[HN Gopher] The Internet Archive's last-ditch effort to save itself
___________________________________________________________________
The Internet Archive's last-ditch effort to save itself
Author : rbanffy
Score : 336 points
Date : 2024-04-29 17:04 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lunduke.locals.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lunduke.locals.com)
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| The "National Emergency Library" was obviously a huge mistake,
| and I'm surprised that IA continues to defend it. The problem is,
| their online book lending is far from the most important part of
| the Internet Archive, and by continuing to fight for it, they
| risk losing everything, including the entire rest of the archive
| which seems to me to be far more important.
|
| The Internet Archive has become the de-facto default location to
| upload anything rare, important, or valuable, and a terrifyingly
| large amount of history would suddenly blink from existence if it
| were brought down.
| ideamotor wrote:
| Well said
| idle_zealot wrote:
| While I agree that the book lending is only a small portion of
| the value provided by the IA, it makes sense that they're
| making a stand here. Losing this battle would establish
| precedent that format-shifting legally aquired copies of media
| is not protected under fair use, which would be disastrous to
| preservation efforts of all kinds going forward.
| bombcar wrote:
| I think they're intentionally tying it all together because
| they _know_ that the "emergency library" was a heap of shit
| (you can't argue you can digitally lend _the same document_
| multiple times simultaneously, it makes no sense).
|
| They're basically holding the Internet Archive hostage to try
| to force this thing through.
| jprete wrote:
| I think it's a serious mistake that they allowed unlimited
| borrowers at a time, because that shifts from fair-use format
| shifting to effectively making multiple copies of the format-
| shifted document.
|
| That said, IANAL and I don't know what actual legal
| conclusions were arrived at from the trial or appeals.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| This has nothing to do with format shifting at all. The IA's
| normal book-lending service works that way, but the
| "emergency library" allowed more copies of a book to be
| "borrowed" than they actually physically owned.
|
| This is straight-up piracy, and there's a 0% chance of it
| being legally justified.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| This might kill the Internet Archive as a legal entity in
| the US if the outcome is particularly unfavorable, but
| LibGen, Scihub, Z-Library, Anna's Archive etc aren't going
| away.
|
| > This is straight-up piracy, and there's a 0% chance of it
| being legally justified.
|
| Agree to disagree. Copyright has worn out its welcome when
| it is locking up culture for life + 70 years at a time [1]
| [2]. The Internet Archive _could_ archive and maintain
| these works in cold storage (both physical and digital),
| only to make them public again 100-200 years from now, but
| that would not be keeping with "Universal Access to All
| Knowledge." Disk and bandwidth is cheap, and the planet is
| big.
|
| [1] https://www.copyright.gov/history/copyright-
| exhibit/lifecycl...
|
| [2] https://www.princeton.edu/news/2003/02/21/lessig-were-
| copyri...
|
| (no affiliation, but a fan and a supporter, and believe in
| defending public goods)
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| It may indeed kill the project and it's a tragic example
| of play stupid games win stupid prizes. There have been
| enough decades of lost lawsuits now that any thinking
| person ought to know better than to go sticking a fork in
| the outlet that is distributing copyrighted materials.
| coldpie wrote:
| I think you've forgotten what 2020 was like. Libraries
| were closed. Schools were closed. Book stores were
| closed. Shipping was majorly slowed. Basically all public
| services were inaccessible to most people. Now imagine
| you're the kind of person who who founds and runs The
| Internet Archive for 25 years, not just another HN
| commenter bored at work. You're sitting in front of the
| button to help millions of people regain access to
| something the pandemic took away from them. Do you push
| the button, or do you cower away because some rich prick
| might sue you later?
|
| I don't think the IA exists without the kind of person
| who pushes that button.
| pessimizer wrote:
| If it turns out to have been a suicide button, then what
| the the IA needed most was the kind of person who would
| not have pushed that button.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| I don't actually care what 2020 was like because it isn't
| germane. No new legislation was passed meaningfully
| altering copyright law during that timeframe so this is
| absolutely a case of fuck around and find out, regardless
| of the optics.
| coldpie wrote:
| Well, I expect that rigid respect for the law is why you
| didn't start the Internet Archive, and also why you
| weren't in a position to help millions of people during
| one of the biggest social upheavals in the last century
| :)
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| The law is the law. I don't have to respect it to grasp
| the concept of cause and effect. There wouldn't be much
| to talk about here if there wasn't a contingent whinging
| and ringing their hands as if any aspect of this
| situation was surprising or novel. Broadcast copyrighted
| material online without the benefits of significant opsec
| and you will get dragged in court, period. Hell it didn't
| take the recording industry 12 months to get a lock on
| Napster. Y'all need to quit playing like there's a victim
| here.
| coldpie wrote:
| Yes, I think we are in agreement. If the law were
| respected, then the IA, the Wayback Machine, Abandonware
| Archive, and all of the benefits we get from them would
| not exist. It sounds like you think the law should be
| respected, so you think it's good for the IA to be
| destroyed by this lawsuit. Yes?
| __d wrote:
| I think it's terrible that the Internet Archive is very
| likely destroyed, or at best, we have to donate a large
| sum of money to pay off Hachette.
|
| But I think it was reckless to engage in uncontrolled
| ebook lending. Controlled lending (one copy lent for one
| copy on the shelf) is not a legal right (in the US), but
| it's got a much better chance of avoiding a lawsuit.
|
| Uncontrolled lending was foolish. It was inviting a
| lawsuit, and it has far less chance of popular support
| than the intuitively more reasonable model of controlled
| lending.
|
| I agree with the sentiment behind the NEL program: it's a
| lovely gesture. But to invite destruction of the Archive
| like that was a terrible mistake, in my view.
| ghaff wrote:
| What was wrong with all the works that are in the public
| domain?
| squigz wrote:
| Seriously, I don't understand how people can defend
| copyright at this point. Maybe at the beginning it was
| implemented properly. Maybe in theory it's a great idea.
| But - surprise, surprise! - it's been broken by
| corporations. Life + 70 years? gtfo.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Because people like the results of copyright, IE access
| to large amounts of resources including books, music,
| movies, and software that would not exist if there were
| not protections to ensure that the creators received
| compensation for their works.
| realusername wrote:
| For recent or popular work maybe that kind of works yeah,
| for everything else though... I challenge you to find
| legally even early 2000s less popular movies or books,
| let alone older work.
|
| The current copyright system is pretty terrible at
| keeping track of older content and the few ones that
| still manage to make it through have questionable rights
| holders.
| neaden wrote:
| Yeah it's pretty easy. I just went to a list of movies
| from 2001 by box office, number 100 was actually a cult
| classic now so skip that and I see the Tailor of Panama
| which is a less popular movie, steaming on Amazon
| https://www.amazon.com/Tailor-Panama-Pierce-
| Brosnan/dp/B000X... and i can get a copy on DVD with
| interlibrary loan. The Shogun miniseries from the 1980s
| has some renewed interest since the new version and it's
| not streaming, but you can purchase a DVD on a bunch of
| places and once again, I can get it through my library.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Also worth mentioning that free licenses like Creative
| Commons, MIT, and FOSS licenses like GPL are also all
| copyright schemes, as unintuitive as that might seem.
|
| The removal of all copyright also means the removal of
| licenses that mandate free sharing and access. Two-way
| street, in other words.
| monetus wrote:
| You could replace the license with a "contract" in the
| terms and agreements section to achieve the same effect?
| Contract law would apply, so I have no idea.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Those liscenses, the GPL in particular, use copyright to
| fight copyright. The alternative to copyright is not
| necessarily a total free-for-all, you could legislate a
| replacement that works like the (A)GPL or CC BY(-SA).
| Require attribution and share-alike without restricting
| usage or distribution.
| squigz wrote:
| I reject your hypothesis that nothing would exist if
| copyright didn't exist.
|
| I wonder how humanity managed for so long without it, if
| that were the case. Or did we just not produce art or
| culture until we established copyright as we know it
| today?
| lxgr wrote:
| Copyright has (for better or worse) co-evolved with the
| technical ability to create effectively infinite copies
| of works, so I don't think we have any empirical data to
| prove or disprove this.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Right, we have no evidence that copyright helps promote
| the creation and distribution of arts, culture, or
| technology, and yet we restrict peoples' freedom to
| proliferate culture and art in the defense of it.
| jl6 wrote:
| Without copyright we would probably make mostly low-
| cost/small-scale art, of the type that can be achieved by
| a single person, and probably would not make big
| expensive collaborative projects like $100m+ blockbuster
| movies which are hard to bring into existence without a
| strong profit motive.
| k12sosse wrote:
| thank god. what was the last $100m+ movie you watched
| that you thought, wow, what a great piece of
| entertainment and/or art?
| ghaff wrote:
| One can agree that 70+ years is way too long without
| disagreeing with the basic principle of copyright.
| squigz wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree with the basic principle of
| copyright. I just am unconvinced it's an attainable long-
| term goal. It seems to me that copyright in a capitalist
| society is bound to end up like this.
| Zambyte wrote:
| That's true, but I actually disagree with the basic
| principle of copyright. I don't think that telling people
| they can't engage in certain creative acts encourages
| people to engage in creative acts.
| lofenfew wrote:
| >Agree to disagree.
|
| >Copyright has worn out its welcome when it is locking up
| culture for life + 70 years at a time [1] [2].
|
| This isn't a "disagreement" with the GP. Piracy is a
| legal concept, and they were speaking in legal terms.
| Whether or not copyright has "worn out its welcome", it
| continues to be a legal reality in the US.
|
| >LibGen, Scihub, Z-Library, Anna's Archive etc aren't
| going away.
|
| Then why should internet archive, which fills a number of
| niches that aren't just book or document piracy, be
| killed off?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| When one has the means and opportunity, unjust laws
| should be challenged. One should also have a plan if they
| fail.
| lxgr wrote:
| > When one has the means and opportunity, unjust laws
| should be challenged.
|
| Sure, but do they? They're a nonprofit, and as such
| depend on donations. Their donors might or might not be
| aligned on these two relatively orthogonal issues.
|
| I'm even sympathetic of their desire to challenge the
| quite absurd status quo of controlled digital lending,
| with bizarre skeuomorphisms such as simulating "books
| wearing out" after a couple of lending cycles, while at
| the same time being more restricted than physical books
| (even though I don't necessarily agree with their means
| of challenging it).
|
| But even for me, I think the risk is too big, and I'd
| feel much more comfortable with a different (maybe
| related/affiliated, but ultimately separated as legal
| entities) non-profit organization for each concern.
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| Except the IA did not establish the NEL as an act of
| civil disobedience or call for changes to the unjust
| existing copyright laws when they did it. They instead
| told themselves and their patrons that there was a
| "national emergency" exception to copyright law, when no
| such exception existed. Should one have existed? Of
| course. But it did not at the time. The IA continued to
| assert that the NEL was legal within existing copyright
| law, not that it was a principled act of civil
| disobedience against an unjust law. They were trying to
| Jedi mind trick a "national emergency" exception to
| existing copyright law into existence.
|
| If you want to challenge an unjust law in a democracy,
| you can work within the system to change it, or you can
| engage in civil disobedience, publicly accept the
| consequences, and put your freedom on the line as a way
| to bring popular attention to the unjust law. That is the
| mechanism of civil disobedience against unjust laws. The
| whole point is that you must risk something in order to
| go around the system and challenge an unjust law.
| Everyone in America has at least one law they consider to
| be unjust, including some laws that I'm sure you believe
| are very just and would be very upset if others started
| to violate them in the name of justice.
|
| Birmingham banned Martin Luther King, Jr. from
| participating in public protests and a Circuit court
| judge signed off on it. When MLK said he would protest
| anyway, the whole point of the civil disobedience was
| that MLK would be arrested for it. He was right that the
| public was outraged at the enforcement of this unjust
| legal order and called for change. What the IA did was
| like if MLK put on a mask to go protest, and when the
| police tried to arrest him, he said that he wasn't MLK.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| A global pandemic is a national emergency (I'm unsure how
| this cannot be argued considering the efforts both the US
| government and the Federal Reserve engaged in). The
| Internet Archive is at risk because of their actions,
| which can be argued to be in good faith during
| extraordinary times based on the events that occurred at
| that time [1]. You may not agree with regards to intent
| and the definition of good faith, but that is for the
| judicial process to resolve. If the Internet Archive
| legal entity is forced to dissolve, are legal
| participants on the other side of the civil suit prepared
| for the fallout from such an outcome (the "public
| outrage" you mention)?
|
| I would argue the NEL is an example of fair use when the
| entire world is locked down [2] [3] [4], but I'm not the
| one who is defending the case. You're upset they are
| seeking a favorable interpretation of law through the
| judicial process. That isn't a Jedi mind trick, and to
| call it as such is silly ("The fair use right is a
| general exception that applies to all different kinds of
| uses with all types of works. In the U.S., fair use
| right/exception is based on a flexible proportionality
| test that examines the purpose of the use, the amount
| used, and the impact on the market of the original
| work.").
|
| Power concedes nothing without a demand. Better to ask
| for forgiveness than permission.
