> Despite the self-serving library branding of its operations, IA’s conduct bears little resemblance to the trusted role that thousands of American libraries play within their communities and as participants in the lawful copyright marketplace. IA scans books from cover to cover, posts complete digital files to its website, and solicits users to access them for free by signing up for Internet Archive Accounts.
I wonder how they feel about actual libraries, which make published works available for free to many people as well.
> If libraries weren't an ancient concept that preceeded copyright law they'd be illegal today.
You can easily see this if you look at more modern medium: Gaming.
nVidia created a service where we could play games we bought on their machines. The publishers immediately sued and demanded that we be prevented from playing our own games on those machines without paying extra.
Copyright law now has become cancer - just like real cancer, the original base might be something that provided important value, but has now started feeding on the creativity of society and killing progress and freedom.
[My personal opinion, unrelated to any employment:]
FWIW I've studied copyright informally in UK, USA, and to a lesser extent other countries.
In UK our "Fair Dealing" is highly restrictive compared to USA's Fair Use.
Our (UK) archiving rights extend only to a couple of institutions and then only to people attending the library in person. We don't have rights to make backups; we don't have rights to format shift (except to help the disabled).
Yes, copyright specifics apply but wrt archiving USA is far from the most restrictive regime.
And the US through it's massive influence and bullying would undoubtedly force it upon other countries, as they have done countless times including in the context of copyright.
In the case of copyright, at least nominally, it's the more-restrictive (and European) Berne Convention (1886) terms which have been adopted elsewhere.
To what extent this reflects European rather than US interests I'm uncertain, though the latter certainly exist.
It reflects the interests of special interest copyright groups who work both to get these treaties written with terms favorable to themselves, and to get laws passed to enforce them.
When those laws are passed they try to get the laws to be stronger than the treaty. Thereby leading to differences in laws and a push for a new treaty to "harmonize" different copyright regimes. Strangely, the new treaty harmonizes on the strong end of the laws passed, thereby creating a ratchet effect.
After decades of success on things like copyright terms, Disney finally reached the end of the road when the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement died. As a result Steamboat Willie, written in 1924, will become public domain in 2024, some 68 years after it was originally supposed to do so.
Point being that the initial push in the present direction came from Europe in the 19th century, no matter how influential the 20th century US publishing sector eventually became.
And to be clear, I don't think the "US, no, Europe" blame game accomplishes or illuminates much. Far more useful is to note that monopoly power seeks to extend itself, regardless of origin.
I was in Morocco when we signed copyright restrictions, and I can assure you 95% of the pressure is from United States, and it is in the interests mainly of the US and it's allies.
As far as it reflecting European interests, the Berne convention is against European interests as it pertains to US copyrighted work as it offers them less protection than US works and forces a higher standard for US copyright than domestic copyright in many cases.
Understood and accurate so far as I'm aware. As my other response notes, the tradition of copyright maximalisation began in Europe in the 19th century before being adopted by US interests in the 20th. Nationalistic attribution of traits answers far less than monopolistic power expansion.
I agree wholeheartedly, the tradition of copyright maximization has its origins in capitalism and value extraction, as such it follows the siege of global capitalism as that is where the interests in the commodification and extraction of value from intellectual property originates from. So it naturally began in Europe, then in the US, and maybe shortly in China? We will see.
Same here. What publishers give to authors is practically zero, so if you want the author to get any money you're better off sending them a donation directly.
It's actually relatively inexpensive to move gear via cargo container. I'd hazard you could move all 10PB of the Internet Archive for less than $25k-50k in shipping costs (~$2k per 40FT container), with labor extra for loading and unloading. (Disclaimer: I have coordinated data center migrations in a previous life)
Although, it's probably more financially efficient for other nations to offer cultural grants for local IA non-profit entities to spin up infra in country and begin mirroring the South SF location.
What they are being accused of would be highly questionable under the copyright laws of over 190 countries, including almost all that are likely to be reasonable places to host a major internet site.
You're joking, but this is the kind of thing that becomes true when enough people think it's true. What does a reasonable person think they're getting when they buy a book? That's the implied contract.
For every application of FSD that applies to a lending library, it seems like there are 99 or more that apply to everyday lending, modification, repair, or resale concerns. Even if libraries didn't exist, I think we'd have something like first sale doctrine.
You're probably right, but this doesn't solve the fundamental problem.
People who do intellectual labor, such as writing books, must be paid because everyone must be paid. Nothing is free.
