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Comment by mostlysimilar | Hacker News Reader

What are the worst consequences of losing the appeal? Could this put the Internet Archive out of business or seriously impact its ability to operate?

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This lawsuit is only about 127 books they were pirating, which at the statutory $150,000 damages for willful infringement would be $19 million, barring any punitive damages. That's most of their revenue for a year, and several years' net income: https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/943242767_202112_990_...

The real risk is what other lawsuits this might bring on. Given the Internet Archive was doing the same thing with 1.4 million other books, they could potentially be liable for billions of dollars if everyone jumped on this.

How likely is it that a "Internet Archive v2 foundation" will be founded, "partner" with the Internet Archive, rescue all the content, and the IA v1 is allowed to go bankrupt?

Because I surely won't donate money just to fund greedy copyright holders, but I'd be happy to fund The Archive.

I think that's illegal, something like a phoenix company[0]?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_company

It sounds like those are legal in many cases, and I'd expect that it becomes easier when it's all nonprofits.

I have no idea how a not-for-profit bankruptcy would even work, but yeah, I definitely expect the Internet Archive will continue in some form regardless of what happens.

I feel that if they lose, they'll be nearing death's door as it would open up to even more lawsuits (they're already fighting the record labels) and I won't be surprised if various other industries such as the gaming industry would file one next.

More here in this essay: https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1bswhdj/if_the...

Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39908676

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