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Internet_publi
| cation
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Policy_argumen
| ts_abou...
| ghaff wrote:
| To say nothing of the fully legal digital services (and
| physical checkouts with inter-library loans) that many
| public libraries in the US and I assume elsewhere offer.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The services they cannot afford?
|
| https://apnews.com/article/libraries-ebooks-publishers-
| expen... ("Libraries struggle to afford the demand for
| e-books and seek new state laws in fight with
| publishers")
|
| Consider the title above in the context of this post. It
| is libraries against publishers.
| ghaff wrote:
| That may be but it exists today for the most part. And
| librarians at research libraries were grumbling at
| licensing costs for digital a couple decades ago. Not
| they were happy with physical subscriptions either.
| runeofdoom wrote:
| > _Whether or not copyright has "worn out its welcome",
| it continues to be a legal reality in the US._
|
| Unless you're a billion-dollar corporation who needs to
| feed your LLM.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I don't believe in copyright at all, even in principle.
| The closest I can get is that it should be within the
| power of the state to grant temporary monopolies on
| things that it wants to encourage. But there is a basic
| conflict between freedom of expression and the fact that
| expressions can be copyrighted.
|
| However, the idea that IA is going to defeat a copyright
| industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars is
| laughable. If you're going to fork between government
| choosing to end copyright and government choosing to end
| the IA, the IA is 100% dead.
|
| Characterizing people who don't want the IA to risk all
| against copyright as copyright-supporters is not fair at
| all. It's like calling people Assadists who didn't want
| to invade Syria.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| > straight-up piracy
|
| Have you seen the other 97% of the archive?
| cbolton wrote:
| Given the nebulous nature of "fair use" it seems quite
| excessive to say there is a 0% chance of it being legally
| justified.
| pgalvin wrote:
| The lawsuit is not limited to a ruling against the
| unlimited lending, but any lending whatsoever (even
| 1-to-1).
| allturtles wrote:
| The emergency library was the _trigger_ for the lawsuit,
| but the lawsuit contends that even controlled digital
| lending is illegal.
|
| There seems to be continued confusion on this basic issue
| of what is at stake in the lawsuit.
|
| > The court fully rejected the Internet Archive's argument
| that fair use protected its digital lending program.
| Notably, it did not limit its analysis to the National
| Emergency Library. Instead, the court rejected fair use as
| it applies to controlled digital lending in general. [0]
|
| [0]: https://www.library.upenn.edu/news/hachette-v-
| internet-archi...
| bombcar wrote:
| If the IA is a single point of failure, better we learn that
| _now_ instead of later.
| ggjkvcxddd wrote:
| That doesn't make sense. Of course it's a "single point of
| failure". I don't think anyone could have ever thought
| otherwise. A competing archive service would undoubtedly be
| great for humanity.
| vgkjfhwebfk wrote:
| https://archive.ph/
| bombcar wrote:
| This one is even more frightening, as it's (as far as I
| know) a one-man show that could disappear at any time.
| vgkjfhwebfk wrote:
| Yes, it could, but IA, which - up to now - looked more
| professional and reliable could, too. And, unexpectedly,
| that's what's happening now.
|
| Maybe archive.ph will also surprise us, by being more
| resilient.
|
| Anyway, it's an alternative, for now.
| rbanffy wrote:
| This is NOT anywhere near what the IA provides.
| vgkjfhwebfk wrote:
| Yes, it's an alternative, not a copy. For example, it
| doesn't provide "emergency library" style borrowing, and
| maybe this missing feature is a pro, not a con.
| lima wrote:
| It archives a much smaller part of the internet, it't not
| an IA replacement.
| lxgr wrote:
| On the other hand, it's doing something similarly dubious
| with paywalled news articles in that it bypasses many
| news sites' paywalls and supposedly injects its own ads
| next to the content.
|
| There are even many comment threads detailing their
| strategy to avoid legal takedown requests by serving
| content via an "anti-CDN" (i.e. always serving content
| from abroad whenever possible, to make legal actions more
| difficult).
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I tried to hit archive.is, archive.ph and archive.org
| yesterday. They were all down, and archive.is seems to
| still be down.
| lxgr wrote:
| Any chance you're using Cloudflare DNS (directly or via
| e.g. iCloud Private Relay)? The people (person?) running
| archive have a somewhat complicated history with them.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Not using Cloudflare DNS, I use my own recursive
| resolver. And by "archive", I assume you mean
| archive.org; archive.is and archive.ph are different
| people.
| lxgr wrote:
| No, I meant .is, .today etc; archive.org does not do
| weird DNS things to my knowledge.
| bombcar wrote:
| I think people don't really stop to consider - the Internet
| Archive could be gone tomorrow; either through legal
| action, malice, accident, mismanagement of the non-profit,
| etc. It's just considered "an Internet tool that exists".
|
| I would argue that their attempt to even _try_ this
| emergency library thing indicates that the people in charge
| are a bit too cavalier with what they have, for whatever
| (likely well-intentioned) reasons they may have.
|
| And while individuals can mirror/datahoard the publicly
| facing parts of the IA, that's not all they have access
| too.
| rbanffy wrote:
| So, we need a distributed planet-size, multi-redundant,
| partly-encrypted, archive that can absorb and host the
| entirety of IA multiple times (for redundancy), INCLUDING
| the borrowing library.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Yes. If you have the pockets and logistics behind you,
| I'm sure Brewster would invite you for lunch to discuss.
| You'll need people for infra ops, people to coordinate
| hosting racks across the globe (preferably on every
| reasonable continent), and whatever the current cost is
| of a few exabytes of cost efficient storage hardware.
| afc wrote:
| This comment reminded me of famous quote: "When someone
| says "I want a programming language in which I need only
| say what I wish done," give him a lollipop."
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| "why build one when you can have two at twice the price"
|
| they have a duplicate headquarters in Vancouver now, a
| similarly grand building to their SF headquarters. Years
| ago there was a collab with the library of Alexandria in
| Egypt to host an offsite backup but I don't think it
| panned out.
| Animats wrote:
| > A competing archive service would undoubtedly be great
| for humanity.
|
| There was supposed to be a second archive at the
| Bibelotheque Alexandrina in Egypt.[1] It worked for a few
| years. But it seems to be down now.
|
| [1] https://www.bibalex.org/en/Project/Details?DocumentID=2
| 83&Ke...
|
| [2] http://web.archive.bibalex.org/
| ranger_danger wrote:
| My problem with the "rest of the archive" is that it's arguably
| 98% unchecked mass piracy that their own people seem to be ok
| with, in the form of "we're not copyright police, so just
| upload whatever you want and let companies deal with it later."
| which is exactly what Jason Scott has said.
| hackernudes wrote:
| Could it be that the alternative is losing stuff forever?
| leotravis10 wrote:
| Sadly, yes. It's more of a reason why you should download
| the stuff you want and need before it's too late:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39908676
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes. If there is something you think you might personally
| want in the future and you can download it today you
| probably should. But it's probably not terabytes.
| ghaff wrote:
| The vast bulk of content is lost forever and given how much
| is created I'm not even sure that's a bad thing. And if
| literally everything were magically siphoned up I'm also
| not sure that's a good thing.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Of course it is piracy. This coloring of "bad" piracy with
| "good" things like libraries and preservation is an important
| step in dispelling the broadly pro-copyright culture we live
| in. It draws a clear picture of what copyright robs us of by
| presenting a case were violating it has a sense of moral
| righteousness.
| leotravis10 wrote:
| > The Internet Archive has become the de-facto default location
| to upload anything rare, important, or valuable, and a
| terrifyingly large amount of history would suddenly blink from
| existence if it were brought down.
|
| Here's the related discussion: _Stop using the Internet Archive
| as the sole host for preservation projects_ | 87 points by
| yours truly | 27 days ago | 27 comments
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39908676
| coldpie wrote:
| You are directing your ire at the wrong party. Hachette has
| nothing to gain from continuing to pursue this lawsuit, the
| only possible outcome (as you correctly state) is the world
| becomes a worse place. The behavior they object to has already
| stopped, and they've got a judgment to prevent it happening
| again. Hachette could drop enforcement of the judgment, both
| parties can dismiss the appeal, and no one loses anything.
|
| Hachette's owners see an opportunity here to destroy a public
| good, and they are taking it. Hachette are the bad actors
| trying to destroy what you find valuable, not the IA.
| justinclift wrote:
| > Hachette has nothing to gain from continuing to pursue this
| lawsuit ...
|
| They're probably just making sure that the next place that
| wants to pull something funny, doesn't.
|
| Ye old "lets make an example out of them" thing.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >Hachette has nothing to gain from continuing to pursue this
| lawsuit
|
| They do: Legal precedent.
|
| IA made themselves into an easy, prominent target by doing
| something everyone else agreed to not do via Gentlemens'
| Agreements(tm) and precedents set by lesser transgressions,
| so now they're reaping what they sowed.
|
| The book publishers stand to gain legal precedent that doing
| what IA did can and will result in legal consequences severe
| enough to ruin you.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > You are directing your ire at the wrong party. Hachette has
| nothing to gain from continuing to pursue this lawsuit, the
| only possible outcome (as you correctly state) is the world
| becomes a worse place.
|
| Hachette obviously benefits from teaching would-be unlimited
| "lenders" a lesson. Even anti-DRM, "buy my books only if you
| can afford" authors were against this hare-brained lending
| scheme because the IA didn't even bother to buy a single copy
| of the books they were "lending".
|
| The blame squarely falls at the IA's feet; being an idealist
| doesn't give you the rights to delve into illegal behavior,
| regardless of the righteousness of your cause or the depth of
| your conviction. If the world is better with an org in it,
| and it jeopardizes it's own ability to remain a going
| concern, it's clear to me who is culpable. "Too good to die"
| doesn't exist.
| cess11 wrote:
| You don't consider it to be a right to revolt against
| tyranny?
| WoodenChair wrote:
| > You don't consider it to be a right to revolt against
| tyranny?
|
| Do you think not being able to download all the free
| stuff you want is tyranny?
|
| "Tyranny" is defined as a "cruel and oppressive
| government or rule."
|
| How are you being oppressed and/or treated cruelly?
|
| You can think copyright terms are too long without the
| hyperbole.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean 'The Right to Read' sets up a story environment
| where Copyright/IP _is_ a form of tyranny. I view any
| form of overly broad copyright as a form of government
| enforced tyranny itself. This can be anywhere from terms
| that last lifetimes. The lack of counter enforcement
| against actors bring false claims. And allowing very
| generic /simple systems to be copyrighted thereby
| enacting massive rent seeking behavior across most of the
| population.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| This is not a case of misuse of copyright. Books are
| copyrighted so authors can exist.
| vundercind wrote:
| Authors have no trouble existing without copyright _at
| all_ , let alone some weaker version of copyright.
|
| Meanwhile, vanishingly few authors make a living at it,
| and not a lot more make beer money. It's a pursuit that
| _barely_ pays as it is, yet many books are written.
| coldpie wrote:
| > being an idealist doesn't give you the rights to delve
| into illegal behavior
|
| Just to be clear, it is your position that the IA's Wayback
| Machine and abandonware archives should also not exist,
| right?
