[HN Gopher] Judge decides against Internet Archive
___________________________________________________________________
Judge decides against Internet Archive
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 1010 points
Date : 2023-03-24 23:31 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (file770.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (file770.com)
| SuperSandro2000 wrote:
| If you are for the people, you are always against the publishers.
| viscountchocula wrote:
| Is there potentially room here for the Librarian of Congress to
| bless CDL? Or would that require an act of Congress?
| Thorentis wrote:
| I think most people here saw this coming. Unfortunately this
| isn't a question of whether the law is good, it's a question of
| whether IA broke the current laws we have.
|
| IA can and should lobby for copyright law to change. But breaking
| it before it has changed is risky and foolish, and does more harm
| than good.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > But breaking it before it has changed is risky and foolish,
| and does more harm than good.
|
| The entire US civil rights struggle would disagree with you.
| [deleted]
| trinsic2 wrote:
| Yeah I have to agree copying entire works and lending them out
| is probably not the best idea. I wonder how Google got away
| with the same though.
| jijji wrote:
| how does a library get away with it.... they have to purchase
| the book first? is that how it works? how is internet archive
| different from a library, A lot of libraries are online right
| now and do the same thing.... It seems like a real harm if
| internet archive is forced offline because of a decision like
| this
| [deleted]
| krapp wrote:
| >how does a library get away with it.... they have to
| purchase the book first? is that how it works?
|
| Yes. And they can lend those books to people due to the
| first-sale doctrine, which allows the legal owners of a
| work to lease, lend or sell it without the copyright
| owner's permission.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| this definition also seems to fit what libraries were
| doing, lending out their copy, sometimes digitally,
| sometimes in person, always only 1 copy at a time
|
| the judge said the conversion to digital was not
| transformative, so I don't see why it should constitute
| another work versus the original one
| teraflop wrote:
| Legally speaking, what the Internet Archive was doing is
| exactly what copyright law prohibits: making and
| distributing an unauthorized _copy_ of the book.
|
| The first sale doctrine (which libraries depend on) says
| you're allowed to to sell, rent out or give away your own
| _physical_ property, even if that property happens to be
| an embodiment of a copyrighted work. It doesn 't say
| anything about it being legal to make another copy of a
| work, and then distribute it while you keep the original
| one for yourself.
| serf wrote:
| that still doesn't really explain Google's position.
| yonran wrote:
| Google never lent out entire copyrighted books without
| the publisher's permission. Books.google.com consisted of
| 1) old public domain books that can be fully downloaded,
| 2) limited preview books that the publisher opted into
| putting online partially, and 3) snippet view books that
| only showed a sentence of context in response to search
| queries. The Authors' Guild sued over 3), Google argued
| that they transformed the book into a search index, not a
| reading experience, and Google won.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Google never did? Google Books does that with public domain
| books only.
|
| Copyrighted works only show snippets, and publisher-enabled
| limited previews.
| hgsgm wrote:
| > I wonder
|
| There's an app for that.
|
| https://www.google.com/googlebooks/perspectives/facts.html
| alexfromapex wrote:
| The system shouldn't require lobbying to get results that
| benefit the greater good
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _system shouldn 't require lobbying to get results that
| benefit the greater good_
|
| It does when there is disagreement over what constitutes the
| greater good.
| brewdad wrote:
| A handful of corporations vs the entire population of
| planet earth, or a nation's subset, should be pretty
| obvious where the greater good lies.
| Timwi wrote:
| There is actually no such disagreement. The corporations
| and copyright mafia are very open about the fact that their
| profits are more important to them than the common good.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| This made me chuckle pretty hard. When lobbying enters the
| picture there's only a small, selective group of people
| that are going to constitute the greater good.
| majormajor wrote:
| I think you're referring to financial aspects of today's
| lobbying alone, but I think it's impossible to suggest
| you could have any sort of consideration of the greater
| good without taking into account different people's view
| on what that is, which means them trying to persuade you
| of it, which is the exact definition of lobbying.
| User23 wrote:
| Not really. Lobbyists are merely bag-men for the real
| shot-callers.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It doesn't matter what "different people's view" is. With
| corporations lobbying, there is no greater good, only
| greater wallet.
| IncRnd wrote:
| The system is founded on protecting the rights of
| individuals. That's the system we have today, not a
| collective rights system.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| that's like saying the washing machine _should_ fold my socks
| after it 's done washing them. That would be nice, but when
| you're running a large organization like IA you should be
| less concerned with how things should be and more concerned
| with how things _are_.
| majormajor wrote:
| How would that be accomplished? What are the options here?
|
| 1) an elected legislature that's supposed to consider the
| greater good?
|
| 2) a generally non-elected judiciary that is supposed to
| consider the greater good to override the legislature?
|
| 3) a hopefully-benevolent dictator to consider the greater
| good?
|
| Obviously any of these methods can fail; the first of them is
| the easiest to "edit," as it were. Things like term limits
| would likely improve it, though.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| We're kinda taught that we choose representatives which
| reflect our values through the process of election and that
| those elected officials should they not reflect our values,
| are at the mercy of the electorate in the next election.
|
| Instead, few elections are competitive and the
| representation happens through the lobbying process.
|
| In short, the accountability story we're taught isn't true
| and money talks more than votes. It's this bait and switch
| that has the unintended consequence of fueling populism and
| the disbelief that representatives represent us, and that
| institutions work.
|
| Here's a dumb idea. Create and advocate for a congressional
| proportional representation interstate compact in the same
| vein as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact[1].
| Then advocate for pooled campaign financing as a function
| of proportional representation[2].
|
| The nice thing about interstate compacts is that they can
| eventually capture a majority given election variability
| over time. They divide and conquer the problem into
| actionable tasks that effectively aggregate.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Inte
| rsta...
|
| 2. purposefully being vague. what would softmax(T>>1) look
| like, for instance?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Citing the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
| indicates you have no understanding of the political
| organization of the United States of America.
|
| I implore you to do your homework, but I will tell you
| the compact would only serve to reduce the voice of the
| people (that is to say, reduce democracy) rather than
| increase them.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Please look into responding with empathy and grace
| instead. You took a chance to educate and threw it away.
| What would you hope to gain from such an interaction?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Alright then: The National Popular Vote Interstate
| Compact (hereafter "the Compact") would reduce democracy
| by reducing and eventually destroying the sovereignty of
| each individual State.
|
| The United States of America is exactly what it says on
| the tin: A Union of States. Each State is equal to all
| the others, united somewhat loosely as a Federal
| Republic.
|
| With regards to the consequences of the Compact, it would
| destroy the democratic right of the people of each State
| to decide, for themselves, who will represent their State
| in the Executive Branch of the Federal government. The
| President of the United States _represents the States in
| the Union_ and is _elected by the States_ , the States in
| turn determine who they elect as President by
| _respectively asking for their people to vote_ who their
| State should vote for.
|
| You might ask who in the Executive Branch of government
| represents the peoples of each State directly, that role
| falls upon the Governor of each respective State.
|
| The Compact would reduce the voice of the people and the
| sovereignties of States by removing their right to
| decide, for themselves, who to elect for President of the
| United States. People from one State would be able to
| overrule the people of another State, and vice versa.
| You're in California and voted for Bob? Tough shit,
| someone in North Dakota voted for Alex and your vote
| quite literally does not matter.
|
| Citing and supporting the Compact indicates you have no
| understanding of who, and more accurately _what_ , the
| President of the United States represents. It indicates
| you have no understanding what powers and rights each
| State and their respective peoples hold. If you are in a
| larger State, it indicates you have no care for what your
| fellow Americans and Statesmen think; if you are in a
| smaller State, it indicates you are fine with forfeiting
| your right to vote in deference to the nationwide
| majority.
|
| If you sincerely think the Compact would improve
| democracy in the United States of America, at best you
| are misguided and were misled, and at worst you are
| disingenuous with ulterior motives.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Again, can you please take the ad hominem out of it? It's
| getting in the way of having a productive discussion.
|
| > The United States of America is exactly what it says on
| the tin: A Union of States. Each State is equal to all
| the others, united somewhat loosely as a Federal
| Republic.
|
| This is simply counter-exampled with the proportional
| representation of the US House. If states were equal then
| population would play no part in representation.
|
| > With regards to the consequences of the Compact, it
| would destroy the democratic right of the people of each
| State to decide, for themselves, who will represent their
| State in the Executive Branch of the Federal government.
| The President of the United States represents the States
| in the Union and is elected by the States, the States in
| turn determine who they elect as President by
| respectively asking for their people to vote who their
| State should vote for.
|
| Again untrue. This doesn't reflect reality. People don't
| behave like that or believe that. Most people are in fact
| in favor of abolishing the electoral college[1].
|
| > You might ask who in the Executive Branch of government
| represents the peoples of each State directly, that role
| falls upon the Governor of each respective State.
|
| I'm not asking that. We're discussing Federal elections
| and representation.
|
| > The Compact would reduce the voice of the people and
| the sovereignties[sic] of States by removing their right
| to decide, for themselves, who to elect for President of
| the United States. People from one State would be able to
| overrule the people of another State, and vice versa.
| You're in California and voted for Bob? Tough shit,
| someone in North Dakota voted for Alex and your vote
| quite literally does not matter.
|
| This literally describes how Electoral College operates.
| It's a well known point of discussion when critiquing the
| electoral college. Surely, you must be familiar with that
| line of reasoning.
|
| > Citing and supporting the Compact indicates you have no
| understanding of who, and more accurately what, the
| President of the United States represents. It indicates
| you have no understanding what powers and rights each
| State and their respective peoples hold. If you are in a
| larger State, it indicates you have no care for what your
| fellow Americans and Statesmen think; if you are in a
| smaller State, it indicates you are fine with forfeiting
| your right to vote in deference to the nationwide
| majority.
|
| This confuses a personal subjective experience with the
| objective truth of reality. You've extrapolated a genuine
| question and comment into a malevolent and sinister plot.
| I truly urge you to find the best in people.
|
| > If you sincerely think the Compact would improve
| democracy in the United States of America, at best you
| are misguided and were misled, and at worst you are
| disingenuous with ulterior motives.
|
| Questioning people's character and motives distracts from
| productive discussion.
|
| Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine meeting
| someone who had this take. Can you point me in the
| direction of Constitutional scholars who share the same
| opinions you do?
|
| I urge you to familiarize yourself with The Federalist
| Papers : No. 68[2]. It covers the motivations for the
| construction of the electoral college all which are not
| reflected in your assessment of it. If you wish to
| continue belaboring this point, please just quote from
| No68 where it agrees with you.
|
| 1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2022/08/05/majority-of...
|
| 2. https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-
| papers/text-61-70#s-lg-box...
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >This is simply counter-exampled with the proportional
| representation of the US House. If states were equal then
| population would play no part in representation.
|
| This is a compromise because not all States have the same
| population (obviously). The Senate, where all States have
| equal representation, decides matters which are
| considered de facto of higher importance such as
| government appointments and diplomatic matters, among
| many others. All bills must also pass _both_ the House
| and the Senate, meaning a bill must pass the test of
| equal representation voting; larger States cannot simply
| force their way through, especially if smaller States
| come together.
|
| >Again untrue. This doesn't reflect reality. People don't
| behave like that or believe that. Most people are in fact
| in favor of abolishing the electoral college[1].
|
| Abolishing the Electoral College (which in my humble
| opinion is rooted in ignorance and party politics more
| than anything) has nothing to do with the fact that the
| President of the United States represents the States and
| is elected by the States. The Governors are who represent
| the peoples of the respective States in the Executive
| branch of government.
|
| Congress will act as a failsafe in the event the
| Electoral College deadlocks, and in such an event the
| House will vote for President-elect along State lines
| with the Representatives of each State _voting in unison
| with fellow State Congressmen as a bloc_ , just like the
| Electoral College, with each State bloc getting 1 vote.
| The Senate will likewise vote per-Senator on who will
| become Vice President-elect.
|
| It is very clear that the intent is the Presidency (and
| Vice Presidency) will be decided _by the States_ , with
| or without the Electoral College by an _equal
| representation vote_. The Presidency is voted in _at the
| pleasure of the States_ , derived from _the pleasure of
| the people of each State respectively_.
|
| >I'm not asking that. We're discussing Federal elections
| and representation.
|
| The President of the United States does not represent the
| people, at least not directly. In that context, you are
| in fact asking that because you, by citing and supporting
| the Compact, are arguing the President of the United
| States should represent the people directly rather than
| the United States.
|
| >This literally describes how Electoral College operates.
| It's a well known point of discussion when critiquing the
| electoral college. Surely, you must be familiar with that
| line of reasoning.
|
| The Electoral College (or Congress in the event of
| failsafe) votes, either officially or de facto, according
| to the will of the people of the respective States that
| the Electors (or Congressmen) hail from. The Electoral
| College (or Congress) quite literally represents the
| direct will of the people _in each State_.
|
| The Compact instead proposes to _not_ represent the
| direct will of the people in each State, instead
| deferring to whatever is the majority vote of the nation
| as a whole.
|
| The very nature of the Compact means that if the
| nationwide majority votes for Bob, then any States that
| voted for Alex or Charlie or Dave effectively have their
| votes uncounted; this is because the Electors of States
| whose people voted for Alex or Charlie or Dave will
| instead vote for Bob _in absolute defiance of that State
| 's peoples' votes for the others._
|
| The Compact effectively legalizes unfaithful Electors
| answering to the will of States they do not represent.
|
| This is an attack on the sovereignties and democracies of
| the States and their peoples thereof and should never be
| accepted, let alone tolerated.
|
| >This confuses a personal subjective experience with the
| objective truth of reality. You've extrapolated a genuine
| question and comment into a malevolent and sinister plot.
| I truly urge you to find the best in people.
|
| >Questioning people's character and motives distracts
| from productive discussion.
|
| Explain yourself how the Compact would improve democracy,
| then. What the Compact proposes is the exact opposite:
| What part of _deliberately defying the will of the
| people_ is supportive of democracy?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's giving everyone in the country the same amount of
| voting power. That's not defying the will of anyone.
|
| Stop focusing in on exactly how individual electors would
| supposedly defy things, because the point of the compact
| is to make electors irrelevant, and the overall outcome
| follows people's will perfectly fine.
|
| Consider this: If states traded pairs of electors with
| each other your logic would call that defying the will of
| the people, even though it would change nothing about the
| outcome. Because now they're not voting directly based on
| what their state said. Your logic is wrong.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| You are neglecting to understand that the States are
| separate from each other, with a right to decide their
| affairs themselves. The nationwide popular vote is
| meaningless because the United States of America does not
| operate on nationwide popular votes, it operates on
| Statewide Popular Votes which are represented at the
| Federal level of politics by the States' respective
| Governors, Congressmen, and Electors.
|
| Consider another example of Federal matters being decided
| by votes by the States: Constitutional amendments.
| Amendments require ratification from 2/3rds of all the
| States to become part of the Constitution, not 2/3rds of
| the nationwide popular vote.
|
| The Compact argues for the people of one State dictating
| the decision of the people of another State, in this case
| the question of who shall become President of the United
| States of America. Destroying State rights like that is
| not how you improve democracy.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > The Compact argues for the people of one State
| dictating the decision of the people of another State
|
| So would my theoretical where states trade electors. So
| that's not enough to show that democracy has been
| damaged.
|
| The process _as a whole_ would still be democratic. The
| result _as a whole_ would be based on everyone 's vote
| with even more equality than usual.
|
| Looking at individual electors to make an objection is
| not going to give you the right answer.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| What are you thoughts on the idea of disproportionate
| voter power as described here?
| https://medium.com/practical-coding/whats-my-vote-
| worth-3ca2...
| brewdad wrote:
| The NPVIC _could_ be a great advancement for democracy
| but since the side advantaged by the current system has
| zero incentive to agree to it, the idea is
| counterproductive without a mandate requiring the entire
| country to participate.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >the side advantaged by the current system has zero
| incentive to agree to it
|
| You are absolutely right that the States, particularly
| the smaller and weaker States, would have zero incentive
| to agree to _surrender their sovereignties_ in deference
| to the other States.
|
| The United States of America is a Union of States, and
| the first step to further democracy in this country is
| respecting the sacred fact that each State and the people
| within them each have the right to decide their own path.
| Violating their sovereignties is destructive for
| democracy.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| >You are absolutely right that the States, particularly
| the smaller and weaker States, would have zero incentive
| to agree to surrender their sovereignties in deference to
| the other States.
|
| Except that they already have. Each of Vermont(3),
| Delaware(3), Hawaii(4), Rhode Island(4), New Mexico(5),
| Connecticut(7), and Oregon(8) has already ratified
| legislation agreeing to the compact. That's seven counter
| examples.
|
| I'll point out that there are in fact enough states
| pending ratification that will obsolete the EC should
| they be confirmed. In a twist of irony, a sacred duty to
| represent states could be foiled by state legislatures
| themselves.
| User23 wrote:
| Term limits are predicated on the notion that our so-called
| legislators legislate. They do not. They merely sign off on
| the bills their principals give them. While for the tv
| issues the two parts of our bifactional ruling party are
| happy to pretend to be at odds, when it comes to the real
| priorities of those who are actually in charge they
| inevitably fall in line.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Not copyright, but I'm pretty sure both Uber and AirBnB were
| out breaking laws willy-nilly. They called it "disruption".
| pncnmnp wrote:
| Just to clarify, what are the consequences of their actions? It
| appears to be a clear case of copyright infringement.
| Therefore, I assume that the legal penalties listed on this
| website (https://www.lib.purdue.edu/uco/infringement) can be
| applied in this case:
|
| - The infringer paying the monetary damages and profits.
|
| - The law offering a range from $200 to $150,000 for each
| infringed work.
|
| - The infringer paying for all lawyers' fees and court costs.
|
| Is it more likely for the case to be resolved outside the
| court? I am worried about their future.
| wahern wrote:
| Libraries are exempted from statutory damages if they had a
| good faith belief that their usage was Fair Use. The
| published opinion defers the question of exemption.
|
| Statutory damages are the most significant risk to IA's
| finances, both in this case but also wrt other potential
| plaintiffs who might be waiting in the wings. Exemption
| almost certainly figured into IA's risk assessment when
| designing and deploying their loan program. The argument for
| exemption is, naturally, stronger than for Fair Use.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The consequences may be the loss of the entire Internet
| Archive, if it can't afford to both pay the fines of deciding
| to ++++ around and find out with book publishers and running
| its servers at the same time.
| echelon wrote:
| I'll donate everything I can if that happens. And I'll call
| all of my representatives.
|
| I value Internet Archive as much as Wikipedia. And with
| LLMs set to replace Wikipedia, I think IA will have longer
| societal and historical value.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > loss of the entire Internet Archive
|
| They host a lot of material that is not copyrighted and
| expired copyrights. Also this ruling does not apply to
| software.
| danielheath wrote:
| Yeah, and if they are financially wiped out they will no
| longer be able to do so.
| [deleted]
| RedCondor wrote:
| It's a little amusing to compare the reactions here to Internet
| Archive breaking the law ("The law is the law...") to
| Uber/AirBnB breaking the law ("Newcomers challenging the
| system! Ambitious, bold disruption!").
| misnome wrote:
| I constantly see people still complaining about what Uber and
| AirBnB do/did. And, likewise, there are plenty of comments
| here saying the same positive things about IA.
|
| Are you just choosing to ignore those comments?
| RedCondor wrote:
| It's never a question of existence/nonexistence. One can
| always cite some minor example.
|
| It's a question of proportion, and I'd go further say that
| it's quite disingenuous to pretend that this contradiction,
| in this website, isn't heavily tilted in favour of
| predatory corporations and against public good services
| (i.e. libertarian).
|
| This of course makes sense. Innumerably more people here
| used Uber than IA, and what's more, many were literal
| employees of Uber, AirBnB, etc. and its competitors. It
| would be silly to expect anything else. But it's still
| amusing.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| I'm sad the IA put good work like the wayback machine at
| risk. I hate Uber/AirBnB, but they at least correctly
| predicted they'd get away with it.
| cultureswitch wrote:
| To me those are similar. Uber is addressing the universally
| reviled criminal organisation slash medieval guild that taxis
| are in every single city they operate. AirBnB really never
| was illegal to begin with. Internet Archive is breaking
| copyright law which needs a huge reform.
| ipcress_file wrote:
| > But breaking it before it has changed is risky and foolish,
| and does more harm than good.
|
| As I recall, this is precisely how British Columbia got Sunday
| shopping. Stores and shopping malls broke the law repeatedly.
| There were fines, but Sunday shopping was popular. Eventually,
| public pressure led governments to legalize Sunday opening.
|
| I didn't agree with it then and I don't fully agree with it
| now, but it can work.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"I didn't agree with it then and I don't fully agree with it
| now, but it can work."
|
| I actually do agree with it. Same reason as jury
| nullification. If _enough_ people (jury members in this case)
| believe that the law / particular application is unjust then
| fuck it. In nullification the government must give in. I do
| not see why it should be any different in general. The key
| here should be what constitutes "enough"
| nonethewiser wrote:
| This has a name.
|
| Mob rule.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Not doing this has a name, too.
|
| Slavish obedience.
|
| The jury is not supposed to be robots. They're there
| because there's supposed to be someone with judgment.
| Timwi wrote:
| That's just a derogatory term for democracy.
| FpUser wrote:
| Alternatively we can call it restraining our masters when
| they run amok. They're the same mob that we are. If the
| law goes against common sense / justice then the fuck
| with it. Why should we suffer a consequence of some
| lunatic with damaged brain.
| SideQuark wrote:
| Listing a place a law was broken to advocate for repeating it
| is not good advice. The proper metric is to see how many
| times laws are broken and how often that works out for the
| lawbreaker.
|
| IA is learning the difference, unfortunately.
| ipcress_file wrote:
| I didn't advocate for breaking the law. I said I disagreed
| with the whole thing. I was pointing out that the approach
| had worked in the past, because the previous poster had
| argued that "breaking [the law] before it has changed is
| risky and foolish, and does more harm than good."
| SideQuark wrote:
| The previous poster made a more defensible statement
| given the totality of outcomes when breaking the law.
|
| If I told someone smoking is bad forr their health, would
| you follow with "I know a person that smoked till 98" as
| reasonable advice? This is the same argument.
|
| And in this case, the actions of IA may well end them for
| all of us. That's not such a good outcome for breaking
| the law, is it?
| ipcress_file wrote:
| This is a faulty parallel. Someone who smokes until
| they're 98 is not engaged in a quest to change the
| general outcome of smoking for all others.
| SideQuark wrote:
| Not many lawbreakers are doing it to change the law
| either.
|
| And we're seeing the IA possibly going to end because
| they wanted to break the law, and not completely for some
| moral cause, but because breaking it helps them. There
| was plenty of reasonable calling out Brewster's ignorant
| and self-serving choices on this issue for some time. He
| didn't need to do this, and he put the entire operation
| at unnecessary risk, as his critics claimed would happen.
|
| This is what lawbreaking generally does.
| 14 wrote:
| I am from BC and the Sunday no shopping was a bit before my
| time but my dad talks about how stupid it was. If you had a
| problem and needed something in an emergency well too bad.
| Didn't realize you were low on bread and forgot to get it
| Saturday oh well kids are not getting a sandwich in their
| lunches for Monday morning school. Like you say eventually
| people realized the fines were actually just the cost of
| doing business. Those who opened up sundays made a killing
| because that is what the people wanted. I know a guy who did
| the same for opening a marijuana shop. Did it just before it
| was legal and was getting a $150 fine each day from the city.
| He said just a cost of business as he was making several
| thousand or more each day.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| I take it your dad want a low wage retail employee working
| Sundays? Not sacrificing everything to the grass good
| consumerism isn't "stupid".
|
| > " _Didn't realize you were low on bread and forgot to get
| it Saturday oh well kids are not getting a sandwich in
| their lunches for Monday morning school._ "
|
| It is possible to make bread. And to eat other things. And
| to buy school lunches. And to borrow or trade food with
| neighbours.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| > I take it your dad want a low wage retail employee
| working Sundays?
|
| Is the low wages of retail workers less bad on the other
| days of the week?
| jodrellblank wrote:
| High wage employees have leverage, and can afford to
| quit. They are less pushed into the position "we're
| allowed to open on Sunday so you're working Sundays now".
| ncallaway wrote:
| What makes Sunday so special? Why not just pass worker
| protection laws that prevent people from overworking,
| rather than dictating a magical day that nobody can work.
|
| It's a stupid idea and a dumb law that it only makes
| sense if your worker protection laws are too weak.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _Why not just pass worker protection laws that
| prevent people from overworking_ "
|
| Provide your own answer here: why did the system which
| exists to exploit humans for profit do away with a free
| day instead of "just" passing worker protection laws?
| (Why did you frame it as "prevent people from
| overworking" instead of "prevent people from being
| overworked"?)
|
| > " _It 's a stupid idea and a dumb law that it only
| makes sense if your worker protection laws are too
| weak._"
|
| Humans exist for more than just buying things. You may
| not like "A Sabbath for God" but "A day for something in
| life other than shopping" is an important idea. When
| September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks happened - great
| big terrorist attacks on American soil for pretty much
| the first time - President George Bush told Americans to
| "go shopping" in response. When many American teenagers
| grew up, they hung out at a shopping mall.
|
| Are you not lamenting the increasing feeling that you
| can't go out in public without being charged to be
| somewhere these days? Or the gradual turning of all walks
| of life into advertising and subscription services? Is
| any pushback on it "stupid and dumb" to you?
| ncallaway wrote:
| > Why did you frame it as "prevent people from
| overworking" instead of "prevent people from being
| overworked"?
|
| I'm sorry I used the wrong words.
|
| > Humans exist for more than just buying things
|
| Yea, duh
|
| > "A day for something in life other than shopping" is an
| important idea
|
| That's fine. Why does it have to be the _same_ day for
| everyone? That's the stupid idea. Pass a law that says
| everyone must be given a full day off every week, I'm
| with you. Pass a law saying that day _must_ be Sunday,
| and I'm walking away.
|
| Hell, pass a law that says everyone must be given three
| full days off every week, I'm with you. Pass a law that
| says you have to pay someone 3x for every hour they work
| beyond 30 hours, I'm with you. Pass a law that says
| everyone must work 9am-3pm and I'm walking away.
|
| > Are you not lamenting the increasing feeling that you
| can't go out in public without being charged to be
| somewhere these days?
|
| Irrelevant to the conversation, but generally, no.
|
| > Or the gradual turning of all walks of life into
| advertising and subscription services?
|
| Irrelevant to the conversation, but yea, it's a
| hellscape.
|
| > Is any pushback on it "stupid and dumb" to you?
|
| Nope.
| nikau wrote:
| Having a fixed day off allows people to plan leisure
| activities with friends and family as it was guaranteed
| they too would also have the day off.
| nulbyte wrote:
| I don't think that answers the question. Suppose I want
| to go to the movies on my day off. I can't, precisely
| because everyone else is off, too.
| em-bee wrote:
| entertainment venues, museums, restaurants, etc are
| usually getting an exception here. public transport and
| emergency services too. can't shut the country down.
|
| i am actually curious how they do that in israel where
| the jewish law not to work on sabbath is taken much more
| seriously.
| Ekaros wrote:
| And why should they? Why should not those workers get
| same rights? Are they somehow lesser? Just give them also
| mandatory time off on same day. And then they like others
| can take some other time free to go to those places.
| em-bee wrote:
| well, i don't know about the specific rules for work on
| sunday in these places, but generally, when you accept a
| job there you know in advance that there will be work on
| sundays, so if you don't want that, don't take that kind
| of job.
| nikau wrote:
| yes - so in the past there were penalty rates like double
| time to compensate for that.
| Ekaros wrote:
| So, should this be extended to all workers? And all
| places that people might spend leisure time? Let's say
| restaurants and bars, cinemas, public swimming pools,
| markets, amusement parks.
|
| As those people should have same exact rights to spend
| leisure time with their families and friends.
| nikau wrote:
| Indeed, so at least in Australia they have penalty rates
| where you can get up to 2.5x normal pay rate for working
| on a public holiday for example.
| em-bee wrote:
| children don't go to school on sunday, having the right
| to take sunday off instead of some other weekday is a
| benefit for families.
| ncallaway wrote:
| I feel like this is the best argument for it but... it
| leaves a lot of holes? What about Saturdays, or other
| non-school days?
