They really fucked up and it’s so heartwrenching watching it all happen. I was following the story since it started and I just can’t believe they allowed anyone to download copyrighted books without a limit in 2020, without asking anyone for permission or whether it’s legally viable. Everyone knew they were losing this, and they gave publishers a convincing reason to sue them. by crossing the “legally grey” area to literal piracy.
FWIW, OpenLibrary is a good source of book metadata at least, even if it fails its goal of letting people read books on it.
Unlimited free distribution of copyrighted media is something I’m all for, but that’s a really tall order in terms of political capital for getting the law changed, a few protests aren’t going to do it, basically every elected official would strongly oppose it, you’d have to replace them all first.
Full access to currently published copyrighted books was way too much. Even Google just showed snippets or showed abandonware books. They really should have settled.
They really fucked up and it’s so heartwrenching watching it all happen. I was following the story since it started and I just can’t believe they allowed anyone to download copyrighted books without a limit in 2020, without asking anyone for permission or whether it’s legally viable. Everyone knew they were losing this, and they gave publishers a convincing reason to sue them. by crossing the “legally grey” area to literal piracy.
FWIW, OpenLibrary is a good source of book metadata at least, even if it fails its goal of letting people read books on it.
If people were acting in mass civil disobedience in defense of IA doing the right thing, we could change the law.
Unlimited free distribution of copyrighted media is something I’m all for, but that’s a really tall order in terms of political capital for getting the law changed, a few protests aren’t going to do it, basically every elected official would strongly oppose it, you’d have to replace them all first.
Full access to currently published copyrighted books was way too much. Even Google just showed snippets or showed abandonware books. They really should have settled.