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Just to be clear, it is your position that the IA's
| Wayback Machine and abandonware archives should also not
| exist, right?
|
| No, I fully support these missions. Both have defensible
| fair use protections and do not try to break new legal
| ground with flimsy justifications. I wish the IA were
| little more aggressive about not retroactively applying
| robots.txt rules on archived content.
|
| It's hard to reconcile how overly careful they are with
| the Wayback Machine compared to the carelessness of
| unlimited lending. I am livid they risked their priceless
| archives for _book piracy_ - that 's not a great hill to
| die on.
| coldpie wrote:
| > It's hard to reconcile how overly careful they are with
| the Wayback Machine compared to the carelessness of
| unlimited lending
|
| Indeed. It's maybe worth reflecting on the apparent
| conflict there. What info are you missing, that could
| explain the conflict? The IA folks aren't crazy, but they
| are opinionated and willing to take action where others
| might not, and the world was in a very crazy state at the
| time the decision was made. Consider some sympathy for
| the people leading the project you feel so passionately
| about.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| But they could issue a mea culpa, and move on. Admit
| defeat, pay a token fine or settlement, and keep their
| donations to preserve the rest of their archive. Why
| don't they cut out the rot, to preserve the rest of the
| archives. I know they had a mission, or some goal, or
| whatever, but it failed - it failed a long time ago.
|
| It can be right or wrong, i don't know. I want
| organizations to fight the battles that gain us new
| rights and freedoms. I know that they have a lot to lose
| here though, and they shouldn't risk it.
|
| Concretely, I was a big individual donor to the IA _until
| this lawsuit_. I support their mission, I love their
| work, I help (technically and financially) other
| organizations like local museums and non-profits handle
| their archival work. This is something important to me,
| and I really want their archives to persist.
|
| I stopped donating to the IA - and won't resume - until
| this lawsuit is resolved. I don't want to donate to the
| book publishers, and it looks that's going to be the
| outcome of their entire funds.
| Phiwise_ wrote:
| >It's hard to reconcile how overly careful they are with
| the Wayback Machine compared to the carelessness of
| unlimited lending.
|
| Is it really? The cynical side of me wonders if it just
| might be intentional. What if this is a nonprofit
| analogue to VC monetization? Do you dislike an existing
| law? Create a similar but legal service you know other
| people will appreciate, use donations to undercut
| competitors and become the defacto monopoly, ride the
| network effect to a large crowd that basically relies on
| you, then rugpull by tying their narrow, legal use to
| your crusade for a different legal system by infecting
| their data with illegal material and declaring the whole
| thing must sink or swim together. Now your users have to
| pay you to fight your policy crusade or they lose their
| already legal resource they value much more, and you can
| use your legal half as a moral shield to get approval
| from anyone who only had the time to read the headline
| when the prosecution inevitably shows up at your door.
| All you need yo hold the almost-grift together is to lie
| by omission about who instigated it all.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Book piracy or not, IA seems to be the only source for
| many programming books from the 2000s. (Everyone's go-to
| pirate library has a much less comprehensive collection
| of those.)
| ghaff wrote:
| It's a fair point. Most of what the IA does is probably
| technically copyright violation but I'd argue there's a
| qualitative difference between making copies of public
| websites, software that publishers have abandoned, and
| other things in that vein--especially given they
| historically bent over backwards to stop sharing
| copyrighted material if someone got upset-- and sharing
| digitized copyrighted books Willy-nilly given there was
| already precedent that you just can't do that.
| jfengel wrote:
| As I understand it, they're pretty good about taking your
| site out if you ask them to. That's not quite the letter
| of the law on copyright, and potentially leaves them open
| to lawsuits, but few web site publishers are really going
| to pursue them once they've taken the material down.
|
| If they'd applied that same level to the books, they
| might have avoided this mess.
| farts_mckensy wrote:
| Stupid laws that hurt society shouldn't be defended, and
| those that defend such laws simply because "it's the law"
| are not worthy of being taken seriously.
| sangnoir wrote:
| If the law were stupid, I'd expect a more robust argument
| about how it's stupid in the IA's appeal. They are not
| arguing that.
|
| I have plenty of issues with copyright law as it's
| currently written and wholeheartedly support copyright
| reform. That's very different from any one party
| unilaterally suspending copyright "because of COVID"
| hibernator149 wrote:
| > The blame squarely falls at the IA's feet; being an
| idealist doesn't give you the rights to delve into illegal
| behavior
|
| This way of thinking is the reason why we are losing so
| many great things. Laws are created by people to support a
| society we want to live in. When laws no longer sever the
| society, then the society must rise up and change them.
| Like with any bug, fixing it early is cheaper than fixing
| it later.
|
| > it's clear to me who is culpable
|
| "Look what you made me do. If you hadn't acted up I
| wouldn't have had to destroy you."
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't want to live in a society where authors don't get
| paid, so the laws are just fine.
| Ekaros wrote:
| And it is pretty clear who would be first to exploit
| system where authors don't have copy rights. That is
| Amazon to start with followed by all other big companies
| who can effectively distribute the works.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| The vast, VAST majority of money that an author makes is
| from their advance. It is exceedingly rare for a book to
| sell even enough to cover that advance, and even rarer
| for it to have sales strong enough that the author sees
| meaningful, life changing residuals.
| ghaff wrote:
| And why should I even offer you an advance if I'm not
| going to make any money off your book. Heck, why should I
| invest any money in editing your book for that matter.
|
| I'm not sure it's exceedingly rare for an author to not
| make some beer money on top of single dollar advances but
| it's not a full-time job for many authors. It mostly
| works to support the day job or as a hobby.
|
| But many authors might as well self-publish today. I
| mostly have.
| tivert wrote:
| >> I don't want to live in a society where authors don't
| get paid, so the laws are just fine.
|
| > The vast, VAST majority of money that an author makes
| is from their advance. It is exceedingly rare for a book
| to sell even enough to cover that advance, and even rarer
| for it to have sales strong enough that the author sees
| meaningful, life changing residuals.
|
| This is how author advances would work in a world without
| copyright: authors would self-publish their books, and
| there would be no advances. If the book proved to be
| popular and successful, all the major distribution
| platforms would "pirate" it and pay them nothing. No
| conceivable DRM would save the author's income, because
| the platforms can afford to pay people to manually key in
| the work.
| tivert wrote:
| >> The blame squarely falls at the IA's feet; being an
| idealist doesn't give you the rights to delve into
| illegal behavior
|
| > This way of thinking is the reason why we are losing so
| many great things. Laws are created by people to support
| a society we want to live in. When laws no longer sever
| the society, then the society must rise up and change
| them. Like with any bug, fixing it early is cheaper than
| fixing it later.
|
| Let me put it bluntly: the IA went about pursuing that
| change in stupid and impulsive way, and their actions may
| very well accomplish _nothing_ while _causing_ us to lose
| _more_ "great things."
|
| "I'm going to pretend the laws I don't like don't exist
| in order to try to change them," is an activity for
| people with little other responsibility and little to
| lose.
|
| In hindsight, if the IA wanted to try something like the
| "National Emergency Library," they should have set up an
| independent entity to take the fall and contain the
| damage if it didn't work out. And since they didn't do
| that, they should probably have tried _really_ hard to
| settle and fight another day than go down in a blaze of
| glory.
| vidarh wrote:
| It's perfectly possible to think Hachette is being cruel and
| doing harm and _also_ think IA has acted stupidly and /or
| recklessly.
| coldpie wrote:
| Yeah, this is largely my position, with an added dose of
| understanding (2020 was a weird year; many mistakes were
| made by many people). But Hachette & Co. are the ones
| acting with intent to harm _now_ so I think they deserve
| the ire now.
| gojomo wrote:
| Everything you allege here is misinformed as to the current
| state of the lawsuit and stakes.
|
| You demonize Hachette et al (4 major publishers) as seeking
| to destroy a public good. In fact, they've already settled
| with the IA, as of last August 2023, in a manner that caps
| costs to IA at a survivable level and sets clear mutually-
| acceptable rules for future activity.
|
| You imply IA would dismiss the appeal if the plaintiffs
| "could drop enforcement of the judgement". In fact, there
| were never any assessed damages, the parties have already
| reached a mutually-acceptable settlement per above, and
| despite that - in fact, as part of the settlement! - the IA
| has retained the right to appeal regarding the fair-use
| principles that are important to them.
|
| Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachette_v._Internet_Archiv
| e#F...
|
| _> On August 11, 2023, the parties reached a negotiated
| judgment. The agreement prescribes a permanent injunction
| against the Internet Archive preventing it from distributing
| the plaintiffs' books, except those for which no e-book is
| currently available,[3] as well as an undisclosed payment to
| the plaintiffs.[25][26] The agreement also preserves the
| right for the Internet Archive to appeal the previous
| ruling.[25][26]_
|
| IA's August 2023 statement on how much will continue despite
| the injunction & settlement limits:
| https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/17/what-the-hachette-v-
| inte...
|
| _> Because this case was limited to our book lending
| program, the injunction does not significantly impact our
| other library services. The Internet Archive may still
| digitize books for preservation purposes, and may still
| provide access to our digital collections in a number of
| ways, including through interlibrary loan and by making
| accessible formats available to people with qualified print
| disabilities. We may continue to display "short portions" of
| books as is consistent with fair use--for example, Wikipedia
| references (as shown in the image above). The injunction does
| not affect lending of out-of-print books. And of course, the
| Internet Archive will still make millions of public domain
| texts available to the public without restriction._
| coldpie wrote:
| Hhhhuh. Thanks a lot for this info, this isn't anywhere
| near as bad as all the commentary around the lawsuit I've
| seen lead me to believe. I'm now confused by the
| apocalyptic tone of the article, I read it as being an
| existential threat to the IA ("last-ditch effort to save
| itself," "things aren't looking good for the Internet's
| archivist," "A extremely noble, and valuable, endeavor.
| Which makes the likelihood of this legal defeat all the
| more unfortunate."). I still don't think Hachette has much
| to gain here, but you're absolutely right that I was way
| off the mark.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > Hachette's owners see an opportunity here to destroy a
| public good ...
|
| Quite possibly on behalf of some other entities in their same
| bed that don't like information to be free and preserved.
| causality0 wrote:
| We reasoned. We begged. We screamed at IA not to do what they
| did, that this would be the inevitable outcome. This is like
| someone left a bear trap on my front lawn and because I
| should have the right to do whatever I want on my property I
| refuse to listen to the crowd of people telling me not to
| stick my dick in the bear trap. The controlled digital
| lending was already completely illegal but the IA was making
| headway on making it a culturally accepted practice. Then
| they burned it to the ground. The loss of the IA would be one
| of if not _the_ greatest Internet-tragedy in history, but the
| fools in charge of it don 't deserve anyone's sympathy.
| tithe wrote:
| > a terrifyingly large amount of history would suddenly blink
| from existence
|
| One response to that is the "The Offline Internet Archive" [0],
| which includes software to crawl Internet Archive collections
| and store them to a local server [1].
|
| [0] https://archive.org/about/offline-archive
|
| [1] https://github.com/internetarchive/dweb-mirror
| xingped wrote:
| How much data does the IA store? If only storage were
| cheaper, I'd be way more of a digital hoarder.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| According to their about page, 145+ Petabytes.
| jzb wrote:
| I'm gonna need a bigger NAS...
| _flux wrote:
| So apparently a 20 TB HDD can be purchased at around
| $250, plus perhaps $30 per hdd slot with a computer (I
| just recall a number of this range from calculating years
| ago how much it costs to have storage at home), making it
| 2 million dollars--without any redundancy, so maybe twice
| that.
|
| On the other hand you can already have 24 20TB HDDs for
| maybe $7000 (with required other hardware), and that's
| almost 0.5 petabytes. I imagine it would be able to
| archive all things a single person cares about. Now only
| if there was a way to interconnect these smaller storage
| pods to each other..
| speedgoose wrote:
| For the redundancy at this scale, perhaps tape storage is
| interesting. Though the prices for high density tape seem
| to not be low enough to be public, and IBM scam their
| customers by advertising storage capacity before
| compression.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| So a few racks full of Storinators, and a _fat_ internet
| pipe I guess
| gcanyon wrote:
| I almost can't express how happy this Phineas and Ferb
| reference makes me.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I always thought the physical IA locations like the one
| in San Francisco should offer a kind of "internet cafe"
| setup so you can plug into an ethernet port and get
| gigabit+ downloads without going over the internet at
| all.
| ghaff wrote:
| To be somewhat diplomatic, how much good does your data
| hoarding actually benefit anyone but you and maybe some
| friends? Maybe it will help some leak into the world but
| the contents of your hard drive are pretty ephemeral.
| xingped wrote:
| Oh for sure. I don't think of my digital hoarding as
| anything I'd endeavor to share publicly. I didn't mean to
| phrase my question in the sense of so I could share what
| I hoard with others. It was sort of two separate thoughts
| that yeah, came out sounding like they were attached
| together.
| __d wrote:
| Yes, but ...
|
| Counter examples exist: the NASA moon landing tapes were
| lost, but a copy was found in a horde in Australia. Dr
| Who episodes, lost by the BBC, have been collected from
| fans' recordings, etc.
|
| There's some difficulty in connecting those who want the
| info with those who have it, but if the search gets
| enough publicity, it can work. This seems like a problem
| that could be solved with software.
| cfmcdonald wrote:
| > The problem is, their online book lending is far from the
| most important part of the Internet Archive,
|
| I disagree. Archiving information for future researchers is
| valuable, but giving access to information to people right now
| is also very valuable. Most people's access to texts for
| research is very shallow, unless they are part of a research
| university. Google Books hosts many works that are out of
| copyright, but there is a century-long dead zone that is
| inaccessible.
|
| I write a history of technology blog and the Internet Archive
| lending service has saved me thousands of dollars and many
| hours that it would have taken to track down the same research
| materials on eBay. Realistically, I just wouldn't have
| bothered, and the material I write would be of lower quality or
| not get written at all.
|
| (That said I do agree that the emergency library was a
| strategic and legal mistake.)
