Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
jandrese | on: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive
If they had a system where every page of the original was burned as it was scanned, and when you "checked out" a book it literally deleted the original on the server as it was sending it and the person returning the book also transferred the bytes back it would be quite a show.

I'm about 95% sure a scheme like that would still find them shut down. Remember the Aereo decision? They went through similar contortions, including building an antenna farm with thousands of tiny individual antennas, and were immediately killed off by the courts because it was seen as a legal hack. Such a scheme might threaten cable TV income if it were allowed to stand. Protecting incumbents from competition is a vital role of the courts.

tpdly | parent
> a scheme like that would still find them shut down.

Indeed. Someone else in this thread mentioned [1] as doing exactly that.

> Protecting incumbents from competition is a vital role of the courts.

What's even more confusing is that the judges involved aren't paid off or anything, they really believe themselves. Not sure what that means: Money buys charisma; the status quo is 'the best we got'; or some other bias-carrying platitude.

[1] 17 U.S.C. ยง 108; see also, e.g., ReDigi, 910 F.3d at 658