[HN Gopher] Let Readers Read
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Let Readers Read
Author : mdp2021
Score : 153 points
Date : 2024-06-17 16:01 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.archive.org)
| mekarpeles wrote:
| Thank you for posting @mdp2021 --
|
| Mek here, program lead for OpenLibrary.org at the Internet
| Archive.
|
| Over the last several months, readers have felt the devastating
| impact of more than 500,000 books being removed from the Internet
| Archive's lending library, as a result of Hachette v. Internet
| Archive https://help.archive.org/help/why-are-so-many-books-
| listed-a...
|
| In less than two weeks, on June 28th, the courts will hear the
| oral argument for the Internet Archive's appeal.
|
| What's at stake is the fundamental ability for library patrons to
| continue borrowing and reading the books the Internet Archive
| owns, like any other library.
|
| Please consider signing the Open Letter to urge publishers to
| restore access to the 500,000 books they've caused to be removed
| from the Internet Archive's lending library and let readers read.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Thank you for your work, Mek. Glad I was attentive.
|
| Let us make this wretched world worth it.
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| Copyright law in this country has been rogue for decades. Thank
| you, Sonny Bono!
| raybb wrote:
| I'd love to see the stats about how many books purchases happen
| on Amazon because they're referred to from openlibrary.org (which
| has Amazon links on all pages).
|
| I think the 1 hour loan available for so many books on IA feels
| pretty similar to standing in a bookstore and reading for a
| little while. You get an idea if the book is worth your time and
| if you really like it you'll probably want to buy it somewhere
| that you can easily annotate it and maybe even pass it on to the
| friend.
| rolph wrote:
| "You get an idea if the book is worth your time"
|
| when this happens, it signifigantly raises the bar for authors
| and producers to deliver a desired quality rather than a spiffy
| promotional campaign for a pulp piece.
| wongarsu wrote:
| A bar that the book industry always seemed happy with. The
| romantic view of "traditional publishing" contains a value
| chain that starts with a publisher selecting the best drafts
| sent to them, spending lots of time in a back and forth
| between editor and author to polish that draft, and ends with
| a bookseller who is an avid reader and can give personalized
| recommendations to every shopper.
|
| Of course in today's reality we have largely anonymous book
| stores, "bestseller" lists that are systematically
| manipulated, and publishers that lower their standards in the
| face of competition from self-publishing (both with cheaper
| book printing and online publishing). But providing books
| that are worth your time still seems to be one of the large
| selling-points of publishers.
| boznz wrote:
| Send a Sample from amazon and other eBook suppliers is usually
| 10% of the book. Another unfortunate metric for modern authors
| as they now have to make something interesting happen in the
| first 10% rather than a slow character and plot build up.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| For those who don't know, the case against archive.org is pretty
| rock solid and justifiable. They had been operating a lending
| library of ebooks, where you could 'check out' an ebook file and
| they wouldn't let anyone else read it until you had 'put it
| back'. They had many options for evading DRM and told you to
| delete the file when you 'put it back' on the honor system, so
| this was already legally shaky, but during the pandemic they
| disabled the limits and let anyone 'check out' anything they
| wanted without waiting for a copy to become available - AKA
| hosting a pirate site for downloading unauthorized ebook copies,
| just with 'library' branding. That is what they got sued for.
| sayhar wrote:
| A lot of this is flatly untrue.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| No, it is not.
| crtasm wrote:
| Then you can give us some proof/citation on "They had many
| options for evading DRM" please?
|
| Every time I've borrowed a book on there, it's used Adobe
| DRM just like when I buy an ebook.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| The options to download the book as a PDF or epub.
| crtasm wrote:
| Those options don't exist for books in their lending
| programme though.
|
| Example:
| https://archive.org/details/introducingpytho0000luba
| pie_flavor wrote:
| I have seen it many times. Perhaps they removed it since
| the lawsuit.
| crtasm wrote:
| I have too: on books that are not part of their
| controlled lending programme.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Like what?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _They had many options for evading DRM_
|
| As does Adobe, Amazon... There's no need for me to go through
| the list alphabetically. There's fundamentally no such thing as
| a technological protection measure, not in a world where the
| compact digital camera exists.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| The ease with which a padlock is broken by bolt cutters is
| not a legal defense against doing so.
