So why aren't they suing libraries for doing those "exact same things?" Why target the IA specifically, and not other libraries?
Could it be that the IA did not in fact do the "exact same thing" as libraries?
why you think that's something worth defending I don't know.
I am not "defending" the publishers. They are the villains here. I think current copyright laws are insanely overreaching and have long ago lost the plot of what they were originally intended for.
This is like a horror movie where there's a slasher hiding in the house and the dumb protagonists say "let's split up to find him more quickly", and I'm shouting at the idiot who's going down into the dark basement alone. The slasher is the publishing companies and the idiot going down the stairs is the IA. It's entirely justified to shout at them for being an idiot and recommend that they just run away, without being accused of "defending" the slasher.
Here's the Wikipedia article on the lawsuit. From the opening paragraph:
Stemming from the creation of the National Emergency Library (NEL) during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, publishing companies Hachette Book Group, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Wiley alleged that the Internet Archive's Open Library and National Emergency Library facilitated copyright infringement.
IA was using the CDL without any problems or complaints before the National Emergency Library incident, with the one-copy-at-a-time restriction in place. It was only after they took those limiters off that the lawsuit was launched.
What I said was true.
To determine the impact of losing access to them.
Initially. Either they patent it, in which case everyone reads the patent and starts scrambling to improve on it, or they gamble on keeping it a trade secret and someone reverse-engineers it.
You don't think there's demand for news articles? The comment I'm responding to said there isn't a huge market. That's all I'm arguing against here, that there is a huge market. Whether AI can fulfill it a separate issue, one that we'll see play out.
So why aren't they? If libraries are doing exactly what IA is doing, why not sue them too? The judge issued a summary judgement in their favor so it's pretty open-and-shut, isn't it?
It's because the libraries know where the line is and they're careful not to cross it. IA jumped merrily across the line and shouted about it from the rooftops.