A lawsuit
Now that we’ve recovered from our illnesses, Samuel has started throwing up. We hope it’s just a little food poisoning. He did get into some woefully expired milk. …
We are teaching him to throw up in a bucket and not on the furniture or the floor.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Four big publishers – Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House – have sued the Internet Archive. Today, a court ruled in their favor.
I’m not competent to evaluate this case. For all I know, this ruling is legally correct.
But I’ll say this.
I’ve found the Internet Archive to be extremely useful. As I pursue my non-lucrative – but, I hope, not entirely worthless – personal projects, I tend to study several sources at the same time. The public library system can’t or won’t lend me the kinds of sources that I use – not all at once, and certainly not on less than four weeks’ notice. Nor do I have convenient access to university library materials.
As readers of this blog know, I buy as many books as I can – often, books issued by these same publishers. But that doesn’t quite meet my needs, either.
Indeed, I regularly buy books because I’ve been able to preview them via the Internet Archive. For me, this website is a reference tool – a pit-stop on the way to other reading, not an ultimate reading destination.
My point is that for an ordinary bloke like me, certain extremely meaningful projects would become much more difficult, and maybe even impossible, without some free service like the Internet Archive. If what this organization does is illegal … well, then, we oughta try really hard to figure out some way for the same thing to be done legally.
We are teaching him to throw up in a bucket and not on the furniture or the floor.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Four big publishers – Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House – have sued the Internet Archive. Today, a court ruled in their favor.
I’m not competent to evaluate this case. For all I know, this ruling is legally correct.
But I’ll say this.
I’ve found the Internet Archive to be extremely useful. As I pursue my non-lucrative – but, I hope, not entirely worthless – personal projects, I tend to study several sources at the same time. The public library system can’t or won’t lend me the kinds of sources that I use – not all at once, and certainly not on less than four weeks’ notice. Nor do I have convenient access to university library materials.
As readers of this blog know, I buy as many books as I can – often, books issued by these same publishers. But that doesn’t quite meet my needs, either.
Indeed, I regularly buy books because I’ve been able to preview them via the Internet Archive. For me, this website is a reference tool – a pit-stop on the way to other reading, not an ultimate reading destination.
My point is that for an ordinary bloke like me, certain extremely meaningful projects would become much more difficult, and maybe even impossible, without some free service like the Internet Archive. If what this organization does is illegal … well, then, we oughta try really hard to figure out some way for the same thing to be done legally.