Hacker News Reader

Comment by kleiba | Hacker News Reader

The OP is referring to the ongoing legal struggles the IA is facing wrt. to their version of an online library (with digital book lending).

View on HN

Precisely. To be clear, I don't agree with a comment upthread saying the "shoutout" is what might potentially do harm to the IA in court. I think the actual act of having scraped all those books from the IA's lending system could potentially do harm to the IA in court. The publishers can now point to all the copies of the books in the wild that IA had in their lending system and argue that IA's system is not legally acceptable. It was on shaky enough ground already.

I believe this was already brought up in the court proceedings, and Brewster Kahle already addressed it in April 2024: «Trying to blow protections we have put on files, for instance, does not help us– and usually hurts».

https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1bswhdj/commen...

IA lending books with "weak" DRM also hurts efforts in reducing DRM and reforming copyright though and that is much more important in the long term. It was always a deal with the devil that IA should have never made and them now being at odds with others that preserve those books and actually make them available only makes that more clear.

It's like a food kitchen under a tyrannical regime complaining that people passing their food to rebels might get them shut down.

The shout-out is evidence of the act.

Oh, ok. Thanks, I agree

Reply on news.ycombinator.com