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Great, now you get access but then the year this free access
| is established is the year NEW information stops being
| created and/or the quality goes down hill (funny how making
| something free stops a lot of people from doing it for a
| living). Now everyone's content is 'lower quality or not get
| written at all' because the content that makes your's not
| 'lower quality' is no longer produced (most people/businesses
| don't work for free).
| jrmg wrote:
| The lawsuit is not about the "National Emergency Library".
|
| It's about, as the IA calls it, "Controlled Digital Lending" -
| which the IA was doing before and after the "emergency", and is
| still doing now. The idea that, if they have a physical copy of
| a book, they can lend, one-for-one, a digital copy.
|
| The "National Emergency Library" was basically uncontrolled -
| they were 'lending' digital copies of books they did not have
| physical copies of. But there are no lawsuits about that -
| presumably because they stopped and it would be bad publicity
| fore book companies to pursue them about it now. I do wonder if
| it's what precipitated the book companies' ire - but I also
| think a lawsuit about "Controlled Digital Lending" was coming
| sooner or later anyway.
| gojomo wrote:
| No, the publishers' lawsuit also took issue with the "NEL".
|
| It's just that the lower court's judgement didn't really
| focus much that issue, because they found the broader/simpler
| and more-foundational "can you loan a format-shifted ebook
| 1:1 from your physical book" issue against IA, which then
| makes an anti-NEL conclusion almost automatic.
|
| So NEL-related arguments haven't yet been the focus of the
| rulings, despite being part of the original lawsuit.
|
| Thus, also, IA's appeal is mostly about that foundational
| finding - though section II of the IA appeal brief says that
| if the appeal succeeds on "ordinary controlled digital
| lending", the NEL ruling should also be rejudged:
|
| _> Il. THIS COURT SHOULD REMAND FOR RECONSIDERATION OF THE
| NATIONAL EMERGENCY LIBRARY Publishers do not deny that the
| district court's NEL ruling depends entirely on its analysis
| of ordinary controlled digital lending. Resp.Br. 61-62. If
| the Court reverses the latter, then it should also reverse
| and remand the former. It need not address Publishers'
| arguments about the justifications for NEL (Resp.Br. 62),
| which should be left for the district court in the first
| instance._
| darksim905 wrote:
| >National Emergency Library
|
| Context?
| lucb1e wrote:
| Context in here: https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5556650/the-
| internet-archive... (see also the discussion thread
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40201053 "259 points by
| rbanffy 4 hours ago")
| jawns wrote:
| > Maybe you and I are on the side of The Internet Archive. Maybe
| we are such big fans of Archive.org that we want to come to their
| defense.
|
| > But feelings don't matter here. Only facts. And the facts are
| simple. The Archive's actions and statements (and questionable
| legal defense) have all but ensured a loss in this case.
|
| This is what has surprised me about people's defense of IA. When
| you look at the facts and ignore the admittedly good work they do
| elsewhere, it's clear that they not only ran afoul of the law but
| thumbed their noses at it. But so many people are quick to come
| to its defense because they love IA so much for the other stuff
| they do and don't want it to go away.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > it's clear that they not only ran afoul of the law but
| thumbed their noses at it
|
| When laws are bad, people should thumb their nose at them
|
| Good on them for using the platform they have to try and push
| for real change, at personal risk to themselves and their
| operations too
| bell-cot wrote:
| > When laws are bad, people should thumb their nose at them
|
| When the electrical code says that there should be no voltage
| in the light sockets, then people should stick their fingers
| into them - regardless of what numbers the voltmeters show.
|
| Right?
| 0xedd wrote:
| You misread; He didn't say all laws are bad. But, only an
| idiot can think that a world where corps write laws isn't
| corrupt. None of us, right?
| mminer237 wrote:
| I don't even think this law is bad, other than maybe being
| too harsh. If this was allowed, why would anyone ever buy a
| book? I'm not going to pay any amount of money for a book I
| can legally digitally download for free. I realize physical
| books have an attractive quality, but I don't think that's
| enough to support an entire industry.
| justinclift wrote:
| > When laws are bad, people should thumb their nose at them
|
| Sure. But use some intelligence and risk management when
| you're doing it.
|
| This was just outright stupidity, and there's no excuse for
| it. :( :( :(
| ezekiel68 wrote:
| > When laws are bad, people should thumb their nose at them
|
| You (and Internet Archive) are about to learn what happens
| when the courts fail to be persuaded regarding the 'badness'
| of the law in question.
| LocalH wrote:
| Yet another example of the laws of the world being bought
| by large powerful moneyed interests.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| All throughout history there have been people who break
| laws they disagree with and get punished for it
|
| Sometimes those laws wind up changed later, because of
| their actions
|
| I personally don't agree that this particular thing is
| worth taking a stand on, but I do applaud Internet Archive
| for being willing to take a stand for what they believe is
| important enough. It takes guts
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, this is my issue with it too. The Wayback Machine is
| awesome, Controlled Digital Lending is cool, becoming a host
| for Abandonware and/or Lost Media is definitely great, but I
| think a lot of people don't seem to realize that IA is sort of
| becoming a piracy website.
|
| I mean, it's trivial to find entire MAME romsets for download
| [1], Super Mario Odyssey and Super Mario Wonder roms [2], the
| entire season 1 of Hilda from Netflix [3], huge collections of
| PS4 games [4], and the list goes on.
|
| Just to be clear, this required nearly zero effort on my part,
| I just looked up "Internet Archive PS4" on Kagi and found this
| in about four seconds. You can do this with basically any media
| and find something.
|
| IA needs to do something about this stuff, because it's a
| matter of "when", not "if", for these companies taking legal
| action, and I cannot imagine a future where IA wins. They're a
| huge target with a lot of public exposure, and data harboring
| laws only get you so far.
|
| [1] https://archive.org/details/mame-merged [2]
| https://archive.org/download/street-fighter-30th-anniversary...
| [3] https://archive.org/details/hilda-season-complete-episodes
| [4] https://archive.org/download/CG_Sony_PlayStation_4
| gs17 wrote:
| I genuinely don't understand why they're not making any
| serious attempt to clean it up (also how Nintendo hasn't gone
| after them, they cease and desist their own paying fans!).
| Maybe moderation would cost more than the storage/bandwidth
| so they can leave cleaning it for when legal issues happen.
| The "emergency library" is at least understandable as a
| special case.
| tombert wrote:
| I'm sure Nintendo knows about it, they're a multibillion
| dollar company that's famously litigious and it's not like
| the IA is some obscure part of the deep web, so it wouldn't
| surprise me if they're just biding their time to see how
| this lawsuit goes.
|
| They might be afraid of the optics of suing a library, but
| I just think it's a matter of time before they get over
| that.
| sussmannbaka wrote:
| Nintendo needs that romset to stay up or otherwise they
| won't be able to sell them on the next iteration of Virtual
| Console :o)
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| Presumably, since the files are user uploaded, the Internet
| Archive is protected so long as they comply with any DCMA
| takedown requests, and I imagine they do. But then some
| other user soon uploads the infringing material, and the
| onus is back on the rights holder to find it and issue
| another notice.
| tombert wrote:
| IANAL, but if they're ambivalent and not making a
| slightly proactive attempt to stop blatant and obvious
| piracy on their site, couldn't that still get them sued?
| YouTube has Content ID which of course has its problems
| but I think is somewhat of a protection to ensure that
| they don't get sued direct.
| LocalH wrote:
| Content ID exists _because_ YouTube got sued
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| Also NAL, but the "safe harbor" laws[1] explicity state
| that "a service provider monitoring its service or
| affirmatively seeking facts indicating infringing
| activity"[2] is not required for protection. I have no
| idea how that translates to judicial precedent though.
|
| [1]: https://www.copyright.gov/512/
|
| [2]: https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#512
| 0xedd wrote:
| Because piracy doesn't hurt the digital market. Neither party
| need be concerned.
| tombert wrote:
| That's an assertion I hear a lot, but is that true? How can
| you possibly prove it
|
| If I buy a flash cart for the Switch, and put a pirated
| copy Mario Wonder on there, that's a loss of a potential
| sale. You could argue that I wouldn't have purchased it
| anyway, but you really have no way of knowing that.
| kbolino wrote:
| At scale, digital piracy largely boils down to:
|
| 1. People who do it for fun
|
| 2. Would-be consumers who are priced out or locked out
|
| The first group is, if anything, only encouraged by
| attempts to stop them, and generally won't pay no matter
| what. The second group would pay, if it were possible and
| economical for them to do so.
|
| Focusing on the second group, you can say that every
| pirated copy is a "lost sale" but the sale that you've
| "lost" would only happen on terms favorable to the
| consumer. In other words, supposing you sold a product
| for $50 in developed countries, you're not going to get
| the equivalent at any significant volume in developing
| countries. But if you were to cut the price to the local
| equivalent of say $10, you'll probably get lots of sales.
| Refusing to market-adjust your prices, or even more so,
| refusing to sell in a market altogether, is a great
| recipe for piracy. Yet estimating that piracy at top-
| shelf price times number of downloads is grossly
| unrealistic. The piracy cost you what you should have
| sold it for; but of course, if you had done that, you
| wouldn't have seen so much piracy.
|
| There are some exceptions to this, of course. Certain
| categories of media are extra prone to piracy
| (adult/restricted content in particular) regardless of
| price. Piracy also happens because of factors the
| publisher can control besides price; for example, anti-
| piracy measures in some PC video games have gotten so
| onerous that pirates are getting a better quality
| product; Switch games (in)famously run a lot better on PC
| than the console they were actually designed for; Blu-
| rays are so chock full of dated advertisements and anti-
| piracy warnings that can't be skipped that a torrented
| MKV is preferable; etc.
| tombert wrote:
| Again though, these are just kind of assertions. I am
| sure what you're suggesting is mostly right, but I would
| actually like data instead of just going off gut
| feelings.
|
| I think there is a group 3 that people ignore: people who
| could absolutely afford the product but pirate it anyway
| because they don't want to pay for it. I don't know the
| numbers, I don't even think it's the majority, but I also
| don't think it's zero either.
| kbolino wrote:
| I've followed indie devs talking about this stuff, and
| I've been a critical consumer of digital media for
| decades. That's all fairly anecdotal, to be fair, but I
| am not aware of any hard data that's public and
| transparently sourced.
|
| The segment you talk about exists, indeed I've seen it in
| action, but chasing them down has rapidly diminishing
| returns. Their loyalty to the product is just as shallow
| as their loyalty to the author, and they'll just scamper
| to other media they can get easily if cornered. Indeed,
| that is actually a fairly good argument for _some_
| mitigating measures: it 's like a lock on your house, it
| only stops you from being the lowest-hanging fruit, but
| that often goes a long way.
| handsclean wrote:
| No, I'm quick to come to their defense because this law is
| wrong and immoral.
|
| "One has a moral duty to disobey unjust laws." --MLKJ
| lucb1e wrote:
| Call me out if I'm misremembering this, but I think the vast
| majority of comments were of the same opinion (then and now)
| and not "so many people are quick to come to its defense
| because they love IA so much for the other stuff". I'm sure
| there was a lot of "I love the IA so much for the other stuff"
| but then it was also followed by something like "but wtf is
| this risk they're taking"
| nanolith wrote:
| My wife is a librarian. The elephant in the room here is that
| patrons are shifting toward a preference for digital
| distribution. However, Fair Use has not caught up. So, libraries
| end up spending a large portion of their operating budget
| "leasing" ebooks from publishers at extraordinary markup over the
| print copies. These leases are only good for so many "check outs"
| -- often as few as 4-6 -- after which point, the lease must be
| renewed at a price that can be 2X or 3X the cost of the print
| book. It's downright predatory.
