Technology
Which posts fit here?
Anything that is at least tangentially connected to the technology, social media platforms, informational technologies and tech policy.
Rules
1. English only
Title and associated content has to be in English.
2. Use original link
Post URL should be the original link to the article (even if paywalled) and archived copies left in the body. It allows avoiding duplicate posts when cross-posting.
3. Respectful communication
All communication has to be respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences.
4. Inclusivity
Everyone is welcome here regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
5. Ad hominem attacks
Any kind of personal attacks are expressly forbidden. If you can't argue your position without attacking a person's character, you already lost the argument.
6. Off-topic tangents
Stay on topic. Keep it relevant.
7. Instance rules may apply
If something is not covered by community rules, but are against lemmy.zip instance rules, they will be enforced.
Companion communities
[email protected]
[email protected]
Icon attribution | Banner attribution
view the rest of the comments
This is upsetting, but yet again this is ignoring the real reason they are being slammed and is misrepresenting things to try and support (the legitimately amazing) internet archive.
They willfully, intentionally, and very loudly broke the laws/agreements about how many copies of each book they could lend out simultaneously. I hope they win this. I hope more people become aware of this situation.
I also hope more coverage about this starts to be more honest and straightforward about why this is occurring.
You got downvoted by the hivemind because it’s unpopular, but you’re not wrong. IA flew in the face of existing copyright law by opening up their site to unlimited downloads. They knew the existing copyright law, because they had systems in place to comply. Then they intentionally disabled those systems, to blatantly violate existing copyright and licensing agreements. Pretty much everyone who understood copyright law went “uhh this is a horrible idea and you’re going to get sued so hard” but the IA forged ahead anyways.
Their entire argument has basically been “but we’re a library” and completely misses the fact that even public libraries need to comply with existing copyright and licensing laws. They can’t just allow unlimited downloads for ebooks; They purchase a specific number of licenses, can only lend out as many ebooks as they have licenses for, and then have to use time-locked DRM to ensure those rentals get automatically revoked when the check-out time is expired. All of this is well established, and IA used to comply with it fully. But again, they intentionally disabled those systems, which put them in violation of copyright law and their licensing agreements.
I love IA. I use it all the time. But they fucked around, and now they’re finding out that the large studded dildo of copyright violation lawsuits rarely arrives lubed.
I was super pissed at them when they made the move, as stuff like the wayback machine is far too important to risk by making unforced errors like this
Right? The US government was on there side and granted the Wayback machine a copyright exception. Apparently they let that go to the head.