|
| And... just protection for retail workers? Is there a
| reason it wouldn't apply to all workers below a certain
| pay range (or maybe it did, and the "no shopping" rule is
| just a shorthand?)
| em-bee wrote:
| it does apply to all employees.
|
| and actually, in germany for example, the rule is not
| that shops must be closed. you can open your shop if you
| can run it yourself, without any employees help.
|
| depending on the country, saturdays can be school days,
| but generally nowadays, the rule extended to saturday as
| well, actually, with the exception of retail. it used to
| be that saturdays were half work days. and of national
| holidays are equal to sundays.
| dgacmu wrote:
| Not everyone cares about working Sunday. Why is it
| Sunday? Why not Saturday? Right - one set of religious
| beliefs that aren't universal. Why should the state be
| mandating this? Isn't it better to use state power to
| prevent employers from being able to coerce employees
| into working excessively or being unable to negotiate the
| days off that are important to them?
| brewdad wrote:
| Nobody wants to go to work on Monday. Let's shut
| everything down on Mondays. :)
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| Asian restaurants around me that are open Sunday just
| close on Monday or Tuesday. Very common at least in
| Atlanta.
| em-bee wrote:
| very common in europe too. because more people go out to
| eat on sundays than on mondays
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _Why should the state be mandating this? Isn 't it
| better to use state power to prevent employers from being
| able to coerce employees into working_"
|
| Remember when Arkansas rolled back some child labour
| laws? Hopefully you do, it was last week[1]. The reason
| why not "just do something good for workers instead" is
| because companies want cheaper employees with fewer
| options to leave, not better protections for workers.
|
| > " _Why is it Sunday? Why not Saturday?_ "
|
| Great, well done, you've bikeshedded it from "mandatory
| day off" to "no mandatory day off" because you can't see
| a difference between them. Religion bad, Atheism good,
| therefore roll back labour protections?
|
| [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/08/politics/sarah-
| huckabee-s...
| bentley wrote:
| > Religion bad, Atheism good
|
| In the United States, blue laws have historically been
| used to oppress religious minorities like Jews and
| Sabbatarian Christians.
| blululu wrote:
| No. Those laws were made to curtail drunkenness and the
| numerous social woes that come with it. Same reason we
| passed total prohibition. Those religious minorities were
| negligible in the times and places where they passed blue
| laws and the only groups that were negatively associated
| with alcohol were Christian.
| bentley wrote:
| Huh? I described a side effect of these laws--not
| theoretical, but an actual side effect that happened. You
| counter by saying... that that wasn't the intent of the
| law? Sure, I agree with you: blue laws in the United
| States were not (usually) put in place with the intent of
| oppressing seventh-day Sabbatarians, a relatively
| insignificant group. But oppression of Sabbatarians is in
| fact what they led to.
| dgacmu wrote:
| The post I was replying to specifically indicated
| "Sunday".
|
| I didn't say religion bad. I said that Sunday was chosen
| because of it's alignment with many Christian religions,
| and this is true:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_law
|
| There are many other religions that do _not_ have Sunday
| as a day of rest; other abrahamic religions choose Friday
| (Islam) or Saturday (Judaism, 7th day Adventist). Non-
| abrahamic religions and atheists feature further
| diversity.
|
| Consider:
|
| > California twice passed Sunday closing laws, in 1858
| and in 1861. The first was found unconstitutional just
| five months after it was enacted. It was used to convict
| and imprison a Jewish clothing merchant who closed his
| business on Saturday, and opened it on Sunday.
|
| ( https://historycollection.com/the-random-history-of-
| blue-law... )
|
| One could simply mandate that businesses offer employees
| one or more consistent day of rest instead of having the
| state pick religious winners and losers.
| alexander-wilms wrote:
| [flagged]
| dgb23 wrote:
| Worker protections are fought for and maintained by
| unions.
| brewdad wrote:
| Sunday blue laws were NEVER about labor protections.
| ipcress_file wrote:
| Oh. There were a small number of corner stores that were
| allowed to be open. I don't know how they decided that. But
| you could always get the basics on a Sunday.
|
| Gas stations were also allowed to be open although they
| rarely had convenience stores attached to them back then.
| scoot wrote:
| > Didn't realize you were low on bread and forgot to get it
| Saturday oh well kids are not getting a sandwich in their
| lunches for Monday morning school.
|
| Probably not the best example, because it's not like a
| sandwich is the only lunch option (the lazy one for sure),
| but I take your point. Migraine and no painkillers, period
| and no pads, sex and no condom, alcoholic and no alcohol
| (with risk of lethal DTs)? Too bad...
| libraryatnight wrote:
| The logic you use to dismiss the sandwich example
| extrapolates to your own examples. "Shut off the lights
| and go to bed or go to the ER" "Stuff a cloth in your
| underwear" "Don't have sex" "Don't you have any sterno or
| mouthwash?!"
|
| Why even do this to someone if you understood their
| meaning and more or less agree?
| scoot wrote:
| So your argument is that no shopping is an inconvenience,
| not an imposition? I ask because you did the same thing
| you're arguing against, and yet failed to provide any
| counter examples.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| I have no argument other than your comment was silly and
| pointless. This is you realizing that without realizing
| that.
| tuckerconnelly wrote:
| Do you disagree because of the Sabbath?
| wongarsu wrote:
| Not OP, but I think having one day where nearly everyone
| (except restaurants, attractions, hospitality and essential
| services) has off is good for family cohesion. It gives
| everyone a guaranteed weekly timeslot to spend time
| together.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| << except restaurants, attractions, hospitality and
| essential services
|
| Does cohesion of those families matter less?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Is that a real question?
|
| You didn't split out essential services, and it seems
| dead-obvious to me that shutting those down would cause
| more harm than good even when you value all families
| exactly the same. There's no way they're saying the
| families of essential service providers are less
| important.
|
| And it seems pretty clear they're grouping those other
| things in with essential services, which you could
| disagree with, but is a very different thing from saying
| those families are less important.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| << Is that a real question?
|
| I am genuinely curious how a person reconciles two
| seemingly opposing views:
|
| "It gives everyone a guaranteed weekly timeslot to spend
| time together."
|
| where everyone is everyone except:
|
| "except restaurants, attractions, hospitality and
| essential services".
|
| I could easily give in on essential services, because a
| lot will ride on how broadly they are defined, but if the
| goal is 'family cohesion' building for everyone then as
| few groups should be excluded as possible ( which also
| means that businesses that people, who usually have even
| less leisure time than most of us -- restaurants,
| attractions, hospitality -- can recharge ).
|
| I will be honest. For me it the line drawing always tends
| to be the most interesting piece, because it tends to
| indicate what the individual really values. In this case,
| and this is not a shot, because it is very human thing to
| do, they value 'their family cohesion' and 'their ability
| to participate in various leisure activities' over those
| who have to serve them, while they bond with their loved
| ones.
|
| For the record, the line listed by parent is not
| unreasonable, but can you give me an argument as to why
| it is not amazingly selfish way of looking at society (
| Sunday for me, but not for thee ).
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > For the record, the line listed by parent is not
| unreasonable, but can you give me an argument as to why
| it is not amazingly selfish way of looking at society (
| Sunday for me, but not for thee ).
|
| Sure, that's easy enough. Even if some people can't
| participate, it's a big benefit to have most people share
| a day, and everyone that's taking those sunday work slots
| should be getting paid significantly extra and also
| probably on rotation. And the other poster might _be_ in
| one of those businesses.
|
| If someone in a restaurant/attraction/hospitality
| business has less leisure time, you could _improve_ that
| by valuing Sunday higher. Let them trade two Sundays in a
| month for 3-4 non-Sundays.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Essential services I think should be in different pool.
| They are needed to run modern world. But they should be
| limited to bare needed staff. Just so that emergency
| cases can be handled and emergency actions taken.
|
| And I btw, do not count public transport as essential
| service. People have plenty of time to walk, and
| emergency can include ambulances for medical problems.
| ipcress_file wrote:
| I liked the quiet day. I guess a lot of people didn't.
| Still, I would have preferred the question to have been
| put to a vote.
| ipcress_file wrote:
| What irked me was that a lot of major corporations got
| together to subvert the law out of self-interest. If the
| people wanted to change the law, fine. Call a referendum.
| egberts1 wrote:
| Does it matter?
| zenexer wrote:
| Yes: if it's the sabbath, that's an argument with which
| I'm familiar. My counter-argument is that I don't want to
| be forced to practice someone else's religion. If your
| religion already imposes those rules on its followers,
| why does it need a secular government to assist?
|
| If it's not the sabbath, then I'm intrigued and want to
| learn more.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| That isn't forcing you to practice a religion.
| thwarted wrote:
| If there's a fine for operating your business on Sunday
| because Sunday is the Sabbath, then there's a tax on
| _not_ practicing a religion.
| causality0 wrote:
| It's literally forcing a tenet of a religion on everyone.
| It's like making it illegal to sell beef on Fridays
| during Lent or making alcohol illegal in an Islamic
| country.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Somewhat pedantic, but I would note that Sunday isn't the
| Sabbath, Saturday is. Most Christians don't observe the
| Sabbath (citing Jesus's defense of the woman who was
| supposed to be stoned because she had collected wood on
| the Sabbath). Instead, they rest on the Lord's day,
| commemorating Jesus's resurrection the day after the
| Sabbath, while still recognizing that their god rested
| after creating the world on a Saturday.
| Sunspark wrote:
| For some it might. What if one is a practising member of
| a religion that has their Sabbath on Friday or Saturday?
| They are put at a competitive disadvantage if they are
| forced to be closed for 2 days instead of 1.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| That argument is just absurd, why should that matter
|
| Is it the responsibility of the government to protect the
| profit opportunities of some specific people who choose
| to be a certain religion?
| dboreham wrote:
| Same in England. In Scotland there were no strong laws
| against Sunday shopping, apparently because nobody thought
| any shop would even think about opening. So when they did,
| and everyone went shopping, folks in England complained that
| they wanted what Scotland had.
| gerdesj wrote:
| Are you sure? It sounds vaguely convincing but unlikely in
| practice:
|
| Scotland - Largely Presbyterian ie rather more Catholic
| than us southern softies wot do Church of Eng. Your
| Catholic is rather more concerned about Sabbath behaviour
| than your Protestant except when they don't. Mind you we
| have some laughable nonsense available regardless of
| denomination - for example otters were once classed as fish
| hereabouts for Fish Friday. lol! It is quite hard to get
| more than 50 miles away from the sea in Britain. We also
| have quite a lot of rivers/streams/brooks/burns/cultured
| waterways - canals. Those ribbons of water contain quite a
| lot of fish. Yes, the UK might be quite as mad as you
| imagine it - we seem to require mammals to be classified as
| fish to ensure we make a God happy (one day in seven).
|
| I recall shopping on Sunday becoming a thing here around
| the late 80s/early 90s but hours were not too conservative
| here in the UK compared to the rest of europe. We never had
| formal lunchtime closing for example, which is bloody
| annoying. I lived in W Germany for a few years back in
| 70s-90s and it was tricky buying stuff around 1200-1400
| depending on where you were and the time. Nowadays I note
| that Italy, Spain, Portugal int al still have some pretty
| patchy midday work practices. That's fine but caveat
| emptor!
| pauby wrote:
| In Central Scotland, during the 70s and 80s, lunch time
| closing was the norm. Half day Wednesday was also very
| popular in some trades (butchers, grocers etc.) as it
| allowed working on a Saturday morning.
|
| Back then, nothing was open on a Sunday.
|
| In some parts of Scotland (the Western Isles for example)
| doing any work, hanging your washing out, cutting your
| grass etc. on a Sunday, to be violating the Sabbath. No
| laws. Just peer pressure from your neighbours. As you'd
| expect this is stronger in smaller villages than larger
| towns.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > But breaking it before it has changed is risky and foolish
|
| It certainly worked out well for Uber
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > But breaking it before it has changed is risky and foolish,
| and does more harm than good.
|
| That's how most laws get abolished.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Not with such a completely one sided court case. If anything,
| this will probably kill the Open Libraries (lending digital
| books backed 1:1 by real copies of them) model of lending
| entirely (the court decision mentions no right to digitally
| lend copyrighted material). Publishers seemed to not really
| care about it before the IA covid library stunt, but now it
| might very well die.
| wmidwestranger wrote:
| If the publishers could push the button and kill digitally
| lending at their whim then there isn't a reason to pretend
| it was actually alive and well, in any real sense. I
| believe Machiavelli observed, "War is never avoided, only
| delayed for the benefit of one participant or another."
| Librarians have always had a zealous faction that has even
| frustrated United States Federal Agents, often at the least
| convenient time for the librarians who did so. Given the
| money and influence wielded by the publishers, how would
| the digital librarians fair better in the future? They're
| better off winning or losing here and letting the natural
| consequences of the publisher's decisions come to bite them
| in the ass than building further efforts on a rug the
| publishers can yank from beneath them at any time.
| bawolff wrote:
| Sometimes, but its also how people end up in prison.
| CaptainNegative wrote:
| Precedent for federal cases is typically first set at the
| appellate level. If you're working your activism through
| the courts, you usually have to lose before you can win.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| There is a less than zero percent chance this Supreme
| Court decides in favor of the Internet Archive, if they
| ever even cared to hear the case.
| bentley wrote:
| "This" Supreme Court? As opposed to any other Supreme
| Court?
|
| Which Supreme Courts have been friendly to fair use and
| opposed copyright expansionist arguments?
| thewildginger wrote:
| While this was the southern district of new York, the 9th
| circuit court of appeals ruled on a similar issue with
| Vidangel on 2016. They would buy DVDs and let people pay
| to watch a censored version, even going so far as to
| purchase a physical version for every one that was
| streamed for censorship, and they claimed fair use. They
| were ruled against and filed for chapter 11.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_v._VidAngel#:~:tex
| t=J...
|
| I'm sure someone will reply to tell us how it's not
| really that similar but I thought there were some
| parallels
| bawolff wrote:
| And honestly they probably have a better (albeit still
| terrible) case because it was transformative
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >should lobby for ... law to change. But breaking it before it
| has changed is risky and foolish, and does more harm than good.
|
| This advice is reasonable in most cases, but applying it as a
| rule is devastating for society.
| superkuh wrote:
| https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/22/book-publishers-wont-sto...
|
| >Every part of that has been deemed legal. Copyright law
| already has first sale rights, written directly into the law
| and allow for the lending or reselling of copyright-covered
| works without a license or permission. Similarly libraries are
| given explicit rights to make copies, so long as those
| collections are made available to the public. On top of that,
| courts have determined, multiple times, that book scanning
| itself is fair use for libraries.
|
| >So, literally each separate component of what is happening
| with Controlled Digital Lending has already been deemed to be
| legal and exactly what we expect libraries to do.
|
| >To counter this, publishers (and their supporters, which
| unfortunately include some authors) argue that (1) this
| interferes with the market for licensed ebooks, and (2) that
| there is a real difference in lending out the digital scans:
| that they don't deteriorate the way that physical books do.
| musicale wrote:
| > if libraries were new today there's no way that book
| publishers would let them exist
|
| ;-)
|
| Same for broadcast radio vs. record companies.
|
| And DVRs vs. streaming video companies. Oh wait...
| nikau wrote:
| > But breaking it before it has changed is risky and foolish,
| and does more harm than good.
|
| Exactly, that's only for companies like uber and airbnb who add
| real value to society, not some losers trying to make books
| accessible.
| wmorgan wrote:
| I don't know about Airbnb. But you realize that before Uber
| existed, people ran businesses which were entirely, "you call
| us up, we'll send you a car and take you where you want to
| go," (And that driver was an independent contractor)
|
| I really don't see the angle that Uber was doing something
| fundamentally new, except to the extent that they
| dramatically lowered the price and a lot more people used the
| service.
| palata wrote:
| Pretty sure the parent was sarcasm.
| nikau wrote:
| Yes my comment was very facetious.
| gaganyaan wrote:
| [flagged]
| the_only_law wrote:
| You're assuming they don't agree with the hypothetical you
| suggest. These sort of people back then would have
| unequivocally supported her arrest and persecution. They
| defend the status quo and not much else. After all the status
| quo likely led to their own prosperity. I can only assume
| these sort people would have attempted to condemn something
| like the French resistance since it was "against the law" as
| long as they they benefited from occupation.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| You have it backwards, breaking it widely and repeatedly will
| do more good than harm.
| [deleted]
| kristopolous wrote:
| And the results are
|
| Capitalism 1
|
| Expansion and the preservation of human knowledge 0
| puppycodes wrote:
| or we could just end the idea of intellectual property and stop
| assuming everything needs to be tied to capital to have value
| anticensor wrote:
| Yeah that is the problem with capitalism: they want low
| inherent value but disproportionally high profits.
| thayne wrote:
| > Published works do not lose copyright protection after five
| years
|
| Obviously, the courts have no control over that, but copyright
| protection definitely lasts way too long. Five years, might be
| kind too short, at least for some kinds of works, but I think the
| longer the copyright lasts, the more harm it causes to society
| and the less benefit it has in protecting the interests of the
| creator and incentivizing more creation.
|
| > there is a "thriving ebook licensing market for libraries" in
| which the Publishers earn a fee whenever a library obtains one of
| their licensed ebooks from an aggregator like OverDrive.... This
| market generates at least tens of millions of dollars a year for
| the Publishers.... And IA supplants the Publishers' place in this
| market
|
| I'm confused by this argument. If the market is thriving, then IA
| clearly isn't supplanting it.
|
| > IA argues that its digital lending makes it easier for patrons
| who live far from physical libraries to access books and that it
| supports research, scholarship, and cultural participation by
| making books widely accessible on the Internet. But these alleged
| benefits cannot outweigh the market harm to the Publishers....
|
| In other words, the court values a company, which already has
| plenty of money, making more money, more than "patrons who live
| far from physical libraries" having access to books.
| navane wrote:
| It's weird how a bank can loan out 8-20 times what is deposited,
| but if I can lend out a single copy of a book I have? The banking
| system runs the backbone of the economy, but god forbid if
| everyone has access to all books? What if we use books as a
| payment method, can we then use the same leverage banks do?
| orangepurple wrote:
| Books cannot be used to pay government taxes or settle debts
| which are the factors that drive the value of a currency. As a
| recent example Putin tried to force the EU to pay Russia for
| energy in rubles.
| lucb1e wrote:
| That's not how that works. Non-central banks don't print money
| the way that servers send out bytes.
|
| There is also no copyright on bank notes that prohibits you
| from selling copies of them online. It's also not the bank's
| fault that you feel copyright law is unjust, it's got nothing
| to do with each other.
| winddude wrote:
| Fuck.
| drawkbox wrote:
| Luckily libraries existed before copyright / IP was too top heavy
| otherwise they wouldn't exist. This content and products are part
| of culture. An online library should be allowed to exist. You can
| go to public libraries and in many they have ebook checkout
| systems. Why not Internet Archive, one of the most valuable
| online resources next to Wikipedia and data sources.
| eevilspock wrote:
| They need to move offshore. Iceland?
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Here was the EFF's statement on the case when they initially
| agreed to represent the Internet Archive:
| https://www.eff.org/cases/hachette-v-internet-archive
|
| IIRC this all came about because the IA decided to increase their
| lending beyond the limits of the licenses they had during covid,
| when more people were trying to use their services due to being
| stuck inside.
|
| Also of note is that the is only the district court. We'll have
| to see if the EFF appeals to the circuit next.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| This lawsuit covers the limited lending they did before COVID,
| but that either flew under the publishers' radar or perhaps
| they knew but didn't care enough to respond until IA started
| doing the more blatant "unrestricted lending"
| orra wrote:
| > IIRC this all came about because the IA decided to increase
| their lending beyond the limits of the licenses they had during
| covid
|
| That's the excuse the publishers are pushing, but ultimately
| they disagree with, and have successfully argued in court it
| seems, against the entire principle.
|
| Ultimately, controlled digital lending should be as lawful as
| format shifting an album: this is format shifting from a
| physical book to an ebook.
|
| > Also of note is that the is only the district court
|
| Phew?
| bobsmooth wrote:
| >That's the excuse the publishers are pushing, but ultimately
| they disagree with, and have successfully argued in court it
| seems, against the entire principle.
|
| Which is why it's really dumb that the IA pushed it blatantly
| violating copyright laws.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| But in this case, it wasn't controlled, right? Even with DRM
| to "expire" the lent ebook after a certain amount of time,
| they still ended up distributing the books without
| restriction on availability.
|
| I don't really care about the publishers, but I still
| wouldn't expect to seriously get away with arguing that I
| wasn't distributing copyrighted material if I started
| offering movies online for free in unlimited numbers...
| because it was just controlled lending since the movie files
| were set up to probably become unreadable in 3 weeks.
|
| I'm sure they have competent lawyers that would've predicted
| an outcome like this, which makes the decision to do it even
| more baffling. Especially for an organization that ought to
| be conservative by design, considering they want to be a very
| long-term archive.
| abetusk wrote:
| Digital copies of books are available to anyone willing to look
| for them, free of charge and easily downloadable. I suspect all
| this ruling has done, if I've understood it correctly, is make it
| more difficult for people wanting to download or view copies
| legitimately.
|
| I love the IA. I use it weekly if not daily. My bet is that
| they'll push back on this and other rulings and will ultimately
| lobby for saner laws.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I don't understand why people are shocked at this outcome.
|
| Nothing was stopping IA from both reading the physical copy
| purchased (or potentially lending it out, physically), as well as
| lending out the copy that was created as a result of
| digitization.
|
| Losing this was inevitable.
|
| In fact, the analogies to libraries were flawed from the start.
| Libraries purchase a book and lend out the very book that was
| purchased. Clearly that's not what's happening with the internet
| archive.
|
| I'm other words: a library lends out book b. The internet archive
| buys book c, puts it through Digitize(), which returns book
| cprime and lends out cprime. However fair use would only permit
| lending out c, not cprime.
| allturtles wrote:
| A lot of people in these comments still seem confused about what
| has happened here.
|
| This ruling is not about the emergency library at all. It's a
| ruling that controlled digital lending (one physical copy backing
| each digital copy lent out) is illegal.
| dahart wrote:
| > It's a ruling that controlled digital lending is illegal.
|
| That's not really true. One issue described explicitly in the
| decision is that the lending is mostly _uncontrolled_ , and
| worse there's evidence of it the defendant was aware of. The
| second issue is that the defendant isn't using the first sale
| doctrine, their defense is fair use. Presumably the whole
| reason they decided to argue fair use is because they knew they
| weren't adhering to the lending analogy, because they were
| aware they were effectively distributing copies, not just
| lending them.
| warent wrote:
| That seems horrendous. Don't many community/government
| libraries do this? Seems like a huge blow to freedom of
| information and sharing.
| dmix wrote:
| Is this just ebook lending? Is that popular among local
| libraries?
|
| I thought Kindle/Nook/Apple books/etc completely dominated
| that market. Reading PDFs on computers/tablets for long form
| stuff never made much sense to me. I'm curious if local
| libraries get much traction from their digital libraries.
|
| I could see audiobooks getting locked down being a big hit
| though. Audible has a monopoly on that harder than ebooks
| ever experienced.
| cratermoon wrote:
| My library lends epubs through OverDrive, which puts
| Adobe's DRM on them. It works quite well with my Kobo Libra
| H2O. Checkouts of ebooks spiked during the pandemic, with 3
| million in 2019, for a county with a total population of
| ~800K
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Checkouts of ebooks spiked during the pandemic, with 3
| million in 2019, for a county with a total population of
| ~800K
|
| Did you mean 2020? Or did they spike before the pandemic
| really started?
| cratermoon wrote:
| Sorry, those were two different thoughts. I only have
| numbers for 2019. I haven't been able to find anything
| for pandemic years other than general reports that ebook
| borrowing spiked.
| dunham wrote:
| My ten year old uses "Libby" a lot to borrow books from the
| local library - at one point they started rate limiting
| him. He also typically has a dozen physical books checked
| out at any given time.
| dmix wrote:
| Just curious: What kind of books do they read? On an ipad
| or something?
| piceas wrote:
| For my five year old, we have been rate limited on
| overdrive reading Pete the Cat and Franklin books. Partly
| because the selection is woeful (about 20 English books)
| compared to IA's thousands in that category.
| jhbadger wrote:
| It's very popular among local libraries (at least in the US
| and UK) -- Libby/Overdrive being the main player, followed
| by Hoopla.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| It is worth noting that Libraries in the UK have to pay
| authors/publishers to loan out books on a royalty basis
| with the Public Lending Right payment of course. Even
| physical books.
| [deleted]
| bdowling wrote:
| > Don't many community/government libraries do this?
|
| Those books are licensed to the libraries by the publishers.
| The introduction of the opinion here explains how it works:
|
| > This dispute concerns the way libraries lend ebooks. Public
| and academic libraries in the United States spend billions of
| dollars each year obtaining print books and ebooks for their
| patrons to borrow for free. Pls.' 56.1 P 113. Libraries
| usually buy their print books from publishers or wholesalers.
| Id. P 114. _Copies of ebooks, however, are typically not
| bought but licensed to libraries from publishers_ through
| distributors called "aggregators." Id. P 117. The Publishers
| task aggregators with ensuring that a library lends its
| ebooks only to the library's members. Id. PP 123, 125. The
| Publishers also require aggregators to employ approved
| "digital rights management" ("DRM") software and other
| security measures to prevent unauthorized copying or
| distribution of ebook files. Id. P 126.
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.53.
| .., page 3 (emphasis added).
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| So then IA just needs to have a free membership and
| implement the most basic DRM.
| teraflop wrote:
| Libraries' ebook lending programs are not legal because
| they require membership and use DRM. They're legal
| because they're _authorized by the copyright owners_ ,
| and those are the terms the copyright owners choose to
| impose (along with licensing fees).
| drdaeman wrote:
| But if I purchase the paper book, there is - thankfully -
| no shrink-wrap licensing anywhere that tells me that I
| can or cannot lend it to anyone, yet I sure hope I can.
| Why IA can't?
| sparky_z wrote:
| They can lend the book, they just can't make a copy of it
| and lend the copy instead.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Which _might_ be legally sound (so says this court, we
| will presumably hear from others), but it's logically
| balderdash. The copyright applies to the "intellectual
| property" _content_ of the book, not its paper and
| binding. (I'm sure there are some esoteric exceptions to
| this because artists gonna art, but I feel confident that
| I'm representing the vast general case correctly.)
|
| If I rightly own a copy of a book, I don't think any
| court within the bounds of absurdity would say I can't
| make a digital copy for myself because that's how I
| prefer to consume it. Being allowed to lend one finite
| form but not another equivalent one is definitely
| something law or license might specify, but that doesn't
| mean it makes any kind of sense.
| leeoniya wrote:
| > a digital copy for myself
|
| "myself" being the operative word here.
|
| you can make 100 copies _for yourself_. what you can 't
| do is make a copy that you give to someone else while
| simultaneously retaining access to the original (or
| another copy).
|
| the way libraries work is by relinquishing posession,
| which replication would circumvent.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| > what you can't do is make a copy that you give to
| someone else while simultaneously retaining access to the
| original (or another copy).
|
| I'm pretty sure I _can_ do that.
|
| > the way libraries work is by relinquishing posession
|
| I almost included that I could shred my copy, keeping
| only the digital equivalent, and still retain the same
| rights to the work and lending it.
|
| Any individual in IA's position could do this without
| fear of legal scrutiny. An organization doing it is under
| scrutiny not because there's actual, meaningful copyright
| violation happening but because they systemized a thing
| no reasonable person would object to individuals doing.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure I _can_ do that.
|
| Not legally.
|
| > I almost included that I could shred my copy, keeping
| only the digital equivalent, and still retain the same
| rights to the work and lending it.
|
| This is the part that is not true. For example, you are
| free to transcribe a book onto a parchement and read it
| that way, and store the parchment separately from the
| book for archival purposes, and keep the parchement even
| if the original book gets destroyed.
|
| However, this is a limited exception to copyright. You
| are not in fact allowed, at any point before or after the
| original copy is destroyed, to lend or re-sell the
| parchment you created. That parchment will forever be an
| unauthorized copy, but one that you are allowed to use in
| certain limited ways.
|
| The only wrinkle is that, at least in the EU, when you
| acquire an authorized digital copy of a work, you are
| allowed to lend or sell that copy as long as you don't
| retain access to it during the lending/after the sale.
| This is allowed even though technically you are
| technically creating a new copy of the digital work and
| destroying your own afterwards, but this is an exception
| specific to digital realms, it can't be extended to
| digital copies you make of a phyisical work.
| PinkRidingHood wrote:
| Does that mean I can take the book, copy it, then resell
| it, keeping the copy?