There are two options:
(1) Copyright law, which allows them to erect toll booths and charge readers and users for their work.
(2) A socialist type of system where writers and other intellectual laborers are supported publicly.
The cyber-libertarian crowd is unhappy with both these options. They want everything to be free in all ways.
Since intellectual labor is not free, Jeff Goldblum's Law (from Jurassic Park) comes into play: life finds a way. The way to support oneself in the cyber-libertarian everything-is-free world is by either overt advertising or whoring oneself out as a propagandist (covert advertising).
A third variation also exists that combines aspects of both: surveillance capitalism. In surveillance capitalism all the free stuff is placed on a platform that spies on its users and the data is used to drive both overt and covert advertising.
This is why a simple news web site is 20+ megabytes of trackers, ads, and surveillance crap, and why every platform seems user-hostile. It's also why an increasing amount of intellectual product whether it be books, news, podcasts, etc. is actually political or other forms of propaganda. You can make money by shilling for political parties or political agendas. You can't make money by being balanced and honest and level headed. The work will be much higher quality but nobody will pay for it.
The third option, which works very well, is just by people donating to writers they want to.
The maths works out pretty well if you look at it as a marketing funnel for the author.
In the "traditional" model the author/publisher has to persuade a potential reader to part with money before reading the book, which has huge friction and costs lots of marketing money to persuade people that the book is good enough to buy before they read it - no "one month free trials" here. Using standard marketing funnel maths, they have to get the title in front of 10,000 people to get one sale (assuming a 1% conversion rate for the 2-step funnel). The net profit of this model is lower (for the author) because so much money is spent on marketing.
In the donation model, the author gives the book for free, and then asks for a donation afterwards. They only need to get 100 people to read the book (assuming a 1% conversion rate of people who have read it and want to donate). The cool thing is that those 100 people have read the book, and know it, will talk about it, will recognise the author when their next book comes out, etc.
I think your maths is off. A literary novel is a success if it sells 10,000 copies in hardback. I'm pretty sure that doesn't entail getting the book in front of a hundred million people.
no, the conversion funnel is "people see ad -> people click on ad/notice book -> people buy book". Getting the advert in front of 100mm people to sell 10K copies seems reasonable.
I'd just like to jump in here to point out that most intellectual laborers in the modern world are not paid, at least in terms of a livable wage. Even those intellectual laborers who are paid specifically for intellectual labor, are not paid for writing, for example; they are paid for some other activity with writing as a required side-project.
I'm quite aware that intellectual laborers are underpaid. I'm pointing out that abolishing copyright without any replacement system would make the situation far worse, effectively eliminating many careers.
If this work didn't have much value that would be one thing, but it clearly does. Otherwise people would not be clamoring for access to it. Nobody cares if crap is freely available.
People really want this stuff. They just don't want to pay for it either directly or via any public method. Meanwhile they spend the cost of a median price book or album in 1-2 visits to Starbucks without thinking about it.
The replacement system for copyright is the system that was around pre-copyright: direct funding of works by people who have some interest in their production. Now applicable on a far larger scale via crowdfunding, as showcased by e.g. Kickstarter and IndieGogo (and used successfully to produce a sizeable amount of high-quality, free and open works).
no it is not the default that " intellectual labor" must be paid for in currency (which is the assumption of your post) my comment here for example is " intellectual labor" but i am not paid for it
There are all kinds of labor that people do with out being paid in currency for it, they derive other value from that labor.
You then present a false dilemma in that it is either copyright law or socialism (public funding), there are a whole host of funding models that have been proven to work over and over again that require neither. Open Source is a ripe with examples, YouTube also provides for some, but there are many others (including complete creative Commons books that are funding voluntarily, and voluntary "Pay what you want" systems)
i personally enjoy generating knowledge based products the payment being the edification of other person[s] in particular when the result is a synthesis beyond the original publication[s].
You are really comparing a Hacker News comment that took 1-2 minutes to write with the content of libraries? It's hard for me to write a civil rebuttal to this.
It takes years to write a good book. Years. It's not something you just whip out.
The same applies to any non-trivial piece of music, art, software, engineering, design, or any other form of intellectual labor. People spend years and years on that stuff but only after they spend years and years getting good enough at their craft to actually produce it.
I guess there's another option beyond the two I cited above:
(3) Everything is low effort shit.
