Internet Archive Ordered to Block Books in Belgium (torrentfreak.com) 46
After failed negotiations with publishers, Belgium's copyright enforcement agency has ordered the Internet Archive to block access to specific books in its Open Library within Belgium or face a 500,000-euro fine. TorrentFreak reports: Back in July, the Brussels Business Court issued a sweeping ex parte site-blocking order targeting several "shadow libraries" including Anna's Archive, Libgen, and Z-Library. Unusually, the order also included the Internet Archive's Open Library, a project operated by the well-known U.S. non-profit organization Internet Archive. The order was granted based on a request from publishers and authors who claimed, among other things, that the operators of the targeted sites were difficult to identify. This also applied to the Internet Archive, which was not heard by the court before the order was issued.
[...] Over the past several weeks, Internet Archive attempted to reach an agreement with the publishers, but the effort was unsuccessful. It is clear, however, that the Internet Archive believes that its use of copyrighted books for the Open Library qualifies as fair use. The organization is known to purchase physical copies, which it then digitizes to lend out to patrons, one copy at a time. This self-digitizing project was previously contested in a U.S. federal court, where the publishers ultimately came out as the winner. They argued that the Internet Archive project competed with their own licensing business for book lending. The detailed arguments at the center of the Belgian case are not public, but after hearing both sides, the Department for Combating Infringements of Copyright concluded that Internet Archive must take action.
In a follow-up decision (PDF) published last week, the government department explicitly states that it can't rule on U.S. fair use or the Belgian equivalent, but concludes that self-blocking measures are warranted. The Internet Archive hosts the contested books and has the ability to render them inaccessible. If it refuses to do so, it may be considered a copyright infringer under local law. The final decision requires the rightsholders to supply the Internet Archive with a list of all books that should be blocked in Belgium. The non-profit then has 20 calendar days to implement the necessary measures. In addition to making the books unavailable, Internet Archive must also prevent these works from being made available for digital lending in the future.
[...] Over the past several weeks, Internet Archive attempted to reach an agreement with the publishers, but the effort was unsuccessful. It is clear, however, that the Internet Archive believes that its use of copyrighted books for the Open Library qualifies as fair use. The organization is known to purchase physical copies, which it then digitizes to lend out to patrons, one copy at a time. This self-digitizing project was previously contested in a U.S. federal court, where the publishers ultimately came out as the winner. They argued that the Internet Archive project competed with their own licensing business for book lending. The detailed arguments at the center of the Belgian case are not public, but after hearing both sides, the Department for Combating Infringements of Copyright concluded that Internet Archive must take action.
In a follow-up decision (PDF) published last week, the government department explicitly states that it can't rule on U.S. fair use or the Belgian equivalent, but concludes that self-blocking measures are warranted. The Internet Archive hosts the contested books and has the ability to render them inaccessible. If it refuses to do so, it may be considered a copyright infringer under local law. The final decision requires the rightsholders to supply the Internet Archive with a list of all books that should be blocked in Belgium. The non-profit then has 20 calendar days to implement the necessary measures. In addition to making the books unavailable, Internet Archive must also prevent these works from being made available for digital lending in the future.
You could also turn off the service and that it. (Score:1)
Sometime, some people who think they are more important than they really are, just need a simple lesson: Be left alone in their corner of the world in isolation.
Meanwhile the rest of the world will enjoy a super important tool that Internet Archive is, and they will try to provide better way at enforcing copyright rules than just use the lazy and dumb way and accuse the wrong people and become the needle in the foot that nobody need, because you want to rules like a pyramid, and can't figure out how to puni
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The order is to block access only in the country, so no problem for others. Probably no problem for Belgians too, at least the ones who use a VPN.
I don't think the internet Archive is so widely used that it refusing all access from Belgium will make people vote for different candidates.
Re:You could also turn off the service and that it (Score:4, Interesting)
Sometime, some people who think they are more important than they really are, just need a simple lesson: Be left alone in their corner of the world in isolation.
