xuxebikoInternet Archive's digital library has been found in breach of copyright. The decision has some important implications
The legal ruling against the Internet Archive has come down in favour of the rights of authors.
srasmusI hope all the writers who support this lawsuit understand that they are contributing to a long standing effort to outlaw libraries in general. Nobody makes direct money off of sharing things. Get ready for DRM involved in every single thing that you do.
Listen, I love libraries as much as the next person. We have very clear laws that protect libraries.
Is copyright a little fucked and a little too slanted towards those rights holders? Yes.
Did anyone really think it was OK to start adding books and movies in? And provide those for free to everyone simultaneously? Libraries don’t do that.
Libraries can do that. Okay, technically, it’s illegal, but under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, since libraries are run by political subdivisions of US states, they can’t be sued with the state’s permission which means that a state government can literally not allow the library to be sued for copyright infringement and then they’d get away with it.
The trade-off is that this probably permanently burns all bridges between the library and publishers, who would likely not want to deal with the library any more.
Copyright is federal bub. They get sued in federal court.
Yes, it is federal. Congress can’t abrogate a state’s sovereign immunity to make them liable under copyright law (Allen v. Cooper). In fact, they tried and it was deemed unconstitutional (). States can’t be sued in federal court without their permission (Amendment XI).