Open Source is almost entirely funded by large companies. Pick a popular FOSS project and look at who's committing to it. They're people being paid by large companies to do the work because the company has some vested interest in supporting it. The counter-examples are either SaaS driven (meaning they're not really open) or dual licensed (meaning they're using copyright law).
This sort of philanthropy has limits. In particular it doesn't work for consumer items, only for stuff that companies use directly.
I really don't think you want to bring up YouTube as it actually proves my point. YouTube is a cesspool of propaganda and divisive trolling. That's the kind of content you get when it's "free" and creators must find roundabout ways to get paid for it, such as by stoking society's divisions for attention to monetize ad views.
Your point is very good. However I do want to mention a very limited exception. I am an academic and I write texts that are Free. I figure that a (I hope!) good text raises the profile of my institution and that students come to study at an institution because it has a good reputation. So while, as you say,
> It takes years to write a good book. Years. It's not something you just whip out.
nonetheless these works are freely available.
However, despite perhaps a few exceptions here and there (Kahn Academy is another), overall I very much agree. People have to be be paid. And while Patreon-type stuff is a great idea as far as it goes, it is not sufficient.
How are you defining "good book"? Successful in the marketplace?
No one gets paid to "spend years and years getting good enough at their craft" of writing. Very few people get paid reasonably to "spend years and years on" writing a good book.
>I wonder how they feel about actual libraries, which make published works available for free to many people as well.
If we're talking about "digital" lending instead of physical books, the traditional libraries "play nice" with publishers by buying DRM ebooks and lending out a limited number of copies. This is what they mean by traditional public libraries being "participants in lawful copyright marketplace".
IA scanned books and unlimited lending circumvented all that.
In other words, publishers are ok with limited free lending on their own terms so that it doesn't drastically affect their book sales but they never agreed to IA's unlimited lending which is why they akin it to "piracy".
Not trying to play sides here but if you want to try to understand the nuance of the publishers' position, I'm trying to explain it in a neutral way.
IA's lending is not unlimited, even with the National Emergency Library. The books are still restricted by DRM, they do keep track of how many copies are out for each book, and they do monitor the system to prevent abuse. It's a real library lending system, nothing like what they do with actual public domain works.
>IA's lending is not unlimited, even with the National Emergency Library.
The Internet Archive's Chris Freeland is the Director of Open Libraries and wrote the IA blog post[1] announcing the NEL change and he acknowledges that it is "unlimited"[2] -- and yet you say it isn't. I don't understand why you contradict IA's own representative. Are you affiliated with IA in an official capacity?
- >Stephanie Willen Brown: So, librarian to librarian, is this unlimited simultaneous users?
- >chrisfreeland: Stephanie – Yes, for the duration of our waitlist suspension![2]
This is only talking about 'unlimited' simultaneous users, and the term "unlimited" should be related to its proper context. It's 'unlimited' in a sense because the former limits have been suspended. Everything else is separate, so I'm not sure why we're being told assume that IA can't do their job properly.
>This is only talking about 'unlimited' simultaneous users, and the term "unlimited" should be related to its proper context.
Because the "proper context" in this case is what the publishers are filing the lawsuit about. It doesn't matter whether you agree or disagree with the publishers. To the publishers, unlimited simultaneous users is the same as unlimited copies. With public libraries, they paid for limited simultaneous checkouts of digital ebooks which is limited copies and that was acceptable by publishers. In contrast, IA did not pay publishers a license to make copyrighted works available to unlimited users.
The publishers didn't file lawsuits against public libraries; they filed it against IA. In your own words (since you don't object to the word "unlimited" and you thought my summary was unfair), what exactly did IA do that the publishers are filing lawsuit about?
But for copyright to mean something and for the authors to get paid IA's emergency library can't become the norm right? If they don't enforce limits on the number of copies what does it matter that they monitor the number of copies.
As long as physical libraries throughout the U.S. and in much of the world are shuttered due to COVID, something like the NEL makes a lot of sense. It's not the norm, but we're not living in normal times either.
I don't think the plan is to "become the norm". It's an 'emergency library', and it exists currently because the pandemic has forced regular libraries to close.
Hum, many are starting to reopen which maybe helps to explain why this lawsuit is happening now. Regardless while it changes the morality I don't think it changes anything about the legality.
But under the National Emergency Library, a very large number of people can read one copy of a book at the same time. That makes it completely different from a library "lending" system, regardless of whether user actions are tracked.
Whatever your thoughts on the IA's practices, it's worth being clear on this.