Meanwhile the rest of the world will enjoy a super important tool that Internet Archive is, and they will try to provide better way at enforcing copyright rules than just use the lazy and dumb way and accuse the wrong people and become the needle in the foot that nobody need, because you want to rules like a pyramid, and can't figure out how to punish the actual people who break copyrights, so instead you go after their upstream provider. And note that I am not against enforcing copyrights, but it need to be done in a proper way, not with this plain stupid method.
Absolutely not acceptable.
It is simple. Some people might call it malicious compliance, but simply geoblock Belgium. I do it for EU countries on my websites.
Now of course, Belgium citizens can use VPN - that is how I test my geoblocking BTW - to access the forbidden materials, but then, that isn't the internet archive's problem, it is Belgium citizens breaking their country's laws. Then they can be dealt with internally.
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I do occasionally wonder if random hobbyists with their own webpage get these kinds of notices and just throw them in the trash can with the scams and adverts. Not that folks self host webpages commonly nowadays, but it'd be funny to receive notices from various countries about how your page violates their laws written in a language you can't even read.
I wonder as well. The ambiguities abound. "Right to Forget" was one big one. I don't write the one that "might" have been a violation, but the possibly illegal page had identifiable names and statistics going back to the early 1950's, usually based on record setting in RF activities. So that started the geoblocking. And as the data was copyrighted, but free to download and excerpt, if I still had that page, Belgium would get special consideration as well.
I block EU now because of the brain dead demand to
Re:You could also turn off the service and that it (Score:4, Insightful)
And I'm not the only one. Sometimes I forget to turn off the VPN, and a lot of sites block them.
What sites are you on?? I never get any geoblocking browsing from inside EU except from little news sites from broadcast TV in places like Oklohama that get linked to occasionally. Its so rare I can't even remember the last time I got geoblocked (normally the 451 http code)..... And I really appreciate the sites that allow me to block cookies. I get its 'work for you' but allowing the consumer to know 1) where their data is going to and 2) to block it WITHOUT logging in was one of the better moves of the EU on the internet. If you're not allowing me to block cookies or data uses on your website, and its geoblocked from EU, nothing of value has been lost.
Re: You could also turn off the service and that i (Score:2)
Unless you use your cookie to profile users and pass the data on to third parties, you're perfectly compliant with EU law without ever having to ask visitor consent.
There is no cookie banner law. The only ones who are required to place one are those with underhanded business practices.
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You're misunderstanding the "cookie law", which was the goal of the malicious compliance by ad networks (who are why we have annoying cookie banners -- not the law). Unless you use your cookie to profile users and pass the data on to third parties, you're perfectly compliant with EU law without ever having to ask visitor consent. There is no cookie banner law. The only ones who are required to place one are those with underhanded business practices.
I don't misunderstand anything. I don't care for people who have nothing to do with my website to dictate what is there. So they get blocked, and that is the best form of compliance, when those who want to control your content cannot see it - they cannot have a problem, it is strict no compromised unconditional compliance, just like they wanted. And if people use a VPN to get around it, it is not my problem.
And frankly, my sites are as innocuous as a bunny rabbit. All legit. Problem is the owner doesn't
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Do not comply in advance.
Don't do their work for them. If a nation wants to block its subjects from accessing forbidden knowledge -make them do the work to block their citizens from accessing your website. It is not your responsibility to do the work of censoring their citizens.
(There are other valid reasons to geoblock access to your sites - do it for your benefit, not theirs.)
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The Eu response to innovation is to pass more punitive regulation. This is why the US has SpaceX while the EU makes Lego bricks.
Re: You could also turn off the service and that i (Score:2)
Enforcement (Score:3)
Since the Internet Archive doesn't have any legal entities in Belgium, it seems like if they don't voluntarily comply then the next step would be to ask ISPs to block the site in the country. That would be unfortunate for Belgians.
Re: Enforcement (Score:3)
Let us assume, however, that the Internet Archive only exists within the United States. If one has the time and money, which a country like Belgium certainly does, there exists a mechanism within Federal and many state statutes to have a court enforce foreign judgments. There are a lot of "howevers" in this scenario, so you really need to be motivated.
