Appeals court decision potentially reversing publishers' suit may come this fall.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17029482

In an open letter to publishers, more than 30,000 readers, researchers, and authors begged for access to the books to be restored in the open library, claiming the takedowns dealt “a serious blow to lower-income families, people with disabilities, rural communities, and LGBTQ+ people, among many others,” who may not have access to a local library or feel “safe accessing the information they need in public.”

During a press briefing following arguments in court Friday, IA founder Brewster Kahle said that “those voices weren’t being heard.” Judges appeared primarily focused on understanding how IA’s digital lending potentially hurts publishers’ profits in the ebook licensing market, rather than on how publishers’ costly ebook licensing potentially harms readers.

  • AutoTL;DRBEnglish
    2•2 days ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    During a press briefing following arguments in court Friday, IA founder Brewster Kahle said that “those voices weren’t being heard.”

    However, lawyers representing IA—Joseph C. Gratz, from the law firm Morrison Foerster, and Corynne McSherry, from the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation—confirmed that judges were highly engaged by IA’s defense.

    Instead, McSherry said that CDL provides a path to “meet readers where they are,” allowing IA to loan books that it owns to one user at a time no matter where in the world they are located.

    “It’s not unlawful for a library to lend a book it owns to one patron at a time,” Gratz said IA told the court.

    They’re hoping the judges will decide that CDL is fair use, reversing the lower court’s decision and restoring access to books recently removed from the open library.

    McSherry seemed optimistic that the judges at least understood the stakes for IA readers, noting that fair use is “designed to ensure that copyright actually serves the public interest,” not publishers’.

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