>IA's lending is not unlimited, even with the National Emergency Library.
I'm not debating with you about the details since I haven't used IA's system myself but the last time this came up, a commenter explained that there were a bunch of loopholes in IA's "limits" that it was effectively "unlimited". E.g. after the checkout period expires, you just check out the ebook again. Again, I don't know if this is true.
EDIT to replies equating this to "physical books" : the context of my answer was "digital" ebooks. Physical books are already limited in the sense that libraries' limited budgets only buy limited copies of paper books. So library patrons renewing their borrowed book is "unlimited" on time but not a threat to the publishers because the # of copies are still limited.
Often libraries put limits on the number of times you can do this, but also since IA is currently not restricting the number of copies of a book it loans out that must make a difference no?
I find it interesting that there is an inherent assertion against an equal right to access information in the stipulation that the publisher must be paid.
I look at things differently though I suppose. I see each human as a parallel processing core, and our immediate consciously recallable set of knowledge as basically being Cached, our referentially recallable knowledge (stuff we know where to find, but don't have in mind) as a pagefile swap, and the unknown, but authored as a compressed, archived file on our collective population-wide hard disk.
So what we're suggesting here, is that certain cores should have to go without access to certain trivially reproducible archives so that the archiving program (publishers) can utilize the product of said cores (analogous to money earned by other work done) to pick the winners and losers of the process of making an archive(I.e. subsidizing authorial works) in the first place?
This sounds like a pretty terrible system to me, and like publisher's have an exaggerated role as gatekeepers in the marketplace of ideas. I would not expect that in the presence of a zero-cost information replication mechanism such an entity performing such a task would be desirable except as an artifact of a programmer having something better to do than to refactor out that quirk of the old high cost implementation.
I wonder how far out I can extend this simulation of society as computing system. I suppose the analog of the necessary inputs for life would be the power electricity bill? Hmmmm.
You know, I think I just nerd sniped myself. I'm not sure if I can complete this post as intended now that I'm continuing to think on it. I'll leave it here in case anyone else wants to join in on extending the metaphor/figuring out where the breaking points are.
A physical library pays based on maximum simultaneous checkouts. If they want to allow 5 people to have copies checked out simultaneously, they buy 5 copies from the publisher.
> Physical books are already limited in the sense that libraries' limited budgets only buy limited copies of paper books.
And just to drive this completely home, it's not an arbitrary restriction—if a library has a larger budget or a book is more popular, they can buy more copies of the book, which also benefits publishers.
> The Internet Archive and participating libraries have selected digitized books from their collections that are available to be borrowed by one patron at a time from anywhere in the world for free. [emphasis mine]
I think we should be careful not to let publishers control the narrative here. Publishers interests in making profits are naturally going to conflict with the public good, and the point of copyright is to promote the latter.
I think this press release is missing an important details. While previously IA only allowed the same number of books that they owned to be lent out as part of their response to covid they've dropped that restriction. As much as I like IA if copyright is to continue to exist that can't be legal.
Copyright doesn't exist as boolean. It's a social contract-- a give and take between the owners of "intellectual property" and society-- and exists along a continuum. Copyright in the US has, in the last 50-ish years, taken a hard turn toward benefit for the owners of the "intellectual property" (not requiring registration anymore, increased duration of terms, the DMCA and everything that came along with it). I'd argue and some re-negotiation is long overdue, especially in light of how ubiquitous computer networking is changing the landscape.
One clarification: copyright was never a (direct) tradeoff between desires of the public and desires of copyright holders. It's a tradeoff between two desires of the public: the public wants plenty of works created, and the public also want plenty of rights over those works (for purposes such as building more works upon them, remixing, etc). The desires of copyright holders should only enter into that indirectly, insofar as they result in the publication of more works that wouldn't have been published otherwise, and the public wants to make that trade.
With that in mind: for any given component of copyright law, we should be asking "what would not have been produced if this particular exclusive privilege didn't exist, and does the public want to make that trade?".
The desires of the owners should be indirect. I wish they were. I think it's fair to say the owners likely started exerting their influence (money for legislative influence) a long time ago. That copyright law has continued to move toward the owner's rights end of the spectrum serves as an indicator that legislators see the owner's interests as an explicit part of the contract, intended or not.
