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submitted 1 year ago by xuxebiko@kbin.social to c/world@lemmy.world

The legal ruling against the Internet Archive has come down in favour of the rights of authors.

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[-] stevehobbes@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

Listen, I love libraries as much as the next person. We have very clear laws that protect libraries.

Is copyright a little fucked and a little too slanted towards those rights holders? Yes.

Did anyone really think it was OK to start adding books and movies in? And provide those for free to everyone simultaneously? Libraries don’t do that.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.ml 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Libraries can do that. Okay, technically, it's illegal, but under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, since US libraries are run by political subdivisions of US states, they can't be sued with the state's permission which means that a state government can literally not allow the library to be sued for copyright infringement and then they'd get away with it.

The trade-off is that this probably permanently burns all bridges between the library and publishers, who would likely not want to deal with the library any more.

Edit: The controlling US Supreme Court precedent is Allen v. Cooper. The State of North Carolina published a bunch of shipwreck photos. The copyright owner of those photos sued claiming copyright infringement. The Supreme Court ruled in favour of the state saying Congress can't abrogate a state's Amendment XI sovereign immunity using copyright law as a pretext, thus the photography firm needs the State's permission to sue it in federal court.

[-] stevehobbes@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Copyright is federal bub. They get sued in federal court. Or the FBI shows up and takes all their servers.

The congress could choose to alter copyright laws of course to make this legal. But they can’t just do it. And states definitely can’t.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes, it is federal. Congress can't abrogate a state's sovereign immunity to make them liable under copyright law. In fact, they tried and it was deemed unconstitutional (Allen v. Cooper). States can't be sued in federal court without their permission (Amendment XI).

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this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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