If I was the Internet Archive I would opt
What books? (Score:2)
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All books.
- Guy Montag
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All books.
-Captain Beatty
Hercule Poirot... (Score:2)
Hercule Poirot of Agatha Christie murder mystery novels would be upset...and you'd think Belgium would make an exception for Agatha Christie's novels, as Poirot is a proud Belgian.
Now begins the trend of censorship on the Internet by nation-state boundary...there was the "dream" or fantasy that with the Internet the borders of nation-states would not matter.
JoshK.
Re:Hercule Poirot... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Now begins the trend of censorship on the Internet by nation-state boundary."
Begins?? Have you just stepped out of a time machine from the year 2000? Its been going on for years if not decades my friend in places like china, russia and north korea and they have far less noble reasons than trying to protect copyright.
Re:Hercule Poirot... (Score:4, Informative)
A few years ago Amazon remotely deleted Nineteen Eighty Four from people's Kindle e-readers. Took all their notes with it. The issue was expiry of the licence for the book.
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Censorship aside, it is really a shame more of the world does not have a 'First Amendment", I don't see the internet getting some enforceable national borders as a bad thing.
Nations and societies must have laws to function. Democratic nations have right enforce those laws ( derived from the consent of the governed ). Yes I would argue places like China DO NOT have a right to enforce their law, only the might to do it.
With so much commerce and general activity being online now nations need to both legal
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I was referring to Belgium as that was the article scope, often a safe haven for freedoms in Europe. Other countries, yuppers, lke well North Korea since 1953, etc.
And my time coordinates for my TARDIS forgot the carry...must be that gravitic anomaliser or the randomizer...blasted Type 40s.
JoshK.
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Well, if you'd just managed to study "Veteran and Vintage Vehicles" at the Academy, like you were supposed to, this wouldn't have happened.
C'mon K9.
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Quite so, indeed! JoshK.
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Hercule Poirot of Agatha Christie murder mystery novels ... is a proud Belgian.
I'm not a Frenchie, I'm a BELGIE! [clip.cafe]
Fuck censorship (Score:2)
Re: Fuck censorship (Score:2)
so what's the difference? (Score:2)
What do they think is the difference between a physical book library and a digital lending library?
or did the book publishers just make a lot of "charitable donations" and "campaign contributions" to tip the scales in their favor?
The people running the Archive are stupid assholes (Score:4, Interesting)
The organization is known to purchase physical copies, which it then digitizes to lend out to patrons, one copy at a time. This self-digitizing project was previously contested in a U.S. federal court, where the publishers ultimately came out as the winner. They argued that the Internet Archive project competed with their own licensing business for book lending.
That's certainly one way of describing what happened. Another, more accurate, way would be to point out that the morons at the Archive decided to ignore that whole "one copy at a time" bit "because Covid" and gave the publishers a set of facts for their lawsuit that would not have supported their position any better if they'd been purposefully designed to do so.
Re: The people running the Archive are stupid assh (Score:2)
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It was always said that someone should start pushing against the grotesquely unbalanced copyright laws by just breaking stuff and challenging the norms
Come on. I agree wholehearted that the current copyright regime is horribly broken, but the morons at the Archive didn't "start pushing against unbalanced copyright laws" they simply decided those laws were null and void because reasons. This did nothing to advance their mission and everything to undermine it, that's fucking stupid.
Why stop there... (Score:1)
When they could nix novels in Nepal next?
Copyright is broken (Score:3)
Copyright is broken.
That doesn't mean it isn't useful, but it needs a total and utter re-think.
From treatment of abandon-ware, to geo-pricing, to excessive terms and lack of registration. And probably a bunch of others.
Sadly, if such a rethink ever came to pass, it would be dominated by monied interests. Common sense would leave the conversation at the moment the first bundle of cash was passed around the table.
