Thank you @Mom2aphysicsgeek and Jeremy Kaufman.
Wouldn’t that be a de facto breach of copyright?
Absolutely, @Conformist1688 – lbry.io is engaged in an act of civil disobedience, make no mistake.
Somebody better get the young lady who brought the original suit and make sure she shuts down this obvious, abhorrent and disgusting behavior. It will harm her to such a great extend, knowing this stuff is out there - for 99% to use. Must stand up for the 1%…
They believe it to be legal because of the original license Berkeley released it under:
Is This Legal?
Almost certainly.
The vast majority of the lectures are licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows attributed, non-commercial redistribution. The price for this content has been set to free and all LBRY metadata attributes it to UC Berkeley.
Here’s a link to the Justice Department letter: https://news.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016-08-30-UC-Berkeley-LOF.pdf
I don’t find its reasoning all that compelling with respect to stuff that was just uploaded for free onto iTunes. I would also note that if Berkeley went back to the Justice Department with its current leadership, the outcome would probably be different.
Let me add this: what I find uncompelling is not so much the analysis, but the remedy. Any sensible person would realize that the result of this order would be the removal of most of this stuff from the Internet, resulting in much less access to it. A more sensible remedy would have focused on future additions, and perhaps a gradual process of making the existing stuff accessible.