[ih] on the high seas, was Victorian Internet, was Early Internet history

[John Levine]

In article <CAM9VJk34+EvmCjttCsirfEjoCq_QK+L=-sNjND=LG8+b661uXQ at mail.gmail.com> you write:

>If you actually follow the link, this is a technologicly-enabled lending
>library. One just "borrows", one doesn't pirate, which is something that,
>as I understand it, involves plunder on the high seas.

The Archive ships containerloads of books to China to be scanned, then
lends out the scans.  They assert that's equivalent to lending out the
physical books.  They keep the books, which are shipped back to the US
in containers stacked up somewhere in San Francisco.  

That is a highly dubious assertion.  US copyright law in 17 USC 108(c)
allows libraries to lend copies if the original "is damaged,
deteriorating, lost, or stolen, or if the existing format in which the
work is stored has become obsolete" and they can't find a replacement.
The law defines obsolete to mean that one can't reasonably get the
device needed to read it.  Eight-track tapes and microfiche, sure,
paper books, no.

R's,
John

PS: My union is looking for a test case.

>On Sat, Jul 7, 2018 at 11:31 PM, Miles Fidelman <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>
>wrote:
>
>> But Richard,  "Information wants to be free!" :-)
>>
>> On 7/7/18 6:06 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:
>>
>> Please don’t promote piracy.
>>
>> On Jul 7, 2018, at 6:36 PM, John Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:
>>
>> In article <20180707231214.8E2F028FD154 at ary.qy> you write:
>>
>> Or you can take it out of the library.  If you live in NYC, the library has
>> six copies.
>>
>> If you don't mind taking out a pirate scan, the Internet Archive has a
>> scanned copy, too.