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Obviously there are lots of jurisdictions and you have to
| hit a broad brush with answers, but generally, no. Your
| reproduction is only considered to be reasonable by law
| while you retain the original.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Now I'm wondering how this would apply in situations
| where the person doesn't _know_ if they have the original
| or not.
|
| Inspired by the fact that my emulation of Link's
| Awakening to play on a screen I could see is technically
| legal since we had a cartridge stuffed away in a drawer.
| But for 10-15 years that cartridge lived in a limbo land
| of 'we used to have that, it might still be around
| somewhere...'
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I believe this court ruling suggests that, while you are
| free to make a copy for yourself of a work you legally
| acquired, and you are free to lend or re-sell the
| original work you acquired, you are _not_ free to lend or
| re-sell the copy you made, even if the original doesn 't
| exist anymore.
|
| Basically, the only thing you are legally allowed to sell
| is the exact copy you bought of a physical representation
| of a work, assuming it was created by an authorized
| entity. You do not legally own an abstract copy of the
| idealized work, you own a physical object which happens
| to represent a copy of that work.
|
| Note that this is in fact very much how most people would
| think of copyright. If I buy a book and someone steals it
| from me, or it is there in my house and it burns down, I
| don't have some right to now obtain another physical
| representation of that novel free of charge, or to obtain
| a copy made by a friend with a xerox. My sole right was
| to that one physical copy I bought, and that no longer
| exists.
| [deleted]
| grey413 wrote:
| It's worth emphasizing that part of the reason why
| publishers are happy to work with providing libraries with
| ebooks is that libraries are extremely good customers.
| There's something like 100,000 libraries in the US alone. A
| single organization like the Internet Archive just simply
| doesn't have the purchasing power to make publishers
| willing to give up any ground.
| [deleted]
| superkuh wrote:
| https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/22/book-publishers-wont-sto...
| is a good overview (from a day or two before the judgement).
|
| >Every part of that has been deemed legal. Copyright law
| already has first sale rights, written directly into the law
| and allow for the lending or reselling of copyright-covered
| works without a license or permission. Similarly libraries are
| given explicit rights to make copies, so long as those
| collections are made available to the public. On top of that,
| courts have determined, multiple times, that book scanning
| itself is fair use for libraries.
|
| >So, literally each separate component of what is happening
| with Controlled Digital Lending has already been deemed to be
| legal and exactly what we expect libraries to do.
|
| >To counter this, publishers (and their supporters, which
| unfortunately include some authors) argue that (1) this
| interferes with the market for licensed ebooks, and (2) that
| there is a real difference in lending out the digital scans:
| that they don't deteriorate the way that physical books do.
| mmanfrin wrote:
| > that they don't deteriorate the way that physical books do
|
| Wow, so they're arguing that the destruction of the sold good
| is implicit in the sale, and that preventing that is
| therefore illegal.
| Mezzie wrote:
| It's more pernicious than that because it's a _lie_.
|
| Broadly speaking, physical books last much longer than
| ebooks have been proven to. With preservation measures, you
| can get 100s of years out of a single book copy, but even
| without most books will last for decades unless something
| catastrophic happens or someone destroys them on purpose. I
| have several books from the 1800s that weren't cared for at
| all (picked up at an estate sale) and they're perfectly
| serviceable and would be fine if I rebound them.
|
| So I have books from the 1860s that are still usable. Given
| how the digital world has developed, the odds of someone's
| Kindle or ePub file being viable in 2180 is exceptionally
| low. In the same way that playing old video games can be a
| hassle, I'd be shocked if we're still using the same files
| and formats in 160 years. (Outside of us weirdo archivists
| of course).
| whatshisface wrote:
| So much for right to repair, eh?
| granzymes wrote:
| The article doesn't seem to understand the issue.
|
| Whether a copy of a work is fair use turns on, amongst other
| things, the effect of the copy on the potential market for
| the original. The article acknowledges this.
|
| Controlled Digital Lending competes directly with the
| licensing scheme publishers have for library ebooks. The fair
| use argument was always doomed to fail.
|
| The article then completely ignores the copyright argument
| and tries to equate CDL with libraries loaning out their
| physical copies. This is completely absurd, since libraries
| _do not distribute duplicates of their physical books_ and so
| _do not even enter the realm of copyright_.
|
| If libraries were systematically distributing duplicates of
| their existing books they would be sued for copyright
| infringement.
| musicale wrote:
| What IA is doing is removing the physical copy from
| circulation, making a digital copy, and lending out the
| digital copy.
|
| I don't see the argument that this is "distribution" any
| more than regular (obnoxious) ebook lending is.
| endisneigh wrote:
| What's stopping IA from using the physical book while it
| is simultaneously lending out a copy?
|
| Nothing. Which is why losing was inevitable.
| lolbert3 wrote:
| [dead]
| gcanyon wrote:
| Isn't this answerable by destroying the physical copy?
| (not saying that IA took this action, just saying that it
| removes the complaint of dual use)
| endisneigh wrote:
| No, because if they destroyed the original then they
| would have no way of saying they have the original and
| that's what's being lent.
|
| Then truly they would be lending only a copy, which was
| never legal to begin with.
| yencabulator wrote:
| In the industry the title page is often considered to be
| proof of ownership. E.g. when a book doesn't sell, and
| book stores want it off the shelves, they may be asked to
| destroy the books _except_ return the title pages to the
| publisher, as proof.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Yep, waaaay back when I worked part time in a book store.
| I've stripped paperbacks.
| gcanyon wrote:
| It would be trivial to document the ownership/destruction
| of the original. Video the process?
| toast0 wrote:
| Regular (obnoxious) ebook lending is done under license
| of the publisher, presumably with the approval of the
| rightsholders. It may or may not be distribution, but
| it's approved, so it's ok.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Laws a bit more open to interpretation and chaining
| rarely works, it's humanist, and it's at its face
| unreasonable that one physical copy => right to lend out
| digital cooy.
| grey413 wrote:
| If the IA is creating their own digital copies of
| physical books, it could be argued that that the IA is
| creating and distributing derivative works. I'm not
| certain, but my impression is that derivative works have
| little in the way of legal protection.
| Retric wrote:
| They very much do in cases of backups and even VCR/DVR
| recordings of live TV.
|
| The courts have gone back and forth on this issue, and I
| would expect this ruling to be appealed by either side if
| they had lost.
| dahart wrote:
| Changing formats without changing content is not a
| derivative work; it's just a copyright violation. A
| derivative work must "add new original copyrightable
| authorship to that work."
| https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf
| ac29 wrote:
| The court order discusses this, and says while the first
| sale doctrine means IA could resell or lend their
| physical books, that right does not extend to
| unauthorized reproductions (such as making an ebook by
| scanning in a print book).
| Mindwipe wrote:
| One of the reasons the IA has lost (at least so far) here
| is that the judge noted they do not really do that, and
| have no mechanisms in place for doing that.
|
| I thought the IA was in a bad place before, but they got
| very shown up in court.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| << If libraries were distributing copies of their existing
| books they would be sued for copyright infringement.
|
| There may be a question of definition here. Do you mean
| that they have to lend it, but they cannot give it away?
| Borealid wrote:
| The parent post makes the unwise choice of using the word
| "copy" to mean "duplicate".
|
| They intend to say "libraries do not distribute
| duplicates of purchased books; they distribute the
| originals".
|
| Unfortunately the word "copy" could also mean "the books
| purchased by the library". Of course the library
| distributes purchased books. They just don't scan the
| books, print fascimiles of those books on new paper, and
| then distribute those prints they made themselves.
| granzymes wrote:
| Ah, thank you. Replaced "copies" with "duplicates" in my
| post
| zuminator wrote:
| I think what GP is saying is that when lending (or for
| that matter giving away) print books, libraries don't
| copy anything, they just distribute purchased works,
| which they have a fundamental right to do (in the US).
| That's different from the IA first making a digital copy
| and then distributing that copy, which there is no
| fundamental right to do.
| granzymes wrote:
| Yes, exactly.
| unopened wrote:
| The market considerations for fair use concern the market
| for the work of authorship as a whole, not a specific
| format of it.
|
| I'm not convinced fair use is the strongest argument in
| IA's case. But the idea that lending ebook copies can't be
| fair use simply because it competes with publishers' ebook
| licensing schemes seems like a misreading of how fair use
| is typically applied.
|
| Of course other fair use considerations factor in, but the
| market impact for a _specific format_ isn 't a death blow
| against reproductions of a work, generally speaking.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| It's only one of the tests, but in legal terms and
| precident it is a very strong one that HN frequently
| underestimates.
|
| It's not impossible for a case to win when competing
| against a licensing scheme, but it is very, very, very
| hard.
| blincoln wrote:
| Do you believe that libraries should be barred from
| archiving material to microfiche? How is that significantly
| different from format-shifting a book to electronic form,
| as long as they use DRM to limiy concurrent viewing?
| jhanschoo wrote:
| I suppose the difference is that publishers aren't suing
| such libraries and such archival isn't accessible enough
| to harm publishers' markets.
| granzymes wrote:
| The second point is crucial. The microfiche copies of
| e.g. newspapers do not compete with the originals.
| leoc wrote:
| IANAL but I think I recall seeing that the US libraries'
| initiative to reprint some older books on non-acid-based
| paper was supported by an explicit carve-out in US
| copyright law.
| yencabulator wrote:
| Honest question: Are libraries special cased in US law?
| (They are in many other places, and have rights beyond
| consumers or businesses.)
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| This sets back archival and human knowledge back 100 years. If
| you embargo a physical copy, an electronic copy should be
| lendable.
|
| I would start a webtorrent+ipfs+i2p site in Iceland just to get
| around this insane perpetual monopoly on difficult-to-find, old
| shit that doesn't have a market but publishers keep locked
| away.
| Zetice wrote:
| 100 years? Seems hyperbolic.
|
| And you don't need to do anything at all; all of these books
| have been freely available on IRC for years.
| katbyte wrote:
| are you not aware of how long copyright lasts now?
| Zetice wrote:
| Yes, are you not aware of how pirating works?
| nvader wrote:
| Sherlock Holmes' emotions would like a word.
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/07/the-curious-
| ca...
| Zetice wrote:
| Are you aware of how that case resolved?
| nvader wrote:
| My recollection was that they reached a settlement, but I
| don't know for how much.
| https://abbasmedialaw.com/posts/copyright-netflix-
| reaches-se...
|
| I found this chart interesting, and unexpectedly
| complicated: https://www.belmont.edu/legal/pdf/Public-
| Domain-Chart.pdf
|
| Based on that I think a heuristic of 100 years is broadly
| correct.
| Zetice wrote:
| No, it's not broadly correct, because "when does
| copyright expire" has no relevance to "setting back the
| concept of human knowledge".
|
| Human knowledge remains entirely unaffected by this
| ruling.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > This ruling is not about the emergency library at all. It's a
| ruling that [...] one physical copy backing each digital copy
| lent out) is illegal.
|
| That's not what I read in the linked article, specifically:
|
| Regarding " _IA's promise not to lend simultaneously_ ": " _IA
| has not kept its promise. Although the Open Library's print
| copies of the Works in Suit are non-circulating, IA concedes
| that it has no way of verifying whether Partner Libraries
| remove their physical copies from circulation after partnering
| with IA.... To the contrary, IA knows that some Partner
| Libraries do not remove the physical books from their shelves_
| "
|
| As I understand it, this case _exists_ because the IA was not
| keeping its promise anymore and made an error of judgement by
| breaking the 1:1 ratio without any legal argumentation or even
| a logical reason for it. It was said at the time already, but
| the obviousness, whether something as important as the wayback
| machine 's owner should compete with the pirate bay for market
| share on illegal ebooks, and the use of (my/our) donated money
| on the ensuing legal nonsense, is a different discussion...
|
| If these underlying facts and circumstances were different,
| such as if someone tries this concept again but _keeps their
| promise_ and _implements it correctly_ , the same ruling cannot
| be passed because it's not the same situation. It would have to
| be tried again and it might (or might not) swing the other way,
| at least that is my general understanding of legal systems
| around the world.
|
| Perhaps it would also be different in another country whence
| ExampleBooks Ltd could operate legally, that will depend in
| part on whether the copyright alliance pact (I forgot the name)
| has provisions letting signatories (afaik that's every nation
| you might want to live in) make exceptions for things like
| this.
| hedora wrote:
| That's a terrible ruling. The first sale doctrine says the copy
| of the book you bought is yours. Lending the book is clearly
| not copying it.
|
| So, I guess you just don't own anything you buy anymore? Like
| what if I want to lend a tool to someone, and the tool
| manufacturer wants to rent their tools out? Is that also
| illegal?
|
| What if the tool contains software?
|
| What if reasonable use of the tool requires accessing a print
| manual? A pdf manual?
|
| Edit: Reading the ruling, IA should have argued they are simply
| format shifting a single copy that they own. I wonder if they
| did make this argument, and then the judge conveniently ignored
| it (then lied in the summary ruling, when they say IA made no
| other arguments in their defense), or if IA's lawyers screwed
| up.
| detrites wrote:
| "Alpaca III, can you write an accurate page-by-page summary
| of every page of Book-I-Want-To-Read, where each summary's
| one page long and as faithful to the original pages content
| and length as possible, fully quoting each page permitted?"
|
| My point being: as technology marches on the ageing concept
| of "owning" entirely fungible digital material becomes less
| and less valid. It is already at a stage meaninglessness is
| flirting with it in a new way daily and that will continue.
|
| Really, we need to let it go.
| jkdufair wrote:
| I don't disagree with the ruling. IA is not lending their
| copy that they purchased. They are lending a copy of their
| copy. While that copy is lent out, they are still free to,
| I.e. read the copy in their possession.
| IshKebab wrote:
| And also it's a lot easier to copy a digitally borrowed
| book than it is to copy a physically borrowed book.
|
| There are _practical_ differences between the two, which
| mean that the law probably _should_ treat them differently.
| I expect a lot of HN have difficulty dealing with that
| because they think "but they both contain the same
| information".
|
| It reminds me of people trying to encode books into prime
| numbers or the digits or pi or whatnot to "get around"
| copyright. Fundamentally missing the point.
| nighthawk454 wrote:
| That's technically true. But frankly it seems like such
| people have a giant stick up their ass. The digital version
| would be infinitely more accessible, while still
| maintaining effectively 1-1 access restrictions. I'm not
| even sure if they're _is_ a physical IA library one could
| go to. For all I know they're in a vault somewhere. Even
| the USD isn't backed 1-1 with physical tokens. It seems
| patently ridiculous that books be held to this standard in
| this day and age.
| benatkin wrote:
| It's based on refusing to adapt to a society with digital
| objects.
| yencabulator wrote:
| You cannot even read an ebook without copying it from
| storage to RAM, to CPU cache, to video RAM, and so on; by
| your thinking, all owners of ebooks commit multiple
| instances of copyright infringement every time they read an
| ebook.
| gaganyaan wrote:
| [flagged]
| benatkin wrote:
| Unsurprising that not all of HN is pro-fair use.
|
| That's how you digitally send a copy of a book.
|
| You're saying something similar to "you wouldn't download a
| car".
| endisneigh wrote:
| I don't see how you're refuting their point
| benatkin wrote:
| > You're saying something similar to "you wouldn't
| download a car".
|
| It's applying without considering it.
|
| The digital book isn't being kept at the old location
| because there is no digital book in the physical book.
|
| It's the only way to transfer a single copy of a book
| without destroying the physical copy.
|
| Judges should consider stuff like this and it's a
| disappointing ruling.
|
| But go on...
| endisneigh wrote:
| Exactly. And there lies the issue. Internet archive has
| the book and lends the book simultaneously. Hence why
| they lost.
| dahart wrote:
| No, that's not why they lost. The reason is because they
| effectively lend it to many people simultaneously, and
| implement no controls on getting it "returned" (deleted)
| by the people they lent it to, while even being aware
| that some of them don't "return" it.
|
| The technicality that they keep a copy of the book while
| it's being lent isn't really at issue here at all. It's
| not because there are two copies, it's because there are
| three or more copies, given to two or more parties at the
| same time. It has become "distribution" in the eyes of
| copyright law, beyond the lending analogy.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Even if they did what you described they would still
| lose. There would be no way to implement a control to
| prevent an additional simultaneous copy. It's not a
| technical issue, it's simple impossible inherently.
|
| I don't know why companies keep trying this. MP3.com,
| Aereo, etc. The precedent is clear.
| dahart wrote:
| The question isn't whether it's technically possible, the
| question is whether they even tried, and one of the
| reasons they lost is not just because they didn't try at
| all, they instead looked the other way when they knew the
| borrowers didn't "return" the book.
| endisneigh wrote:
| my point is that even if they did try, the outcome
| would've been the same and CDL was doomed from the
| beginning. their inane emergency CDL plan simply
| accelerated this outcome
| dahart wrote:
| Maybe, but that's speculation, and others have won fair
| use claims. The decision in this case explicitly cited
| the defendant's lack of effort to control their loaned
| copies while being aware of infringement.
| endisneigh wrote:
| who is doing anything even remotely similar that won fair
| use claims?
| dahart wrote:
| I didn't claim similar, and it seems like we're losing
| the point here. Mine is that your claim at the top, that
| the problem had to do with having two copies, actually
| has nothing to do with why they lost. The problem, as the
| judge described, is that they didn't put the "C" in CDL,
| and looked the other way when then knew it was missing,
| and then tried to claim fair use for something that
| clearly isn't fair use. They didn't lose because the
| judge is being pedantic about how many copies there are,
| they lost because they're actually squarely violating
| existing copyright law.
| hackernewds wrote:
| This makes logical sense. Pay for one, lend one.
| jrmg wrote:
| The ruling discusses this (at length!) and concludes that
| even a buy-one-physical-lend-one-digital scheme would not
| be acceptable under current law.
| benatkin wrote:
| [dead]
| criddell wrote:
| Do you think it would have made a difference if they
| bought three copies of the book and then shredded two of
| them? That way they would have the original they scanned,
| their digital version they copy to lend, and the loaned
| digital copy.
| endisneigh wrote:
| No, because they still wouldn't be lending out what was
| bought.
| hker999 wrote:
| Yet, we should proscute GPL violations when the original
| GPL code is untouched.
| benatkin wrote:
| You're comparing apples and oranges.
|
| In the case of a physical object needing to temporarily
| go digital, it needs to be sent digitally and the records
| kept, and of course the physical copy has to be kept.
|
| In the case of the GPL there's no physical copy and thus
| there's no need to consider how to move from one form to
| the other.
|
| To require that a physical object never be used digitally
| is bad for society.
| [deleted]
| yencabulator wrote:
| People rarely buy copies GPL'ed source code, they obtain
| a _license_ to the software. Buying something is very
| different from licensing it.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Unsurprising that not all of HN is pro-fair use.
|
| Isn't "fair use" restricted to (a) short portions of a
| work, (b) used for specific purposes, such as education
| or criticism?
| jrmg wrote:
| Replying to your edit: The format shifting argument and first
| sale doctrine are discussed in the ruling. Notably in the
| section headed '3' starting on page 28 - but also in other
| places.
| bradrn wrote:
| This is interesting, from that section:
| Nor does IA's promise not to lend simultaneously its
| lawfully acquired print copies and its unauthorized
| reproductions help its case. As an initial matter,
| IA has not kept its promise. Although the Open
| Library's print copies of the Works in Suit are
| non-circulating, IA concedes that it has no way of
| verifying whether Partner Libraries remove their
| physical copies from circulation after partnering
| with IA. Pls.' 56.1 PP 495-496. To the contrary, IA
| knows that some Partner Libraries do not remove the
| physical books from their shelves, and even if a Partner
| Library puts a physical book into a non-circulating
| reference collection, it could be read in the
| library while the ebook equivalent is checked out.
| Id. PP 494, 497. IA also does not inform Partner
| Libraries when an ebook in its collection is
| checked out, and Partner Libraries do not tell IA when
| their physical copies are circulating. Id. P 498.
| IA admits it has never taken action against a
| Partner Library that did not suppress circulation
| properly. Id. P 499.
|
| I do want IA to win, but this certainly doesn't help their
| case, to say the least...
| klabb3 wrote:
| This is such an "ackchully" argument from the ruling.
| It's not the spirit of the law and the principles behind
| the idea of free access to information. Instead it's
| narrowing in on the specifics of physical lending of
| books, grasping for analogies to the 20th century, in a
| world which has transformed and moved on decades ago.
|
| But even if all those things weren't true, or important,
| it's profound that there's enough collective incentive to
| go after IA, instead of say corporations violating GPL,
| or the hedgies who created "temporary" artificial supply
| of stocks (which shares a similar "overprovisioning"
| aspect, except they're fraudulent at massive scale).
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| Make no mistake, the law is specific made to limit free
| access to information. Originally this was a reasonable
| concession to encourage creative work, but as the length
| extended and copyright starts to be controlled by massive
| corporations, they gradually became a way to protect
| profits.
| nmeagent wrote:
| Right. IMO copyright in general seriously conflicts with
| the very concepts of free expression and ownership. As
| corporations eat the world and are able to push to
| maximize copyright to protect their profits, our rights
| of expression and ownership are diminished. Fair use and
| the first sale doctrine will ultimately be meaninglessly
| minimized curiosities if we don't fight, tooth and nail,
| _corporate IP holders_ and the bought state entities that
| protect them.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| This.
|
| When IP laws existed to _make sure authors could be
| compensated_ people broadly supported them. The
| perception has changed (for many reasons), to where
| people broadly see IP laws as an enabler for corporate
| greed more than being about fair compensation for
| authors. (See Disney not paying owed royalties, for
| example.)
|
| We can either have "good copyright" that the public sees
| as reasonable, or we can have rampant piracy and the
| consequences thereof. The villains of the piece are those
| who deliberately perpetuate an unsustainable system out
| of greed (and I am _not_ talking about authors and
| publishers trying to get paid for the work they 've
| done).
| dahart wrote:
| > they gradually became a way to protect profits.
|
| It was always from the very beginning a way to protect
| profits, that was the primary intent of copyright law, to
| give the creator of a work the exclusive right to make
| the money from the work before others are allowed to take
| the content and sell it for their own profit. Yes the
| length has become crazy long, and yes the law limits free
| (as in beer) access to information, but that hasn't
| changed the reason for it's being at all. It's not really
| a "concession" either, more like it was intentionally
| balanced to provide enough time for people to make
| profits (which is what economically encourages creative
| work), while being short enough to allow works to reach
| the public over time.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Strange that this isn't easily dealt with by:
|
| 1. IA actually buying a physical copy (or as many copies
| as they plan on simultaneously making available to
| borrowers) of the book. 2. After scanning the physical
| copy, destroying it, and documenting same.
|
| Then as long as they guarantee that they only loan out as
| many copies as they physically had (before destroying
| them) there's no question of simultaneous usage.
| malborodog wrote:
| Why isn't it easily dealt with by doing that??
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| The Internet Archive freely admitted in the case that the
| physical copies owned by partner libraries were not
| destroyed.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Yeah, I get that they may not have done this -- that's
| why I suggested it could be "easily dealt with" by doing
| this.
| hedora wrote:
| Oh, then this case was found on the facts. (They are
| doing a thing that pretty clearly violates fair use.)
|
| I like the IA, but I'm happy this was the screw up. It
| should greatly weaken the precedent this ruling creates.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| Now that I think about it, not being able to own anything is
| a good reason to start stealing. Think about it, why is
| stealing bad? Usually, this is an application of the Golden
| Rule. If you don't want people to steal the stuff you own,
| you shouldn't steal their stuff either. However, if you are
| no longer allowed to own anything (just like under
| communism), then the argument falls apart. Realistically,
| information wants to be free, and spreading it is much easier
| than controlling its spread. I expect the current copyright
| wars will come into an end in a decade or two, ending in the
| loss of the copyright mafia as society reconsiders the
| concession that is the copyright system.
| 0x72 wrote:
| Come on, this was explained like milion times: you cannot
| own private property (factory, land, buildings, means of
| production), but you can own your personal property just
| fine. Why do leftist use such confusing terminology? I
| don't know. We should ask Free Software Foundation.
|
| Most importantly here, information falls under "means of
| production", so under communism it should be free.
|
| Freedom of information under capitalism is (as everything)
| a discussion about money.
|
| I admire your optimism, regarding the copyrights future.
| Fingers crossed.
| ssalka wrote:
| If a judge thinks THAT's illegal, wait till they hear about
| fractional reserve banking.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| Pretty sure fractional reserve banking passes the "do rich
| people make money from this" test, and is therefore fine.
| Zetice wrote:
| So what does this mean for my extensive library in Plex of DVDs
| I own?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| It means you are not legally allowed to lend them or sell
| them, even if you lose the original DVD and even though you
| did have the right to lend or sell the original DVD.
| Zetice wrote:
| It seems like I might not have legally been allowed to make
| a copy of the DVD in the first place too...
| dmonitor wrote:
| you can make a personal backup, but once you hand it to
| someone else it is no longer personal
| Zetice wrote:
| Can you? The ruling seems to rake issue with the
| digitalization itself.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| This is basically the same way that courts have always ruled on
| this point.
|
| Redbox tried this theory several years ago when they were
| trying to launch their film streaming service, and failed for
| the same reasons.
| sva_ wrote:
| This sucks, big time.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| It does suck, but it was self-inflicted. I love the IA, I've
| even done volunteer work for the Physical Archive, but the
| "emergency library" was mad. I can't imagine how they justified
| it.
| sourcecodeplz wrote:
| Locked inside with "nothing" to do, one guy probably got high
| and had this "revelation" that would "help" everyone else
| locked inside /s.
|
| It's sad because it has muddied the image of IA and it made
| them look like rebels when in reality they were doing just
| fine flying (somewhat) under the radar.
|
| I've also read some comments here from people saying they
| would possibly stop donating to the IA because of this.
| Because of donations, the scrutiny is 1000x more for non-
| profits vs regular companies.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > I've also read some comments here from people saying they
| would possibly stop donating to the IA because of this.
|
| Why? It's not like this really makes a difference to the
| other 100 different things they're doing.
| misnome wrote:
| Because IA is causing a risk that the donations aren't
| paying for that, but could end up right in the publishers
| pockets, and shutting down those 100 other projects.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >It's sad because it has muddied the image of IA and it
| made them look like rebels
|
| Considering their software archive is one of the easiest
| source of warez today, I'd say they have a thing for
| painting targets on themselves.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| The National Emergency Library is barely relevant to the
| current ruling, which is primarily about Controlled Digital
| Lending.
| beej71 wrote:
| But it sure sounds like NEL was a trigger.
| aaron695 wrote:
| What kicked this off was they lent more copies than they owned.
|
| Changing format was illegal of course under current law but
| publishers looked the other way.
|
| By allowimg multiple this was the only outcome.
|
| Without risk taking we wouldn't have any IA so this is all part
| of what they are. It's hard to know when to hold em.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| Didn't google do almost exactly this with google books - making
| agreements with libraries and digitising their collections
| without paying the publishers or the authors? Maybe I
| misunderstood.
| sva_ wrote:
| They didnt offer the full books afaik.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| Ahh, you're right. They copied the full books, but they don't
| let the public view more than snippets unless they have
| rights to do so. That must be the 'transformative use'.
| simonh wrote:
| I think you are allowed to duplicate short extracts of
| works as part of fair use.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| It's a four factor test (but the second factor rarely
| counts). the purpose and character of
| your use the nature of the copyrighted work
| the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
| the effect of the use upon the potential market.
|
| The court found that Google copied the entirety of the
| work into their search index, but that this (taking into
| account the strict result snippet restrictions) didn't
| effect the market because no one would decide they didn't
| need the book now they had the snippet.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > They didnt offer the full books afaik.
|
| They got sued, and the settlement didn't allow them to offer
| the full books except for-purchase with a particular revenue
| sharing arrangement.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| ...and then the court threw out the settlement as unfair,
| and then the court ruled in Google's favor.
|
| But the court noted that Google was right on the edge of
| fair use. Google notably prevented the previews from being
| usable as a replacement for an original purchase by only
| displaying 1/8 of a page snippets, blacklisting 1 snippet
| per page, blacklisting every tenth page completely, and
| blacklisting works where a single snippet could be all you
| wanted such as dictionaries and recipe books.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| I still feel like if I'd done something similar as an
| individual I would not have got away with it.
|
| Say I downloaded z-library and wrote a search system that
| only showed me snippets (for searching). How likely do
| you think courts would find in my favour?
