[deleted] t1_jdxsjjy wrote on March 27, 2023 at 11:41 PM

Pretty much the outcome I expected. It's hard to argue copyright law as written wasn't firmly on the side of the publishers, especially once internet archive moved away from distributing the works digitally on a strict 1:1 basis with a physical copy.

(and before anyone says it, I'm not taking the publishers' side here, but the law is the law.)

CocodaMonkey t1_jdyosqh wrote on March 28, 2023 at 3:46 AM

It's not that hard to argue it was legal. The IA had some pretty solid arguments backed by some fairly well known copyright lawyers. If you read the break down of the case and all the precedent the IA cited and the judge ignored to come to his ruling I think you'd be a bit surprised.

It's not really shocking that the IA lost but that the judge ruled so firmly against them and rejected almost every argument they made in full was a surprise. The appeal will be interesting as he certainly gave the AI plenty they can cite for why his ruling was incorrect.

[deleted] t1_jdyqtip wrote on March 28, 2023 at 4:05 AM

FWIW I have read through the case extensively. I'm no legal expert, but it seems to me that IA's case was largely based on arguments about how copyright should work rather than how it does work.

CocodaMonkey t1_jdyrhf1 wrote on March 28, 2023 at 4:12 AM

No, not really correct. It was more like IA's arguement was based on multiple former cases being true rather than any one case being an exact match for what they did. For example they argued they can make digital copies of books and cited the Supreme Court case about video taping TV shows. The supreme court ruled copying TV shows was legal where as in this case the judge ruled copying books into a digital format was illegal.

The important thing to note here is this isn't even getting into the issue of the IA sharing books it digitized. That part was just about the act of copying them into a digital format in the first place.

It was honestly a surprising ruling because of how completely he ruled against the IA. The end result could have ultimately been the same even if he agreed with the IA on some points but he didn't which was a real surprise.