To some degree I think that with the increase in use of digital media there needs to better rights and methods for sharing like one can with physical media.<p>However, it's not fair use to copy material and redistribute it. Furthermore, the creator should be able to determine the format of the release of their work. If someone wants to alter their work, they must do so in a transformative manner and not pass it off as the creator's work.<p>Someone who makes a book with formatting specific to say a PDF, could be unfairly reviewed or judged by readers who borrowed distributed copies that are formatted to epub, for example.
Related Internet Archive blog response to the case: <a href="https://blog.archive.org/2024/09/04/internet-archive-responds-to-appellate-opinion/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.archive.org/2024/09/04/internet-archive-respond...</a>
Related discussion from earlier this month:<p><i>The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41447758">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41447758</a>
> Similar to a photocopy or resale of a book, the publisher and author were paid when their work was purchased or acquired. What do the big publishers want to come after next – used bookstores?<p>Do they not understand what <i>copy</i>right means? They are not allowed to make a _copy_ of a book without permission. Traditional libraries and bookstores do not do that... it is a very important distinction that they either seem completely oblivious to, or are intentionally playing dumb. Or they're somehow trying to get the actual definition of a "copy" changed.<p>Don't get me wrong, I'm all for IA and don't have anything against them... but in this case the court upholds that digital copies are still copies, and thus this is still copyright infringement.
> Controlled Digital Lending replicates the print lending process digitally in a way that respects copyright by maintaining this ratio.<p>Maintaining an owned-to-loaned ratio does not respect copyright.<p>The core concept of copyright is very simple: only you have the <i>right</i> to make <i>copies</i>. It doesn't matter if you destroy a copy beforehand, making the new copy is still illegal. Copyright is about permission, not equivalence, and you can't resell or loan out permission.<p>Or at least that's what the Second Circuit said when ReDigi was trying to sell used MP3s.<p>The thing is, the <i>true</i> core concept of copyright law is "whatever enables America's cultural empire to be cutthroat ruthless assholes that can devour other countries' competing cultural empires[0]". Free speech backed[1] by government-granted monopolies on that speech is the path it took to build such an empire, which is why copyright law <i>became</i> what it is today. The US government, in a sense, is perfectly willing to see its own library system grow increasingly irrelevant to curry favor with its domestic cultural industry.<p>The fact that said cultural industry is perfectly willing to censor itself to get market access in China probably means we've given them way too much free reign. China does not respect copyright. It doesn't respect freedom of speech, human rights, multiculturalism, feminism[2], gay rights[3], antiracism, or anything else the American people value, or even what the cultural industries themselves pretend to value. Hell, it doesn't even respect socialism[4].<p>Anyway, we should consider compulsory licensing. It's closer to respecting copyright than Controlled Digital Lending's lip service. Just have the government set a price to be paid by libraries for loaning out e-books, and let them manage their own services and e-book files.<p>[0] This is why, for example, Japanese media companies tend to be more litigious towards US fans than Japanese ones. Any author or publisher outside the US is at constant risk of cultural gentrification, and has fought tooth and nail just to gain a beachhead into US culture.<p>[1] To be clear I am NOT one of those "copyright backstops 1A" people, but the judicial system is full of judges who think it does<p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism_in_China#Arrest_of_Feminist_Five" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism_in_China#Arrest_of_Fe...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_rights_in_China#Censorship_of_LGBT_activism_and_content" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_rights_in_China#Censorsh...</a><p>[4] If labor unions are illegal, you're not socialist.