| crtasm wrote:
| What do you even mean here? IA didn't break DRM, and they
| use industry standard DRM.
| skulk wrote:
| Equating physical property (subject to scarcity) and
| digital property is what ends up destroying the foundation
| of freedom in computing. Can we not perpetuate this way of
| thinking and instead find better ways to support creators?
| nimih wrote:
| > They had been operating a lending library of ebooks, where
| you could 'check out' an ebook file and they wouldn't let
| anyone else read it until you had 'put it back'. They had many
| options for evading DRM and told you to delete the file when
| you 'put it back' on the honor system
|
| This is basically how checking out ebooks from my "regular"
| library works. Not only is the DRM relatively easy to remove
| (even for non-technical users), returning the books is _also_
| on the honor system (to wit: on a Kindle, you retain access to
| books indefinitely so long as you 're in airplane mode; on a
| Kobo, so long as you keep the book open and avoid returning to
| the home screen; these tricks are both easily discovered and,
| IME, routinely shared among people with ereaders). It's
| possible IA should've avoided poking the bear by removing these
| nominal restrictions during the pandemic, but framing their
| normal operation as substantially different from that of more
| traditional libraries is rather disingenuous.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| 1. There's a difference between a weak DRM format, and a
| "download as PDF" option.
|
| 2. "Poking the bear by removing these nominal restrictions"
| is the "branding" I was talking about. Their "emergency
| library" was a pirate site, plain and simple. You can
| describe it as a procedural difference from what they were
| doing before, but that doesn't stop it from being piracy.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _was_
|
| Vacuous labels. A library provides access to texts; the
| idea of lending single texts serially just comes from the
| physical restrictions of physical books, which loses
| meaning with the electronic format.
|
| A library lends books. There is little difference if the
| queue is respected when such queue is artificial.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| No, it comes from the legal restrictions of copyright,
| which forbid making and distributing copies without the
| permission of the copyright holder. "Library" is not a
| magic word that exempts you from all copyright
| restrictions.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| And in fact the copyright holder has no power about its
| product, when published, not being acquired by key
| libraries. It was so for example under Ptolemy III
| Euergetes (who mandated that every found book be copied
| for the Museum in Alexandria), and it is so today.
| Libraries are there for collection of and access to
| recorded knowledge.
|
| The modalities of accession had a form with the physical
| book, and may lose meaning with current new formats
| (there is no natural exclusive access to a single token).
| So, labelling "piracy" simultaneous access may easily be
| just vacuous technicality.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| 'Vacuous' is a good word to describe comments about
| Ptolemy and tokens, when copyright law forbids making and
| distributing copies without permission from the copyright
| holder, and that is exactly what IA was doing.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Reference to the traditional historical intention about
| having libraries and to relation between codified law and
| practicalities will remain vacuous to you in meaning for
| as long as you will refuse to see the communicated point
| about a clash between principles, which makes the
| copyright laws you mention, as part of a dialectic, even
| weaker than normal positive law.
| finnless wrote:
| There is no download as PDF option for works in-copyright.
| nimih wrote:
| > There's a difference between a weak DRM format, and a
| "download as PDF" option.
|
| Can you direct me to a book available to borrow in the IA,
| which both requires copyright protection, and is available
| to download as a DRM-free PDF? My understanding is that no
| such book currently exists, nor did it exist in the pre-
| pandemic regime.
|
| > "Poking the bear by removing these nominal restrictions"
| is the "branding" I was talking about. Their "emergency
| library" was a pirate site, plain and simple. You can
| describe it as a procedural difference from what they were
| doing before, but that doesn't stop it from being piracy.
|
| I don't think there's any great contradiction in the ideas
| that a) the barriers the IA had prior to the pandemic (and
| still has, to my knowledge) against piracy are perfunctory
| and largely ineffective, b) they are the same barriers that
| any US-based library with an ebook rental program uses, and
| c) even slightly weakening those barriers caused the IA to
| be _de facto_ facilitating piracy in a legal sense,
| regardless of their intentions.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >That is what they got sued for.
|
| It is not. The judge ruled the CDL, their original system, was
| illegal, and the only mention of the period where they removed
| the limits was saying basically "as controlled digital lending
| was already illegal, the pandemic actions were also illegal."
