[n9]

This is not simply a legal issue. As an author of books myself I have very little problem with libraries and online lending and I feel there is mutual benefit. I do not feel the same way about the way that IA is hosting commercial titles, which hews very close to ZLibrary, which I do not think is beneficial for all of us in the long term as it disincentivizes the production of books even if it makes things available to more people in the near term. We might disagree about that but my belief is pretty set.

Regarding legality, the media company battle re: DVD-CSS is quite different in quite a number of ways such that it doesn't simply apply here. That said, I'm not making a legal argument -- I am advocating for a system that makes sense to authors (whom we rely on to write the things that we value) and the greater good.

[timschmidt]

I suppose you could lobby Adobe to build stronger DRM. People will just break it again. There is no apparent technical solution to perfectly prevent users who can read the content from copying the content. Legal solutions are what you get.

[n9]

The technical solution in this case is to not allow the ADE files to be downloaded -- they are not even available in the IA GUI -- there is a well-known backdoor that to my eye isn't needed to support any of the available features on the site.

Just to rephrase for clarity: the way that pretty much every college student that I know downloads many, many books from the archive is via an undocumented route on the website that isn't needed for the site's published borrowing functionality to work.

If you look here: https://archive.org/details/lexicographyoedp0000unse you will see that downloading is not supported.

Yet if click "Borrow" and then you hit this URL while logged in: https://archive.org/services/loans/loan/?action=media_url&id...

You will download a ADE stub file that is trivially deDRM'd.

IA's "solution" to a previous issue with publishers was to remove this functionality from their site. They pulled the links in the UI but not the functionality... I don't think they operate in good faith.

But... far be it from me to expect any dialogue where to be anything but creator hostile. To my mind that is very much short term thinking. We need to make sure creators are paid for their work because we want them to keep creating -- and for others to also create. Just because things are legal doesn/t make them right and/or for the greater good.

[timschmidt]

Right-clicking on that page and selecting "inspect" (or running the web session through a transparent proxy and inspecting the traffic in transit) seems to allow me to pull out individual pages of the book through the API calls used by the web reader. If they DRM'd the individual images it wouldn't be much more challenging. Every person will draw the line in a different place, and that is why the legal system exists.

Again, if you're allowing someone to view something, there is always a way to copy it. DRM and the legal frameworks around it (which we both seem to agree that IA has applied here) are the best available deterrent to copying.

The only way to be sure something will never be copied against your will is to never distribute it to anyone.

[n9]

the logical conclusion here is that generation of reproducible content for profit or even for sustenance is innately impossible. this is neither true not desirable. enjoy pedantism on the internet!

[timschmidt]

Plenty of evidence to the contrary. Somehow I and everyone involved in all of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_Creative_Commons... manage to put food on the table. If your business plan requires enforcing impossibilities on the entirety of humanity, maybe consider reworking it before giving up?

[shkkmo]

Ebook DRM is easily removable, regardless of it it comes from IA, Overdrive or Amazon itself. If you're gonna be internally consistent you have to admit that you DON'T support digital lending and by extension, don't support libraries having a place in the future.

[n9]

wow. just so, so many things that I didn't say and do not believe. Amazon fixed their DRM issues to a great extent and the gap is narrowing, Apple's Book DRM is currently unbroken, Overdrive's DRM bypass is only available via legacy versions of the app last I checked, etc.

You are the one that is asserting that 1. All DRM is inherently bypassable, which is simply not at all true. and 2. That anyone pushing for improvement is against lending, which is not true. This is what YOU are saying, not me. I am simply saying that if the IA wants to keep going (and I would like them to) they might close an unused http route. That is LITERALLY all I am asserting. Good lord, why even bother?