|
| IA may have gone beyond pushing the envelope and well into
| stepping over the line on this one, but it is an important legal
| challenge. I don't think IA will or should win, but I do hope
| that their loss shifts the needle of public opinion a bit toward
| actual Fair Use.
| greyface- wrote:
| It makes me incredibly sad to see the Internet Archive continue
| to argue that a DRM system (which is what controlled digital
| lending is) is a liberatory technology whose usage should be
| expanded. Libraries should stop lighting money on fire buying
| expensive short-lived licenses from publishers, and start
| referring patrons to LibGen, Anna's Archive, Sci-Hub, etc.
| pessimizer wrote:
| That's not a legal argument; you're arguing that crime should
| be officially encouraged by libraries and the Internet
| Archive. That's essentially an argument that they should
| commit suicide in protest of the entire idea of copyright.
|
| I'm not saying that speciously. If it's fine that they
| encourage the public to go to shadow libraries, there's _no
| need_ for the public to go to shadow libraries; because they
| 've then become de facto legal and the libraries might as
| well distribute the material directly (or aid with access and
| provide resources for the shadow libraries.) If it's not fine
| that they encourage the public to go to shadow libraries,
| when they do it they've called their own distribution of
| copyrighted materials into question by implying that they do
| the same thing as shadow libraries.
|
| DRM is an overlay over copyright which gives copyright owners
| some security that they'll be able to hold on to most of the
| distribution of what they own. It's really a pretense,
| because you can have DRM without copyright. DRM is just a
| weak, autonomous enforcement layer being bolted on. That
| pretense is the only thing that's keeping IA online at this
| point. Otherwise, there would be no excuse to allow their
| distribution of copyrighted works at all.
|
| If you want to fight copyright, fight it directly, don't
| gamble the IA for it. The giant multinational companies that
| own the vast majority of copyrights are begging you to stake
| the entire IA on such a sucker bet.
| greyface- wrote:
| It's not a crime to inform patrons of the existence of
| shadow libraries.
|
| > That pretense is the only thing that's keeping IA online
| at this point. Otherwise, there would be no excuse to allow
| their distribution of copyrighted works at all.
|
| > If you want to fight copyright, fight it directly, don't
| gamble the IA for it.
|
| I agree with you. There is no (legal) excuse for the
| National Emergency Library, digital lending DRM is just a
| pretense, and they shouldn't have gambled the Archive on
| it. The battle will be won by shadow libraries, who by
| their extra-legal nature are better equipped to fight
| copyright directly.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > It's really a pretense, because you can have DRM without
| copyright. DRM is just a weak, autonomous enforcement layer
| being bolted on. That pretense is the only thing that's
| keeping IA online at this point. Otherwise, there would be
| no excuse to allow their distribution of copyrighted works
| at all.
|
| Well sure there is, because it also works the other way
| around. You can have copyright without DRM, and enforce it
| not via some weak and easily bypassed technological fig
| leaf but with the full force of the government. A patron
| who makes a permanent copy even though they've claimed and
| agreed to have destroyed their temporary one would be
| liable for copyright infringement. There is no reason the
| law couldn't still prohibit that while allowing temporary
| lending.
|
| Copyright holders would have no more or less trouble
| enforcing this than they do any other infringing copying
| that happens in private, like when the user downloads the
| same book from a shadow library in a foreign country. The
| difference is that the local library has paid the copyright
| holder for an official copy, implying that _they_ haven 't
| done anything wrong, and neither have any patrons who don't
| illicitly retain a copy. Why should people doing nothing
| wrong have any liability?
| leotravis10 wrote:
| > My wife is a librarian. The elephant in the room here is that
| patrons are shifting toward a preference for digital
| distribution. However, Fair Use has not caught up. So,
| libraries end up spending a large portion of their operating
| budget "leasing" ebooks from publishers at extraordinary markup
| over the print copies. These leases are only good for so many
| "check outs" -- often as few as 4-6 -- after which point, the
| lease must be renewed at a price that can be 2X or 3X the cost
| of the print book. It's downright predatory.
|
| If you haven't read this, now's the time to:
| https://buttondown.email/ninelives/archive/the-coming-enshit...
|
| > IA may have gone beyond pushing the envelope and well into
| stepping over the line on this one, but it is an important
| legal challenge. I don't think IA will or should win, but I do
| hope that their loss shifts the needle of public opinion a bit
| toward actual Fair Use.
|
| Very unlikely that would happen and libraries would inevitably
| pay the ultimate price in the long run in a period where
| they're under attack and most at risk of extinction from all
| fronts (politicians, governments, publishers, copyright cartel,
| list goes on all hate libraries and this would be a huge win
| for those groups as a sign to cripple them even more).
| swalling wrote:
| Whatever happened to the idea of legal peer-to-peer lending?
| If I buy a book, it's my property to give away or resell. Why
| is it any different with an ebook?
| coldpie wrote:
| Because you aren't buying an ebook, you are licensing a
| copy of it. The terms of the license you agreed to were
| that you will not distribute or re-assign ownership of the
| material you are licensing.
|
| If you want that to change, you'll need to get congress to
| do something about it (lol).
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| We as a society very urgently need to ban the practice of
| "selling" licenses, but in the meantime we as individuals
| can and should practice civil disobedience.
| criddell wrote:
| DRM (if any) is one difference. Circumventing copyright
| controls can open you up to civil and criminal penalties.
|
| Not all digital books are DRM protected. I recently
| listened to Cory Doctorow's audiobook _The Bezzel_ and at
| the end he tells you that you have the right to loan or
| sell your copy of the audiobook.
| tombert wrote:
| While I don't really agree with US copyright law, I think
| the issue is that it's relatively easy to make infinite
| copies of ebooks. It's basically impossible to guarantee
| that if I sell you my digital copy of The Colour of Magic
| that I _don 't_ have it anymore.
|
| With a physical book, that's much easier; I simply don't
| have the book anymore. I could technically photocopy the
| entire myself and have the book as backup, but that's a
| pretty time-consuming process that most people aren't going
| to bother with.
|
| The "solution" to this could be some kind of DRM, but of
| course that has its own can of horrible and problematic
| worms, not the least of which the fact that central signing
| servers suck.
|
| I had an idea years ago of trying to have some kind of
| blockchain-based DRM but I never really figured out how to
| even get started with it so I never did anything with it.
| Still, I think it could be worth someone giving it a go.
| Ekaros wrote:
| In general breaking digital DRM is trivial. Or only
| mildly challenging as in the end you can get projector
| and camera... With text OCR and some automated editing
| should be good enough. And LLMs might make it even
| simpler.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I think the issue is that it's relatively easy to make
| infinite copies of ebooks.
|
| That's the case regardless of any DRM or even what the
| source material is. You can OCR a physical book or type
| the contents into your computer once from any source you
| can read with your eyes and then make infinite copies
| thereafter.
|
| The thing that prevents this is that making unlimited
| permanent copies is copyright infringement, the same as
| it ever was. Making the unlimited copies is now cheaper
| than it was a century ago, but that has nothing to do
| with where or how the infringer gets the first copy.
|
| Never mind breaking DRM, there are services that will OCR
| a book for around $15. For most books it would cost less
| to OCR than to buy a single physical copy, from which an
| infringer could make an unlimited number. Putting this
| out as some kind of significant distinction between
| physical and digital copies is just looking for an excuse
| for a money grab against the new technology.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The right to copy is what copyright deals with. You never
| had the right to buy a book, copy it, and give away or
| resell the copy.
|
| edit: the "right" we have to copy them from device to
| device I think is just granted by the official
| interpretation of current law by Library of Congress
| lawyers. It would be entirely consistent to say that when I
| sell you an ebook, you get to download it to one machine
| once, and that copying it to a different machine is a
| violation.
| squigz wrote:
| > (politicians, governments, publishers, copyright cartel,
| list goes on all hate libraries
|
| I have to say I've never seen anti-library sentiment from
| politicians or governments.
| pdonis wrote:
| Have you ever seen pro-library sentiment from them? Or do
| they just keep quite while private companies do their
| hatchet work?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| IANAL: Can libraries just buy physical books and then format
| shift (scan+OCR) them?
| zaphod12 wrote:
| I suspect this is likely a violation of agreements, but
| regardless it absolutely does not produce a readable ebook
| mdaniel wrote:
| Agreements of what? I could have sworn the first sale
| doctrine means that I _own_ the book, as there are for sure
| no EULAs that I agree to when purchasing nor opening to
| page 1 of a book. Copyright, for sure, but not an agreement
| that could be violated
|
| I would also take issue with the "absolutely" of your
| assertion about OCR. For some things, yes, for crazy fonted
| works, no, but the devil's in the details
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I believe the idea was that a publisher _could_ have a
| contract with libraries in order to rent them digital
| copies that imposes terms against other ways of getting
| digital copies. (Whether that should be or is legal is a
| separate question that I 'm not going to answer; as ever
| IANAL.)
| tester89 wrote:
| No, copyright violation.
|
| Libraries are able to loan under the first sale doctrine,
| that is to say that the copyright holder exhausts their right
| to control the _distribution_ of a copy after the first sale.
| However, they retain a monopoly on the _production_ of
| copies.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The issue here is whether this counts as the production of
| copies and/or whether that production is fair use.
|
| For example, CDs are digital. To play a CD that you own,
| the player is going to create a copy of the song in memory
| in order to decode it into an analog signal that can be
| played on speakers. Then it's going to discard that
| temporary copy, leaving the CD as the only permanent one.
| It seems pretty obvious that either that sort of temporary
| copy doesn't count or that it should be fair use.
|
| But then how is it any different if the temporary copy is
| on your tablet instead of your CD player?
| pgalvin wrote:
| That is quite literally what this lawsuit is trying to
| establish as illegal (it was a grey area before).
|
| Many people misunderstand and think it is just about the
| temporary unlimited lending. It was motivated by that, but
| went further.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| As far as I can tell, the book publishers are merely
| seeking to have 17 U.S. Code SS 108, subsection (g)
| enforced.
|
| The law[1] makes it clear public libraries are permitted to
| make _one_ digital copy and distribute it (lend it) once at
| a time on separate occasions. Subsection (g) outlines that
| distributing that one copy multiple times simultaneously
| forfeits the protections granted by this law.
|
| [1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108
| JackC wrote:
| SS 108 doesn't apply here, in either direction. See
| footnote 6 of the lower court decision, where the court
| notes that the Internet Archive doesn't rely on SS 108,
| but instead on SS 107 covering fair use, and also notes
| that SS 108 doesn't restrict fair use by libraries: https
| ://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.53..
| .
|
| The reason IA doesn't rely on SS 108 is "When a user
| requests a copy of an entire work or a substantial part
| thereof, the library or archives must first make a
| reasonable effort to determine whether a copy can be
| obtained at a fair price. If it can, then no copy is
| allowed to be made."
| https://www.copyright.gov/policy/section108/discussion-
| docum...
|
| What you're describing, "public libraries are permitted
| to make one digital copy and distribute it (lend it) once
| at a time on separate occasions," is what controlled
| digital lending refers to, and it would be cool if it was
| overtly authorized by statute, but it isn't -- the
| original CDL whitepaper (
| https://controlleddigitallending.org/whitepaper/ ) relied
| on fair use instead. The trial court found that it fails
| that test, so unless IA wins on appeal, it doesn't exist.
| gooob wrote:
| this law is out of date and silly. one of the primary
| purposes of making digital copies is to have infinite
| copies, and everyone knows that. [Request to delete that
| law submitted]
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I don't think so? I was saying that the library buys a
| paper book, scans it, and destroys the original, leaving
| them with a digital copy. I _think_ (seriously, IANAL) that
| conversion process is legal because you start with 1 copy
| and end with 1 copy. The thing the Internet Archive is in
| trouble for is taking 1 copy and giving it to multiple
| people at once (effectively, start with 1 copy, end with
| >1 copy) which _is_ probably a legal problem.
| navane wrote:
| I have lent books from IA, they only loan out to one
| person at a time. You have to renew your lending every
| ninety minutes or so.