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Yes, the court also found that their collaboration with
| libraries to legally scan the books mattered.
| starkparker wrote:
| p19-20 of the ruling:
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.53...
|
| > The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit previewed as much
| in HathiTrust and Google Books, cases that "test[ed] the
| boundaries of fair use." Google Books, 804 F.3d at 206. The
| defendant in HathiTrust scanned whole copies of millions of
| books, including those protected by valid copyrights, to create
| a database on which the general public could search for
| particular terms across the scanned works. 755 F.3d at 91. The
| creation of this "full-text searchable database [was] a
| quintessentially transformative use," the court held, because
| "the result of a word search is different in purpose,
| character, expression, meaning, and message from the page (and
| the book) from which it is drawn." Id. at 97. Importantly, the
| database did not "allow users to view any portion of the books
| they [were] searching" and therefore, unlike IA's Website,
| "d[id] not add into circulation any new, human-readable copies
| of any books" or "merely repackage or republish the originals."
| Id.
|
| > Google Books similarly found transformative use in Google's
| scanning of copyrighted books to create a database that
| included a "snippet view" search function that allowed readers
| to view a few lines of text containing searched-for terms. 804
| F.3d at 208. The snippet view showed the searcher "just enough
| context surrounding the searched term" to help the searcher
| evaluate whether the book fell within the scope of the
| searcher's interest "without revealing so much as to threaten
| the author's copyright interests." Id. at 208, 216. But the
| Court of Appeals cautioned that "[i]f Plaintiffs' claim were
| based on Google's converting their books into a digitized form
| and making that digitized version accessible to the public,"
| precisely what the Publishers allege in this case, the "claim
| [for copyright infringement] would be strong." Id. at 225. If
| HathiTrust and Google Books demarcated the boundaries of fair
| use, this case shows what conduct remains squarely beyond fair
| use.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| [dead]
| jmpman wrote:
| I'm of the view that the authors/publishers should have to have
| willingly given up their rights to allow this. When I put
| something down on paper and sell it, my intention isn't to allow
| it to be traded every 35 seconds on the internet, it's to have
| made a single copy. Now if the authors/publishers want to allow
| the physical copy to be lent digitally like IA is doing, I'm all
| for them having some lic they can sell which allows it. I expect
| this lic would be 100x more expensive than the simple physical
| copy.
| beej71 wrote:
| Copyright law already forces copyright holders to give up their
| rights after a certain amount of time. And if you're OK with
| that, all that's left is to argue the duration. :)
| gaganyaan wrote:
| You're part of the problem, and your view is a relic of the
| past. I'm glad that dinosaurs are quickly becoming curios for
| museums.
| misnome wrote:
| Exactly, authors should be glad to be paid $7.99 - once -
| every time they write a book, and be happy about it. Anything
| further is just proof of their obsolesence.
| z0ltan wrote:
| [dead]
| bawolff wrote:
| Wow, reading the article this seems like a clear cut case. Did IA
| really think they could win this?
|
| Edit: reading other sources, it seems like the crux of the idea
| is they would only lend out books where they had the same number
| of physical copies. I can see the reasoning for that, but it
| seems hard for fair use to get you there.
| unopened wrote:
| If anything, their "first sale doctrine" route seems like a
| stronger argument than fair use here. When you purchase a copy
| of a work, you have the right to lend, sell, or share that copy
| without any additional payment or permission required to the
| creator. This is how libraries have operated for centuries.
|
| I think what IA was doing, making sure they only lend out as
| many copies as they physically own, was clearly within the
| spirit of that doctrine. But in the digital era, lending
| anything over the web necessarily means making a copy of it
| somewhere along the way, which laws haven't adequately adapted
| to yet.
| misnome wrote:
| > I think what IA was doing, making sure they only lend out
| as many copies as they physically own,
|
| Part of this points out that they weren't even doing that;
| there was no process to ensure that the "partnered" library
| wasn't simultaneously lending out their copy.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Exactly. I'm not a lawyer but I'm baffled they went the fair
| use route -- fair use has nothing to do with it.
|
| The argument that this is no different from lending
| temporarily to a friend seems to be much more reasonable.
| Especially since no money is changing hands.
| teraflop wrote:
| The first-sale doctrine was also covered in the ruling.
| According to the letter of the law (17 USC SS 109) it
| specifically only covers the distribution of _existing_
| authorized physical copies; it doesn 't grant you
| permission to make a copy and lend that to a friend.
| Spivak wrote:
| The judge disagreed with that too. Companies have tried and
| failed to set up a streaming service backed by physical
| copies and they were struck down so this really didn't have
| any chance either.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I don't understand the reasoning there though. Like, I
| can get on board with sayibg fair-use is silly, but
| lending a book that I own --either digitally or
| physically-- should be protected.
| ianburrell wrote:
| You can sell or lend the physical copy you own. You can't
| make a copy and then loan that. Copyright is the right to
| control making copies.
|
| You could sell or lend virtual copy if the platforms
| supported that. You are allowed to make a copy for backup
| purposes, and no one will ever know if you use that or
| even lend it. But if you make business of it, then they
| will notice and sue you.
| unopened wrote:
| The concept of "owning" a book digitally is already on
| shaky ground, since most large publishers only sell
| _licenses_ for accessing ebooks. You 're not actually
| purchasing a copy in perpetuity like a physical book.
| Naturally these licenses are entirely on the publishers'
| terms.
|
| In practice this means publishers can revoke access
| licenses for all sorts of arbitrary reasons, alter the
| content of ebooks already purchased, or plenty of other
| shady practices, with little recourse available to the
| reader.
|
| Plus it means they can force libraries to keep paying
| repeated, marked-up licensing fees for the privilege of
| lending out ebooks. Much better deal for the publishers
| than the physical library lending model!
|
| I don't blame IA for trying to find a way to liberate
| library lending from that racket.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > You're not actually purchasing a copy in perpetuity
| like a physical book.
|
| I own the physical book. Why does the publisher have any
| further rights to tell me what I do with it?
| rkagerer wrote:
| _publishers only sell licenses for accessing ebooks_
|
| That right there is the true root of the problem.
| rhino369 wrote:
| It's a subtle distinction but when you lend a physical
| book no copy is made.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that out.
|
| It makes me so sad -- it reminds me of Aereo, when the
| Supreme Court ruled against it in 2014 that it wasn't
| allowed to stream public broadcast TV over the internet,
| despite having a separate radio receiver for each viewer.
|
| I can understand why Congress hasn't changed law to allow
| digital 1-for-1 reuse of previous physical/analog sources
| -- because there will be too much lobbying against it
| from corporations.
|
| But it really seems like the Supreme Court had a chance
| to set new precedent in an area that hadn't been foreseen
| in law so really was undefined. And they chose
| corporations over consumers back in 2014, just like a
| federal judge did again now.
|
| I can only imagine how much better if the Supreme Court
| had sided with consumers here. Congress could have
| overturned it through law, of course, but only in the
| face of massive voter dissatisfaction, and so I'm not
| sure they would have.
| [deleted]
| jsheard wrote:
| The _original_ idea was to only lend out digital copies that
| are backed by a physical copy, so if challenged the Internet
| Archive could reasonably argue that they 're protected under
| the same laws that physical libraries are, but when the
| pandemic kicked off IA launched an "emergency library" which
| waived the lending limits so any number of copies could be lent
| out regardless of how many physical copies they have.
|
| My assumption is that publishers probably weren't happy about
| the original model but it was legally murky enough that they
| didn't pursue it for risk of losing and setting the wrong (from
| their perspective) precedent, but the emergency library made
| for an extremely easy case against IA.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The case dealt with the former. This article is the judge's
| ruling, the National Emergency Library is not mentioned.
| teraflop wrote:
| The full ruling does mention it, albeit briefly:
|
| > IA also argues that it made fair use of the Publishers'
| copyrights during the National Emergency Library. The
| analysis above applies even more forcefully to the NEL,
| during which IA amplified its unauthorized lending of ebook
| versions of the Works in Suit by lifting the one-to-one
| owned-to-loaned ratio. IA's defense of fair use with
| respect to the NEL therefore also fails.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| My mistake, though that line emphasizes that the NEL is
| barely relevant to the decision.
| bawolff wrote:
| Nonetheless, its still the sort of thing that can colour
| opinion. If you want to change things with a precedent, it
| is usually best to try and be a perfect angel in every
| other way possible.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| During the pandemic, libraries closed and weren't lending out
| physical books at all. Did the emergency policy lend more
| digital books than the number of physical books locked in
| libraries? We'll probably never know, but I think that was the
| logic.
|
| The scanned books are not so much fun to read, it is definitely
| less ergonomic than a Kindle. I would expect those using the
| program likely needed it.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Did the emergency policy lend more digital books than the
| number of physical books locked in libraries? We'll probably
| never know, but I think that was the logic.
|
| The most checked out book, _The Lion, The Witch, and The
| Wardrobe_ , had ~850 check outs. I think it's safe to assume
| they didn't come close to the amount of physical books locked
| in libraries.
|
| Not that it's very important, the pandemic policy is barely
| mentioned in this ruling.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| This is a justification that makes sense in theory, but the
| Internet Archive doesn't _own those books_ and can 't track
| them. If they had asked libraries to explicitly send parts
| of their collection to the IA for this, that might've held
| some weight.
| Aeolun wrote:
| That's irrelevant to the defense, which would probably
| amount to 'publishers didn't suffer any material loss'.
| [deleted]
| FpUser wrote:
| I hope IA does not cease to exist as the result. It's value far
| exceeds the negatives.
| enriquto wrote:
| The culprits of this travesty must be named and shamed:
|
| Suing publishers: Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House,
| and Wiley.
|
| Judge: John G. Koeltl.
|
| Don't care about the judge, but there should be a massive
| campaign to boycott these four publishers to oblivion. What's the
| most harmful thing that we can do to them?
| leobg wrote:
| Pirate the hell out of their stuff, I guess. After all, can't
| borrow anymore, can we? :)
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Interesting of you to think that if these particular publishers
| hadn't stepped up, other publishers wouldn't have created the
| exact same lawsuit.
| chris_wot wrote:
| So basically now everyone just outright pirates the books. Great
| outcome for the publishers.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Time to download my next car
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Probably worth it to give this a scan before commenting on what
| the judiciary is supposed to do (or is allowed to do):
|
| https://www.loc.gov/item/90898138/
|
| And I was surprised to find the Wikipedia section on Judicial
| Review was pretty reasonable:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_S...
| fareesh wrote:
| It seems like one can just email the internet archive to have
| their content excluded. Was there a reason why they refused in
| these cases?
| afrcnc wrote:
| For who is not aware, this is how America works: Corporations
| have more rights than you! Rich people have more rights than you!
| duxup wrote:
| I'm bummed IA chose to pick this fight by declaring this magical
| COVID emergency and lending more digital copies than they owned.
| The outcome seemed inevitable and IMO IA has been dishonest about
| what the lawsuit with its own statements.
|
| It makes me wonder if there are any adults at the helm at IA and
| I worry about its future.
|
| IA is an amazing resource... I don't understand why they chose
| this hill to fight on.
| gaganyaan wrote:
| What's magical is the thinking involved in copyright,
| particularly as it involves the digital space.
|
| I 100% guarantee that if a dead tree library xeroxed their
| books during a national emergency, nobody would be making
| comments like this. Somehow, because computers are involved,
| magical thinking gets a pass.
| misnome wrote:
| It's not magical thinking if the law agrees.
| snapetom wrote:
| NEL opened in March 2020.
|
| The first doc on this case was filed June 1, 2020.
|
| NEL closed down almost immediately on June 16, 2020.
|
| IA was definitely and stupidly playing with fire here. As
| others have said, publishers weren't happy with IA's one
| hardcopy, one digital loan rule, but lived with it because of
| the potential bad press. However, I'm willing to bet the NEL
| pushed them over the edge to go to war. Incredibly reckless and
| now we've taken a step backwards against IP abuse, IMO.
| pakyr wrote:
| I don't think that controlled digital lending in its entirety
| being ruled illegal was at all inevitable. Sure, take them to
| task for the 'emergency library', but the scope of this ruling
| seems unjust.
| wmf wrote:
| It's about probabilities. If they had even a 10% chance of
| bankrupting themselves they probably shouldn't have done it.
| Even if they eventually win, every dollar spent on lawyers
| wasn't spent on archiving.
| hgsgm wrote:
| The ruling gave 4 obvious rebuttals to their claims.
| [deleted]
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| But I can borrow ebooks from other public libraries.
|
| Is there something specific about IA or is this ruling making the
| concept of epub borrowing a copyright infringement (in the US)?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| This ruling says controlled digital lending is copyright
| infringement. Some other libraries use controlled digital
| lending, but most use a different system.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_digital_lending
| samsonasu wrote:
| Public libraries pay a different, greater license fee for
| ebooks they can lend vs physical books . The licenses also come
| with restrictions about number of lends, time limits, etc.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenduffer/2019/01/30/librarie...
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| Here comes the memory hole, folks. This copyright claim is just
| the ruse to break down the wall, with the real purpose being to
| lay claim to news and internet archiving so that inconvenient
| news and information can be more easily memory holed without
| archives existing.
|
| Let me put it this way, everyone should start working on
| decentralized archiving tools and retention of information
| locally about topics they are particularly interested in. I don't
| say that out of the blue.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Uh, you do realize this is just about physical books, right?
| When I want to read the latest news I don't go to my local
| bookstore and grab a book on news, I get that from the
| internet, which the Internet Archive is perfectly able to
| archive, as it has nothing to do with this. Sigh.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct that
| will one day be seen as ridiculous as absolute monarchy is today.
| If we are going to allow it and penalize people who are doing
| natural human things like sharing with friends, there has to be a
| specific benefit to society in every instance. For example, pay
| taxes on copyrights and patents, increasing every year to reflect
| disturbance caused to society.
| jb1991 wrote:
| Money is also an unnatural construct, most of civilization has
| succeeded and advanced due to abstract constructs, and this is
| one of mankind's strengths. Learn more about this in the book
| Sapiens.
| goodlinks wrote:
| Have you read the ragged trousered phillanthropists?
| jb1991 wrote:
| No I haven't, but if you're suggesting that these so-called
| unnatural constructs can be damaging to the world, that is
| certainly true, but the flipside is that they also lead to
| great progress.
| goodlinks wrote:
| Imho Its a really good book, i think the first novel
| written by a non-noble, or something like that.
|
| Its over 100 years old but still very relevant today.
| Understanding how things have not changed in that time
| was powerful in helping me form opinions on what should
| change.
|
| Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ragged-
| Trousered_Philant...
| FredPret wrote:
| Other made-up constructs include human rights and democracy.
| Your argument does not make sense.
| goodlinks wrote:
| Human rights and democracy are nothing like IP.
|
| Dont be shitty to people and listen to their voice are thing
| that any group of children playing may come up with them
| selves.
|
| Those same children will copy each other and build on ideas
| each other have.
|
| Thi child who demands no one can play a game or any
| derivative because they came up with it first, well, they are
| just not very nice.
| FredPret wrote:
| Ironically, if we built a lord-of-the-flies society (based
| on child "morality") we'll have an arbitrary concentration
| of power that'll make our IP rules look like a picnic.
| goodlinks wrote:
| Seems you are arguing a against something i didnt say?
|
| I guess you must believe you have some special ideas that
| you didnt get from anyone else at all, not based on any
| of you experiences and conversations with others that we
| all should pay you to use or refine (or even just
| repeat). And that you think it right to force these kinds
| of delusions on your children to stop them growing up
| stupid and naive?
| klibertp wrote:
| > Dont be shitty to people and listen to their voice are
| thing that any group of children playing may come up with
| them selves.
|
| Not my experience at all. There's always a leader, and
| there's always a bully, and - if you're lucky - they are
| not the same kid. If you're unlucky, the whole group is a
| shitshow of gruesome sadism and "playing" that can lead to
| serious injury and death.
|
| I mean, that's obviously anecdotal, but if children were so
| rational to invent things like human rights, why would we
| need caretakers and teachers?
| goodlinks wrote:
| I didnt say children were perfect or formed model
| societies, i said IP was nothing like human rights or
| democracy.
|
| When you experienced bullies etc. did you not have
| someone you could talk to that would agree the person was
| being shitty?
|
| the idea that you can own an idea is not something that
| has an obvious link to basic issues that arise from
| existance of people, humam rights and democracy are.
|
| Just because some people are shitty doesnt mean we should
| lower the bar.
|
| There are some reasons for IP but they should not derive
| from owning an idea.
| Thorentis wrote:
| I mostly agree with the conclusion, but your premise is shaky.
| Positive law (as in, laws which are of human creation) are not
| inherently bad because humans made them. Humans are more than
| capable of creating good laws which protect the common good
| against the worst parts of human nature. But they are also
| capable of creating bad laws.
|
| We have to analyse each law on its own merit.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct
| that will one day be seen as ridiculous as absolute monarchy is
| today._
|
| Not so sure about the monarchy thing, nominally yes, but we're
| certainly moving to renting everything content-related, and
| even back to political and corporate feudalism in many aspects,
| we might as well be peasants whose feudal lords own
| everything...
| dylan604 wrote:
| as it should be peasant. now get back to work!!! /s
|
| with the concept of 1%ers and how imbalanced the wealth
| distribution is, it doesn't really seem like it's much
| different than the days of feudal lords. it just seems like
| we've been tricked into thinking there was a middle class to
| keep the revolting to a minimum.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| [dead]
| sacrosancty wrote:
| [dead]
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I think of it like trying to restrict what your neighbor can
| have for lunch. That's not a thing we're allowed to do today
| and the concept makes no sense to someone today. But you can
| limit what your neighbor engineers!
| goto11 wrote:
| > Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct
|
| Ownership of land is an unnatural, made up construct. In
| contrast to intellectual creations, land is limited. Therefore,
| granting ownership of land to a person is literally robbing
| other people of this land.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct
|
| So is a "right to life" in a world where nature is red in tooth
| and claw, but it is an extremely useful unnatural, made-up
| construct.
|
| All laws are ideas had by people and backed by collective (or
| in some regimes, concentrated) force.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct
|
| Property is an unnatural, made up construct.
|
| > that will one day be seen as ridiculous as absolute monarchy
| is today.
|
| Maybe, by just asserting untestable claims about future
| opinions isn't an argument.
|
| > If we are going to allow it and penalize people who are doing
| natural human things like sharing with friends, there has to be
| a specific benefit to society in every instance.
|
| That's a valid preference. I disagree, I think that a system of
| property law which provides net benefit _in aggregate_ is
| adequate, requiring each individual exercise of property rights
| to be a net benefit in specific is too much overhead.
|
| > For example, pay taxes on copyrights and patents, increasing
| every year to reflect disturbance caused to society.
|
| I'd rather have both have short, free terms with copyright
| _extendable_ by a tax, unless you are going to have a more
| general property tax than just on patents. But note that taxing
| property isn't a sign that it is _particularly_ "made up", real
| property and some items of tangible personal property _also_
| have property taxes.
| Jochim wrote:
| > I'd rather have both have short, free terms with copyright
| extendable by a tax,
|
| Why allow extension at all?
|
| The initial term serves as a societal "thank you for that
| cool idea". I'm not sure I agree that financial success
| should mean society continues to award you exclusive rights
| to the idea.
|
| Applying modern intellectual property law to "base"
| inventions illustrates how ridiculous it is. Should we be
| paying a tithe to the descendants of the person that built
| the first wheel? Would humanity have been better off if it
| had prevented anyone other than that individual from building
| wheels without their express permission? The answer is
| clearly no. That individual benefited personally from their
| invention and from the improvements to efficiency in the rest
| of their society. Restricting that would only have served to
| impede further innovation, prosperity, and quality of life.
| coding123 wrote:
| So theoretically in your world I can work at a company, copy
| their code, data set up my own site, then trip on their power
| cord taking their site down on my last day, oops sorry.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| But doesn't that conflict with the practicalities of economics?
|
| If everyone freely creates copies of what I produce, because
| they can, I can't go buy things that can't be easily
| replicated, like food or shelter.
|
| If IP is free for everyone, what do we do with all the people
| who need to live solely by producing IP?
| realusername wrote:
| Maybe there's a middle-ground between zero IP and the near
| perpetual IP we have right now.
|
| Additionally, we must keep in mind in those debates that
| piracy causing loss of revenue has never been proven and is
| an urban legend.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| Piracy (stealing) _has_ to cause loss of revenue. It's
| right in the definition. There's no way around it.
|
| There's also a moral component to all this.
|
| Regardless of the calculus, if a creator says they don't
| want to give their product away for free, that they'd like
| to be paid for every copy, we should respect that.
| realusername wrote:
| > Piracy (stealing) _has_ to cause loss of revenue. It's
| right in the definition. There's no way around it.
|
| No that's not, that's an urban legend, feel free to point
| me to some aggregated research studies proving this, the
| copyright lobbies never managed to prove that during
| multiple decades.
|
| Repeating something over and over again on TV by paid
| lobbyist doesn't make it true, you have to prove it.
|
| > Regardless of the calculus, if a creator says they
| don't want to give their product away for free, that
| they'd like to be paid for every copy, we should respect
| that.
|
| That's debatable at best.
| frollo wrote:
| The whole Reinassence happened without copyright law and they
| did just fine.
|
| In fact, a lot of masterpieces we have from that period would
| have been illegal under current IP law because they were the
| result of a lot of iteration on the same concepts by
| different artists.
| narwally wrote:
| Do we actually need monetary incentives to get people to
| create new things. Won't people naturally keep creating new
| things as long as they aren't constrained by a more
| fundamental need? So we really just need to create a society
| where nobody has to worry about their basic needs like
| housing, food, healthcare, etc...and then people are free to
| create and are even free to fail while doing so.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| I agree, but until we get to that new society and new
| economic system, people need to consider the creators. IP
| is often all they have.
| dheera wrote:
| I fully agree with this. Information is just entropy, and isn't
| possible to own.
| PKop wrote:
| Democracy will one day be seen as ridiculous as absolute
| monarchy is today.
| coldtea wrote:
| It might, as history has cycles.
|
| But not because it will be replaced with something "better".
| Democracy just means everybody has a say on decisions
| affecting them and the society they are in.
|
| If your replacement is closer to "only informed people should
| have a say", that is even older then democracy, and is much
| worse in practice.
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| If we don't replace the current flavour of democracy with
| something better there won't be much society in a few years
| (10s, 100s). The next level beyond democracy is tiered,
| time-limited, and retractable sortism [1]: some kind of a
| return to roots (Athenian democracy), but with a twist. A
| quick way to sketch it would look like this:
|
| (i) no functionaries: run all the administrative jobs not
| in an office by Margaret and John, but in some cluster of
| computers;
|
| (ii) no political nominations: instead of having elections
| between Side A vs Side B (vs Side C in non-US countries),
| all the decision-making positions are up to vote by name
| and all the candidates are sorted out randomly from the
| totality of the populace (no candidate can have more than 2
| mandates);
|
| (iii) negative vote: all ballots have a special box "No
| One" invalidating all the candidates (if the majority votes
| "No One") or reducing the duration of the mandate;
|
| (iv) the duration of the mandate correlated with voter
| turnout (if 30% of the populace vote, you don't get 100% of
| the 4-year mandate, you get 1.2 years of mandate);
|
| (v) the vote no longer a fact (you voted for X one time),
| but a process (you are maintaining your vote for X today
| also); when a majority of people retract their vote for a
| certain decision-maker they automatically lose their
| position of power.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
| coldtea wrote:
| > _If we don 't replace the current flavour of democracy
| with something better there won't be much society in a
| few years_
|
| The current flavour of democracy is already not
| democratic as practiced in most countries (perhaps
| Switzerland is an exception).
|
| In the US it's career politicians with little
| accountability, billionaires and huge coporations with
| huge influence, paying politicians, media owned by said
| millionaires or fed BS by the government, a baroque
| system of chosing President, a failed educational system
| that doesn't teach kids to be active citizens, fossilized
| two party system supported by all kinds of powers and
| structures that the voters aren't allowed to change, and
| so on. Plus a charade of voting once every five years. If
| that's democracy, then yes, it should change: to real
| democracy.
|
| The options you describe would be some of the solutions
| to that.
|
| Of course those "wise persons in power who know better
| than us what's good for us" will prevent anything like
| that.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Quite possibly, society doesn't sit still, but it's still an
| improvement from before in modern constitutional republic
| context. Beats going to war to change rulers.
| PKop wrote:
| >an improvement
|
| I'm sure some think it is. I think dictating power based on
| war ability makes way more sense than everyone having a say
| simply by virtue of breathing.
|
| Egalitarianism is not consistent with nature. But these
| things go in cycles, the flaws and contradictions will
| accumulate and the system will collapse eventually, like
| they all do.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| How do you run a society that way? Can I get a bigger
| house by mulching you in your own garden and telling your
| family to push on? Do we decide whether you can build an
| extension on your house by how good a shot the counties
| men are? Do Walmart and Cosco fight wars over the more
| desirable lots? This is not a serious suggestion.
| PKop wrote:
| Perhaps there is a synthesis of the two, where some get
| more say based on "war ability" (or other such
| competence) without actually having to engage in micro
| battles everywhere. Notice I was describing the criteria
| upon which decision-making and power is apportioned, not
| necessarily how it happens. There is a long standing
| tradition of opposition to mass democracy, particularly
| amongst the founders of my country so I'm in good company
| there. Ultimately whatever nominal system is in place, a
| governing elite arises one way or another...so debates
| about democracy are funny because in many ways power of
| the masses isn't real [0]. But to the degree democracy
| becomes "mass" is the degree to which is becomes worse.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35223884
| gsk22 wrote:
| > I think dictating power based on war ability makes way
| more sense than everyone having a say simply by virtue of
| breathing.
|
| I honestly can't tell if you're trolling. In what world
| is it better to instead give all the say to one person?
| Especially a person selected solely by their prowess for
| violence (or in leading others to violence)?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Who needs philosopher kings when warlords will suffice?
| thayne wrote:
| > In what world is it better to instead give all the say
| to one person?
|
| If that one person is wise, virtuous, and really
| prioritizes the people's best interest, and is willing
| and capable of delegating and seeking advice from people
| who understand various domains better than them, and is a
| good enough judge to choose good people for such
| delegation and advice, then it could be at least much
| more efficient than a democracy or republic. Decisions
| could be made much faster. And such a leader could very
| well be better at making decisions that are better in the
| long term, even if they aren't in the short term.
|
| However, how do you find and appoint such a leader? And
| even if you somehow get such a leader, how do you ensure
| their successor is just as good? Selecting a leader based
| on military prowess definitely won't get you such a
| leader though.
| Joeri wrote:
| Rulers who conquer tend not to be wise or virtuous,
| because if they were they wouldn't conquer. I can't think
| of an example of a benevolent autocratic ruler that
| outperformed the average democracy when it came to the
| well-being of all their subjects (including the
| conquered). Some rulers can use the spoils of war to
| bless some of their subjects, but that just shifts wealth
| around and causes incredible misery for the deprived.
|
| Productivity requires decentralized decision-making. The
| more centralized the power structure is, the lower the
| overall productivity of the subject population.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _If that one person is wise, virtuous, and really
| prioritizes the people 's best interest, and is willing
| and capable of delegating and seeking advice from people
| who understand various domains better than them, and is a
| good enough judge to choose good people for such
| delegation and advice, then it could be at least much
| more efficient than a democracy or republic._
|
| First, that's a big if. Second, it's the old pipe-dream
| that there are decisions that are on "best interest" for
| everybody, that can just be based on "domain knowledge",
| and not competing interests to be heard and balanced.
|
| > _Decisions could be made much faster._
|
| _That persons decisions_. Not the ones people want.
| Basically you 're described an infantilized population
| and a parent/nanny that knows what's best for them.
| [deleted]
| barrysteve wrote:
| Nature doesn't have F35 fighter jets, fully autonomous
| drones that can duty cycle 24/7 for months, hackernews
| discussion boards built on the internet, that benefited
| from thousands of years of physics breakthroughs. Nukes,
| medicine, ect, you know the list of technologies..
|
| Even in a war-economy, the majority of the civilian
| populace has to provide all the complicated logistics,
| food, services, entertainment, ect to keep the war effort
| going. Being a wage slave to a warlord isn't a magic fix
| to "egalitarianism".
|
| We can already live outside of egalitarianism. I can
| guarentee you Bill Gates, Stephen Hawkings and Jeff Bezos
| (and the lowest of society too) have no need for my input
| on their life, and don't know I exist.
| andrewguenther wrote:
| Are you equating what the IA did here to "sharing with
| friends"?
| Timwi wrote:
| I'm not OP, but personally, I can totally get behind that. It
| is not up to the law to tell me who can be my friend. If I
| decide that all of humanity are my friends then I should be
| able to share anything I want with them.
| rocqua wrote:
| There is a specific benefit to society. It allows artists to
| live of creating works meant for wide consumption. It means
| artists aren't limited to those who cater to the rich and those
| who are rich themselves.
|
| Not that I support current copyright law, but I do see that it
| brings some good. That good just doesn't outweigh the bad.
| encomiast wrote:
| "Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct"
|
| So, what laws and constructs of civilized life are not an
| unnatural made up constructs? You seem to be suggesting there
| is some natural law that excludes things like intellectual
| property. Which natural laws, specifically, are you talking
| about?
