While we are deeply disappointed with the Second Circuit’s opinion in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the Internet Archive has decided not to pursue Supreme Court review. We will continue to honor the Association of American Publishers (AAP) agreement to remove books from lending at their member publishers’ requests.
We thank the many readers, authors and publishers who have stood with us throughout this fight. Together, we will continue to advocate for a future where libraries can purchase, own, lend and preserve digital books.
They fought well, but it was a case they couldn’t possibly win.
And shouldn’t have courted. More power to them, but this was the wrong hill to fight for.
I’m not sure why this was wrong to fight for.
Pretty much because they couldn’t possibly win and set a bad precedent by losing. It’s a worthy goal, but it wasn’t the right time or country.
I see IMSLP has been a regular supporter of the IA. They are somewhat of a Project Gutenburg but for public domain sheet music and recordings, and they are a great source for music students. I imagine they have deep interest in these results. Their comments really highlight some potential difficulties with determination of copyright that can cause digital libraries unnecessary problems.
I haven’t followed the case too much, as I suspected the big money side was going to win somehow, but sheet music publishing has always been contentious between those selling it and those providing it for free. Sheet music was and is targeted as a form of piracy by record companies and publishers. Even Nintendo gets in on the action.
If someone can make a buck off of it, they’ll beat you up for giving it away for free.
We agree that the court case sets a very ugly precedent for libraries like archive.org (and ours). Before you go banning and taking down tens of thousands of items in mad rush, please do seriously consider our comment made shortly before the attack that took you down for two weeks:
https://blog.archive.org/2024/09/21/lending-of-digitized-books/#comment-492068
When a publisher reprints something in 1975 that was originally published in 1885 it does not grant a new copyright on any pre-existing public-domain material. There are countless examples (many thousands) on this site of the type of thing mentioned in the above post. When a new edition of a public domain original is issued, the only thing covered by the copyright claim is the new material added which must be at least somewhat original in nature to qualify. This should be made clear in the copyright registration (though they sometimes fail to do so). It should not be solely for a new typeset (in the US and many countries) but only for new additions such as commentaries, annotations, illustrations, prefaces, afterwords and the like. If someone redacts the newly-added material the 1975 print is fine as its reduced to merely a new typesetting of the 1885 original (sometimes a publisher doesn’t even bother to produce a new typeset but literally reprints the old one) – thus with the identical content as the original.
IMSLP is of course a much smaller site in terms of the sheer number of items in our library. We’re highly specialized after all (music scores, for those who might not be familiar). We have a team dedicated to this kind of thing and we’re always busy at it. We know all about the various games played by publishers. Take a page from our book please. Archive.org has a lot of community goodwill and there are no doubt folks with time to volunteer and do some curating to redact only the kind of newly-added thing mentioned above. Hachette el al really don’t want a public domain. They just want to control everything – despite the fact that they’re clearly benefitting from things in the public domain – just take a look at this short list taken from your own list of “banned books” affected by the decision:
“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain (first published 1884-85) “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin (first published 1899) “An American Tragedy” by Theodore Dreiser (first published 1925) “Candide” by Voltaire (first published in 1759, also in English translation, again in English 1762) “The Decameron” by Giovanni Bocaccio (written ca.1353, published in English by 1620)
All five of the originals are public domain worldwide, even the two translated into English. Yet there they are on the list. Yes there are certainly derivative works which are very much under copyright – like Bernstein and Sondheim’s “West Side Story” – based on “Romeo and Juliet” but obviously recast, transformed and adapted in such a way that it’s a work on its own. That one won’t be showing up at IMSLP for quite some time for obvious reasons.
That being said, publishers have been known to put up “scarecrow notices” on plain old reprints containing nothing at all outside the original. In the US, these are technically illegal. With all the lawfare they’ve conducted over the decades, they’ve got countless folks gaslighted into thinking every claim made is a valid one. As the lyric of a famous song goes: “It ain’t necessarily so.”
Thank you, this is interesting to read. I also use ISMLP from time to time and can only imagine how valuable it is to actual musicians. Now, it is simply true that sheet music that is under copyright is, indeed, under copyright, but as ISMLP focuses on classical music it’s not such a big deal, as much of it is in public domain (many 20th century classics still aren’t, I believe, such as Stravinsky, Shostakovich…), at least the original old editions.
just take a look at this short list taken from your own list of “banned books” affected by the decision:
“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain (first published 1884-85) “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin (first published 1899) “An American Tragedy” by Theodore Dreiser (first published 1925) “Candide” by Voltaire (first published in 1759, also in English translation, again in English 1762) “The Decameron” by Giovanni Bocaccio (written ca.1353, published in English by 1620)
All five of the originals are public domain worldwide, even the two translated into English.
This part lacks important detail, though. The two translations are likely to be new ones, not from 17th/18th century, so they have new copyright too. The other two books may be under legitimate new copyright because of the supplementary materials or textological work. I talked about this with some people on reddit who I guess were knowledgeable about this, and basically when an editor works on a new edition they might introduce corrections to the text based on the manuscripts or some other version of the text (e.g. censored sections). This is work that should (I guess) also be copyrighted. Now, I haven’t gotten a completely satisfying answer about what really can be covered by this, because it can be difficult to explain whether mere modification of spelling of e.g. Shakespeare (original <walk’d> = modern <walked>) counts as copyrightable work, or does it require more extensive work (such as dealing with the textual variations in early Shakespeare editions, which are mind-boggling).
They go into more nuance in the comment they linked within the comment I shared which addresses their experience with some of the things you mention, where publishers will change/add things, and that new material changes the public domain status, but others will change minor details and and try to call it a new protected work.
I’ve seen many guitar tab sights get copyright noticed out of existence, but now playing piano and learning about IMSLP, they seem to be very above board and respectful of the law, so it’s interesting to hear of the challenges they face even in trying to comply with established rules.
Things like what IMSLP provide are at least as much educational and historical materials as they are entertainment, and I’m glad they’re trying to legally preserve it all. I’ll have to look more into their difficulties, it was very interesting reading these 2 posts and their content is very much of interest to me.
They should spin off an independent organization hosted somewhere overseas with different laws (or on the dark web) to archive stuff like this.
Wasn’t the problem that Internet Archive lend more digital copies at the same time, as they had physical representations? I know this was the big topic. Probably the reason why the publishers could push this hard. So I’m a bit surprised that they have to “remove” all requested books. Are they not allowed to lend at max one digital copy for each physical copy they have?
Originally that was indeed what the lawsuit was about, but the publishers went further with their demands.
