You are correct: the ruling simply affirms the plaintiff’s claim against IA.

Any out-of-copyright and non-copyright items, as well as items with permissive terms (e.g., Creative Commons licenses) will still be available on IA. Previously, the plaintiff Hachette offered a deal that IA rejected, in which IA would be allowed to make digital copies of Hachette texts that are either out-of-print titles, or titles for which digital copies have never been produced.

Right now, it’s up to Hachette and the other publishers affected in the case whether that offer is still available.

edited: hyphens.

I definitely don’t like the obnoxious copyright system in the USA, but what the IA did seems obviously wrong.

The publisher-plaintiffs did not prove the “obvious wrong” in this case, however US-based courts have a curious standard when it comes to the application of Fair Use doctrine. This case ultimately rested on the fourth, most significantly-weighted Fair Use standard in US-based courts: whether IA’s digital lending harmed publisher sales during the 3-month period of unlimited digital lending.

Unfortunately, when it comes to this standard, the publisher-plaintiffs are not required to prove harm, rather only assert that harm has occurred. If they were required to prove harm they’d have to reveal sales figures for the 27 works under consideration–publishers will do anything to conceal this information and US-based courts defer to them. Therefore, IA was required to prove a negative claim–that digital lending did not hurt sales–without access to the empirical data (which in other legal contexts is shared during the discovery phase) required to prove this claim. IA offered the next best argument (see pp. 44-62 of the case document to check for yourself), but the data was deemed insufficient by the court.

In other words, on the most important test of Fair Use doctrine, which this entire case ultimately pivoted upon, IA was expected to defend itself with one arm tied behind its back. That’s not ‘fair’ and the publishers did not prove ‘obvious’ harm, but the US-based courts are increasingly uninterested in these things.

edited: page numbers on linked court document.

Here you go:

• https://ia801600.us.archive.org/23/items/future-ruins-hwln-04-031/HWLN-04-031-i.JPG
• https://ia801600.us.archive.org/23/items/future-ruins-hwln-04-031/HWLN-04-031-ii.JPG

What an experience!

The F-22 impressed us. In this photo, it is flying over the lake, which when compared to objects in the foreground shows how big it is. In the second photo, it flew vertically upward, was suspended for a moment to light off two flares, and briefly dropped line a stone before pulling out again. Dramatic stuff. These redditors have a bit more context on the significance of it flying here.

We were inspired by your recent photos. We’ll post more.

“In my view, a lot of the general associations we have with drinking in public are negative, like drunkenness in public, drinking and driving, like drunken hoodlums, all of these things — which make the news, but aren’t necessarily the only way people consume alcohol in public.”

Dr. Malleck quoted here gets close to the source of the problem, which is classism.

Most mayors, city councilors, etc. are doing well financially and they own their own houses (as well as cottages, investment properties, etc.), so the idea of going to a public park to drink outside with friends seems unusual to them. They view public parks as community spaces, but only within their personal perspectives as homeowners, and therefore what is allowed in parks is restricted to class-based moral sensibilities. It’s easy for Councilor So-and-So to bring her laptop to her backyard garden patio for another Zoom meeting. The line worker who just wants to sit outside with her family after 12 hours inside sorting chicken meat for Councilor So-and-So’s BBQ that weekend… she was an afterthought when it comes to these kinds of public space bylaws.

This disconnect between how municipal leaders and many apartment/condo-dwelling constituents live also explains the conflicts during the pandemic when people wanted to leave the isolation of their apartments for fresh air, but homeowner leaders (with their backyards, cottage retreats, ‘working’ holidays, etc.) told them to go back inside and threatened them with fines.

We do we have these bylaws? Ignorance rooted in class.