Aside from that, insofar as US copyright takes inspiration from the Statute of Anne, I'd say that the interests of copyright holders were never completely indirect ("... and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families...").
re: The "what we should be asking" - I don't think we can conceive of the possible business models that could spring up if changes were made to copyright law. Sure-- some business models might become untenable-- but I don't think entire classes of works would just disappear. I'd rather ask "What new business models or classes of works would be permitted if this particular exclusive privilege were relaxed?"
> The desires of the owners should be indirect. I wish they were.
Right. I was stating what should be, and what was originally intended. The clause in the US constitution authorizing copyrights and patents reads "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". Any such exclusive right is granted (not inherent) and should only be provided insofar as doing so will "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
> re: The "what we should be asking" - I don't think we can conceive of the possible business models that could spring up if changes were made to copyright law. Sure-- some business models might become untenable-- but I don't think entire classes of works would just disappear. I'd rather ask "What new business models or classes of works would be permitted if this particular exclusive privilege were relaxed?"
Agreed completely. Another reason why it's a careful tradeoff for the public to make.
I don't think a reinterpretation where anyone is allowed to make and lend as many copies of works as they want is workable though. Like we haven't found another way to incentive producing content.
Why does the business model have to be based on counting copies of information being made (and hamstringing technology to serve that purpose)?
What about patronage? What about public performance? What about merchandising rights? (I actually have very little beef w/ Trademark law. It seems like it's functioning well and provides value to society.)
What about the idea certain livelihoods and classes of works just go away? Maybe that's sad, but maybe it's also just what happens.
You're admitting what most anti-copyright people don't want to admit – if instead of bookshops we only had the Emergency Library, certain classes of works would indeed go away, including most good fiction, not to mention history, biography, reportage etc. You say that's "just what happens" like it's some ineluctable natural process, but none of this is preordained. The traditional model has a lot of defenders – including the majority of readers who are still happy to pay for books – and with those defenders' help it can survive.
If a market's survival is incumbent upon screwing-up new technology for everybody then I say "Let it die". It it means having draconian laws that tie up the most precious products of human toil in too-lengthy "protection" terms, to the point that works of culture are lost, then I say "Let it die".
Not being able to make a living producing something that no one will pay for sounds very much like a natural, preordained process to me. I can't make a living manufacturing buggy whips or operating elevators anymore. Technology made those jobs go away. It's sad perhaps, from a nostalgic perspective, but the world moved on.
If a business model needs "defenders" in the face of technological change then it's no longer a viable model.
I don't believe a transactional model is the only one that can work. It happens to be convenient for a certain type of creator, but that doesn't mean it's the only one.
I will clarify that I'm most certainly not anti-copyright. I think a lot of value can be derived from a copyright regime based on a more balanced social contract. US copyright law, and those who have "harmonized" with the US, has shifted much too far in the direction of favoring the owners of "intellectual property".
I don't understand where you're getting the idea that books are something "no one will pay for". Sales of books are generally stable or rising. They are not like buggy whips.
I also don't understand how it is that you're describing books as "the most precious products of human toil", but you're simultaneously saying you're happy to sacrifice them if it means you get copyright reform.
And I also don't understand how copyright law is screwing up your "technology". It screws up your ability to get certain things for free. But if someone wants to create a DRM-free ebook and give it away, they are still perfectly able to do so.
Unlikely and definitely unproven. Historical precedent rather shows that at least 96 % of the books would be produced even without copyright, given less than 4 % bothered to register the copyright when it was mandatory. And less than 1 % of the 4 % required a copyright term longer than 14 years.
https://archive.org/details/howtofixcopyrigh00patr/page/104/...
If tomorrow Congress repealed the Berne convention and shortened the copyright term to 5 years from publication, in order to make the Internet Archive's "National Emergency Library" permanent even without fair use, probably a good 99.9 % of the works would still be produced.
Also, on that note, [citation needed] on the implicit claim that "signing up for Internet Archive Accounts" is necessary or even suggested to access the content on the Internet Archive. I've used the IA a lot, and not once did it even advertise the ability to create an account (beyond probably some Log-In/Sign-Up button somewhere that I didn't even notice), let alone require me to do so. Still don't have such an account.
I am not saying I agree with their criticism of IA, but libraries are quite different.
Libraries pay for each copy of a book they have, and checkouts are limited to the number they own at a time. The IA doesn't pay at all, and there is no limit to how many people can access the content.
>> which make published works available for free to many people as well.
The key difference is the copying, the vary thing that copyright is meant to regular. A library doesn't turn one book into many. A digital archive does. That's the difference that draws in the legal system. Some libraries have developed schemes for this (one digital copy available for one person at a time) but this doesn't get around the fact that any digital copy can be copied or translated into different formats.