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I agree with you.
|
| We can simply say IP is a concept that we need to bust. And
| that's fine. No need to invoke weird "reasoning" like that.
| pfisch wrote:
| I personally like that movies and videogames exist and can
| be made with large budgets because that generally makes
| them better.
|
| I don't see how that continues without IP.
| rcoveson wrote:
| You have no idea how good the Avengers movies are in the
| timeline where the US issues Internet bans for piracy and
| does a comprehensive job of protecting the rights of
| creators in other countries as well. Our IP situation is
| anarchy compared to theirs, and our comic book movies are
| embarrasments.
|
| In that timeline there's a comment chain:
|
| >> So this dev lost his job because he couldn't work
| during covid after getting Internet banned for pirating
| some movie. Doesn't that seem excessive?
|
| > Okay, yes, maybe a little. But let me ask you this: How
| could Disney-XBox Studios have afforded the $2.3T Iron
| Man vs. Master Chief sequel if they weren't able to
| protect their investment? I just don't see how that movie
| gets made without strong IP law.
|
| The Benedict Cumberbatch from their side could probably
| transport you over, if you want. They're pretty accepting
| of immigrants, as long as you're willing to get The
| Implant.
| narwally wrote:
| More Lord of the Flies than Anarchy. There's definitely
| hierarchy in our system.
| edgyquant wrote:
| There will still be a first to market advantage.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| I don't see how that works in a world truly without
| copyright.
|
| You can't spend hundreds of millions making GTA6 if the
| first person you sell it to can give away copies.
| dns_snek wrote:
| Copies of GTA 6 won't work online, which is what the vast
| majority of people are likely going to be buying it for.
| Lack of copyright also doesn't mean lack of sales. GTA 5
| was a huge commercial success despite being cracked in
| days.
|
| I pay for Tidal and buy 99% of my games despite having
| access to safe private trackers. On the other hand I
| pirate 100% of my TV and movies. Make of that what you
| will but for me it's always a service issue (or lack
| thereof).
| rhino369 wrote:
| Without copyright, it wouldn't just be pirates on shady
| websites distributing GTA5. It would be ripped and sold
| at Walmart and on Steam by anyone.
|
| Why would anyone pay for HBO when Netflix could just put
| up The Last of Us without paying a cent.
|
| Why would AMC theaters pay Disney for Avengers 5 when
| they can just pay some Disney employee to send them a
| copy for free?
| burnished wrote:
| Oh, were you not alive when Steam started being a thing
| and piracy sharply reduced? Turns out people like to buy
| things from people who make things they like.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| I was alive, yes, it sounds like you weren't because
| Steam was universally hated for the DRM inconvenience it
| put around HL2.
| burnished wrote:
| Hahaha no, but I did forget that it affected HL2. It was
| interesting how the more egregious DRM actually made the
| product worse, people downloading the cracked version
| were legitimately just choosing the superior version.
| sltkr wrote:
| You can, but you'd use more DRM and server components. In
| the extreme your game would be streaming on something
| like GeForce Now so only paying customers can access it.
|
| To a large extent we also see that today (because let's
| be honest, current copyright law is not enforced very
| consistently) and there are still big-budget movies and
| games being released.
| yadingus wrote:
| > that generally makes them better.
|
| This is a very questionable statement.
| Timwi wrote:
| It will continue without IP once people realize that the
| creative arts benefit from people doing it for the love
| of the art, as opposed to doing it out of a fear of
| starvation.
|
| People should get paid to create things, and get paid
| what the work is worth.
|
| Right now, people get paid a small fraction of what it's
| worth, while the bigger fraction goes to execs who have
| had no hand in creating anything of value. And those
| execs get paid for _selling_ something that their workers
| have made, not for making it.
|
| Big-budget movies should get made because people
| democratically decided that we want to collectively spend
| resources on making such a movie, not because unelected
| company execs say so who have exclusive control over a
| huge amount of capital and who can use IP laws to extol
| more capital from innocent people who just wanna watch a
| decent movie.
| apologia wrote:
| > People should get paid to create things, and get paid
| what the work is worth.
|
| This is literally how it works today though. No one is
| intentionally paying employees more than they have to,
| and if they pay less than they have to, they lose
| employees.
|
| Basically this is just an anticapitalist rant. Not useful
| _even if one agrees with the premise_.
| concordDance wrote:
| It's a scale. Laws against murder and theft of food are
| highly natural (e.g. most social cooperative animals will
| have something like it), zoning laws are more unnatural.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| If people always beat me up and snatch my stuff the moment I
| am not looking, that's not very good living. Even if I am
| wealthy enough to hire guards, they can turn on me at any
| moment and get all my stuff rather than just what I am
| willing to pay. So we opt for a peaceful, honest society
| where people are not allowed to hurt each other, steal or
| break contracts. On the other hand, if I learn from other
| people and they learn for me, we all become smarter and more
| productive.
| submeta wrote:
| Physical objects cannot be shared. I can't create a copy of
| my car. But ideas can and will be shared. Our societies try
| to criminalise it. That's not right. It does not help
| humanity in making advances.
|
| Imagine a world where every human has access to all ideas,
| papers, books, thoughts. That'll empower every human being
| who has access to it.
|
| We need to find other ways to compensate authors and
| creators.
| Thorrez wrote:
| Is there a such thing as morality or ethics? Is there any
| action that is unethical?
| coldtea wrote:
| There is, but not one imposed by the laws of physics or
| some universal given. ]
|
| For example it was moral and ethical (and you were
| considered a good person regardless of whether you did it)
| to own slaves when that was the prevalent morality of a
| societies.
|
| So, there are actions that are unethical based on made up
| human constructs of morality. Nature and physics doesn't
| care either way.
|
| Which is the parent's point: what laws and ethical norms
| aren't "unnatural" and aren't made up? All are. Doesn't
| mean they are not useful and good for being that.
| edgyquant wrote:
| It was accepted as an economic reality but it was never
| considered moral or ethical to own slaves any more than
| it's considered ethical to own a tool shed today.
| coldtea wrote:
| Of course it was absolutely considered moral and ethical.
|
| There are tons of old articles, books, and treteases on
| the matter, describing it as perfectly moral and ethical,
| and how its beneficial to the slaves, who lack agency,
| are animal like, and are offered "useful work" from their
| masters who know better, how they are beastly and need
| the whip to get sense into them, and so on.
|
| That's of course, on top of the fact that slave owners
| were among the most respected good-standing members of
| society, and only controversial figures considered them
| imoral and unethical for owning slave. In fact
| abolitionists were considered bad people, not unlike
| today's terrorists and activists.
|
| Theses idea of the morality of being a slave owner, and
| the superiority and natural right of the owners vs the
| slaves, is universal in societies that held slaves (as
| was in societies were royals and lords were above folks
| reduced to peasants).
|
| Regarding the South, for example:
|
| "What were Southern pastors, preachers, and religious
| leaders telling their flock? Southern clergy defended the
| morality of slavery through an elaborate scriptural
| defense built on the infallibility of the Bible, which
| they held up as the universal and objective standard for
| moral issues.
|
| (...)
|
| Reverend Furman of South Carolina insisted that the right
| to hold slaves was clearly sanctioned by the Holy
| Scriptures. A fellow reverend from Virginia agreed that
| on no other subject "are [the Bible's] instructions more
| explicit, or their salutary tendency and influence more
| thoroughly tested and corroborated by experience than on
| the subject of slavery." The Methodist Episcopal Church,
| South, asserted that slavery "has received the sanction
| of Jehova." As a South Carolina Presbyterian concluded:
| "If the scriptures do not justify slavery, I know not
| what they do justify."
|
| As Pastor Dunwody of South Carolina summed up the case:
| "Thus, God, as he is infinitely wise, just and holy,
| never could authorize the practice of a moral evil. But
| god has authorized the practice of slavery, not only by
| the bare permission of his Providence, but the express
| provision of his word. Therefore, slavery is not a moral
| evil." Since the Bible was the source for moral
| authority, the case was closed. "Man may err," said the
| southern theologian James Thornwell, "but God can never
| lie."
|
| The Southern Presbyterian of S.C observed that there was
| a "religious character to the present struggle. Anti-
| slavery is essentially infidel. It wars upon the Bible,
| on the Church of Christ, on the truth of God, on the
| souls of men."
|
| During the 1850's, pro-slavery arguments from the pulpit
| became especially strident. A preacher in Richmond
| exalted slavery as "the most blessed and beautiful form
| of social government known; the only one that solves the
| problem, how rich and poor may dwell together; a
| beneficent patriarchate." The Central Presbyterian
| affirmed that slavery was "a relation essential to the
| existence of civilized society." By 1860, Southern
| preachers felt comfortable advising their parishioners
| that "both Christianity and Slavery are from heaven; both
| are blessings to humanity; both are to be perpetuated to
| the end of time."
|
| Same for politicians:
|
| William Harris, Mississippi's commissioner to Georgia,
| explained that Lincoln's election had made the North more
| defiant than ever. As Harris saw things, "Our fathers
| made this a government for the white man, rejecting the
| negro as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race, incapable
| of self-government, and not, therefore, entitled to be
| associated with the white man upon terms of civil,
| political, or social equality." Lincoln and his
| followers, he stated, aimed to "overturn and strike down
| this great feature of our union and to substitute in its
| stead their new theory of the universal equality of the
| black and white races." For Harris, the choice was clear.
| Mississippi would "rather see the last of her race, men,
| women, and children, immolated in one common funeral pyre
| than see them subjugated to the degradation of civil,
| political and social equality with the negro race."
|
| More to the point, he noted, abolition meant "the turning
| loose upon society, without the salutary restraints to
| which they are now accustomed, more than four millions of
| a very poor and ignorant population, to ramble in
| idleness over the country until their wants should drive
| most of them, first to petty thefts, and afterwards to
| the bolder crimes of robbery and murder."
|
| https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/why-non-
| slavehol....
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| It was also considered a mental illness for a black
| person to want to be free. The healthy position of a
| black person was being enslaved, and a black person
| attempting to become free was considered sick and needing
| psychiatric treatment!
|
| (Am agreeing point that, unfortunately, slave holding was
| considered morally good once upon a time... a biological
| fact, even!)
| scythe wrote:
| The most obvious distinction between intellectual property
| and ordinary property is their history. Ownership of _things_
| has existed for longer than reliable records are available.
| Copyright and patents, by contrast, were created during the
| late Renaissance in response to the particular economic
| circumstances of the time. They have since become the tools
| of entrenched interests who would rather suggest that things
| have always been this way and we couldn 't live without it.
|
| Is anything humans do natural? The only thing that can make
| something unnatural, so far as we understand it, is human
| intervention. Insofar as we conceive of unnaturalness as a
| recognizable quality of phenomena, it is more acute when the
| humans responsible are more sophisticated in their methods.
| We can easily observe a very large difference between the
| primitiveness of human society when it created the ownership
| of things and the much more advanced culture that devised
| what we now call intellectual property. From this
| construction of what is natural and what is not, we clearly
| find that intellectual property is much less "natural",
| though there is still the necessity of accepting that
| "natural" can be a meaningful idea at all.
| canibal57 wrote:
| Nearly everything humans do is natural. We have just made
| up clever ruses to hide the vulgarity of much of it and to
| dissuade ourselves that the disparity caused by the natural
| order has no chance to be solved.
| generj wrote:
| I'd argue intellectual property existed earlier than that,
| as soon as states (or guilds) considered certain techniques
| and skills exclusive to them.
|
| Off the top of my mind, with a solely European view the
| Venetians moved glass production to Murano in the 13th
| century at least partially to make a monopoly on luxury
| glass. World History was awhile ago but other restrictions
| on technology transfer existed by at least 800 CE and
| probably in a limited sense well before 1000 BCE.
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| Guilds would get the right to do something by the
| government, to the exclusion of others. Such as the
| haberdasher guild, that had the right to sew and no one
| else could sew commercially.
|
| Patent was invented to break the guilds. A guild member
| could reveal a technology publicly, and get a 10 year
| right to use it. This was to make progress go faster, as
| guilds kept technology secret.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's kind of true that idea of IP is entirely made-up, but
| it's also important to recognize that it was made up _to
| support and safeguard author's living_.
|
| IP allows authors to require values of content to be
| preserved, recognized, and financially rewarded(in one-time
| or recurring payments).
|
| In the absence of IP, printing companies can take manuscripts
| and contents to profit off of copies free-for-all style,
| bankrupting manuscript writers.
|
| However, it was NOT designed to protect interest of
| multinational megacorporates, causing individual contributors
| to be ignored and paid for presence in its making than input
| in the product; such use of IP is basically a polar opposite
| of its intent.
|
| We should stop allowing corporates to take ownership of IPs.
|
| J.K. Rowling enjoying her life is fine, that is intellectual
| property as intended. "(C)Disney" or "(C)2023 Electronic
| Arts. All Rights Reserved." is not. Those latter cases is how
| and where IP laws are not working as intended.
| vasco wrote:
| It was created to allow the United States to make money
| printing books without paying for them but not allowing
| other countries to print their books.
|
| Later it was expanded to keep poor countries and people
| from affording medicine.
|
| All enforced by threat of economic sanctions with the full
| backing of the US armed forces.
|
| Reading on the history of copyright would be a good start
| before perpetuating misconceptions.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| How does that story fit with USA being 100 years later to
| the Paris Convention?
| breck wrote:
| This. People (naively or dishonestly) think because the
| text is "To promote the progress of science and useful
| arts", that it must be the case it does this. Powerful
| people wouldn't lie, would they?
|
| In reality (c)opywrong and patent law does the opposite.
| It promotes the collection of money and power to the 1%
| to the detriment of the progress of science and useful
| arts.
| encomiast wrote:
| The idea of copyright predates the United States. The
| English 'Statute of Anne' of 1710 is typically cited as
| the first modern expression.
| vasco wrote:
| In the world of copyright and patents, there's a before
| and an after the USA. Anyone trying to make a different
| case must be trying to fool themselves.
| jenadine wrote:
| Disney and Electronic Arts employs hundreds of thousands of
| employees that gets to enjoy their salary. They are paid
| through the IP. How is that not IP working as intended?
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| War is an ultimate employer of soldiers and workers that
| make things for war effort, does it therefore mean that
| we should continue wars or that all these people would
| otherwise be unemployed?
|
| Without copyright, and especially century long Mickey
| Mouse copyright, it's easier to open your own smaller
| amusement park that competes with Disneyland, this will
| employ a lot of people outside LA or Orlando area. Plus I
| will still buy my games and movies from reputable sources
| that are fair to content creators. If some poor college
| students can't afford that, maybe it's good they can get
| a break.
| Timwi wrote:
| The employees toil to create amazing stuff and receive a
| pittance compared to what it's worth. Most of the profit
| goes to execs who have had no hand in creating anything
| of value.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| start a company why don't you, being an exec sounds
| simple enough
| Timwi wrote:
| None of my comment suggests that it's easy. And more to
| the point, being hard doesn't mean that execs do good in
| the world.
| brabel wrote:
| Is this comment meant to say that not having IP laws
| would somehow assist in fixing this problem?
| b800h wrote:
| Communism very popular these days on Hacker News; it's
| like being back in the 1960s at the start of the computer
| revolution, or on Slashdot in the very OSS days. You'll
| all turn and become capitalists eventually.
| theduder99 wrote:
| Yeah its an age/experience thing.
| [deleted]
| Timwi wrote:
| None of my comment suggests communism. Plus, your comment
| doesn't seem to add anything meaningful to the
| conversation as best as I can tell.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| Yeah, about that - Disney decided years ago it doesn't
| need to pay authors royalties it legally owes them.
|
| https://www.writersmustbepaid.org/
| encomiast wrote:
| "it was made up to support and safeguard author's living".
| That's not really true. It least in the US, its stated
| purpose is to promote the useful arts and sciences.
| Incentivizing authors is a means to that end. If
| incentivizing corporations achieves those ends as well, it
| would seem to be consistent with the original purpose. Of
| course, there are probably valid arguments that corporate
| ownership of IP doesn't always promote the useful arts and
| sciences (for example patent trolls).
| bruce511 wrote:
| "patent trolls" is an unhelpful term because it is in the
| eye of the beholder.
|
| Was Amazon being a patent troll patenting single-click-
| to-purchase? Was Apple a troll in patenting Swipe to
| Unlock? They were using those patents in their products.
|
| On the other hand is the Tolkien Estate patent trolls?
| They're not producing anything new.)
|
| If I have a dozen patents, and some company wants to buy
| them from me, is that any different to me selling my
| company? Surely I can sell my assets?
|
| The root issue are not "patent trolls". Being sued by
| Amazon is no less disruptive than by Trolls r US.
|
| The root issue is the nature of the patents being issued.
|
| The root of copyright issues are (mostly) not about
| actual copyright, but the length of copyright.
| Natsu wrote:
| Usually they're called NPEs, non practicing entities and
| differentiated because their use of patents is to use
| them to extract tolls rather than to build things.
|
| Which isn't to say that established players don't also
| use them to create moats around technology of interest,
| or that the nature of certain patents doesn't lend them
| to abuse. They could, for example, require that the thing
| which makes the patent 'novel' _also_ be 'patentable
| subject matter' for example, rather than letting one
| patent some novel software running on a non-novel
| computer and meet the standard one piece at a time.
|
| Also I wasn't aware that Tolkien or his estate had any
| patents. Copyrights, surely, but patents? That's surprise
| me.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > The root of copyright issues are (mostly) not about
| actual copyright, but the length of copyright.
|
| The other issues are getting worse over time. Lack of
| first sale doctrine. DRM preventing fair use. That Aereo
| thing where you're not allowed to rent a preconfigured
| antenna and recorder from someone else.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Yes, very few works need more than the original 7 years
| in order for them to get a sufficient return to make them
| economically viable.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| When/where was it 7?
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| IIRC under the Statute of Anne, it was 7 (plus 7 if you
| paid again).
|
| It seems like a good balance between private monopoly and
| public interest for the shirts of artistic works
| copyright protects.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Statue of Anne was 14+14. I'm not sure exactly if/how
| payment worked.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I wonder if that applies to novels that don't become
| bestsellers? A book that simply does okay. People buy it,
| never a ton of them, but always a few, every few days,
| for a long time. No idea what the answer is, just
| something that popped into my head.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >Was Amazon being a patent troll patenting single-click-
| to-purchase? //
|
| Just on that example. I think Amazon were fine to get a
| monopoly (in USA) on commercial implementation of one-
| click. But realistically it's worth a couple of years at
| most of monopoly for something which arises naturally out
| of the progress of the web, which Amazon rode the wave of
| (and contributed to). Locking that up for 20 years
| doesn't serve society; it's clearly anti-democratic [ie
| against the best interests of society as a whole] to have
| that extended term for business methods/software.
|
| In this case it's trivial to work around, but that's not
| true of all 'small idea' patents.
|
| _This is if course my personal opinion, unrelated to my
| employment._
| encomiast wrote:
| Fair points.
| casey2 wrote:
| >What laws? All natural rights, life (bodily functions e.g.
| the right to eat not to have something to eat), speech,
| association etc. Broadly defined as anything a person can do
| that doesn't require violence or compulsion.
|
| If someone says something in public then I have the right to
| say it. A way to get around this is by making every viewing
| of copyrighted material a private contract. e.g. "You can
| only own a license for personal use of this movie if pay and
| agree not to share it." But, if somebody does break that
| contract and shares the movie publicly, going only by natural
| rights everyone who watched it would be able to share. Since
| book publishers didn't like this they lobbied for our current
| "unnatural" copyright laws.
|
| Why people don't like this now generally falls into three
| camps with some overlap 1) People who want free books, movies
| and software. 2) People who want all books, movies and
| software to be libre. 3) People who don't want the government
| to create a protected class of license holders, for various
| reasons (anticommunism, traditionalism etc.)
| agalunar wrote:
| If I have a physical object, you can't also have that
| physical object. That's natural in the sense that it follows
| from natural law (physics).
|
| If I have an idea, or a digital copy of something, you can
| also use that idea, or also get a digital copy, without
| depriving me of it. The only reason you can't use my idea or
| own a digital copy is because society decided that it would
| punish you for doing so - and that's unnatural in the sense
| that it doesn't follow from any inherent feature of reality.
| encomiast wrote:
| Sure, and also I am bigger and stronger than you. Therefore
| I take your physical object and you can't stop me. That's
| natural in the sense that it follows from natural law
| (physics). Natural laws are brutish and don't support the
| kind of society that most of us want to live in.
| yucky wrote:
| Except in that instance you would be depriving him of
| that thing. Making a digital copy of what he has would no
| more deprive him of that thing than taking a picture of
| his painting on the wall.
| mushbino wrote:
| The golden rule is pretty universal for human.
| komali2 wrote:
| The golden rule fails as soon as you introduce someone of
| one culture to another.
|
| Example: my friends and I have a massively western-
| masculine internal culture. At parties people would ask
| if we were "ok" because a minute earlier we'd have been
| shouting at each other how smooth brained and stupid each
| other was. Of course we'd be fine, that's how we talk to
| each other. We'd get frustrated if someone tried to talk
| through implication - one time I asked my friend to put
| his seatbelt on and he said "wtf just tell me to put my
| fucking seat belt on don't be all soft about it."
|
| But if we turned that culture on someone else we'd be the
| most horrible of bullies. Not everyone wants to be
| "talked to straight" like that, and that's fine.
|
| I'd get mad if someone let me walk around with a booger
| on my face. "do unto me" is to say to me "lol saving that
| for later?", But to someone else a much more polite
| method is probably desirable.
|
| "Do unto me" might mean literally not talking to or
| approaching someone. It might mean feeling spurned or
| like someone thinks you're disgusting if a hug or
| handshake is avoided.
|
| Do unto me is far too simple a rule. We need more
| communication involved.
| brabel wrote:
| > my friends and I have a massively western-masculine
| internal culture.
|
| Sounds to me like you just have "teenage boy" culture.
| macawfish wrote:
| You're taking it very literal here, from my perspective
| it doesn't mean "literally treat others according to your
| preferences", it means "treat others with the same kind
| of consideration you'd offer yourself". It's like:
| wouldn't you want people to treat as best they can you in
| a way that aligns with _your_ needs and values? So treat
| them in a way that aligns with _their_ needs and values.
| I think it also implies that people would have respect
| and care for themselves, but that 's not always the case
| in reality.
|
| It's really like the semantics of "walk this way".
| cbozeman wrote:
| If it was universal the Mongols wouldn't have changed the
| carbon footprint of the planet by slaughtering so many
| millions of people.
|
| The one constant as you move through human history
| _objectively_ is that might makes right... the best you
| can hope for is a philosopher king who is willing to put
| his iron gauntlet in a velvet glove and then use that
| hand to guide society into a better place... and apply
| pressure when necessary, as opposed to crushing.
| [deleted]
| agalunar wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure what point you're making. That's
| not physical law in the same sense - nothing compels you
| to take something from me (or prevents you from taking
| something from me if you're sneaky or strong enough, as
| you said).
|
| On the other hand, you and I can't both have the same
| object even if we wanted; it has nothing to do with
| ability or circumstance.
|
| edit: I should clarify that you and I can share something
| in the sense that we can freely give it back and forth,
| but if we have one shovel, we can't both be shovelling at
| the same time (and can't share it at all if we live far
| apart). And if we're talking about food, well, we can't
| both take the same bite of bread.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I 'm not really sure what point you're making. That's
| not physical law in the same sense - nothing compels you
| to take something from me_
|
| Tons of thing compel someone to get the thing another has
| - them being hungry, just fancying it, mere greed, etc.
| All of those are natural feelings. In nature the stronger
| getting what they wont is the norm. There are no property
| rights.
|
| > _On the other hand, you and I can 't both have the same
| object even if we wanted; it has nothing to do with
| ability or circumstance._
|
| So? Physics is not the basis of law in a society. Just a
| hard limit of what can be done.
|
| But one can e.g. just kill you by hitting you with a
| rock, and physics is 100% fine with that, as is biology.
| Physics doesn't care either way. It's just a bunch of
| equations that describe how matter interacts, not a legal
| or moral code, and it doesn't get into the baseline state
| of animal behavior in nature...
|
| We still have laws against it though.
| anikan_vader wrote:
| Well, collective ownership and communal property are
| arguably just as "natural" as private property.
| robobro wrote:
| Rather than "private property" do you mean "personal
| property" ?
| encomiast wrote:
| My point is that you are picking and choosing which parts
| of nature you value. The idea of "having", of ownership,
| is not natural. Many people like Locke have tried to
| connect it nature, but with limited success -- it's still
| a human construct. In the natural world ownership is
| defended purely by force or guile. So you are taking this
| idea of ownership, protected by human constructs of law,
| and then adding a caveat that it only applies to physical
| objects. But that's not a natural consequence of the idea
| of ownership. We make up laws based on the outcomes we
| desire. One of those outcomes, to promote the progress of
| science and useful arts, is explicitly called out in the
| US Constitution. Maybe you don't think promoting those
| things are important, or maybe you don't think copyright
| is effective at doing that, but you are not making that
| argument. You are making some novel, unsupportable
| argument about natural law and physics that frankly
| doesn't stand up to any sort of rigorous argument.
| danShumway wrote:
| Okay. If all ownership is arbitrary, then definitely we
| can limit IP when its not benefiting society. IP is
| arbitrary and made up, just like everything else.
|
| Calling out all property ownership as arbitrary doesn't
| mean IP suddenly deserves more protection. If anything,
| it gives _more_ permission to be skeptical about its
| value to society. An IP law that prevents digital
| libraries isn 't an outcome we desire, so... case closed,
| let's change the law.
|
| You're arguing about whether natural rights exist, but
| regardless of whether or not there is such a thing as a
| natural right -- intellectual property is not a natural
| right. And getting rid of the entire category of natural
| rights just makes IP even more obviously not a natural
| right. It's not something that people are universally
| entitled to regardless of the social impact.
| agalunar wrote:
| I believe I understand what you're saying, but I feel
| we're talking about different things, so I may have
| miscommunicated my point. I'm not talking about ownership
| as recognized or enforced by people (in fact, I never
| used the word "own" or "ownership"). All I mean is that
| _if something is over here by me, it can 't be over there
| by you,_ because things can't be in two places at once.
|
| On the other hand, the exact same spatial arrangement
| _can_ be in two places at once (e.g. the state of bits on
| a disk, or the idea of a shovel, i.e. the pattern of a
| shovel as exemplified by two distinct shovels).
|
| All of that's obvious. I think what OP was trying to
| suggest is:
|
| Despite the obvious difference between physical things
| and ideas, we often treat them similarly (specifically,
| we treat ideas like physical objects). And perhaps that
| would seem a bit strange if we weren't so used to it.
| irjustin wrote:
| Agreed that you're talking about physics, but how does
| that translate into society?
|
| At some point you have to move away from physical
| requirements. The barter system simply doesn't scale.
| posterboy wrote:
| The monopoly on violence is a fundamental concept of
| state theory. Formulaicly, the people constitute the
| state and exert power based on democratic principles.
|
| Since intelectual property rights do not reflect a
| democratic process and were rather restricted because
| they threatened the power of the estate, their merrit is
| questionable.
| fhsm wrote:
| I am similar unclear on where this supposed bright line
| sites but to try and steal man your argument a bit is it
| possible you looking for the distinction between
| excludable and rivalrous goods?
