing digital lending properly... but without actually saying what they were doing...

No one was denied books. They were only slightly inconvenienced by not getting them for free.

Just because the library is closed doesn't mean you can run up the pirate flag. Piracy hurts artists.

If you don't believe that copying not approved by the publisher is just like kidnapping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word “piracy” to describe it. Neutral terms such as “unauthorized copying” (or “prohibited copying” for the situation where it is illegal) are available for use instead. Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as “sharing information with your neighbor.”

A US judge, presiding over a trial for copyright infringement, recognized that “piracy” and “theft” are smear words.

As an author, this will be yet another reason not to write books. The only people who will be able to afford to write will be the independently wealthy and the hobbyists.

It's sad to watch the IA descend into such anti-artist hatred. Copyright is like a union for writers. To see them become a copyright denialist is so sad.

That is what I really fear. Every book becomes a more subtle advertising piece.

Nothing is stopping people from releasing their passion projects to the world without strings attached.

Speaking of which... copyright is not a union for writers. A union is a union for writers. Copyright creates an artificial market for their output, but it largely does not dictate how they are paid, only that they must authorize copying and distribution of the work. There are plenty of extremely exploitative publishing agreements out there that copyright law has zero qualms about.