It makes me incredibly sad to see the Internet Archive continue to argue that a DRM system (which is what controlled digital lending is) is a liberatory technology whose usage should be expanded. Libraries should stop lighting money on fire buying expensive short-lived licenses from publishers, and start referring patrons to LibGen, Anna's Archive, Sci-Hub, etc.
That's not a legal argument; you're arguing that crime should be officially encouraged by libraries and the Internet Archive. That's essentially an argument that they should commit suicide in protest of the entire idea of copyright.
I'm not saying that speciously. If it's fine that they encourage the public to go to shadow libraries, there's no need for the public to go to shadow libraries; because they've then become de facto legal and the libraries might as well distribute the material directly (or aid with access and provide resources for the shadow libraries.) If it's not fine that they encourage the public to go to shadow libraries, when they do it they've called their own distribution of copyrighted materials into question by implying that they do the same thing as shadow libraries.
DRM is an overlay over copyright which gives copyright owners some security that they'll be able to hold on to most of the distribution of what they own. It's really a pretense, because you can have DRM without copyright. DRM is just a weak, autonomous enforcement layer being bolted on. That pretense is the only thing that's keeping IA online at this point. Otherwise, there would be no excuse to allow their distribution of copyrighted works at all.
If you want to fight copyright, fight it directly, don't gamble the IA for it. The giant multinational companies that own the vast majority of copyrights are begging you to stake the entire IA on such a sucker bet.
It's not a crime to inform patrons of the existence of shadow libraries.
> That pretense is the only thing that's keeping IA online at this point. Otherwise, there would be no excuse to allow their distribution of copyrighted works at all.
> If you want to fight copyright, fight it directly, don't gamble the IA for it.
I agree with you. There is no (legal) excuse for the National Emergency Library, digital lending DRM is just a pretense, and they shouldn't have gambled the Archive on it. The battle will be won by shadow libraries, who by their extra-legal nature are better equipped to fight copyright directly.
> It's not a crime to inform patrons of the existence of shadow libraries.
That is indeed a crime: "promotion and incentivisation of crime", one of the major ways of starting an organised crime in fact. Do you want IA to be declared a criminal organisation?
This is a huge stretch. If I go to my local library, I can take a book off the shelves, walk over to the photocopier, deposit some coins, and make a copy. Is that promotion and incentivization of (and profiteering from) copyright infringement? I can check out a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook, or any number of other books that detail and arguably glorify crime of various forms. Is that promotion and incentivization of crime?
Libraries are repositories of information, including "forbidden" information.
> It's really a pretense, because you can have DRM without copyright. DRM is just a weak, autonomous enforcement layer being bolted on. That pretense is the only thing that's keeping IA online at this point. Otherwise, there would be no excuse to allow their distribution of copyrighted works at all.
Well sure there is, because it also works the other way around. You can have copyright without DRM, and enforce it not via some weak and easily bypassed technological fig leaf but with the full force of the government. A patron who makes a permanent copy even though they've claimed and agreed to have destroyed their temporary one would be liable for copyright infringement. There is no reason the law couldn't still prohibit that while allowing temporary lending.
Copyright holders would have no more or less trouble enforcing this than they do any other infringing copying that happens in private, like when the user downloads the same book from a shadow library in a foreign country. The difference is that the local library has paid the copyright holder for an official copy, implying that they haven't done anything wrong, and neither have any patrons who don't illicitly retain a copy. Why should people doing nothing wrong have any liability?