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Just reading through, the distinction seems pretty
| obvious to me. It doesn't reinforce several of my
| ideological perspectives, even contradicts some, but the
| distinction is plain as day. Physical _things_ are
| subject to the laws of physics (can't be in two places at
| once), idea "things" are much more ephemeral and thus
| much less restricted by those same rules (an idea can
| propagate basically infinitely and be "had" by basically
| all who wish to have it, barring arbitrary rules to the
| contrary). The former has concrete, immutable scarcity,
| and the latter only has scarcity people assign to it.
| cxr wrote:
| The creative effort comprising time and attention that
| goes into bringing a work into existence is rivalrous.
| That's what IP law aims to protect/reward. People can
| insist on pretending not to understand this every time
| the argument comes up, but it's at their own peril; the
| world is not going to undergo IP reform as a result of
| anyone misconstruing or misrepresenting the issue as if
| it's really about whether or not person A is deprived of
| their copy of work Z when person B makes a copy of Z for
| themselves. It's not and never has been. It's about
| encouraging creators by offering protections in the hopes
| that doing so will lead to more people opting to create.
| agalunar wrote:
| Speaking as to my own opinion now:
|
| I'm skeptical that "encouraging creators by offering
| protections" is much more than a rationalization. (And
| I'm not sure whether it's historically accurate, although
| that's beside the point.) It doesn't seem like the
| concept of intellectual property and its protection under
| the law have been effective at encouraging people to
| create things; they seem to be more effective at
| encouraging rent seeking. If we want to enable and
| encourage people to create things, we should pay them to
| create - not pay them to share something _after_ they 've
| already created it.
|
| For example, we can pay someone to perform the labor to
| create something we want (contracts), we can finance
| their endeavours or subsidize their living expenses if we
| like their work (the patron model), and so on. In fact,
| we already do these things, but their effectiveness is
| limited because our current laws favor other business
| models.
|
| And there's a wonderful reciprocity: if I pay someone to
| create something, not only do I get what I want, but
| everyone else gets to benefit from it too. And the things
| that other people pay to have created I also get to enjoy
| (and there are a lot more "other people" than there are
| "me").
|
| [This is the visualization of a goal (or at least an
| alternative way of going about things) and an argument
| for its possibility. Unfortunately I can't claim to know
| its feasibility, how to get there from here, or even
| which tactics would be effective, but I hope to have good
| answers some day.]
| wwweston wrote:
| "Incentives don't matter" is usually a bad take.
|
| The idea that patronage isn't dominant because... it
| can't compete with copyright? is a not-even-wrong take.
|
| And there's an _astounding_ burst of human creativity in
| the last 300 years. There are several factors you can
| attribute that to but the correlation with ip laws means
| you're not going to have evidence that they inhibit
| rather than incentivize progress in the useful arts and
| sciences.
|
| If there's any empty rationalization in play, it's yours.
| agalunar wrote:
| > "Incentives don't matter" is usually a bad take.
|
| I didn't say that I thought incentives don't matter. (I
| was trying to say that I thought IP law isn't an
| especially good way to incentivize creativity, and that
| there might be better ways.) So I might be
| misunderstanding what you mean by this.
|
| > The idea that patronage isn't dominant because... it
| can't compete with copyright? is a not-even-wrong take.
|
| Could you explain why it's not-even-wrong? I can
| definitely accept that I'm wrong, but I don't see why
| it's so misguided that it can't even be discussed,
| affirmed, or denied.
|
| Today, I can (usually) make more money as a software
| developer writing proprietary software than I can writing
| libre software. If software _couldn 't_ be copyrighted,
| it doesn't follow as a matter of course that demand for
| software would plummet. If the demand remains, in this
| alternate world I ought to still be able to make a living
| writing (libre) software.
|
| In this alternate world, I would necessarily be paid for
| the labor I perform (writing code) rather than making
| money by selling licenses or copies. So, if the only
| difference between our world today and this alternate
| world is the existence of software copyright, and in our
| world today I'm incentivized to sell licenses or copies
| but in the alternate world I'd be paid for my labor _per
| se,_ it seems fair to say that the reason I 'm
| incentivized to sell licenses or copies - and the reason
| why e.g. patronage isn't more dominant - must be "because
| we recognize and protect copyright the way we do".
|
| That was my line of reasoning.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| As a general rule we don't enforce copyright at the point
| of having an idea, but rather at the point of putting
| that idea into some sort of medium that can be
| transmitted to others, and then we enforce copyright at
| the transmission point. The transmission has concrete,
| albeit somewhat mutable scarcity.
| philipps wrote:
| The characterization that IP law is only intended to spur
| creative activity is incorrect. It was designed to
| balance the interests of the creator with those of
| society. And that balance is off, IP regulation has
| become a tool for rent seeking.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >The characterization that IP law is only intended to
| spur creative activity is incorrect. It was designed to
| balance the interests of the creator with those of
| society.
|
| I will just note that characterization is a very American
| one, and that different cultures have different
| characterizations.
| damoe wrote:
| You are actually incorrect here as far as the US goes.
|
| Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US constitution
| states:
|
| 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.
|
| The whole constitutional purpose of IP law is to spur
| creative activity. The interests of the creator are only
| a means to this end. This has, unfortunately, been
| perverted by regulatory capture.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Despite the obvious difference between physical things
| and ideas, we often treat them similarly (specifically,
| we treat ideas like physical objects). And perhaps that
| would seem a bit strange if we weren't so used to it.
|
| ok but they way that we treat them the same are both
| constructs, we don't treat them the same in that if A has
| the idea you can't have it (in the same way that if A
| takes the bite of bread you cannot have that bite of
| bread), we treat them the same that if A has the idea
| they have a right to profit from it by selling you the
| idea in the form of a book etc. just as if A has the
| bread they have a right to profit from it by selling you
| a bite. And you don't have the right to take the bread
| from A just because you can.
|
| As noted while it is physically impossible for an object
| to exist in two places at the same time it is the social
| construct of ownership that we transfer from physical
| objects to non-physical objects.
| [deleted]
| travisgriggs wrote:
| > nothing compels you to take something from me
|
| What if you've hoarded all the food or all the water, and
| I need it to survive? Would that be compelling?
|
| I'm with the other guy. These distinctions are arbitrary.
| They may be useful for a society that attempts to
| maximize "happiness@ (also arbitrary), but it remains
| that they are not universally obvious.
| [deleted]
| johnnymorgan wrote:
| You've misconstrued natural law with might is right,
| which is a concept not a law.
| Winsaucerer wrote:
| > If I have a physical object, you can't also have that
| physical object.
|
| The parent was asking which laws are not constructs, and
| your example I don't think works as an answer to that
| question. In what sense do you "have" that physical object?
| For example, what does it mean to say "I have a phone"?
| "Having" in that sense is a construct, not a natural thing.
| You might be holding the phone, you might put it down, I
| might hold it while you are holding it, I might pick it up
| when you put it down, I might look at it while you aren't,
| etc. But there's nothing in any of those real natural world
| descriptions that correspond to having, until you start to
| include our social constructs around possession.
| pookeh wrote:
| He means owning the phone.
| agalunar wrote:
| This was imprecise on my part; I apologize. I explained
| what I meant by "having" in a daughter comment
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35299668) and made
| a clarification regarding sharing in another
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35299420).
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| How do we ensure that creators are well compensated for
| their creations that are enjoyed by thousands or millions
| of people, so they can continue creating without ending up
| having to flip burgers and not creating at all?
| [deleted]
| berniedurfee wrote:
| But you're depriving the person that originally created the
| original digital something of the proceeds from their hard
| work.
|
| I don't think we can have a conversation about free
| distribution of IP without considering the original
| creator.
|
| The creator depends on getting remunerated for each copy of
| their work. How are they to live?
| hurril wrote:
| Sure I can. The one you were just holding. You are relying
| on the meaning of the concept of having or owning, thinking
| that you don't have to either define that or rely on a
| preexisting definition. Whoops.
| muyuu wrote:
| > f I have a physical object, you can't also have that
| physical object. That's natural in the sense that it
| follows from natural law (physics).
|
| the unnatural, made up construct is that your property is
| recognised and respected by law, so that you don't have to
| physically defend it and potentially lose it to someone or
| some group stronger, perhaps more violent, than yourself
|
| if you only recognise physical ownership, you only own
| objects as long as you can physically protect them yourself
| and you explicitly deny any further rights not to have them
| robbed, as that is also an "unnatural, made up construct" -
| you were not robbed, there is a just different physical
| ownership going on now
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If I have a physical object, you can 't also have that
| physical object_
|
| Depending on the definition of having, which goes begs the
| question.
| stodor89 wrote:
| I get your point, but you make yourself an easy prey for
| literalists by using the words "natural" and "unnatural" like
| that. I mean, incurable diseases and nasty parasites are also
| natural, right?
| boredhedgehog wrote:
| Absolute monarchy doesn't work at all as an example of a
| thoroughly discredited intellectual concept. It's the political
| reality in various countries across the globe right now and
| frequently polls highly in all others. The word "king" has been
| dropped and replaced by "president" or "strong leader", but the
| concept is the same.
|
| And I think that's an important development to keep in mind
| when arguing against something like intellectual property,
| because these debates also frequently shift to battles over
| words instead of realities.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Being political reality doesn't save something from being
| intellectually discredited. The fact that people need
| propaganda such as "president" as you mention supports that,
| because the very idea of monarchy and aristocracy are
| impossible to sell these days. These systems can only survive
| through lies and confusion or brute force and neither has
| anything to with having any intellectual credibility.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| I have conflicting thoughts about the state of the law. As
| someone who has created original IPs, and likes to earn back
| something for my effort, these laws are basically my only
| safety net. But they way they are laid out is extremely
| prohibitive, and blocks creativity. I am all for shortening the
| copyright period, and introducing a mechanism similar to that
| of musical covers to all protected works.
| panic wrote:
| Are there any organizations working toward the abolition of
| intellectual property in the US? I agree with you that it's
| ridiculous and would love to do something about it.
| becquerel wrote:
| Most anarchocommunists are against IP, so the wobblies (IWW)
| are a good shout.
| dogcomplex wrote:
| Wait a few more months... let's see what the bittorrent and
| private crypto folks end up doing with AI... Either way, IP
| is going to either accept defeat or get very very loose in
| its claims, as the ability is almost here to just process a
| feature-length film, slightly modify each scene and replace
| script, camera angles, environments and actors with generic
| IP-free amalgamations, all while still capturing the tone and
| story... Images/text/code are already done for. Who's going
| to enforce that, and how much similarity do you need to
| infringe? Who's going to prove you processed that film when
| nothing about your movie is quite the same?
| atomicUpdate wrote:
| Assuming such an organization existed, what would stop
| someone from using their name, logo, etc. to also promote
| enhancing IP law and undermine they're entire message?
| Presumably they wouldn't be so hypocritical as to sue you for
| that, would they?
| sicariusnoctis wrote:
| If IP stops being a thing, we can always invent new laws to
| replace it such as "impersonation".
| narwally wrote:
| Trademark and copywright aren't quite the samee things. We
| can get rid of copywright while still allowing trademarks.
| whiddershins wrote:
| The comments on here are extremely myopic, as the meme "copyright
| bad" is firmly lodged in the minds of thousands or millions of
| people who don't rely on it to make a living.
|
| It can't imagine a more practical or metaphysical violation of
| copyright than to literally _copy_ the pages of a book and then
| _distribute copies_ of this book to however many people you feel
| like.
|
| I guess you could violate the rights more by taking the author's
| name off of it.
|
| This mad ideology is destructive and blind. No one has a right to
| the product of another's labor. A dysfunctional system doesn't
| change the ethics here.
| baryphonic wrote:
| I saw this coming. A few days ago, I read that IA's lawyers
| argued fair use in part based on "transforming" the content by
| making copies at scale. I was surprised & astonished that they'd
| try such sophistry, since a verbatim copy isn't transformative at
| all. I felt IA's lawyers were grasping at straws if they were
| making that fair use argument.
|
| Everyone would do better to lobby Congress to change the law to
| allow for limited digital lending kind of like what IA did
| (notwithstanding the "emergency" lending).
| thebooktocome wrote:
| > since a verbatim copy isn't transformative at all
|
| It's not a verbatim copy; the argument specifically involved
| converting content from one format (physical book) to another
| (ebook).
|
| > Everyone would do better to lobby Congress
|
| Good luck outspending the big publishers. How many people who
| work for a living does it take to match Disney's capacity to
| bribe Congresscritters?
| baryphonic wrote:
| > How many people who work for a living does it take to match
| Disney's capacity to bribe Congresscritters?
|
| Why so cynical? Who's more captured: Congress or the IP Bar?
|
| If everyone commenting and reading about this on HN called
| their members of Congress within a few hours on Monday
| afternoon, there would be serious buzz on Capitol Hill.
| Several hundred to a few thousand people all calling in about
| a similar issue to members of both parties is _noticed_.
|
| Remember the "SOPA" thing Big Content tried to ram through a
| decade ago? It failed because dozens upon dozens of members
| were spooked.
|
| You know why lobbyists are listened to? They're not "bribing"
| members of Congress; they are simply presenting an unrebutted
| story.
|
| EDIT: forgot to address the "transformative" thing.
|
| Format shifting is not transformative, any more than
| bootlegging a movie in the theater or taking a photo of a
| copyrighted piece hanging in a gallery are. The meaning of
| the work is almost certainly identical whether it's on a
| physical page or on a screen.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Format shifting can either be a verbatim copy (as it was in
| this case), or also involve editing (which this case did
| not.)
|
| _Personal_ -use format shifting has sometimes been found to
| be fair use; but this is not that.
|
| > How many people who work for a living does it take to match
| Disney's capacity to bribe Congresscritters?
|
| Don't have to bribe if you have enough people convincingly
| committed to vote on the issue.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| What actually happened? The article is a really confusing read.
|
| Edit: found another article that describes it much better:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35300195
| EchoReflection wrote:
| this is very disturbing, but definitely not unexpected. surprised
| it took this long, actually. fortunately i think it will still be
| a long-ish time before the thought-police can take down all the
| parts of the internet that clash with the "sensibilities" of the
| scrooge-like, pro-paywall, pro-restriction curmudgeons in their
| ivory towers.
|
| https://www.alltechbuzz.net/best-internet-archive-wayback-ma...
|
| https://www.guru99.com/best-internet-archive-wayback-machine...
|
| https://startupstash.com/internet-archive-alternatives/
|
| https://www.topbestalternatives.com/internet-archive/
|
| https://alternativeto.net/software/internet-archive/
|
| https://rigorousthemes.com/blog/best-archive-is-alternatives...
|
| i realize the last link is "alternatives to 'archive.is' " and
| not "alternatives to 'archive.org'/the wayback machine", but it's
| still pertinent/in the same ideological arena (obviously).
|
| As MLK Jr said* "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it
| bends toward justice."
|
| _Apparently Dr. King adapted that line from Unitarian minister
| Theodore Parker:https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/15/arc-of-
| universe/#:~....
|
| i've archived _this* page (this ycombinator page) at:
| https://archive.vn/AZNoN
| pontifier wrote:
| I'm a little bit worried about how this might affect Murfie.
|
| I've been an advocate for years for a model where people own
| physical media, and have access to the media they own in any way
| they see fit.
|
| The way this ruling is structured, it paves the way to make even
| ripping your own CDs to your MP3 player illegal. As common as it
| is, this right has never actually been tested in court.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| That's just sensationalism. If they wanted to go after ripping
| CDs, they would have gone after that when CDs actually had more
| than negligible sales. CDs are a dead format in 2023. Most
| music isn't even released on CD anymore.
| pontifier wrote:
| It's the way the judge references the ReDigi case that is
| troubling to me. It's been a while since I read it, but I
| thought ReDigi found that digital copies don't have the same
| first sale rights that physical copies do.
|
| This judge seems to think that the first sale doctrine isn't
| even applicable.
|
| The Google book scanning case had previously indicated that
| giving full copies of scanned books to the owners clearly
| fell under fair use in part because of the first sale
| doctrine. This ruling seems to ignore that.
|
| I do truly hope you're right though.
| nomilk wrote:
| If this results in the collapse of the Internet Archive as a
| whole, it will be the digital equivalent of the Notre-Dame fire;
| a treasure being destroyed before our very eyes.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Maybe more like the Library of Alexandria? That said, I get
| your point.
| misnome wrote:
| I don't think the owners of the Notre-Dame set the fire
| themselves.
| interestica wrote:
| Fork Everything.
| animitronix wrote:
| You know what to do boys, let's make it happen.
| readbeard wrote:
| If we work together, I think it would be realistic for us to
| attain a rollback of most recent one or two copyright term
| extensions by following a two-pronged strategy:
|
| (1) Show politicians on the left how copyright term extensions
| have largely amounted to a transfer of wealth from the public to
| large corporations, and
|
| (2) Show politicians on the right how rolling back to an earlier
| version of copyright would reduce the interference of the
| government in the lives of its citizens and return to a vision
| for IP that better adheres to that presented by the Constitution
| and defended by its framers, while leading to a more vibrant and
| competitive market for new works.
|
| Meanwhile, both groups should be assured that a release of many
| classic works into the public domain would be popular among the
| vast majority of their constituents.
|
| Who's in?
| zarzavat wrote:
| Politicians in the US are corrupt. You need a rich person who
| cares about your cause to bribe them more than the rich
| businesses with copyrights are currently bribing them. Then the
| law will be changed.
| zestyping wrote:
| Both of your arguments have merit, and would be convincing if
| politicians on both sides were driven by logic. Sadly, I'm
| doubtful that many politicians on the left still have the
| integrity or power to act against copyright empires.
|
| It's even more obvious that politicians on the right no longer
| care about limited government. They are currently trying to ban
| books.
| acheron wrote:
| Nobody remembers UMG vs mp3.com?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.co....
|
| This isn't exactly the same thing, but it's close. Of course this
| was always going to be ruled against.
| daedlanth wrote:
| [dead]
| Sparkyte wrote:
| Judge has a bad history on the internet.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Well, that can be understood in several ways.
| RedCondor wrote:
| America will rule in favour of private property and against the
| common good every single time, unless forced to do otherwise by
| external circumstances.
|
| Famously it only went against segregation because "Racial
| discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda
| mills." (Attorney General James P. McGranery)
|
| https://redsails.org/concessions/
|
| Fortunately this means more of an impetus for piracy in the
| meantime, and alternative systems in the near future.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| > America will rule in favour of private property and against
| the common good every single time
|
| Thankfully that's the best outcome. Unless you mean you support
| eminent domain.
|
| I'd pay hell to the country that even plans on using it against
| me, and I'll follow and protect others who this happens to as
| well. Anyone who decides they can steal my resources will have
| to fight for it.
|
| You do not own me.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I might not own you, but apparently you don't own your own
| books as much as you might have thought. ;-)
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| I don't own a single digital book, nor am I deluded to
| think that the internet was going to solve the issue of
| ownership in the first place.
|
| You are free to demand that publishers provide you
| unlimited access to their servers so you can download your
| books perpetually. Publishers need not give in to
| alternative access methods to their material.
|
| If you want to own books, have it actually in your
| possession, which is not the internet.
| whatshisface wrote:
| This article is about a court ruling restricting what the
| IA could do with books they physically owned.
| endisneigh wrote:
| You misunderstand it if that's your conclusion
| RedCondor wrote:
| In the very near future America as a country will have to
| fight a lot harder to loot the resources of other nations, so
| I imagine as resource scarcity encroaches upon everyone's
| lifestyle you'll probably begin to see yourself less as an
| independent frontiersman and more as a member of society. But
| not one moment sooner.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| I don't understand why users would voluntarily move away from
| piracy. I prefer "you can't do anything about it" to "please let
| us." Why the norm, base line expectation of the end user is not
| identity obfuscation and free access to information without
| hindrance I just don't get.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| I like IA for what it is, but I would prefer a more hardline
| stance like this too. However, there is a place for an
| organization like this to attract good will. It would be much
| better to just have a backroom deal between IA and libgen to
| upload everything it have there in a plausibly deniable way,
| though.
| endisneigh wrote:
| You could say the same about stealing physical books.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| Stealing physical books deprives the owner their right to the
| book. Copying a digital book only "deprives" the "owner" a
| right to control its distribution. It's not nearly the same
| thing. Whereas ownership of physical items is permanent to
| ensure society would function, the right to control
| distribution is a concession we make to authors to allow them
| to make a profit. In our era, this is so ridiculously abused
| that it is fine to take back some of it. For example, the
| author should be entitled to the right of controlling copying
| if he action intends to distribute copies. If book is out of
| print because the author decides it is not profitable, then
| the right should go back to us.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| How many times must we have the discussion about the
| differences between stealing a physical item and copying a
| digital one?
| endisneigh wrote:
| It's not the same, but the OP is talking about free access
| to information. So under that logic stealing the physical
| book is fine. Or I can amend my original comment and say
| stealing the physical book, creating a copy using a
| commodity printer and leaving the _copy_ , while keeping
| the original, is fine.
| gaganyaan wrote:
| Please don't. ChatGPT has enough incoherent garbage to train
| on already. It doesn't need more training data.
| [deleted]
| icelancer wrote:
| Because people are not good at using the Internet or technology
| and just want to click on links.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| I'm not convinced. Before smartphones and the like, people
| used Gnutella and ICQ. We live in a world of telephone
| numbers, social security numbers, credit card numbers, top
| level domains, maybe your average Joe can't program a
| computer but he can definitely install Tor browser and a
| BitTorrent client.
|
| I think the problem is that the produce the end user gets are
| delivered as a business case through a funnel, and people
| don't realize that the relationship is fundamentally
| adversarial. What just boggles my mind is how people just
| accept it without any sort of rebellion or self interest.
| zarzavat wrote:
| In the 2000s, using P2P was very common because the
| alternative was ripping CDs or spending $$$ on the iTunes
| Store for DRMed music. People were also not connected all
| the time so it made sense to download and store your music
| on an iPod or similar.
|
| In the late 2000s Spotify arrived, it was much easier than
| piracy, and not as expensive as the iTunes Store, although
| still DRMed.
|
| At the same time, Apple introduced the iPhone and people
| gradually stopped using computers so much and started using
| smartphones more. And on smartphones you couldn't install
| whatever software you wanted.
|
| Many younger people today in the west have no experience of
| piracy at all. They live on their phones in a fully
| corporatized environment.
| ImaCake wrote:
| Libgen is not particularly difficult to navigate, although
| its bare bones which makes it look intimidating. The real
| problem is some hosts are clearly trying to get me to
| download viruses.
| terrycody wrote:
| What were they thinking?! What were they thinking?! What were
| they thinking?!
| deely3 wrote:
| IA or judges?
| lincler wrote:
| "IA argues that its digital lending makes it easier for patrons
| who live far from physical libraries to access books and that it
| supports research, scholarship, and cultural participation by
| making books widely accessible on the Internet. But these alleged
| benefits cannot outweigh the market harm to the Publishers...."
|
| I never had enough money to get the books I wanted, sometimes
| getting to a library wasn't that easy. IA (and other platforms)
| helped me a lot. So, seeing this section is really depressing.
| [deleted]
| unopened wrote:
| Aaron Swartz founding the Open Library with IA was a shining
| moment in web history. Sad to see giant corporations stomping on
| his vision of a web that offers free access to information for
| all.
| throwaway742 wrote:
| I miss him. He really did his best to live up the the hacker
| ethos. Information wants to be free.
| uda wrote:
| Initially I'm enraged against the publishers, the judge and the
| system in general as many of you, but they are not the issue,
| while I can't talk on behalf of IA, I don't see this as a fight
| against the publishers, but a fight against broken business
| models flourishing because and protected by broken laws meant to
| protect earlier broken business models
|
| The current law is broken, we know that, but most of us don't
| grasp broken laws as a threat until it is challenged (and we as a
| society usually lose), and then we expect the judge to "save" us
| from the broken law instead of holding the legislators
| accountable
|
| This circuit should be shortened, we need to react better to laws
| as they are being drafted, not wait out their inevitable harm to
| society like with DMCA and PATRIOT act
|
| If anything has proven this lately is the Roe v. Wade overturn,
| we really need to stop relying on courts to "save" us and instead
| fight for better laws, be more involved in the legislation
| process and actively propose and push for fixes
| komali2 wrote:
| What actions can Americans possibly take given the captured two
| party system and drawing back of voting rights? Not to mention
| the wildly unrepresentative government, wherein for example
| more people can vote for Trump in California than Texas in 2020
| yet each of those person's votes are functionally meaningless,
| or, republicans can fail for over two decades to win a popular
| vote and still elect three presidents in that time. Or the fact
| that California gets very few senators per person whereas north
| Dakota gets a much larger power per citizen in the Senate, and
| the House is similarly unrepresentative.
|
| It seems that working within the system isn't an option for
| Americans that desire a better world anymore. Perhaps a
| billionaire has the means to change this within system-allowed
| parameters such as lobbying and ad buys?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > yet each of those person's votes are functionally
| meaningless
|
| Not sure what a "functionally meaningless vote" is; is that
| simply a vote cast for the losing side? If something is to be
| decided by a vote, then one side of the argument is going to
| lose, otherwise you don't need a vote.
| Matl wrote:
| I'd guess you took what OP meant a bit too literally, I'd
| say that there's so many things to change, campaign for,
| convince that even if you say convince enough people to
| vote to change this law, there's already another rolling
| your 'win' back being prepared, backed by interest groups
| with much deeper pockets.
|
| So in the end your individual vote does little, because
| real power is at the hands of much better resourced
| interests.
| criddell wrote:
| A decade ago, activists made a difference protesting SOPA and
| PIPA.
| Matl wrote:
| Or Google did.
| ajdegol wrote:
| Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
|
| Perhaps have chatgpt search through drafted laws to identify
| inconsistencies, curtails to liberty, and evidence of self-
| interest...
| patrick451 wrote:
| Aside from the two party system, this is all working exactly
| as designed.
| prox wrote:
| Getting involved, grass roots style. The feeling of
| powerlessness is exactly the way you become inert to do
| anything. "What can I do."
|
| Politics work from the local to the national, so getting
| involved locally is a good thing, or organizations that work
| to promote the ideals you want to see in the world.
| jzb wrote:
| Getting involved locally is a very non-specific guidance.
| Part of the problem with "local involvement" is that a lot
| of folks are in very very gerrymandered areas. Either
| you're hopelessly outvoted or preaching to the choir when
| trying to affect local politics.
|
| But also, I think we are well past affecting change through
| voting and so forth. Not that you shouldn't vote. But if we
| want to see actual change in the United States, we need to
| start taking some cues from the French and other countries
| where they go on strike aggressively until they get what
| they want.
|
| As long as we keep getting fucked and showing up for work
| anyway the powers that be are just going to keep fucking
| us.
| vinyl7 wrote:
| Even if you do get involved, you're going to get tackled by
| the quarterback trying to enact the changes that you see
| are needed. What has been happening in politics over the
| last several years? Bickering about non-issues that don't
| really effect people.
|
| What did the senate do this week? Interview the TikTok CEO.
| Meanwhile our economy is in shambles, inflation is out of
| control, housing and rent is unaffordable, the middle class
| is dying.
|
| Why are they over there arguing about wokeness, screaming
| about communists and facists being on the precipice of
| taking over the country, and interviewing the tiktok CEO?
| Because that doesn't require any action. It distracts the
| public from real problems. The partisan inflammatory and
| meaningless screeching is enough to get them re-elected, so
| why do any hard work fixing problems?
|
| And so people who do try to get involved in order to fix
| real issues like the economy or housing, end up getting
| blocked by pointless debates. It's system-wide
| filibustering.