| gs17 wrote:
| This was about the "National Emergency Library" which ran
| for a while in 2020. After the publishers came after
| them, they returned to only having 1:1 lending.
| navane wrote:
| Thank you. I admit I was reading this thread a bit
| nonplussed.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's hard to make headway in copyright law trying to
| reason like a regular human being.
|
| Copyright is an artificial constraint on something that
| is otherwise constrained only by cost of raw inputs and
| machine labor (even back in the days of setting the lead
| by hand)... And in that sense, not very constrained at
| all. The whole thing is an artifice that tries to
| encourage creation of novel work by couching monopoly on
| ideas in property law.
|
| This leaves you with a quantum beast that mostly runs on
| "vibes." To your example: no, illegal, because you made a
| copy, right there, when you format-shifted. _Or_ yes,
| because you preserved the total number of instances. _Or_
| no, because you moved a tangible format that is easy to
| preserve singularity on to a hard-to-audit, easy-to-copy
| format, thus greatly increasing the risk of copyright
| fiolation. _Or_ yes, because you actually recorded the
| fact of the position of the ink on the paper in your
| original copy, and you can 't copyright facts ("this is a
| historical record of what my book looked like"). Or...
|
| Copyright is a ball of string and chewing gum held
| together by a few explicit laws and many, many centuries
| of precedent. It's _very_ hard to predict what the end
| result of a lawsuit in novel territory will be, because
| it really does come down to "Which faction do the judges
| think should have more power today?"
| kbenson wrote:
| From other comments here noting that digital copies are
| often both more expensive and allow only for a limited
| number of total lends to happen before invalid (4-6 being
| noted), it sounds like even getting a physical copy,
| converting to digital and securing or destroying the
| physical copy to allow a single digital copy to be
| checked out at a time would be useful for libraries. Just
| having a digital copy with the same lending
| characteristics as a physical one sounds like a win over
| that.
| troupe wrote:
| I think this is a lot less clear than just a yes or no.
| Imagine you have a library where you can't touch the books so
| you have to look at them through glass and turn the pages
| with some type of robotic arm. That probably wouldn't be an
| issue. What if you replace the glass with a computer monitor?
| So you are sitting in a room next to the book you are
| viewing. Then what if you extend the wire and sit in the
| building next door? What if you replace the wire with the
| internet? At what point did you start infringing on the
| copyright?
|
| Imagine a video rental service where you can go in, and they
| will play whatever movie you want on a DVD player in the back
| room. How long can that wire be between the DVD player and
| the person watching before it starts being copyright
| infringement?
| saulpw wrote:
| > Imagine a video rental service where you can go in, and
| they will play whatever movie you want on a DVD player in
| the back room. How long can that wire be between the DVD
| player and the person watching before it starts being
| copyright infringement?
|
| I imagine it would be when you put a Y on the wire so that
| two people can watch from two different monitors.
| paulmd wrote:
| nope, aereo didn't have a Y in the wire, still found to
| be infringing.
|
| of course this gets to the core of the problem: rights on
| paper are one thing, but they are easily taken away by a
| plaintiff with money. if you don't have the money to
| defend the right, you don't have the right (and in fact
| stand a good chance of getting the right taken away for
| everyone else too).
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Didn't Aereo lose because they were basically found to be
| a cable company which then subjects them to a specific
| set of different rules?
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Aereo tried essentially this, with thousands of TV antennas
| for their "broadcast TV over the internet" scheme. They
| lost, and no longer exist.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Zediva tried essentially this. DVDs, players, internet.
|
| Aereo was significantly different, because there was no
| copyrighted material being rented. They were renting out
| servers, and the servers made per-user recordings. Aereo
| got super screwed over too, because the supreme court
| said they were 'basically' a cable company, and then they
| weren't able to get cable company style mandatory
| licensing either.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Do you want my interpretation of the law, or what I think
| it should be?
|
| Let me put it this way: You should very much be able to
| rent a DVD from across the world and control it by wire,
| and the only limit we need to prevent abuse is how often
| that DVD can change hands, since micro-renting could cause
| legitimate problems.
| gooob wrote:
| yes, but apparently the law hasn't been updated to allow for
| that, and legal people get confused by it. what is it that
| triggers the process of reviewing and revising/removing an
| outdated law when an entity breaks it? it's obvious that
| there could be thousands of laws that were made, that are now
| out of date because of advances in technology or scientific
| understanding. so isn't there some regular procedure for,
| when someone sues someone, allowing for the opportunity to
| consider if the particular violated law is still applicable?
| maybe if it hasn't been applied in a while and/or was made a
| long time ago?
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Do you think the authors and editors should be compensated for
| their work? Charging for use seems to be a pretty straight
| forward way to reward the people who create good books.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Copyright grants you the right to profit from the first sale.
| It does not grant you the right to charge "per use."
|
| Should your books destroy themselves after you've read them
| once?
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| No. Copyright gives the right to control how a work is
| reproduced. In the case of printed books, we've arrived on
| the first sale doctrine which still does a pretty good job
| of spreading costs over all users. It's not perfect, but
| wear and tear help spread out the costs.
|
| Digital books are different. It's quite possible for there
| to be one "sale" in the first sale model. That doesn't do a
| very good job of sharing costs among the people who read
| the book. Nor does it do a good job of rewarding the people
| who produce good books that are in much demand.
|
| I'm quite happy with all of the digital "renting" schemes
| that effectively "destroy" the digital work after I've
| consumed it. Why? Because I want to pay the least amount
| and that means spreading the costs as broadly as possible.
| That's just fairness.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Yes, it controls reproduction, but not all uses are a
| reproduction. The law also has zero concerns for
| "spreading costs" and it's why "fair use" and libraries
| can even exist in the first place.
|
| Further, simply because you give out copies of your work
| for free, does not mean you suddenly lose copyright
| protection. Costs and copyright are two entirely separate
| issues, which is why open source licenses can exist. Your
| attempt to convolve these two facts leads to an
| incredibly messy interpretation.
|
| Digital books are not different in any meaningful way.
| You have the right to sell a digital copy. Once sold, the
| user who purchased it, has a right to use that copy in
| any way the see fit. Including lending it to others,
| selling it second hand, or even reading it out loud as
| part of an event.
|
| The article makes it perfectly clear, this is not driving
| costs down, so while you may be happy with that outcome,
| that's clearly not what's actually occurring. So I'm
| genuinely surprised you've gone to this much effort to
| advocate for something that demonstrably fails to produce
| the outcome you're after.
| pdonis wrote:
| Do you think the authors and editors actually get the lion's
| share of the profits from sales of books? Particularly
| ebooks?
| jcranmer wrote:
| This is your friendly reminder that, if libraries didn't
| predate copyright, they never would have existed because
| copyright owners would have argued it's a flagrant violation of
| copyright. Even given that libraries are clearly legal,
| copyright owners still try their utmost to make them illegal,
| because they're seen as lost purchases.
|
| If I were only allowed to change one thing about copyright,
| what I would change is not the length of copyright terms, but
| the treatment of digital works. Kill this stupid pretend game
| that you don't buy anything digital, you merely lease it, and
| therefore the creator gets to jerk you around to their heart's
| content because contract law supersedes all. No, make a digital
| sale a sale, and then we get to have the First Sale Doctrine
| kick in. And hopefully we get to sit back and enjoy the
| schadenfreude as they repeatedly go to SCOTUS as the printer
| manufacturers do with some new harebrained attempt to work
| around First Sale Doctrine and SCOTUS goes "lol, nope, doesn't
| work."
|
| But truly, fuck the ebook lending practices. It's downright
| predatory and it just makes me never want to actually buy an
| ebook (unless it's from one of the few publishers that goes
| all-in on DRM-free ebooks).
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| what's your timeline on libraries? i guess you're counting
| ancient, private collections. public libraries happened well
| after copyright was established and just had to go to court
| and make their case. first sale doctrine indeed saved the
| day.
|
| the more interesting case for me is that xerox was allowed to
| exist, and libraries fought successfully to allow their
| patrons to use xerox machines within the library (1973
| Williams & Wilkins Co. v United States). this freedom may not
| have been established had it been any other circumstance than
| a medical journal suing the medical doctors xerox'ing the
| papers for their own research. the public attitude was "bro,
| lives are on the line here, let the doctors make copies" and
| we got the four factors of fair use outlined in the 1976
| Copyright Act
| brnt wrote:
| If you do not consider the ancient, famous libraries to be
| public, Wikipedia puts ~1600 as a first date of modern
| public libraries. While copyright has a first occurance
| date in the 1700s, in some locales much later.
|
| Either way it seems public libraries were around at least a
| century before copyright, but by other measure, in some
| places, much longer.
| ghaff wrote:
| Copyright in the UK predates the existence of the United
| States by quite a bit.
| fao_ wrote:
| And has no concept of fair use :P
| samatman wrote:
| > _if libraries didn 't predate copyright, they never would
| have existed because copyright owners would have argued it's
| a flagrant violation of copyright._
|
| Before the advent of digital media, the meaning of copyright
| could be cleanly derived from the words it is compounded
| from.
|
| Any publisher arguing that to lend a purchased item to
| another person infringes on their exclusive right to produce
| copies, would have been laughed right out of the courtroom.
| hysan wrote:
| I'm glad to see this near the top of this post. The reality of
| what's been happening to libraries in the shift to the digital
| age keeps getting ignored by everyone. For those of us who grew
| up only being able to afford reading books by borrowing from
| libraries, I've been dismayed to see so little discussion
| around this. Like other commenters have said, libraries
| wouldn't exist if they were to be proposed today and I think
| that points to a fundamental problem with legislation.
| navane wrote:
| "libraries wouldn't exist if they were to be proposed today"
|
| This is so sad. I spend so much time growing up in libraries.
| Been locked up there accidentally more than once.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| What a library is today is so different. I'm not sure I
| would leave my kids alone in one like my parents used to.
| There was always the homeless element, but now there's
| rampant drug use in and around, anti-social behaviour is
| ignored or tolerated and it's not really about the books
| (digital or paper) but the free internet to troll your
| social media. Libraries used to be accessible jewels of
| knowledge, now they're generic community spaces.
| chgs wrote:
| Maybe in your area. Certainly not in my area.
| influx wrote:
| The last time I was in the Seattle Downtown library,
| there was a gentleman shaving and taking a "shower" in
| the sink of the shared public restroom.
|
| I'm of the mind there should be a place he could do that
| safely and easily, but that place shouldn't be the
| library.
| __d wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear your library is like that. Mine isn't,
| and I don't think this generalization is fair.
| gibbitz wrote:
| They reversed Roe v Wade. Why not libraries too? Regulation
| of companies to protect consumers is bad, so regulation of
| consumers to protect companies must be good, right? Maybe
| this can be the case to get libraries banned. Would reduce
| all the pollution from book burning and keep kids from
| reading all those family-values averse books. Win-win...
| smegger001 wrote:
| yup i remember using the sound proof booths they had for
| patrons at my library and not hearing the announcement that
| the library had closed got locked in and only noticed when
| they librarians started turning off the lights to leave.
| delusional wrote:
| An unfortunate consequence of internet piracy is that
| noncommercial activity has been pushed out of mainstream
| policy. The library was way more crucial when I couldn't just
| illegally pirate a book on the internet. In turn I was way
| more willing to fight for it.
| paulmd wrote:
| > mainstream policy [is...] an unfortunate consequence of
| internet piracy
|
| no, this is obscene degrees of victim-blaming here. the
| modern copyright regime predates the internet being a major
| commercial vector for anything by literally decades. the
| DAT tape wars were 80s, the VHS/Betamax time-shifting wars
| were 70s. taping off the radio was 60s.
|
| obviously as the noose tightens, more and more activity
| becomes "criminal", so the "criminal activity" stats
| probably do go up over time, but that doesn't inherently
| reflect some change in social mores as much as the legal
| framework changing out from underneath it. and that was
| _not_ initiated by anything to do with the internet - this
| really dates back to the "taping off the radio" days and
| the blowback from studios who didn't like that, and
| retrenched in the 80s and particularly the 90s.
| robocat wrote:
| > the VHS/Betamax time-shifting wars were 70s
|
| Are you talking about legal challenges?
|
| For popularity VHS was the 80's I think: "JVC released
| the first VHS machines in Japan in late 1976, and in the
| United States in mid-1977." and took a few years to take
| off widely.
|
| Interestingly enough, VHS was developed in secret at JVC:
| "However, despite the lack of funding, Takano and
| Shiraishi continued to work on the project in secret. By
| 1973, the two engineers had produced a functional
| prototype.". The development of blue LEDs has a better
| story. Does Japanese culture encourage secrative
| development?
