<story><title>Tell HN: Internet Archive is facing a Big 4 Publishers lawsuit</title><text>Not sure why this isn&amp;#x27;t more prominently highlighted, but this is a very culturally significant project and a custodian of a tremendous amount of Internet and WWW-oriented history. I would imagine HN would put this at the forefront of the discussions happening here.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not affiliated, but I am a concerned netizen. All of us here have benefited from The IA. Please help raise awareness as to what is happening.&lt;p&gt;Read more here, and elsewhere - https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wsws.org&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;14&amp;#x2F;cucd-j14.html&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; In June 2020, four major publishers—John Wiley &amp;amp; Sons and three of the big five US publishers, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins and Penguin Random House—filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive, claiming the non-profit organization, “is engaged in willful mass copyright infringement.”&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The lawsuit stems from the corporate publishers response to an innovative temporary initiative launched by the Internet Archive during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic called the National Emergency Library. Given the impact of the public health emergency, the Internet Archive decided to ease its book lending restrictions and allow multiple people to check out the same digital copy of a book at once.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Up to that point, the Internet Archive had established a practice of purchasing copies of printed books, digitizing them and lending them to borrowers one at a time. When it kicked-off the emergency lending program, the Internet Archive made it clear that this policy would be in effect until the end of the pandemic. Furthermore, the archive’s publishers said that this program was in response to library doors being closed to the public during the pandemic. Under conditions where the Internet Archive was the only means of access to titles for many people, the policy was justified and a creative response to COVID-19.</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>gojomo</author><text>Some people here say they like the Internet Archive, and resent copyright maximalism, but wish IA would be more legally conservative around copyright law: &amp;quot;follow the law!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;ask permission!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;work through other libraries!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;They may not understand that none of what they like about the Internet Archive would&amp;#x27;ve been possible without a bold willingness to probe the boundaries of copyright law.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;d asked any mainstream copyright law authority in the 1990s, they&amp;#x27;d have likely said the entire Wayback Machine was illegal under the letter-of-the-law, and advised against even trying it. &amp;quot;Reckless!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Only by IA actually doing it – &amp;amp; demonstrating the indispensibility of such a historical record to academics, policymakers, culture, &amp;amp; the courts – were people&amp;#x27;s mental models gradually upgraded. Now, even with little change to statutory law, most see that the &lt;i&gt;best&lt;/i&gt; interpretation of the various traditional categories, exceptions, &amp;amp; affordances of copyright law is the one that finds legal space for a Wayback Machine.&lt;p&gt;Bulk-scanning books-still-in-copyright, even for private preservation&amp;#x2F;use? Was legally iffy when Google &amp;amp; IA started doing it; now better recognized as legitimate.&lt;p&gt;Accepting user&amp;#x2F;collector uploads of live concerts? Storing, serving, &amp;amp; providing emulated environments for old still-in-copyright retail PC&amp;#x2F;game&amp;#x2F;arcade software? Bulk-archiving &amp;amp; replaying TV news broadcasts? All iffy when IA started doing them, becoming accepted as reasonable over time by the demonstration-of-utility.&lt;p&gt;An Internet Archive that waited for legal clarity before starting such projects would still be waiting today – and we&amp;#x27;d have neither the valuable projects, nor the accumulated experience&amp;#x2F;clarity, from the actual doing, about what is reasonable &amp;amp; beneficial.</text></comment>
<story><title>Tell HN: Internet Archive is facing a Big 4 Publishers lawsuit</title><text>Not sure why this isn&amp;#x27;t more prominently highlighted, but this is a very culturally significant project and a custodian of a tremendous amount of Internet and WWW-oriented history. I would imagine HN would put this at the forefront of the discussions happening here.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not affiliated, but I am a concerned netizen. All of us here have benefited from The IA. Please help raise awareness as to what is happening.&lt;p&gt;Read more here, and elsewhere - https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wsws.org&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;14&amp;#x2F;cucd-j14.html&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; In June 2020, four major publishers—John Wiley &amp;amp; Sons and three of the big five US publishers, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins and Penguin Random House—filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive, claiming the non-profit organization, “is engaged in willful mass copyright infringement.”&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The lawsuit stems from the corporate publishers response to an innovative temporary initiative launched by the Internet Archive during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic called the National Emergency Library. Given the impact of the public health emergency, the Internet Archive decided to ease its book lending restrictions and allow multiple people to check out the same digital copy of a book at once.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Up to that point, the Internet Archive had established a practice of purchasing copies of printed books, digitizing them and lending them to borrowers one at a time. When it kicked-off the emergency lending program, the Internet Archive made it clear that this policy would be in effect until the end of the pandemic. Furthermore, the archive’s publishers said that this program was in response to library doors being closed to the public during the pandemic. Under conditions where the Internet Archive was the only means of access to titles for many people, the policy was justified and a creative response to COVID-19.</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>capableweb</author><text>I love the Internet Archive and frequently donate to them (2 times so far this year).&lt;p&gt;What I&amp;#x27;d love to see improved is the ability to be less &amp;quot;fragile&amp;quot;. Currently it&amp;#x27;s all located in the US and they have a huge focus on the US, both technically and politically.&lt;p&gt;But why not try to replicate it all over the world? There seems to have been some smaller efforts inside the Internet Archive to make it more decentralized, but it feels like it should be a much bigger focus on it.</text></comment>