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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.

[-] FatCrab@lemmy.one 10 points 1 year ago

Even assuming that is a viable application of sovereign immunity, which I am not at all convinced, at a minimum you've described a very strong due process violation. No, libraries cannot just arbitrarily infringe copyrights.

[-] NateNate60@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

The applicable Supreme Court precedent here is Allen v. Cooper. The State of North Carolina published all pictures of a shipwreck within its custody on its website as "public record" and the photography firm that owned the copyright sued. The Supreme Court ruled that Congress cannot abrogate a state's sovereign immunity under its Article I legislative powers and thus ruled in favour of the state.

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this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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