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Maybe it's time for libraries to focus on the physical
| aspect... and education, for example teaching people how to
| pirate digital copies without getting malware.
|
| For ebooks, pirates can provide the public library service.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I don't think IA will or should win, but I do hope that their
| loss shifts the needle of public opinion a bit toward actual
| Fair Use.
|
| I find it extremely bizarre the people make posts like this,
| essentially conceding that controlled digital lending _should_
| be legal, but then claiming that they _shouldn 't_ win. Why
| shouldn't they win? They're doing something reasonable,
| meritorious and not at all clearly prohibited.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I believe the issue was that they weren't doing controlled
| digital lending. They allowed an unlimited number of people
| to check out an individual book digitally & then took
| donations for doing so. The original envision, where a book
| can be checked out digitally (and then is reserved until
| "returned", and mare available again), is way more
| defensible.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > They allowed an unlimited number of people to check out
| an individual book digitally
|
| You're referring to the emergency library, which only
| operated during COVID. The claim in that case is that it
| should be allowed because it's temporary and can only
| operate during an emergent crisis, thereby limiting the
| impact on the market for the works.
|
| > & then took donations for doing so
|
| Why should that be relevant unless a donation is required
| to get a copy? It seems like a bad faith argument to try to
| ensure that no one offering a free service to the public
| can solicit donations to continue operating it.
|
| > The original envision, where a book can be checked out
| digitally (and then is reserved until "returned", and mare
| available again), is way more defensible.
|
| Isn't the case about both?
| gooob wrote:
| what did they do with the donation money? if they did
| something charitable with any extra profit i think it
| should be ok, because then all there is is good-intentioned
| activity.
| danielfoster wrote:
| It's not normally the courts' job to change the laws. People
| need to get Congress involved. I doubt very few people write
| to their representatives about fair use.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The entire question is whether any change to the law is
| necessary. The courts created fair use to begin with and it
| has been codified by Congress in the statute for decades.
| Congress doesn't need to change anything if this is already
| fair use, so why shouldn't it be?
| ghusto wrote:
| There's a lot of sentiment here uncritically equating "right" to
| "the law". Yes, they almost certainly will not win because it
| seems (at least to a layperson like me) that they've broken the
| law. However, that doesn't mean the law is right.
| acuozzo wrote:
| > There's a lot of sentiment here uncritically equating "right"
| to "the law".
|
| I wonder what percentage of the population is stuck in stage 4
| of Kohlberg's "Stages of Moral Development".
| Analemma_ wrote:
| > There's a lot of sentiment here uncritically equating "right"
| to "the law".
|
| No, that is not what's happening and you are willfully
| misreading the people who disagree with you. The people who
| oppose IA's decision are doing this because it was foolish to
| tie the continued existence of the Archive to a designed-to-
| fail protest action. I encourage protesting unjust laws, but if
| you set things up so that your inherently-doomed protest will
| take a critical piece of infrastructure down with you, people
| are going to be pissed. Don't take something people rely on and
| make it collateral damage.
| rbanffy wrote:
| How much is Hachette worth? Can some tech bro just acquire it and
| make this thing just go away?
| rst wrote:
| Hachette is one of four plaintiffs; a majority stake is
| currently held by Vivendi, which is worth over $10 billion.
| Another, HarperCollins, is owned by Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp,
| and the Murdochs might just not want to sell.
| ezekiel68 wrote:
| > Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp
|
| Not any longer (since Sept 2023).
| darksim905 wrote:
| You have no idea what you're talking about.
| ksherlock wrote:
| It's actually not just Hachette, it's also Wiley, Penguin
| Random House, and HarperCollins.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| What are the worst consequences of losing the appeal? Could this
| put the Internet Archive out of business or seriously impact its
| ability to operate?
| leotravis10 wrote:
| I feel that if they lose, they'll be nearing death's door as it
| would open up to even more lawsuits (they're already fighting
| the record labels) and I won't be surprised if various other
| industries such as the gaming industry would file one next.
|
| More here in this essay:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1bswhdj/if_the...
|
| Related discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39908676
| mminer237 wrote:
| This lawsuit is only about 127 books they were pirating, which
| at the statutory $150,000 damages for willful infringement
| would be $19 million, barring any punitive damages. That's most
| of their revenue for a year, and several years' net income:
| https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/943242767_202112_990_...
|
| The real risk is what other lawsuits this might bring on. Given
| the Internet Archive was doing the same thing with 1.4 million
| other books, they could potentially be liable for billions of
| dollars if everyone jumped on this.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| How likely is it that a "Internet Archive v2 foundation" will
| be founded, "partner" with the Internet Archive, rescue all
| the content, and the IA v1 is allowed to go bankrupt?
|
| Because I surely won't donate money just to fund greedy
| copyright holders, but I'd be happy to fund The Archive.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| "At bottom, [the Internet Archive's] fair use defense rests on
| the notion that lawfully acquiring a copyrighted print book
| entitles the recipient to make an unauthorized copy and
| distribute it in place of the print book, so long as it does not
| simultaneously lend the print book. But no case or legal
| principle supports that notion. Every authority points the other
| direction."
|
| First of all, why isn't that supported? Why shouldn't they be
| allowed to distribute that book digitally at a 1:1 ratio?
|
| Secondly, isn't this part of what their case is arguing for
| though? Wouldn't this be the case that sets that precedent?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| See the relevant bit of the law here:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108
|
| Of particular relevance is subsection (g) which explicitly
| states distributing the _one_ copy permitted under this law
| multiple times simultaneously is illegal.
| nadermx wrote:
| Well, hold on. They are allowed to make one copy. Then g
| specifically says they are allowed to distribute one copy.
| Doesn't say it always has to be the same copy. It is in fact
| their one copy.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Here's the relevant bit of subsection (g):
|
| >(1)is aware or has substantial reason to believe that it
| is engaging in the related or concerted reproduction or
| distribution of multiple copies or phonorecords of the same
| material, whether made on one occasion or over a period of
| time,
|
| TL;DR: If you make more than one copy of a physical copy
| you have rights to and/or distribute that copy or copies
| multiple times simultanenously, the protections granted by
| this law do not apply.
|
| This law only protects public libraries if they make _one
| and only one_ copy and distribute (lend) that copy out
| _once at a time on separate occasions_.
|
| There are clauses in this law permitting up to three copies
| in other circumstances, but those are not immediately
| relevant for this conversation.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| The section I quoted from the article (which is a direct
| quotes from the ruling) makes it sound like it's illegal
| regardless of the number of simultaneous copies being
| distributed, while your link explicitly states that 1:1 is
| legal.
|
| So I'm a bit confused.
| thenewnewguy wrote:
| My understanding is that the original Internet Archive
| library worked under the 1:1 lending theory. Then, during
| COVID, they decided to open up what they called the
| "National Emergency Library", offering unlimited copies of
| the books, which is why the lawsuit happened.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| How can there be so many rich tech people and none willing to be
| patrons for this?
| criddell wrote:
| Why make a big donation now? Chances are it will only end up in
| Hachette's pocket.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| they don't need more money, they need someone else's legal
| advice than their current counsel
| lucb1e wrote:
| I wonder, if you averaged the HN comment thread at the time
| and took that as legal advice (or even better, if they had
| announced it and then waited with publishing all those books
| until there were 24h worth of comments and then used _that_
| as legal advice whether to go through with it), if they 'd be
| in a better position now
| imiric wrote:
| Rich tech people didn't get rich by fighting for just causes,
| and against the interest of other rich corporations. There's no
| money or prestige in backing IA.
| tombert wrote:
| I love IA but honestly they're almost not a library anymore. You
| can find entire ROMsets for a lot of consoles for games that are
| still being commercially sold both physically and digitally, you
| can download without any kinds of restrictions (no attempts at
| controlled digital lending or anything like it), and without
| having to see a bunch of ads for "Horny and Single MILFS in your
| area".
|
| You can also download full TV series that are currently still
| available on Netflix and full movies and lots of other stuff. I'm
| all for archiving, and I think they'd have a case if this were
| Abandonware or Lost Media, but I fear that a lot of stuff on
| there simply isn't and their ambivalence towards flagrant abuses
| of copyright is going to get them repeatedly sued.
|
| It's annoying, because IA is a wonderful resource and it would be
| a shame if they get sued out of existence.
| criddell wrote:
| Even though I think it was foolish, I do kind of understand the
| logic.
|
| The IA wants to preserve digital media. Sometimes it's a
| website, sometimes it's a CD, sometimes it's a ROM image, and
| sometimes it's a scan of paper.
|
| In the end though, I don't think it's the archiving part that
| got them in trouble. It was providing access to that archive.
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, I mean, if they just had an archived ISO of every PS3
| game in existence sitting on hard drives in the back, I don't
| think that would be a problem and I doubt that would get them
| sued because I think that would likely fall under fair use,
| especially for a library (IANAL), especially if they had
| purchased legitimate copies of the games and/or had them
| donated.
|
| In fact, I suspect that if they did some kind of controlled
| lending program of the PS3 games, or the ISO was available to
| use upon request (e.g. like the US library of congress), that
| likely wouldn't get them sued either, but as it stands I'm
| not seeing a fundamental difference between IA and
| ThePirateBay, sans the lack of viruses and popups from the
| former.
| troupe wrote:
| > (e.g. like the US library of congress)
|
| Does the LoC do something like this?
| criddell wrote:
| Yes.
|
| https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2012/09/yes-the-library-
| of-c...
| troupe wrote:
| The relevant sentence from the link: I would very much
| like to reach the point where we are able to provide
| access to some digital surrogate of the game while
| keeping the original disc in storage in the same way that
| we provide access to digital surrogates of our film and
| video collection fiberoptically to terminals in the
| Moving Image reading room.
| criddell wrote:
| Even if they can't figure out a way to do that, the
| material should become freely available after copyright
| expires. It might take 120 years for that to happen, but
| better late than never.
| tombert wrote:
| I've never done it, but I believe the answer is "yes". I
| believe you can go to the physical library of congress
| and view their archived media. I don't believe you can
| check it out or distribute it without the copyright
| holders permission, but I think you can view it while
| you're there.
|
| Again, never done it, only seen stuff in YouTube videos,
| and not even recently.
| gs17 wrote:
| > In fact, I suspect that if they did some kind of
| controlled lending program of the PS3 games, or the ISO was
| available to use upon request (e.g. like the US library of
| congress), that likely wouldn't get them sued either,
|
| And if they really want to push the boundaries of format
| shifting and copyright, this would be a more productive
| avenue for it. Some physical libraries have games already,
| why not a digital one?
| tombert wrote:
| Yep, completely agree.
|
| My local library has video games to borrow; I've never
| done it but I have no doubt that the NYPL has done their
| due diligence to avoid getting sued.
|
| A "format-shift" is kind of untested ground legally and I
| think a consequence of how IA is doing stuff is going to
| lead to some really bad legal precedent that might take
| decades to undo.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| No -- they are allowing unrestricted uploads where they do
| almost no pruning of anysort. Random 3rd parties are
| uploading whatever they want. Some from the usenet warez
| scene have even starting migrating towards archive.org .
|
| They have become a megaupload.com site of shorts with
| slightly better reputation.
| tombert wrote:
| I suspect they're going to be forced to implement some kind
| of YouTube-esque Content ID system, or risk being sued out
| of existence.
|
| Data harboring laws protect them a bit, they have some
| level plausible deniability, but I think that only gets
| them so far; surely they know at least as well as _I_ know
| how easy it is to get pirated media. The engineers who work
| on IA aren 't morons, and they certainly know how to Google
| just as well as me, not to mention that they have access to
| internal databases that I don't.
|
| It's even better than Megaupload; there's no ads on IA. No
| popups, no banners, AFAIK no tracking, everything has a
| torrentable version with a guarantee of at least one seed;
| hell it's still kind of SFW; it wouldn't be an inherent red
| flag to my employer if they saw Internet Archive in my
| history on a work computer.
| DoItToMe81 wrote:
| No, they aren't. They actively remove content that has been
| subject to a legitimate takedown request. As has been the
| case many times when I've tried to use them for piracy.
| tombert wrote:
| If you haven't been able to use them for piracy then
| you're not trying terribly hard. I downloaded a game
| directly from IA that's still actively being sold
| yesterday.