| meany wrote:
| The slowness and lethargy of the system is by design. For
| instance, The constitution is really hard to change to
| prevent tyranny. Checks and balances against power protect
| all our rights. There is no garauntee that the people in
| power will choose your path forward. There is also no
| garauntee that the majority view is yours. Hitler for example
| was elected. The system was setup to ensure for hundreds of
| years at the price of short term inefficiency. Read the
| history of an imploding republic - France, Rome, Weimar - and
| you will see similar pushes to speed reform for the masses
| that ended in tyranny. Reading the federalist papers will
| give good perspective on the rationale for these things. One
| may disagree with the conclusions, but the concerns and
| rationales are reasonable
| unholythree wrote:
| It's hard for people to appreciate just how much better our
| lives are, and how much more just life is in western
| society now than all of the millions of years of human life
| before. 200 years ago some people were literal property,
| 150 years ago women couldn't vote almost anywhere, less
| than 75 years ago Turing was chemically castrated for being
| a homosexual. Huge, meaningful strides have been made for
| equally and fairness very recently.
|
| It may seem terrible and unjust that there are some now
| that are as rich as a Roman emperor and can buy a great
| deal of influence, but the world was once thousands of
| unaccountable tyrants, free to brutalize their peasants and
| slaves.
| dogcomplex wrote:
| Entirely open (at best) question, which no smug hacker news
| commenter is going to answer. What does one do?
|
| (My current longshot hope? Digital democracy, on the backs of
| open source production economies running on the latest AI for
| highly-accessible/affordable data processing / labor. If we
| just start making online group decisions and scale it up,
| that's a power bloc that can run its own parties and
| strongarm existing gov processes - assuming the network even
| wants to interact with them... )
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Digital democracy, on the backs of open source production
| economies running on the latest AI for highly-
| accessible/affordable data processing / labor.
|
| Politics is the set of activities associated with making
| decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations
| among individuals.
|
| Throwing technology at these human affairs isn't an answer.
| shigawire wrote:
| Not the sole answer but it does enable different ideas
| that weren't possible at scale without technology.
|
| Something like liquid democracy.
| komali2 wrote:
| I agree with many that the most effective method will be
| some combination of empowering communities and destruction
| of property.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Way too much focus on the HOW and not the WHAT
| maxwell wrote:
| Odd to open asking what actions Americans can take, and then
| closing with a bizarre appeal to a noble wealth hoarder.
|
| What can we do? Uncap the House. Repeal the Reapportionment
| Act of 1929. The billionaires easily bribe 435 reps, several
| thousand would be harder. And in line with historical
| representation.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/uncapthehouse
| ncphil wrote:
| Something many have advocated for decades. But keep in mind
| that there are tens of thousands of elected offices in the
| US, most of them nonpartisan, local positions that cost
| little to contest: yet it's incredibly hard to find people
| willing to run. Voter apathy is a huge problem here, in
| part due to historic voter suppression efforts baked into
| the system, but the dearth of candidates willing to
| participate in elections is even more serious. There again,
| legal discouragements, especially in the most significant
| races (state and federal legislature, executive), are
| endemic. Still, too many offices at the local level (town
| and city council, special district boards) go uncontested:
| leaving one or the other major party -- or venal
| representatives of the FIRE sector -- in control to
| mismanage and misappropriate power in areas directly
| impacting public life.
| ghaff wrote:
| Many of those local or state offices also pay little to
| nothing. A state rep in NH gets paid $200 for a two-year
| term based on an 1899 law.
|
| That's something of an outlier but $25-50K is common.
| komali2 wrote:
| The bizarre appeal was poorly communicated sarcasm.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| As an non-USA inhabitant, one thing I see is that you have a
| lot more voting chances than most countries. I heard e.g. you
| can vote for officials like sheriffs and stuff.
|
| So don't only vote for a president, vote for everything you
| can. Become member of both parties, and vote for presidential
| candidates at both sides.
|
| I think after that, you shouldn't be afraid to 'throw your
| vote away'. Gerrymandering and other stuff made most voters
| in the presidentials irrelevant. So the only voice left there
| is the signal function of 3rd part vote. Make it clear yo
| don't like the hobson's choice you've left. You did what you
| could in the previous round.
|
| Don't succumb to nihilisms. The powers that be seem to have
| dividers in a dumber and smarter half. The dumber half gets
| very simplistic reasons to vote for some extremist side. The
| smarter half gets tamed by nihilistic passiveness. Both get
| all kinds of divisive news as a side dish. Don't fall into
| this trap. A big enough group of people aligned around a
| common cause is the biggest danger to any powerfull entity,
| and they fear them and do anything to break them up.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| > Become member of both parties, and vote for presidential
| candidates at both sides.
|
| That's not permitted in any state which I know.
|
| I am a registered voter in "NO PARTY", which gives me the
| option to request a ballot from any party in a primary and
| vote within that party.
|
| Any registered voter can vote any candidate or issue in
| general elections. I think what would improve our abysmal
| two-party system would be runner-up benefits, and
| coalitions, rather than winner-takes-all.
| alistairSH wrote:
| The likely best solution to the 2-party system is a
| change to balloting from single-choice to something like
| approval voting (check any number of candidates you could
| live with) or ranked-choice/instant run-off (number
| candidates by preference).
|
| If I were king, I'd do away with party primaries
| completely. Run a jungle primary with all candidates on a
| single ballot. Ranked choice to pick the top 4-5 for the
| general. Then ranked choice in the general to select the
| winner. Something like that.
|
| I'd also ditch the EC for direct election of the
| president. And legislate the size of a House district be
| derived from the smallest state population. This adds
| hundreds of members to the House, and brings voting
| parity back to CA and TX (who currently have districts
| substantially larger than Wyoming's single seat.
| youainti wrote:
| The "jungle" primary you speak of is in use in Washington
| state.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _Become member of both parties, and vote for presidential
| candidates at both sides._
|
| This usually isn't allowed. At least in my precinct (in an
| open primary state), both primaries are on the same day, in
| the same location, and you select which party's ballot you
| want when you arrive. Anybody can vote, you don't have to
| be a party member.
|
| Some states have closed primaries, where only party members
| can vote. Usually you declare party membership in advance.
| Not sure how these states prevent people from joining both
| - I suspect there is a state register of party affiliation.
|
| As the parent post alluded to, the US is at a bit of a
| crossroads. The protections built into the political system
| that were added to protect minority political groups from
| the tyranny of the majority has been turned on it's ear
| over the last several decades and we're now stuck with an
| ever-decreasing population of angry christo-fascists making
| decisions against the will of the vast majority of the
| nation.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I'd wager it'd be even more useless for me to vote for
| sheriff than president. The sheriff where I live is a
| populist figure who's continuously re-elected in power for
| nearly 20 years at this point. He's probably going to re-
| elected till he dies since he has that "celebrity"
| mentality Americans love.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I bet in your county it would take the dedicated organization
| of maybe 10-25 people to tilt who is out on the ballot in
| your local government. (If your county is much larger, you
| may need 50 or so.) register for a minor party and then only
| nominate members of that minor party that fit your views. A
| friend of mine in his smaller town was able to, with his
| local family, put on only democratic candidates under
| Republican nominations because his family had minor party
| share.
| salawat wrote:
| >wherein for example more people can vote for Trump in
| California than Texas in 2020 yet each of those person's
| votes are functionally meaningless.
|
| Executive election and apportionment of electoral votes are
| specifically a matter for States to determine the
| implementation details of. Therefore, any complaints on that
| front are entirely California's problem.
|
| > or, republicans can fail for over two decades and still
| elect three presidents in that time
|
| ...The Chief Executive is determined in a two-fold election
| pipeline. A popular vote to elect State electors to cast
| votes for the President The number of electoral votes is set
| by a Constitutionally defined function that strikes a balance
| to ensure the most populous states can't steamroll the less
| populous. The means of choosing who the electors are are up
| to the States. Original intrnt was that Electors were
| unaccountable to anyone, as the Founders wanted a specific
| check on demagoguery, as they greatly feared the charismatic
| charlatan who could work a crowd, and believed a second
| smaller unaccountable party of voters would either eventually
| reconfirm the majority if it was a genuinely uncontroversial
| decision, or conscientiously object if they could not in good
| conscience believe it was in the best interests of the nation
| to cast that vote. The Founders believed a person was
| virtuous. People were easily led and prone to being swindled
| by a charismatic speaker.
|
| The popular vote literally was antithetical to what the
| Founders set put to do. It was _specifically not the system
| they wanted to get anywhere near._
|
| >Or the fact that California gets very few senators per
| person whereas north Dakota gets a much larger power per
| citizen in the Senate,
|
| This is by design. The Senate represents the States. Not the
| People directly. Each state gets two Senators, no matter how
| big, no matter how populace. Only the House Scales as a
| function of Population. The Senate is specifically a check on
| the House. It was recognized that the House would be the
| Heart/Vehicle of the People's passions. The Senate was
| intended to be a smaller, more rational filter to keep the
| House checked as Reason is the check on Passion.
|
| Again. Working as designed/Civics 101.
| Qahlel wrote:
| every monopoly is created by the government (read: state and
| laws).
| politelemon wrote:
| > and then we expect the judge to "save" us from the broken law
| instead of holding the legislators accountable
|
| Why can't it be both? All this does is keep us busy looking
| where the 'root cause' is and never actually solve anything
| because the mechanisms to fix _those_ things don 't exist...
| all the while others reap its benefits.
| punnerud wrote:
| Could the law be nullified? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/N
| ullification_(U.S._Constitu...
| shadowgovt wrote:
| No, because no jury was involved.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| Judges are there to enforce the law, not to make it. You
| can't hope that the judge takes your side because then the
| judge could just as easily take the other side. There is of
| course an element of interpretation which the judges can use
| to decide in different directions over the same thing, but
| that again is an example of a broken law.
| thebradbain wrote:
| To get pedantic, the executive is there to enforce (and
| decide how to enforce) the law.
|
| The judicial is there to decide if a given law should be
| enforced (and if a given enforcement method is valid)
|
| This is why I'm not a big fan of originalism: that is
| almost always a subjective decision.
|
| Otherwise we would just have a legislative and an
| executive.
| salawat wrote:
| Nitpick: >To get pedantic, the executive is there to
| enforce (and decide how to enforce) the law.
|
| The Executive is there to implement an enforcement
| mechanism, even if the decision os to implement a null
| mechanism.
|
| The executive cannot (or normatively should not ex
| nihilo) just materialize enforcement infrastructure
| without Congressional approval. The existence of
| Administrative law, however, rather shopts down the
| original intent of the Founders in terms of Governmental
| architecture.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > Judges are there to enforce the law, not to make it.
|
| That's not the right characterization of the argument.
| Judges are there to tell legislators that they can't make
| certain laws. The abortion dispute is not about judges
| making abortion legal, it's about judges telling
| politicians that they cannot make abortion illegal. Without
| that, politicians would literally have the ability to do
| anything they want.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| I assume you are coming from the standpoint of the judges
| working out if a law is unconstitutional. My country, the
| UK, does not have a written constitution, so this kind of
| thing doesn't come up as often. However, a constitution
| is still just a bunch of legal principles, set by
| government. The judges are still making rulings based on
| a set of rules. If the rules need changing then the
| people should elect the right people to change them.
| [deleted]
| meany wrote:
| But the judges should only overrule legislators when
| their laws violated higher level legislative authority or
| constitutions, right? Do you think a judge should be able
| to legislate what the law is independent of elected
| officials? Why would you trust them, especially since
| they are appointed by politicians or elected themselves?
| salawat wrote:
| ...There's a reason the judiciary scared the bajeezus out
| of Thomas Jefferson.
|
| Look at how the 2nd Amendment basically does not exist
| for some of the most populous states because SCOTUS
| refuses to reign in the more egregious examples of
| judicial/legislative reacharound like Wickett v. Filburn,
| or the vast majority of firearms legislation in places
| like NY and California.
|
| Roe v. Wade is a shining example of how legalism can get
| turned on it's head just by changing out the
| authoritative judge who has the last word, or a new case
| coming up and being heard that threatens a change in
| viewpoint of SCOTUS.
|
| The Writ of Certiorari is in my opinion the most
| overpowered political lever in the entire U.S. in the
| negative sense in that it's not being granted robs
| millions of an opportunity for redress of real harms, and
| in a positive sense in that when it is granted it can
| completely alter the judicial landscape for decades
| _without legislative action_.
| [deleted]
| ratboy666 wrote:
| Judges do NOT legislate from the bench! That is
| incredibly anti-democratic, and a collapse of our system.
| Judges do NOT tell politicians that they cannot make
| abortion illegal. That right, and yes, it IS a right, is
| reserved to the electorate. Who gets their will expressed
| through politicians. Judges judge against the body of
| legislation (and common law). And, yes politicians
| LITERALLY have the ability to do anything that the
| electorate want. That includes Global War.
| acomjean wrote:
| We have rights as individuals, which can't be infringed
| by laws. The courts are there to prevent those laws. It's
| what abortion and 2nd amendment lawsuits are all about.
|
| These right declarations aren't super clear so the
| political leanings of the court weight heavily.
| orangepurple wrote:
| You assume "rights" exist in a vacuum. The so called
| "rights" given to "the people" are clearly defined in the
| constitution and the bill of rights. Judges compare laws
| to those documents for conflicts, and err on the side of
| the constitution and the bill of rights. They do not make
| rights up as they please.
| krapp wrote:
| > The so called "rights" given to "the people" are
| clearly defined in the constitution and the bill of
| rights. 9th Amendment: The enumeration in
| the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be
| construed to deny or disparage others retained by the
| people 10th Amendment: The powers not
| delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
| prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the
| States respectively, or to the people.
|
| What is clearly defined by the Constitution is that the
| set of rights claimed by the people is unbounded and
| explicitly _not_ limited to what is enumerated in the
| Constitution and Bill of Rights - those rights _are_
| assumed to exist 'in a vaccum' in that they are declared
| to be "inalienable" and "endowed by the Creator,"
| irrespective of one's personal belief in the validity of
| claims of divine sovereignty.
|
| The Constitution does not define rights, rather it
| defines the limits of the government's power to abridge
| those rights.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| I find it both shocking and terrifying that people lack
| the most fundamental understanding of how a properly
| separated government system would work, let alone why it
| should function that way.
|
| It should concern everyone that these types of top down
| authoritarian mentalities are more prevalent as people
| without a tradition or culture based in western
| philosophy that has led to what used to be a clear
| separation of powers, become more prominent even all over
| the western/European based world.
|
| It will not end well for most of humanity, even in this
| community, regardless if how much we believe ourselves to
| be doing good here, or at least not even considering the
| destabilizing consequences of what we do here.
| MikePlacid wrote:
| > authoritarian mentalities are more prevalent as people
| without a tradition or culture based in western
| philosophy
|
| I think you are wrong here. We, the people with "lived
| experience" in authoritarian countries, look with
| astonishment at how the American people dismantle the
| basics of their own political system "based in western
| philosophy".
|
| You know, Stalin's constitution of 1936 was one of the
| most liberal and progressive at the time. Then 1937 came.
| So the suggestion that judges should stop looking at the
| code of law and just eagerly follow the Party line -
| produce cries of "danger" from my very own carbon-based
| neural network.
|
| So my estimate is quite opposite - the "native" Americans
| took the benefits of the political system based on
| western philosophy so much for granted, that they've
| stopped thinking where these benefits were coming from.
| krapp wrote:
| >It should concern everyone that these types of top down
| authoritarian mentalities are more prevalent as people
| without a tradition or culture based in western
| philosophy that has led to what used to be a clear
| separation of powers, become more prominent even all over
| the western/European based world.
|
| Do tell, what people specifically are you referring to?
| cduzz wrote:
| You certainly can if you're in east texas!
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Absolutely. Marbury v. Madison didn't happen.
| colonwqbang wrote:
| A system where judges ignore the law and just rule based on
| their general gut feeling, is much worse.
| magicalist wrote:
| This was a fair use case. The judge ruling on a question of
| law is exactly how it works.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| If the Internet Archive's digitizing and distribution of
| old books is fair use then so is a video game ROM site
| that distributes digital images of pre-PS360 era games
| that are no longer available to purchase legally. except
| at exorbitant rates on eBay. And there's also a strong
| case for the original Napster being fair use if IA is.
|
| I don't think there was ever any serious doubt that the
| Internet Archive would lose their case as they are
| clearly in violation of copyright law. The issue in the
| case is that the copyright laws are bad laws that have
| become contrary to their purpose of "promoting the useful
| arts and sciences" due to the copyright terms being
| absurdly long (and the lack of any serious deterrent to
| fraudulent DMCA claims which has allowed for the
| proliferation of such claims as a censorship and/or
| doxxing technique) and need to be reformed. It was unwise
| for the Internet Archive to violate copyright law just as
| it was unwise for Bowser the ROM site owner[0] to violate
| copyright law because flagrantly violating copyright law
| is an effective way to get yourself bankrupted via
| lawsuits and an ineffective way to get bad intellectual
| property laws changed.
|
| [0]: https://venturebeat.com/games/gary-bowser-has-to-
| pay-nintend...
| dcow wrote:
| If the ROMs are out of print then they should fall into
| the public domain.
|
| One much needed copyright law adjustment would be to
| limit copyright protection to a period where the work is
| actually commercially viable meaning the owner is making
| an effort to sell it. It doesn't benefit anybody to have
| old works locked up for years and years with no way for
| the public to acquire them legally.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _If ... digitizing and distribution of old ... is fair
| use_
|
| It's a library. A library does that.
| ghaff wrote:
| Libraries and archives have very little in the way of
| special rights when it comes to digital distribution of
| copyrighted works even if they have certain
| backup/preservation rights.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Judges here to apply the law made by the legislators. That's
| the basis of the separation of powers. If it wasn't the case we
| wouldn't have a legislation in the first place turning judges
| into oligarchs.
|
| The way people are supposed to support better laws is by
| electing better legislators. Easier said than done I admit, but
| I think that's better than giving judges power beyond their
| role.
| dahart wrote:
| > The current law is broken
|
| I think many agree that copyright needs to be shortened, but
| what does "broken" mean, exactly?
|
| I have good feelings for the Internet Archive, but in this case
| it's about a handful of books that are being copied and
| distributed a mere 5 years after initial publication, which I
| think a lot of people who want copyright shortened would still
| agree is quite a bit too short. Books frequently get popular
| long after initial publication, they're not anything like
| blockbuster movies that make most of their income in a few
| weeks (which used to be true before streaming but might not
| even be true anymore).
|
| Keep in mind that this isn't about the Internet Archive
| specifically. If the court ruled it's okay for them to copy and
| rent books, then _anyone_ can copy and rent books, it
| undermines the entire market for books (and also web sites and
| images and other media, because this is the Internet Archive).
| Think about what it means for the company you work for, or the
| creative works you or your artist friends create, if people can
| copy their things legally and take away their revenue streams
| after only 5 years.
|
| I wonder why the Internet Archive doesn't keep things
| unpublished on their site until it's not generally available
| online, this would keep them clear of the most obvious
| copyright violations.
| ghaff wrote:
| Really the main (even only?) thing "broken" about copyright
| is the terms. (ADDED: I generally favor orphan works
| legislation but I also get the argument that this is also
| more likely to favor corporations than individuals.)
|
| And basically all the schemes to make copyright more
| expensive, difficult, requiring jumping through hoops and
| paying increasing amounts of money to renew? That just
| basically screws individual creators (who already don't make
| much money for the most part) to the benefit of the major
| content rights holders who are not going to forget or be
| unable to pay for copyright renewal. Which is probably not
| the objective of most of the people dreaming these up.
|
| The US actually took a pretty big step towards benefitting
| more small-time creatives when it aligned with the Berne
| Convention and did away with explicit notices being required.
| dahart wrote:
| Oh I don't think either the main or only problem is terms,
| I'm simply asking parent for clarification. Declaring it
| wholesale broken needs a Chesterton's Fence justification;
| we can't fix it until we acknowledge why it's there, and
| identify what parts are worth preserving.
|
| I only recently learned that the US has a bit of a Berne
| Convention loophole in the sense that you are required to
| register works with the copyright office before you can
| seek damages for copyright infringement (otherwise you can
| only demand they cease and desist). That fine print seems
| like it undermines the spirit of the Berne Convention just
| a bit, and most other countries that adhere do not have
| this extra hoop.
| mindslight wrote:
| Besides the lengthy term, another major problem with
| copyright is how forcefully it has been applied to the
| personal realm. If it were a limited commercial right that
| made companies play fair with each other while leaving
| individuals alone, I wouldn't have nearly as much of a
| problem with it. But from yesterday's nastygrams near
| libraries' xerox machines [sic] and stores' blank tape
| aisles, to today's shakedowns of torrenters and
| kneecappings of software developers, the way it has been
| conceived as some absolute property right is utterly
| draconian.
| jacobolus wrote:
| The point of copyright is "To promote the Progress of
| Science and useful Arts", not to be fair or to guarantee a
| lifetime of income to popular authors and their children.
| To that end, the exclusive copyright is supposed to be of
| _limited time_.
|
| Having no-effort century-long copyright might narrowly
| benefit a tiny number of small-time creators, but it robs
| the public of our collective culture.
| dahart wrote:
| It's definitely worth including the full quote and
| discussing what it means.
|
| "Congress shall have Power . . . 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."
|
| Part of the intent behind the law is to promote the
| sciences and the arts through these exclusive rights. The
| idea is that creators will have an economic incentive to
| create, because they'll have some protection from
| copiers. The idea was not primarily to promote culture by
| releasing works into the public domain. This framework
| acknowledges both means of promotion, the short term
| protection of profits, combined with the long term
| acknowledgement that society will benefit from works
| becoming public after some time. So it is trying to be
| fair to both authors and to the greater social good, and
| it requires deciding & balancing what the term length
| should be.
| jacobolus wrote:
| It's not intended to be "fair" to authors, is my point.
| It is intended to encourage them to create new works. And
| I don't think anyone has ever even tried to argue that a
| century-long copyright incentivizes authors to produce
| works they otherwise would not (if the term were only,
| say, 10, 20, or 50 years).
|
| The original (US) copyright term was 14 years with
| registration + another 14 years with renewal. That seems
| to me, in broad strokes, like a good balance between
| promoting new works vs. giving public access to previous
| works.
|
| The century-long term only benefits a vanishingly small
| proportion of creators (which is to say, a vanishingly
| small proportion of creators' inheritors). The primary
| beneficiary is a small number of very large monopolistic
| media/publishing firms, who have e.g. bought up the
| rights (for peanuts) to the past century of back issues
| of thousands of scientific journals, and now keep them
| behind a paywall.
|
| But the harm to the public is incalculably large.
| dahart wrote:
| The original terms do sound pretty good relative to
| today. 28 years, with some action required to renew. What
| does the Berne Convention say? "the general rule is that
| protection must be granted until the expiration of the
| 50th year after the author's death." Since this is fairly
| globally adopted and not very US-specific, does that
| influence your opinion on terms? What is the reason that
| the Berne Convention allows for terms this long, and if
| we want them to be shorter, what needs to happen, in
| order to get lawmakers globally to agree?
|
| I certainly might have misunderstood your comment about
| being "fair" to authors. I guess you were saying that the
| US copyright law isn't doing anything to distinguish
| between independent authors, small businesses, or large
| corporations? It certainly does allow for big business to
| have an easier time of things, and is not at all fair to
| individuals and small businesses, that's true.
| jacobolus wrote:
| My point is that fairness or guarantee of author's
| natural rights or whatever is not in my understanding the
| fundamental premise for copyright (in the USA). US
| copyright, at least as established by the US
| Constitution, is based on practical/utilitarian
| considerations, and is primarily concerned with benefit
| to the public.
|
| In my opinion the Berne convention (which is instead
| premised on authors' supposed natural rights, without
| much concern for the public) is a incredibly harmful and
| anti-social system which should not have been ratified by
| the USA. It has become even more harmful in the digital
| age.
|
| Disclaimer: I am not an expert on copyright history, law,
| or philosophy.
| dahart wrote:
| I guess I don't know what you mean then. The US copyright
| law and the Berne Convention are both trying to establish
| what should be deemed fair, with respect to publishing
| and copying creative works. They establish (define) the
| fairness of copying something you didn't create. They
| also try to be fair to creators and society by giving
| authors some rights (time-limited exclusive copyright),
| and by giving society the right to take the work into
| public domain eventually. The explicitly stated concerns
| are about protecting the economic interests of creators,
| which I'd agree might be characterized as utilitarian,
| but also with general social good, benefit to the public
| as you say, which is perhaps a lofty ideal?
|
| * edit, since I didn't see your edits about the Berne
| Convention. That's an interesting take. I thought most
| copyright progressives viewed Berne as a marked
| improvement over US copyright pre-Berne. The most
| important aspect of Berne is that it's globally adopted,
| so the discussion about terms really needs to be about
| Berne more than US copyright law, I think?
| jacobolus wrote:
| The copyright system, just like the patent system, is
| based on a recognition that if anyone can trivially copy
| something you make, there is less point in working hard
| on it for a long time, because you won't be able to
| benefit from your labor (and perhaps won't even be able
| to support yourself).
|
| Unlike working on something physical (say, a bushel of
| grain, a shirt, a bookshelf, or a house), when the work
| is an idea (like a better mousetrap or a catchy song) if
| someone copies it they can profit from your labor at your
| expense because they pay none of costs of creation, so
| can undercut and outcompete you.
|
| Therefore, the thinking goes, creators won't bother
| making new intangible creations like textbooks or
| paintings or inventions if they can't have some kind of
| exclusive right over publication or use. (I'm not quite
| sure what empirical evidence there is for this claim.
| That seems like an interesting question, but it's
| probably pretty tricky to investigate.)
|
| The goal of the copyright and patent system is to
| encourage creators by granting them limited-time
| exclusive rights, whereby they can benefit from their
| hard work. Those creators then do useful work they
| otherwise would not bother with, and the public benefits.
|
| But the premise is not an abstract ideal of fairness or a
| guarantee of moral rights for authors and creators. The
| premise is promotion of science and useful arts. At the
| point where the copyright term is interfering with
| (rather than promoting) science and useful arts, it is
| too long. That is, the fundamental question should be
| "does this system most benefit the public?" not "is this
| system the fairest to authors?"
|
| I've never met a creator who decided what or whether to
| create based on their descendants' earning money from
| exclusive rights to their work 50+ years into the future.
| Maybe such creators exist, but I would guess those to be
| vanishingly few.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Yes. This would really hurt the ability for authors to make a
| living if everyone could do what the IA claims the right to
| do. It just won't work for sales to be cut off after a few
| physical copies by digital copies everywhere.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| Is there really no middle ground between "five years after
| publication" and "seventy years after the last author's
| death"?
| dahart wrote:
| I'm suggesting there is a middle ground, yes.
| lagadu wrote:
| Switching from common law to civil law systems should fix a lot
| of that up. This wouldn't be possible, considering the amount
| of law that would need to be written to replace an existing
| common law system but it's an interesting thought experiment.
| cbozeman wrote:
| [flagged]
| LilyFrenchPants wrote:
| [flagged]
| cbozeman wrote:
| You don't have the right to kill another person. You don't
| even have the right to kill most animals without sufficient
| reason (hence hunting permits, fines for not properly
| caring for agricultural animals, etc.).
|
| The point, which ought to be obvious to HN readers - and
| would have been 10 years ago - is that we as a nation never
| sat down and decided, "What constitutes a person?"
|
| Personally I'm on board for telling you what you can do
| with your uterus in the same way European nations are - you
| have 12 weeks to decide. After that, you keep the baby and
| it's illegal to abort it. I believe every single one of the
| vaunted Scandinavian nations has a 12 week limit on
| abortion. Many tech people want to model society after
| them, so there you go. Start there.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| You can do whatever you would like with your uterus (or any
| other body part), just please don't kill anyone in the
| process.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _just please don 't kill anyone in the process._
|
| Ah, there's the rub: How to define "anyone."
|
| (In my 1960s Catholic family, my parents encouraged us
| four kids to discuss issues of the day at the dinner
| table. One night the discussion was about abortion, and
| specifically, when does a fetus become human. My dad
| joked that he often wondered whether fetuses didn't
| become human until they could cut their own meat ....)
| starkd wrote:
| Well, thanks for the strawman. When you debate in strawman
| arguments, you block constructive debate from moving
| forward. The issue is one of judicial discernment. It is
| the ability for a supreme court to make up rights not
| written into the constitution. This is not difficult to
| recognize, whether you are pro-choice or pro-life. The
| correct place for this is in legislation. It is an
| emotional topic that is constantly evolving. What is going
| to happen when a fetus can survive in an artificial womb?
| We are a long way from that, but that is something a
| council of unelected justices should not have to rule on.
| cbozeman wrote:
| > What is going to happen when a fetus can survive in an
| artificial womb?
|
| We're going to see a wave of hilariously (in the worst
| possible way) maladapted babies, because I'm almost
| certain we'll find that the constant "noise" of the
| mother's body, plus hormonal changes, are critically
| important for proper development.
|
| Sure, maybe researchers and scientists will factor _all
| of this_ into the development of such a technology, but
| so far Humanity doesn 't have a good track record with
| getting everything right on the first go-round.
| starkd wrote:
| It also can be argued that overturning Woe v. Wade was good,
| because it put it into the hands of legislators. It was
| shitty law because it instituted a right where none was.
| Thus, it kept legislators from legislating on an evolving
| issue.
| kortex wrote:
| There are many who argue that no specific law is necessary,
| that the Constitution gives the right of privacy and bodily
| autonomy, and that Roe v Wade correctly asserts that
| constitutional right.
|
| Do you need a specific law protecting the right to throw a
| barbecue, own a dog, or read books on dangerous topics? No,
| because the Constitution is a framework which broadly
| allows actions by people, and carves out specific things
| that the government has control over.
| salawat wrote:
| Except SCOTUS will not smack down things based on the
| 10th Amendment like they should be.
|
| They'll sure warp the bounds of Federal Government
| jurisdiction through the interstate commerce clause
| though.
| silvr wrote:
| > Everyone at the time recognized that Roe v. Wade was shitty
| law, but they put their objections on the back burner and
| kicked the can down the road so they wouldn't have to have
| the Mother of all Debates.
|
| Well, no. It codified roughly what the public thought was
| appropriate at the time - the stable achievable policy
| equilibrium. And in the past 50 years, public sentiment has
| remained mostly unchanged; it's just trended a tiny bit
| towards more permissiveness around abortion.
|
| See the graph displaying Gallup's public polling results
| here: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/how-has-public-
| opinion-a....
|
| > Two years after the court's decision, 54 percent of U.S.
| adults said they supported abortion under certain
| circumstances and another 21 percent said abortion always
| should be legal, according to Gallup polling from 1975, while
| 22 percent of Americans said it should be illegal.
|
| > By 2018, Gallup pollsters found little change [...]
| Apfel wrote:
| Not particularly keen to get in an abortion debate on HN of
| all places.
|
| That being said, regardless of anyone's political stance, you
| saying 'because you made bad decisions' is inflammatory, and
| clearly based on the assumption that the pregnancy was a
| result of fully consensual sex.
|
| Don't be that guy.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Even in the 1970s, women had condoms and birth control
| pills.
|
| You're going to be hard-pressed to find a reasonable,
| thinking individual who would not allow for abortion
| exemptions for rape / incest / endangerment of the mother.
|
| We're on Hacker News. A place where - supposedly - thinking
| people comment.
|
| _You_ "Don't be that guy."
|
| It shouldn't even be necessary for me to have had to type
| this.
| dahart wrote:
| It's not hard at all to find examples counter to your
| claim. In Alabama "there are no exceptions for rape or
| incest".