Belgium (Score:5, Informative)
Some small factoids:
-Anna's archive are already blocked in Belgium. Only Belgium. So are the alternative URLs. It seems to be done at the cloudfare level. Easy to circumvent. Before, they blocked various sites via DNS poisoning, it was easy to circumvent by changing your DNS. Now you need a VPN.
-Belgium is a quite parochial country, especially the French-speaking side. It would be very Belgian to take measures that would work only if Belgium was the only country on Earth and not understand why it does not work or why the rest of the world does not care about the Belgian point of view.
-It is very difficult to hire competent civil servants in the IT sector (among others). Because unions are extremely powerful in Belgium and they block, for ideological reasons, the hiring of anyone at the market rate. Basically, you must offer very similar pay to everyone who has a diploma in X years. So the public sector salaries proposed to IT workers with a degree in 5 years are very close to the salaries that are proposed to someone with a paper pusher degree.
-There are workarounds to that hiring problem but they are not very common. For example an administration that realized after years that virtually nobody applied to their IT job offers has resolved to create a non-profit whose job is to provide IT services to said administration. To bypass the unions.
-In other words, the judges are likely poorly advised, the civil servants who have to implement judgments must be not very competent nor very motivated. Judges have the possibility to summon anyone as judiciary expert and you must respond to the summon, by law. But the justice will pay you at public rates which are ridiculous and take months to pay you, you may even have to sue them to be paid. So if you are summoned it is probably wiser to declare yourself incompetent and go home at peace.
Internet Archive Needs to Think Harder (Score:5, Insightful)
The Internet Archive’s fundamental duty is to preserve human knowledge — to ensure that cultural, scholarly, and historical materials are not lost to time, obscurity, or commercial impermanence. Preservation does not mean competing with publishers, nor does it mean undermining legitimate markets. It means ensuring that when something ceases to be readily available, it can still be found, studied, and remembered.
If a book is commercially available, widely distributed, and maintained by its rightsholders, then it is not in danger of disappearing. There is nothing for the Archive to “preserve” in that case; the responsibility lies with publishers and distributors. For such works, the Archive’s role should be standby stewardship — maintaining a secure, non-public copy to ensure continuity of access if and when availability lapses.
In contrast, for works that have fallen out of print, lost their commercial distribution, or exist in fragile physical form, the Archive’s duty is active and urgent. These are the works at real risk of vanishing, and preserving them — including through controlled digital lending — serves the public good and the historical record.
This approach strikes a balance between copyright compliance and cultural preservation:
The Archive would withhold digital access to works that are actively in print or licensed.
It would, however, retain preservation copies in its secure collections.
And it would make these available again only if those works become unavailable through ordinary channels.
By adopting this preservation-first, access-conditional model, the Internet Archive fulfills its mission without infringing upon the rights or revenues of living markets — ensuring that the world’s knowledge remains safe, even when the commercial world moves on.
Jurisdictional Overreach (Score:2)
Internet Archive doesn't need to do diddley-squat.
It is not a Belgian company, has no employees there, collects no taxes there, nada.
They should just ignore Belgian courts, and let the Begians have a hissy fit.
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IA likely has some assets in the EU that Belgium could touch through it's membership. Perhaps they could even get them shut down in the EU for failure to comply with laws.
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assets in the EU that Belgium could touch through it's membership
That's not how law works.
This case it is about Belgian law, which applies in Belgium, not the entire EU. So if the IA have assets in, say, Ireland, that's outside of the scope.
If the IA were to break EU law, then that would be subject to European courts, not to Belgium directly.
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If they want to do business in Belgium, that business is subject to Belgian law.
That's not overreach, that's the law of the land.
It doesn't matter that the IA is not itself Belgian.
Digital book burning? (Score:2)
If only someone could figure out how to have a good old fashioned digital book burning. I do love the smell of burning zeros and ones in the morning.
No. (Score:2)
Fuck you.
If you want to block your citizens from accessing US content, then do so; but do not try to force US entities to block your citizens for you. The USA is a sovereign nation. If it is legal to do a thing here, then it is legal to do the thing here. If your citizens come here (physically or virtually) and do the thing -that is not our problem.