Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Legality, COVID “Emergency Library,” and IA’s Strategy

  • Many argue IA’s COVID-era “emergency library” (unlimited concurrent loans) was an obvious overreach that “poked the bear” and triggered the lawsuit.
  • Others stress the lawsuit formally targeted all of IA’s controlled digital lending (CDL), not just the emergency period.
  • Court granted summary judgment against IA; several commenters see this as proof their legal theory was weak and poorly executed.
  • Criticism that IA leadership gambled the whole archive on an activist move instead of isolating the legal risk.
  • A minority defend IA’s actions as necessary civil disobedience in a broken copyright regime.

Controlled Digital Lending vs. Copyright Law

  • CDL advocates: if a library owns a physical copy, it should be allowed to lend one managed digital scan at a time (1:1 “owned-to-loaned”).
  • Court held the scanning + delivery itself is “copying” requiring permission; the 1:1 constraint was deemed irrelevant.
  • Some note IA’s own records under discovery showed they weren’t even perfectly enforcing 1:1.
  • Analogies raised (and mostly rejected legally) to “renting DVDs and streaming them one-at-a-time” services that courts shut down.

Critiques of Copyright Duration and Scope

  • Broad agreement that copyright terms are far too long (life + 70 in practice).
  • Proposals: fixed 10–25 year terms; “use it or lose it”; mandatory renewal fees; automatic public domain at death; shorter terms for software.
  • Strong support for freeing out-of-print / commercially unavailable works; debate over whether authors’ families should keep rights.
  • Comparisons with trademarks (“use it or lose it”), patents, and copyleft licenses (GPL) as alternative incentive structures.

Publishers, Authors, and Libraries

  • Many view publishers as rent-seeking gatekeepers exploiting DRM and expensive e‑book licenses that drain library budgets.
  • Others push back, highlighting the value of editors, typesetters, and the need for revenue in a high-risk book market.
  • Libraries’ traditional first-sale rights vs. tightly controlled digital lending seen as a core conflict; fear that “digital libraries” will be effectively illegal.

Access, Piracy, and Shadow Libraries

  • Strong sentiment that restricting easily shareable knowledge is socially harmful, especially for old, niche, and technical books.
  • IA’s scans are often unique mid‑20th‑century works not well covered by LibGen; removal is a real loss for researchers and students.
  • Many predict users will shift to LibGen, Anna’s Archive, IPFS, and torrents; some openly encourage seeding as a form of resistance.

Normative and Political Debates

  • Long subthreads on whether information should be treated like property at all; emphasis on non-rivalrous nature of digital goods.
  • Arguments range from “abolish copyright” to “fix it modestly”; concerns about communism vs. capitalism, UBI, state subsidies, and long-term societal incentives.