| jandrese wrote:
| IMHO the Internet Archive was always going to get sued because
| they were treating ebooks like physical books and that's
| contrary to the copyright maximalism that is law around ebooks.
| The COVID change didn't really make a difference, they
| publishers were never going to allow some random people on the
| internet undo all of the work they put into adding restrictions
| on digital media.
|
| They're never ever going to allow something like the doctrine
| of first sale to happen again. That's why you can't have an
| regular library with ebooks. The publishers will not settle for
| anything less than charging libraries per-read and requiring
| negotiation for every title offered. The old library model
| doesn't maximize shareholder value for the publisher. Also to
| blame is our elected representatives who could legislate a
| better system for the people, but are too beholden to corporate
| interests to ever do so.
| aeriose wrote:
| Isn't the whole reason the lawsuit started because the Internet
| Archive went above an own-to-loan ratio of 1? This blog post
| completely leaves this detail out and makes it seem they were
| always only doing 1 physical copy to 1 digital copy which is not
| true.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Isn't the whole reason the lawsuit started because the
| Internet Archive went above an own-to-loan ratio of 1?
|
| No. The lawsuit was about CDL as a whole, and there's plenty of
| evidence showing publishers were preparing for it even without
| the COVID emergency library. If the lawsuit was just over the
| emergency library, I doubt IA would still be fighting.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Honestly, I don't understand why they're picking a fight with
| publishers. These lawsuits endanger the future of the Internet
| Archive which does a lot of really unique and irreplaceable work
| in digital preservation.
|
| There are plenty of other groups with deeper pockets and bigger
| institutional backing that preserve and share books. Let someone
| else fight this battle.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| It is already ongoing, the publishers already sued - and
| initially won. This is about a request for appeal.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Oh, well, I guess I hope they win their appeal because it's
| too late to unring that bell. When I read about it, it seemed
| like a very open-and-shut infringement case, though. It seems
| like their only chance will be drawing some activist judges
| who want to make new law.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _We envision a world ... where library patrons are free to read
| without fear of corporate or government surveillance_
|
| I would like to remind the public of:
|
| # _An attorney says she saw her library reading habits reflected
| in mobile ads. That 's not supposed to happen_
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/18/mystery_of_the_target...
| savingsPossible wrote:
| Reading the article, it seems that this relates not to the
| internet archive, that is privacy preserving, but to another
| public library (that aparently was leaking or selling data -- I
| did not read it entirely)
| mdp2021 wrote:
| The point is that the Archive highlights the risk of
| surveillance over library patrons, and I highlighted that
| instances of said risk have been reported.
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| In fact, the article sugests it was a third party, for-profit
| DRM service, such as OverDrive, which publishers force
| libraries to use to lend audio and e-books, who sold the
| patron's data to advertisers. Perhaps this is what the GP
| comment intended to point out.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| Am I the only one who feels embarrassed when I see something like
| this?
|
| I'm just a nerd. I'm not involved with ebook publishing. But I
| know for a fact that I'm the 1%. 99% of the people can't use a
| computer as well as I'm able to. So this is my 1%. And when my 1%
| creates a digital version of a product that is inferior to the
| physical version of the product, and then tells the 99% it's the
| better way but it turns out they just didn't consider everything,
| and they don't even seem to care, and it just keeps making things
| worse for a lot of people, I just feel embarrassed. It wasn't
| supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be a total victory,
| better in every conceivable way. If it's not for the smell and
| texture of paper, then I don't want to hear "but physical books
| are better because..." This isn't even a complicated technology.
| It's just text.
|
| How can an industry that can't figure out how to make a book
| digital handle something like artificial intelligence?
| eevilspock wrote:
| maybe we should adopt the internet business model everywhere, and
| allow publishers to monetize books delivered free to readers via
| the Internet Archive by inserting ad space in those books. Better
| yet, require your local library to use "ad supported" versions of
| those books, with ads every 50 pages or so.
|
| /sarcasm
|
| (I should not have to use the /sarcasm tag, but there is a large
| body of libertarian types who'd think I'm serious, and will now
| realize that libraries are communist)
| mdp2021 wrote:
| It is probably worth noting that libraries are traditionally
| State-supported, because the development of internal knowledge
| is considered crucial for the development of everything else.
|
| The business model _is_ that society wants them and finances
| them for the improvement of society.
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