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Alabama
|
| If you're argument hinges on "reasonable, thinking"
| individuals, and you're claiming that Alabama law didn't
| meet that standard, then I would argue your "thinking"
| standard is completely irrelevant. The only relevant
| criteria is what makes it into law and affects people.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| I agree with you until you parroted the propaganda trope about
| Roe v Wade. Roe has always been known as "bad law" even though
| it was never law, only illegitimate judicial dictate. It's
| always been known as one of the worst rulings in American
| history.
|
| It's unfortunate that you would demonstrate such logically
| compromise in such a blatant manner, ironically, in a post
| about "bad law". Ironically, overturning Roe specifically was
| good law, in that it followed the law the ruling was a blatant
| violation of.
| saint_fiasco wrote:
| I'm confused. You act hostile yet you seem to agree with the
| original comment.
|
| The reason Row v Wade was overturned is that the judges don't
| want to have to decide if abortion is legal or not. They want
| legislators to be responsible for that.
|
| You, the judges, and the parent comment are all in agreement
| here.
| patmcc wrote:
| Oh, bullshit. The same judges who "want legislators to be
| responsible" for deciding abortion laws also explicitly
| don't want legislators deciding campaign finance and
| firearm laws.
|
| It's political. It's always been political. It always will
| be. The judges that want abortions illegal will find legal
| arguments to make that happen and vice versa.
| MrVandemar wrote:
| > The reason Row v Wade was overturned is that the judges
| don't want to have to decide if abortion is legal or not.
|
| No. The reason Roe v Wade was overturned is because
| conservative middle-aged/old white-guys with money are not
| happy about people, and by people I mean _women_ , having
| reproductive choice.
|
| It's one of the areas that fundamental islam and
| conservative "Christians" have significant overlap, and
| that's not a good thing.
| [deleted]
| OJFord wrote:
| I have no idea what Roe v Wade is about (I'm not American
| or in the US), but I like GP read the parent comment to
| theirs as meaning 'these jokers overturned it, that is bad,
| we cannot rely on them'. Re-reading after seeing your own
| comment, it is ambiguous really, you could read it either
| way, but you're probably right (having the context of what
| it's about) and GP just mistook the meaning as I did.
|
| > If anything has proven this [that 'we need to react
| better to laws as they are being drafted, not wait out
| their inevitable harm to society'] lately is the Roe v.
| Wade overturn, we really need to stop relying on courts to
| "save" us and instead fight for better laws [...]
| orangepurple wrote:
| It all boils down to people fighting for the right to do
| whatever they want to an unborn soul including shutting
| down its life processes at will. They all have different
| justifications and excuses. It boils down to the local
| morality hence why judges kicked it back to the local
| governments.
| guelo wrote:
| Souls aren't a real thing.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Neither is "abortion"
| eggburger wrote:
| Who gave them the right to say it was legal or illegal in the
| first place? People in here pretending one party is better than
| the other because they give you back fundamental human rights
| they have no business controlling the legality of to begin
| with.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| The constitution.
| Eumenes wrote:
| That's the Supreme Courts job?
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| More background on the case: https://www.eff.org/cases/hachette-
| v-internet-archive
| djha-skin wrote:
| Something developers don't seem to understand about the media
| business is just how much they care about copyright law.
|
| One huge thing that was drilled into my skull working for
| SlingTV: a work comprises the actual data _and the medium to
| which it is affixed_. When 11 million people used our DVRs to
| record the super bowl, we had to store 11 million copies on disc.
| Of the same exact footage. That we ourselves originally broadcast
| to them. Our lawyers told us not even to try messing with this.
| Don 't try to share copies they said, we'll get sued off of our
| faces.
|
| So I'm not surprised that a judge ruled this way when looking at
| the facts. From a media person's perspective, digitally copying
| the work that was in print is making a second copy. Whether or
| not you think this is dumb, it's the reality under which we work.
| I've learned to be very careful about things like this.
| mysterypie wrote:
| > _we had to store 11 million copies on disc_
|
| The reason you were allowed to store 11 million copies is
| because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled[1] in 1984 that you were
| permitted to make copies of TV shows to watch later on your
| VCR. And this was reputedly because some of the supreme court
| judges had VCRs -- which had been spreading lightning fast at
| the time -- and understood the concept and wanted to find _or
| create_ a legal argument to permit such copying.
|
| Just imagine if VCR adoption had been slower, and that the
| judges had not yet tried out that newfangled invention for home
| recording, and they had ruled that personal copies weren't
| allowed. Then today, you'd have been making 11 million illegal
| copies. It's amusing to think about whether making a single
| copy available to 11 million users would have been much less
| legal risk in that scenario.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Univ
| e....
| raynr wrote:
| To be more specific, the Betamax case is the reason _a
| specific person_ can store a copy of a TV recording that
| _they_ made, for _timeshifting_ purposes, because SCOTUS held
| that that person 's use of the recorded TV content, in that
| circumstance, was fair dealing with respect to the recorded
| TV content. And that's it.
|
| If you provide a recording service, you had better be as
| close as you possibly can to that fact matrix. Any hint that
| it's you, and not your users, who are doing the copying,
| would attract the wolves.
|
| Also, this focus on who is doing the copying has been looked
| at enough in different jurisdictions around the world that
| it's probably not worth the risk testing it. Germany
| (Save.TV, Shift.TV), Japan (Rokuraku II), Australia (Optus TV
| Now). Don't quote me on these, this is off the cuff.
| sinuhe69 wrote:
| I thought the IA only archives websites and digital contents,
| which are in danger of being lost? eBooks are seldom the only
| form of publishing, thus I believe there is always at least an
| archive copy of them. Making them accessible for all is clearly
| very controversial.
| sp332 wrote:
| IA has _tons_ of stuff. Scroll down past the Wayback search on
| https://archive.org/ to the more advanced search and you can
| see more categories. You can play a lot of the audio, video,
| and even some software right in the browser. Their physical
| archive is also huge. Here are some pictures from 2012
| https://scldigital.wordpress.com/internet-archive-gallery/
| sinuhe69 wrote:
| Oh, I didn't know they even have a physical store! Thanks for
| pointing out. Yeah, I know they also archived digital audio
| and other stuffs, but never thought book archiving lies in
| their realm as well.
| sobkas wrote:
| Every law in USA was made with overwhelming input from lobbyists
| and other monied interest. What law will be passed depends on
| will of oligarchs not public.
|
| Every law that accidentally helps people not oligarchs can be
| stopped by activists judges either in state or federal
| courts(including Supreme Court).
|
| Because judges in the end serve corporations/oligarchs first and
| ideology second. The Federalist Society?
|
| This stems from the fact that politicians that choose them(and if
| they are elected by public they can be bought directly) were also
| bought.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| This isn't really surprising. Judges bend over backwards to large
| corporate interests. It's the career safest thing for a judge to
| do.
| ar9av wrote:
| Whatever AI wrote that article needs an upgrade.
| retube wrote:
| I don't understand the outrage here. It sounds like a clear case
| of copyright infringement with IA profiting from the works of
| others. Can someone explain the issue?
| beej71 wrote:
| For me, the outrage is really about the fact that the greater
| good is clearly (IMHO) served by IA operating like they do (one
| simultaneous lend per held copy). So copyright law is wrong.
|
| And I know it's not the judge's place to say that.
|
| If they drop copyright to 15 years and IA stops lending books
| younger than that, I'd be 100% OK with that outcome, as well.
| But copyright terms are in the "lifetimes" range, so lending
| books out that are still under copyright serves the greater
| good.
|
| But since the odds of the US switching to the metric system are
| about 1000x greater than the odds of us decreasing copyright
| terms, I'm not holding my breath.
| mjh2539 wrote:
| I have a practical question. Will stuff like this:
| https://archive.org/details/rivernavigationi0000will be going
| away?
| tkgally wrote:
| The Internet Archive's initial response is here:
|
| http://blog.archive.org/2023/03/25/the-fight-continues/
|
| Excerpt: "[W]e will keep fighting for the traditional right of
| libraries to own, lend, and preserve books. We will be appealing
| the judgment and encourage everyone to come together as a
| community to support libraries against this attack by corporate
| publishers.
|
| We will continue our work as a library. This case does not
| challenge many of the services we provide with digitized books
| including interlibrary loan, citation linking, access for the
| print-disabled, text and data mining, purchasing ebooks, and
| ongoing donation and preservation of books."
| antibasilisk wrote:
| wow that's wild _opens libgen, piratebay and scihub_
| whatshisface wrote:
| "I don't care how bad the laws are because I'll break them," is
| how people think in collapsing societies.
| chrsjxn wrote:
| It is genuinely hard to imagine this could have gone any other
| way.
|
| Copying an entire work, with no changes, and then distributing
| the copy is pretty archetypal copyright infringement.
|
| IA's lawyers had to have known this was a long shot, right?
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I think IA lives inside the HN/techie bubble, where you can get
| a lot of positive support for things that don't translate into
| the real world.
| userbinator wrote:
| Is the Internet Archive itself going to need archived next?
|
| Or is most or all of what it has already available in the pirate
| libraries?
| yamrzou wrote:
| My experience has been that many of the Internet Archive books
| (especially rare/old ones) are not available in pirate
| libraries.
|
| So this is sad news.
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| Personally, I've had good luck with HathiTrust Digital
| Library [0] for old books in the public domain. A majority of
| the books that I've cared to check are mirrored on both IA
| and HathiTrust. It has an arbitrary restriction that you
| can't download full PDFs, but at least the contents are all
| available.
|
| [0] https://www.hathitrust.org/
| [deleted]
| ZunarJ5 wrote:
| https://github.com/internetarchive/dweb-mirror
|
| Thoughts?
| anothernostrich wrote:
| A judge from a dying empire doesn't matter in the larger scheme
| of things.
| Zurrrrr wrote:
| Yet another example that piracy is not just a superior product or
| about not paying for content, but is an absolute core need.
| cultureswitch wrote:
| In the face of senseless copyright law, avoiding to fund the
| organizations responsible is a moral imperative, and piracy is
| typically the way to do that.
| Zuiii wrote:
| > avoiding to fund the organizations responsible is a moral
| imperative
|
| I never thought about it that way. I avoided getty and other
| stock media publishers out of principle. In their deranged
| quest to subjugate google, they made image search worse for
| me. I think it's about time I started applying this logic to
| other publishers as well. Copyright is completely out of
| control. There has to be accountability, even if it's
| insignificant and only on a personal level.
|
| For any authors reading this: I intend to continue paying for
| books and will gladly do so but only if it's to you directly.
| Either self-publish or put a donation link on your site. If
| I'm interested in your book, I will search for your personal
| website prior to taking any action.
|
| It's sad that it has to come down to this.
| BigCryo wrote:
| Absolutely.. the system deserves no respect, then give it none
| gigel82 wrote:
| And rain is wet... I wonder why IA thought doing something
| obviously illegal would have any other outcome.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yikes. I borrow books constantly from the IA that are
| hard/impossible to find elsewhere because they've gone out of
| print. A lot of academic-ish non-fiction from the 1960s-1980s,
| stuff you can only otherwise get through inter-library loan that
| takes weeks rather than seconds.
|
| Any idea if this means IA has to shut down lending by when?
| Tomorrow? Next month?
|
| Any chances for appeal here? Or any chance they relocate the
| books division to another country or something?
|
| It's just so sad if something so valuable is forced to go "poof".
| A real loss.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| seems to me that once something is out of print for a lengthy
| period of time, publishers shouldn't be able to make the fair
| use argument that electronic copies interfere with the
| commercial market for the book.
| allturtles wrote:
| Yes, IA has followed a similar tragic arc as Google Books,
| another martyr to the dream of a truly 21st century library.
|
| What's most tragic about it to me is that that vast majority of
| _works_ affected are "zombie" copyright works that have no
| actual commercial value. Someone, somewhere holds the
| copyright, but no one has sold a copy in years or decades. For
| the sake of protecting the tiny sliver of commercially valuable
| works, access to all of this other knowledge will be lost.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Zombie works are free to share if there truly is no
| rightsholder pressing claims.
| hackernewds wrote:
| What happened to Google Books?
|
| I would argue the artist still deserves to retain value,
| regardless of the size of it unless they give it up. If it
| expires, sure it's public domain.
| beej71 wrote:
| The artist does deserve to retain value for some time, but
| the question is how long should that be such that all
| interests are balanced?
|
| As an author myself, I think the proper copyright term is
| ~15 years from the copyright inception. (Disclosure: I give
| my stuff away for free online--people buy paper copies if
| the want them, so I'm not a publisher's idea of a model
| author.)
|
| A relative handful of publishers/authors will lose out
| (e.g. Dune, Van Gogh), but the public domain will be well-
| served. 15 years seems like a good balance point.
| allturtles wrote:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-
| t...
| giantrobot wrote:
| If artists deserve money every time you read a book then
| your plumber should get paid every time you take a shit.
| Copyrights have been abused to the point of absurdity. They
| should last no longer than patents.
|
| A writer/artist/whatever can make some money off a work for
| two decades and then their work goes to the society that
| enabled its creation.
| MrVandemar wrote:
| > A writer/artist/whatever can make some money off a work
| for two decades and then their work goes to the society
| that enabled its creation.
|
| -- Signed, Not an Artist.
|
| (Most artists are paid an absolute pittance for their
| work. Most work at least one other job. Almost none make
| even a basic income. I feel artists should have the
| benefit of the income from their work for their natural
| life, unless they waive their rights. That said,
| companies have sorely abused and influenced copyright law
| to the point that the advantage is highly asymmetric in
| their favour and that certainly needs to be addressed).
| giantrobot wrote:
| Why doesn't the plumber deserve a payment every time you
| shit then? Effective sewage systems prevent devastating
| diseases like cholera and typhus. Surely that's a higher
| social utility than a trashy Harlequin novel or any of
| the works of Kevin Federline?
|
| Also, fuck you for assuming I've never made any art. I'd
| be fine if anything I've drawn, painted, or written
| became public domain after twenty years. If I _wanted_ to
| sell it that 's plenty of time. Works entering public
| domain doesn't preclude me from selling the physical
| artifact even after its public domain. It doesn't
| preclude me from making new art to sell. A musician's
| work becoming public domain doesn't preclude them
| performing it for pay.
|
| It would be ridiculous if twenty years from now some poor
| bastard got sued into destitution because they downloaded
| some dumb thing I wrote twenty years ago.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| But does the artist deserve to retain the value of their
| work seventy years after their death?
|
| Given the very large proportion of orphaned works, a very
| large proportion of living authors don't think their
| existing corpus has any residual value to them.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Seriously.
|
| Has there been any kind of movement towards a law that would
| automatically put zombie works into the public domain?
|
| It really doesn't seem unreasonable that if a book, film,
| recording, or video game hasn't been generally available for
| sale over the past 5 or 10 years it becomes public domain.
| Use it or lose it, in other words.
|
| Although it might really only apply to past works. Because
| while physical books go out of print, e-books will probably
| be available forever, no?
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Not in the public domain, no, but some countries such as
| the Nordics have mandatory schemes for orphan works where a
| collection society is able to authorise their use and has
| legal protection to do so, and will pay out said royalties
| should someone come forward to claim ownership at a later
| date.
|
| Most of Europe was going to do this at some point but the
| photographer's unions pushed back in very strong terms so
| they were often watered down.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Not in the public domain, no, but some countries such as
| the Nordics have mandatory schemes for orphan works where a
| collection society is able to authorise their use and has
| legal protection to do so, and will pay out said royalties
| should someone come forward to claim ownership at a later
| date.
|
| Most of Europe was going to do this at some point but the
| photographer's unions pushed back in very strong terms so
| they were often watered down.
| anticensor wrote:
| But then they would make such works paying public domain
| (the type of public domain that you have to pay royalties
| to the state) rather than FFA public domain.
| lenkite wrote:
| I guess they should move the site to Russia - better chance of
| staying alive.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| IA have posted a response, though it doesn't address what will
| / may happen regards book lending:
|
| <https://blog.archive.org/2023/03/25/the-fight-continues/>
|
| Specifically:
|
| "We will be appealing the judgment and encourage everyone to
| come together as a community to support libraries against this
| attack by corporate publishers.... We will continue our work as
| a library. This case does not challenge many of the services we
| provide with digitized books including interlibrary loan,
| citation linking, access for the print-disabled, text and data
| mining, purchasing ebooks, and ongoing donation and
| preservation of books."
|
| Checking a listing for a specific book ... there's still the
| option to log in and borrow it as I write this.
| Aeolun wrote:
| From the article the publishers take issue with only 120 or so
| books. No idea what kind of effect that will have on the rest
| of it though.
| bdowling wrote:
| > the publishers take issue with only 120 or so books
|
| Not quite. The plaintiffs have to name some specific works on
| which to base the case. The 120 is enough because the
| statutory damages for just those 120 works could be a
| staggering amount that would bankrupt IA.
|
| The complaint [0] also asks for an injunction enjoining IA
| from any further infringement of "any of the respective
| copyrights owned or exclusively controlled, in whole or in
| part, by Plaintiffs, whether now in existence or hereinafter
| created." [0] at 51.
|
| [0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd
| .53...
| wahern wrote:
| There's a good chance IA will be exempted from statutory
| damages. See 17 USC SS 504(c)(2),
|
| > The court shall remit statutory damages in any case where
| an infringer believed and had reasonable grounds for
| believing that his or her use of the copyrighted work was a
| fair use under section 107, if the infringer was: (i) an
| employee or agent of a nonprofit educational institution,
| library, or archives acting within the scope of his or her
| employment who, or such institution, library, or archives
| itself, which infringed by reproducing the work in copies
| or phonorecords
|
| The opinion (p46) defers this matter,
|
| > At this point, IA's statutory remittance argument is
| premature. IA may renew the argument in connection with the
| formation of an appropriate judgment.
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.5
| 3...
| Algemarin wrote:
| > I borrow books constantly from the IA that are
| hard/impossible to find elsewhere because they've gone out of
| print. A lot of academic-ish non-fiction from the 1960s-1980s,
| stuff you can only otherwise get through inter-library loan
| that takes weeks rather than seconds.
|
| Try Library Genesis: https://libgen.is/
| [deleted]
| wl wrote:
| LibGen's selection of these kinds of books is nowhere near
| that of the Internet Archive.
|
| I guess I'm going to have A LOT more interlibrary loans in my
| future.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| This was going to be my next question with basic assumption
| that the entire gathered information will either vanish, get
| moved to torrents or splintered across various believers of
| the cause.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| I hope they would come up with a way to publish the
| information for backing up or give it over to libgen.
| ZunarJ5 wrote:
| Even better: https://annas-archive.org/
| xvector wrote:
| This is the one use case where the blockchain/web3 is
| useful.
|
| Give me a decentralized library on the blockchain, where no
| government can take it down by merely discovering the
| host's identity and location. Invulnerable to rubber-hose
| attacks and censorship (which IPFS is still vulnerable to.)
| pdar4123 wrote:
| Why do u need a blockchain? Why not just torrents for
| sharing.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| IPFS has some theoretical merits, such as not relying on
| discrete trackers (which is a point of failure), and at
| present we have a bunch of mirrors that speeds it up.
| However, BitTorrent has a better track record regarding
| resilience against interference (from copyright mafia) or
| other bad actors. IPFS has so far not openly supported
| this usage.
| MisterSandman wrote:
| Exactly, torrents are already decentralized.
| xvector wrote:
| Torrents cannot be updated. Furthermore, torrents are
| subject to the sites that advertise them getting banned.
| You will constantly be on the hunt for new trackers.
|
| Blockchain is an obviously superior application here as
| new books and articles are constantly being released.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Why would I need to update my books and pdfs? How
| difficult is it to follow a publishers RSS feed and
| download new editions and new uploads?
|
| I cannot picture why blockchain seems like a value ad
| here, there's way easier ways to synchronize collections
| of data, no global consensus necessary
| opzz wrote:
| why not a blockchain? It's much less likely to go down
| with network issues because people are financially
| motivated to run the network.
| Nowado wrote:
| They don't seem motivated to do so now, while torrents,
| Russian hostings and warez seem up for years. How come?
| opzz wrote:
| I don't see any major blockchains going down right now?
| xvector wrote:
| Torrents can't be updated.
| chaboud wrote:
| I personally don't think it's necessary, but the
| Blockchain creates an effectively irreversible
| collectivization of the work: Removal would also undo
| whatever other work was committed.
|
| It's kind of like cryptographically amortized hostage
| taking... Erase my book, and the pickle ball
| championships NFT gets it...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's super easy to remove a block or a part of a block if
| you don't care about it.
|
| And if you're not accepting payments there's especially
| little reason for you to need to care.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Result will be rampant piracy and theft of creator works
| (which posters seem to be a proponent of here)
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| Blockchains don't really do this well though. A
| blockchain is useful when you need a publicly accessible,
| canonical shared record of a consensus, obfuscated or
| otherwise. They're not for storing arbitrary data. If you
| want to store arbitrary data, and you want peer to peer
| decentralized kind of features _and_ you want identities
| obfuscated, currently you 're looking at BitTorrent over
| Tor. I don't know if i2p or Tor or anyone else is working
| on any sort of swarm like file sharing internally over
| those networks, but it needs to be done and these shadow
| libraries need to begin using it.
| xvector wrote:
| Blockchains can absolutely be used for storing arbitrary
| data (see Filecoin.)
|
| Torrents cannot be updated. Whether done over Tor or not,
| they aren't suitable for this use case, especially as you
| have to chase down the websites that advertise them, as
| they constantly get banned.
|
| What you need is a distributed append-only data
| structure. Blockchains are an example, but not the only
| way to do this.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I assume this will be appealed, as what decision like this
| isn't appealed.
| bentley wrote:
| "We will appeal."
|
| https://twitter.com/internetarchive/status/16394247772647219.
| ..
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I said it before on this very forum. Wikipedia does not
| really need your donations these days. IA just might.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| IA and Signal are two nonprofits I donate to and
| recommend everyone donate to regardless of their
| political or religious convictions (or lack thereof).
|
| The Internet Archive very well may be the only way to
| know a lot of important things from the past -- things
| that libraries used to keep track of but can't in the
| internet age.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| I would add FSF and/or EFF. FSF is more uncompromising
| with respect to their original principles of defending
| digital freedom, whereas EFF sort of shifts with time
| (gradually giving up grounds).
| criddell wrote:
| If the IA loses all appeals and the lending library is
| totally destroyed, is there a firewall between that and
| the entity that is archiving the internet, or does the
| whole thing live and die together?
| yamrzou wrote:
| Thanks. I just donated to support them, and encourage
| everyone to do the same.
| jefurii wrote:
| Looks like EFF is providing the lawyers for this case.
| THEY need your dollars too.
| tenpies wrote:
| Unfortunately IA lost all credibility in my eyes, when
| they decided that one journalist in particular gets to
| decide that none of their (awful) tweets should be
| archived[1].
|
| I understand not allowing certain things to be archived,
| but the tweets of a public person, especially one who
| works as a news-maker, should certainly be in the allowed
| list.
|
| E: And just to be clear, this was before said writer set
| their tweets to private.
|
| ---
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://t
| witter....
| 35208654 wrote:
| The demand for ideological purity and that the revolution
| be perfect is the reason that progressive causes lose so
| goddamn always.
|
| Your opponent doesn't play by these rules.
| fire wrote:
| are you assuming they decided this or did they state it
| somewhere?
| pauby wrote:
| What has IA done wrong? You don't provide any references.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Presumably you too can get your tweets excluded from the
| wayback machine. They're your intellectual property, you
| control what other's do with it.
| [deleted]
| 14 wrote:
| Meanwhile I can go to any torrent site and download a couple
| hundred thousand books with ease.
| Sunspark wrote:
| You can always get something, but most people don't have the
| knowledge of how to go about it without asking someone for
| guidance first.
| SL61 wrote:
| I would agree with this if the issue were movies or games,
| but most people know that you can Google "[book title] pdf"
| and get a free copy. The small file sizes mean that piracy
| sites don't need to rely on torrents and can just offer a
| direct download. I frequently see piracy sites in search
| results just from searching the title of a book. The barrier
| to pirating a book is extremely low.
| totetsu wrote:
| Last time I looked at the most seeded ebook torrents I found a
| bunch or alt right stuff...
| mdp2021 wrote:
| It gives a special sensation to see the title of this extremely
| bad piece of news accompanied by the black margin (for the loss
| of Gordon Moore).
|
| As if a stronger black margin.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| What's with the fbclid tacked on the courtlistener URL. C'mon.
|
| Let's just hope IA can afford to pay any judgment entered against
| it. If the court finds IA had no reasonable grounds to believe
| this was fair use, then IA has to rebut a presumption of wilful
| infringement. If they fail, the statutory damages could be
| substantial. Assume Kahle has calculated the max cost of alleged
| infringement of 33,000 titles and is not putting the entire
| archive at risk over a book scanning project.
| psnehanshu wrote:
| Can someone explain me like I am 5? What is digital lending? And
| please don't ask me to search Google, I am lazy.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| IA bought a book, scanned it, then lent out the scanned copy
| rather than the physical book.
| psnehanshu wrote:
| For free or for a fee?
| endisneigh wrote:
| Free
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Not too lazy to reply, though.
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(page generated 2023-03-25 23:01 UTC)