There will always be a massive difference between physical copies and digital ones.
Of course, authors miss out on any royalties in either case, but the speed at which their income stream can dry up is oodles faster when there's a digital copy available.
Digital can be copied, replicated and redistributed very easily, but physical books require man handling to achieve the same goal.
Do you mean people borrowing books? I'm not expert but I guess it's not equal. Libraries still have to purchase the books (or a license for digital) and only one person can hold one book (license) at a time. For example, I have to wait for an ebook to be returned before I can check it out to my kindle, it's not unlimited access.
Say what you want about the current copyright system, but buying a single book and lending it out one at a time and buying a new one when it wears out, is obviously different than handing out unlimited digital copies.
What's really sad is that this is a physical limitation of books that is easily overcome with digital copies. Instead of embracing this new freedom technology brings us, we -- or rather some publishers -- seek to hold new technology back and effectively make it mimic as much as possible the limitations of the previous technology. And this only because it makes business sense to them.
Imagine this:
"Good news, everyone! We've invented Star Trek-like replication technology. I can replicate and provide any amount of food or tools for everyone! It's the post-scarcity society we've always dreamt of!"
"Quick, we must now devise a way to make this encumbered so food and tools cannot really be replicated at will with zero cost, and instead make it resemble how we used to farm/grow food and build traditional tools, or else business as we know it may crumble. Also we need a way to identify and sue people who breach our business contracts!"
It's depressing. A bit like the future that The Murderbot Diaries depict.
You're equating what we have now (people wanting to make money off their intellectual property) with a fictional scenario where money is no longer needed.
We have to stick with the old way for now, otherwise it would only take one library buying one copy of anything, and it being available to any and everyone on an unlimited basis. That can't work.
I don't know that we have to stick with the old ways, but more importantly, it's depressing when technology is limited in this way. This isn't even morally arguable technology like genetic manipulation, this is simply a post-scarcity situation made, um, artificially scarce. It's never the right time for change; if some companies had their way a post-scarcity world would never arrive ("now is not the time! Think of the economy!"). A Star Trek world would never happen because copyright holders wouldn't let it happen.
It's depressing when people argue "but libraries can only lend as many physical copies as they have" as if this was a good thing about books instead of an accidental limitation.
Actually, that's the concept I was looking for: accidental limitations. It sucks when publishers and media companies seek to turn accidental limitations into mandated limitations, as if they were a law of nature, and when the technology could rid us of said limitations.
but this is _not_ just a distribution problem like you seem to be implying. Yes, digital solves distribution, so we are post-scarcity in that sense, but someone also needs to put in the intellectual labor to write a book in the first place. That has always been scarce. And if you don't incentivize it properly, people will have no reason to put in the effort to write books.
I assure you, writers will write books even if nobody paid them. This is not to say it's ok if they have to live under a bridge because they can't support themselves. But writers write, and for a lot of them money is not the primary motivation, just a welcome (and important) one.
Likewise, painters will paint even if nobody will buy their paintings.
e-books are very tricky when it comes to copyright. Even the retailers who sell the ebooks on Amazon (or elsewhere) are not really the "owners". It's always the publisher who is considered to be the owner. So technically you do not own the ebook you bought, you just license it for yourself on your device(s). [0]
Isn't there an ongoing lawsuit against Amazon on this issue where someone is suing them for misguiding people about ownership when you "buy" an ebook from them?
If it says "buy" in the listing and that listing is in any way endorsed by the copyright owner - eg by not issuing a c&d letter - then you own your copy.
Of course much legal machination will be attempted to assert you don't.
I was replying to, "I wonder how they feel about actual libraries, which make published works available for free to many people as well." I know first-hand of several books that have inappropriately been present on the IA as stolen copies of books written by independent authors. Those authors filed DMCA notices to remove them. So, no, the IA is not the same as an "actual library" regarding copies of books.
Uh, publishers understand libraries and they've made their peace with physical books. They're just suing about someone who is undermining this balance.
As it is, real libraries are bad deals for everyone. Libraries spend too much on books that aren't read and they don't spend enough on books in demand. A digital system that charges per reader makes more sense.
But I don't expect anyone to believe this because people have some weird attraction to something that they think is "free" even though it costs millions in tax dollars.
I wonder how they feel about actual libraries, which make published works available for free to many people as well.