Kevin,
No, I don't believe that filing suit against a violation of civil law is whining, it's what needs to be done to protect one's rights and also the larger set of rights we know as democracy and rule of law.
Calling it whining is a tried-and-failed strategy to belittle and insult those whose rights are being violated, that's all- and it fails again this time.
"Whining," "crying crocodile tears," such verbal constellations used to depict the other side as deserving to have their rights taken away... it's not a good time
to be doing this. Mocking those whose rights are being violated seems myopic.
The tech industry, with all of its billionaires seeking to further concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few, to reshape ideology, implement surveillance,
make all forms of communication technology-mediated for their own profit, to reduce regulations in order to accomplish this- along with its library/archive agents so eager to please for money and for a taste of that privilege, have perhaps taken this roadshow
to its logical conclusion.
The Internet Archive is not an archive, it is a digital piracy site that exists to serve the interests of the tech elite, it is brazenly looting all sorts of works.
Getting to Sandy's question, it's not just obscure orphan works, it's best sellers, works by large publishers and by niche publishers, new books recently published by people who work very hard to create those books only to see them stolen by a multi-millionaire
working toward greater profits for tech investors. As I pointed out earlier, he and his supporters all know that the National Emergency Library is unauthorized and uncontrolled, as copies can be made by anyone in the world and retained perpetually; and that
"digital lending" does not exist as a concept in the law. They have consistently produced misinformation about this.
It seems misplaced to be mocking civil law and individual rights at this time. Copyright is an individual right and a human right. I mildly caution you against
this, as it seems to me to be both untimely and unjust. Thank you.
Best,
Janice T. Pilch
Member of the Library Faculty
Rutgers University
From: "Smith, Kevin L" <
[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 13:10:39 +0000
If anyone is interested in reading it, here is a link to the complaint filed in the case.
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0.pdf
To me, there are two especially interesting features about this case. First, the complaint does not contain any extended argument about fair use. It asserts that IA is not making a fair use, and it states
that their use is not transformative, but it never actually analyzes the fair use factors. It is, in my opinion, more anger than argument.
The other remarkable feature is the timing of the lawsuit and its announcement. On the day that the Hennepin County Medical Examiner called the death of George Floyd a homicide, and at a time when our nation
is gripped with turmoil over systemic racism, whining about “disrespect for the copyright value chain” seems misplaced and myopic.
Kevin
Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D.
Dean of Libraries
University of Kansas
From: "Pilch, Janice T" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2020 19:59:11 +0000
People may be interested in knowing that this morning four publishers in the Association of American Publishers—Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John
Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House—filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Internet Archive in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Alleging "a profound disrespect for the value chain of copyright," the lawsuit concerns both the Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library and its Open Library and assert that the Internet Archive
"systematically produces bootleg digital copies of books and distributes them to the global public on a massive scale."
https://publishers.org/news/publishers-file-suit-against-internet-archive-for-systematic-mass-scanning-and-distribution-of-literary-works/
Eventually we can expect a determination of whether the Internet Archive's unauthorized
uncontrolled digital access under the label of "controlled digital lending" is "fair" or unfair.
My best,
Janice T. Pilch
Member of the Library Faculty
Rutgers University Libraries
[SNIP]