|
| I don't doubt that they respond to takedown requests, I
| just think they need to be more proactive about stuff.
| 0xedd wrote:
| Disgusting world we're hurling towards.
| anononaut wrote:
| I've been saying this for thousands of years.
| sam1r wrote:
| I truly enjoyed the authors' tone throughout. It felt like a
| condensed drama / saga.
|
| Can't wait to hear what happens next!
| RecycledEle wrote:
| Those who destroy The Internet Archive must live in our memories.
| nadermx wrote:
| The thing that everyone seems to be glossing over, is the
| internet archive is in fact a none profit. This gives them a very
| different angel in their appeal.
| geye1234 wrote:
| Should I assume that this latest tilt at a windmill is going to
| cause IA to get decapitated by a blade, and start preparing for a
| world without the Wayback Machine and the other legally non-
| controversial bits of IA?
|
| Is it too late for them to turn back from this craziness and
| settle out of court for a non-fatal amount?
| favorited wrote:
| > Is it too late for them to turn back from this craziness and
| settle out of court for a non-fatal amount?
|
| They have already done so. Part of that settlement allowed them
| to appeal the result, which is what this is.
| sourcepluck wrote:
| The discussion here makes for tawdry reading I must say. If the
| relatively technologically capable are apparently predominantly
| convinced now that copying a file is the same as stealing a
| physical good then the Internet Archive is already in bad shape.
| gojomo wrote:
| From the headline to the details, this is a deeply misinformed
| take on the arguments, current case status, & possible outcomes.
|
| "Save itself"?
|
| Despite occasional prior histrionic kayfabe about "IA in
| existential danger" in the media (& HN threads) - sometimes
| fanned by the IA's supporters themselves - that's never been the
| real stakes.
|
| For the serious librarians, publishing businesspeople, and
| lawyers involved, this has been about legal clarity for a gray
| area at the intersection of copyright, fair use, & traditional
| rights of first-sale and library practices. It's not really about
| damages, nor the IA's (or traditional publishers') existence.
| Instead: the principles controlling what's allowable going
| forward.
|
| To that end, per Wikipedia, as of _eight months ago_ (August
| 2023), the lawsuit parties already reached & had the court
| approve a negotiated settlement that caps the potential costs to
| the IA at a survivable level, & sets ground rules for future
| similar e-book activities that the Hachette et al (4 major
| publishers) plaintiffs and AAP (publishers' trade group) find
| acceptable. But further: this mutual settlement permits IA to
| continue its legal appeal on the principles involved.
|
| From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachette_v._Internet_Archive#
| F...>:
|
| _> On August 11, 2023, the parties reached a negotiated
| judgment. The agreement prescribes a permanent injunction against
| the Internet Archive preventing it from distributing the
| plaintiffs ' books, except those for which no e-book is currently
| available,[3] as well as an undisclosed payment to the
| plaintiffs.[25][26] The agreement also preserves the right for
| the Internet Archive to appeal the previous ruling.[25][26]_
|
| That is: the publishers were never b-movie villains trying to
| destroy a public resource; the IA was never reckless anarchists
| gambling all its other programs for a quixotic legal precedent.
| They were all adults with a legitimate legal dispute about what's
| allowed, seeking a clear definitive resolution in the culturally-
| appropriate manner.
|
| And via the settlement and appeal, the parties are still working
| out the issues.
|
| This author misdescribes the IA as "a profitable enterprise
| (bringing in between $20 and $30 million per year) that is on the
| verge of a potentially devastating legal ruling which could put
| [it] out of business". But IA is a non-profit, arguing for a
| mission-critical principle - a principle which is a plausible
| extrapolation of existing fair-use rights and library/IA
| practices into a new domain. And it's doing so _with explicit
| permission under the existing settlement_ , capping financial
| risks far below any existential risk.
|
| This author further deceptively excerpts IA's central argument as
| being just "Controlled digital lending is not equivalent to
| posting an ebook online for anyone to read". Against this, the
| author writes, essentially, "nuh-uh, that's exactly what they
| did".
|
| In fact the full necessary context of IA's argument is:
|
| _> First, Publishers disregard the key feature of controlled
| digital lending: the controls that ensure borrowing a book
| digitally adheres to the same owned-to-loaned ratio inherent in
| borrowing a book physically. Publishers repeatedly compare IA's
| lending to inapposite practices that lack this key feature.
| Controlled digital lending is not equivalent to posting an ebook
| online for anyone to read or copy (contra Resp.Br. 27) or to
| peer-to-peer file-sharing by companies like Napster (contra
| Resp.Br. 5). Neither practice is based on use of a library's
| lawfully acquired physical copy, and neither ensures that only
| the one person entitled to borrow the book (or recording) can
| access it at a time. Controlled digital lending is also distinct
| from the digital resale considered in Capitol Records, LLC v.
| ReDigi, Inc., 910 F.3d 649 (2d Cir. 2018). Contra Resp.Br. 35.
| The former's purpose is nonprofit library lending, while the
| latter's was commercial resale. Controlled digital lending is
| fair use, even if these other practices are not._
|
| That is: the heart of IA argument is that its "controlled digital
| lending" practices were technologically limited in purpose and
| duration to be like libraries' other traditional legal reuses of
| owned works. (Typically, this meant maintaining the 1:1 physical-
| copy-to-leant-ebook ratio, but even under the temporary "National
| Emergency Library" program, it meant no permanent unrestricted
| copies were created - all rights-managed borrowings could and did
| expire when the crisis ended and normal book sources reopened.)
|
| This author's manipulative clipping distorts the IA's filing into
| a strawman not matching the actual arguments advanced.
| squigz wrote:
| > preventing it from distributing the plaintiffs' books, except
| those for which no e-book is currently available
|
| Wait. Does this mean the IA can't lend books that the
| publishers currently sell ebooks for?
| Giorgi wrote:
| Copyright is outdated and needs to be canceled, as well as patent
| system and everything that restricts mankind's free access to the
| information.
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| Regardless of the legal merits of the Internet Archive's case,
| and regardless of Hachette Book Group's insistence otherwise,
| it's clear from Hachette's arguments and public statements that
| they would be happiest if public libraries altogether didn't
| exist and fair use was erased from law.
|
| And regardless of what the law _is_ , the Internet Archive an
| other libraries _should_ be allowed to lend out a digitized copy
| of a physical book they own while the physical book is not in use
| (i.e. controlled digital lending). This is especially true for
| books without an official digital edition. Hachette doesn 't want
| this, because they want to extract as much revenue from libraries
| as possible through continuing subscription fees for digital
| catalogs.
|
| Finally, while I agree that the Internet Archive's arguments that
| the National Emergency Library's unlimited lending should be fair
| use were always tenuous, I'm still saddened that the arguments
| failed, and think the precedent their failure sets is much worse
| for society than the precedent from their success would have
| been.
| Udo wrote:
| Hopefully in the far future the IA will be distributed over many
| individual user nodes, but that doesn't seem feasible right now.
| What we need right now are 2-4 high powered individuals or
| companies building local mirrors. Hopefully the IA would
| cooperate in setting these up. These mirror organizations should
| be distributed around the globe in different jurisdictions, and
| they need to take the negative lessons from IA into account: for
| example, they should probably be structured such that the legally
| precarious data-serving arm is a different entity from the
| organization that owns the server space.
|
| We absolutely need this kind of resilience, and we need it now.
| Otherwise this time will retroactively be dubbed the digital dark
| ages because so very little information actually survived and
| made it out.
|
| Someone in this thread was estimating about USD 2M investment in
| hardware, then 1M facilities and a small team of people for
| initial setup, plus connectivity costs and maintenance - let's
| say 4M initially and about 1M ongoing costs yearly. A single
| wealthy individual could fund one of these sites. You don't even
| have to be "rich" to fund this, being well off would be enough.
|
| If you fit this description and you're feeling altruistic or are
| looking for a lasting legacy that will benefit humanity far into
| the future, use a portion of your capital to make this happen.
| ethanholt1 wrote:
| If this makes the IA website go down, we are going to lose so
| much important internet history. For example, Garry's Mod
| recently had almost all of its Nintendo addons taken down, and
| they were republished on the IA. So if we lose the IA, we might
| honestly lose quite a lot of preserved media, between games,
| videos, audio, and everything else.
| lucb1e wrote:
| "last-ditch effort to save itself" is the title, "things aren't
| looking good for the Internet's archivist" the subtitle. But no
| mention of what losing the lawsuit actually means for IA: is it
| actually existential as the title and subtitle are alluding to?
| That's the only thing I care about if we assume (1) the IA is
| important and (2) they're gonna lose, both of which I think
| virtually everyone thinks are realistic statements. Bit
| disappointed by the article because it's rehashing what we know
|
| Edit: found the answer
|
| > per Wikipedia, as of eight months ago (August 2023), the
| lawsuit parties already reached & had the court approve a
| negotiated settlement that caps the potential costs to the IA at
| a survivable level
|
| ^from another comment,
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40203627>, nearly at the
| very bottom of the thread (perhaps because it looks like a wall
| of text at first glance? But the most important info is first).
| Thanks, gojomo!
|
| I just hope this appeal cannot make it worse than it is. Sounds
| like it will soon again be a good time to donate to the IA: they
| survive, plaintiffs see there is nothing more to take, then we
| fund their regular operations and hope for no more "emergency"
| ideas
| dada78641 wrote:
| > I just hope this appeal cannot make it worse than it is
|
| It cannot. The IA already basically got the worst possible
| judgment.
|
| This is also not an existential threat to the IA, and payment
| has already been agreed upon. The reporting on this is
| extremely sensationalist.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > and payment has already been agreed upon
|
| Why bother appealing then? Seems to just be wasting lawyers
| fees on both sides.
| uuddlrlrbaba wrote:
| Maybe instead of paying lawyers to enforce copyright these corps
| should pay the authors more.
|
| Its so frustrating that copyright claims provide riches to the
| middlemen while buyers/consumers and authors/artists get screwed
| over again and again.
| fb03 wrote:
| Can't read the article because blocked in my country (Brazil) for
| some reason (legal demands) ;-(
| stavros wrote:
| I wanted to write a piece of FOSS that would allow dissemination
| of a large dataset. It would basically work kind of like a
| torrent swarm, you'd have a "tracker" (the Internet Archive)
| deciding what it wants each person to store (usually the rarest
| content would get stored preferentially), and the user could say
| "I want to donate 2 TB of space to the Internet Archive" and
| would download whatever files the IA thought were most at risk of
| being lost.
|
| This would have the added benefit that, if the IA went down, the
| public could reconstruct (some of) the dataset from this swarm.
|
| I spoke to a few archiving organizations about whether they'd
| find it useful, but there wasn't much interest. Too bad, I think
| a lot of people would like to donate some disk space right about
| now.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| It's surprisingto me the internet archive isn't rakimg in the
| money selling AI training data. There are so many quality
| resources that aren't available on the internet anymore and
| aren't discoverable.
| Iris2645 wrote:
| A bit obvious that hosting this sort of service in the U.S would
| have bad consequences.
| CivBase wrote:
| There is another story on the HN front page about the FCC fining
| wireless carriers for sharing location data. Someone left a
| comment comparing the fine for each carrier to their yearly
| revenue. The biggest fine was for only 0.1% of the carrier's
| yearly revenue.
|
| What the Internet Archive did was obviously illegal, no matter
| how well intentioned, and I'm disappointed in how they've handled
| the situation. But what those carriers did is arguably much worse
| in regards to the public good. So why is the IA looking at its
| potential end while those carriers receive wrist slaps?
| apgwoz wrote:
| I recently read an article (can't find it, but similar to this:
| https://blog.reedsy.com/how-much-do-authors-make/) which pointed
| out that the publishing industry is very similar to Venture
| Capital where 1 hit pays for a ton of the other books that sell
| at most 1000s of copies.
|
| So, if you make books available for free, with unlimited copies,
| the publisher never gets their advance back, never funds the next
| hit, etc, etc, etc.
|
| I'm all for freedom for information, but unless we can come up
| with a distribution model that ensures authors actually get
| paid... I've gotta side with the publishers here. They gotta pay
| the authors somehow.
| daniel31x13 wrote:
| Try Linkwarden - https://linkwarden.app
|
| - Preserve bookmarks by capturing a screenshot of the saved page.
|
| - Open-source and fully self-hostable.
|
| - Support for collaborative bookmarking.
|
| P.S. I'm the maintainer of the project.
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