The article describes the publisher lawsuit demanding an end to controlled digital lending (CDL) as "fundamentally changing what it means to own a book" because that's what free culture people say about everything You can agree with it if you like but it's nothing new
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This lawsuit, in and of itself, does not "fundamentally change what it means to own a book" If you believe that change happened, it happened the first time ebooks came out with DRM
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I think the really annoying thing about this whole angry mob thing going on right now is people who obviously don't have a very clear idea what they're mad about getting even madder than that because of it
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"The end of controlled digital lending will inaugurate a dark new Orwellian future!"... By which you mean take things back to where they were in the ebook world before 2011, when the Internet Archive invented controlled digital lending?
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"The lawsuit wants to make it illegal to scan books AT ALL for ANY REASON" The complaint very obviously does not say that, it negatively contrasts what IA does with what Google Books and Hathi do in order to make its case
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The Nation article bases its whole apocalyptic tone on the fact that the complaint uses the phrase "illegally scanned" at one point Like come the fuck on
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Bustillos couldn't be more clearly doing the thing where you just reignite old drama by restating old news as breaking news
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Anyway the most sensible apocalyptic argument in the article is also the most speculative one No one actually believes paper books are going to start coming out with content locks on them where the book sets itself on fire after six weeks or whatever
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The article argues that as everything gets more digitized, paper books are on their way out entirely, and ebooks are the future, and therefore you might just never own a book in digital file form again and might rely on "Spotify for books" etc etc
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I agree that that is scary So is the opposite scenario, where because physical books just don't exist anymore, access control of anything doesn't exist anymore Anything that gets the least bit popular instantly becomes a freely shared PDF, all payment for writing is voluntary
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Either way, if that scenario happens, the "controlled digital lending" concept becomes a joke, it's unsustainable, it's a silly fiction If they stop printing physical books then your whole "I should be able to do anything I want with scans of a physical book" doctrine fails
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It's *already* pretty silly that IA claims to have like 100 copies of the same book locked up forever in a shipping container never to be touched again, to justify lending 100 copies of the same file Are they gonna keep printing books to put into crates in the Brave New World
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People are so mad over this because the basis of CDL is kind of obviously a bullshit stepping stone to what they actually want Like it's so obvious Brewster Kahle just doesn't like copyright period and he thinks a world where everything is free and authors work for tips is ideal
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The free culture side obviously wants this, it's their stated goal to just end copyright, period, people openly say it to your face constantly So yes it is frustrating trying to argue about the legal status quo of something like CDL and pretend we're not talking about that
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My position is a broadly "pro-copyright" position - I'm flexible on a lot of details but I think the idea of copyright is in and of itself a moral good and worth defending Which is a totally middle of the road position in the real world and on Twitter makes you a Nazi monster
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But as a result I'm really, really certain that the Internet Archive obviously also has as its goal "changing the fundamental definition of owning a book" At least from what most ordinary people think it is, never mind tendentious arguments about the pre-copyrjght golden age
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*Everyone* wants to "change the definition of owning a book" because in the digital era that idea doesn't *have* a definition because everything about it fundamentally works differently That's the whole point
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End of conversation
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