Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library • Hacker News Board

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#61

Post by geofft » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 2:39 AM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #3

> What about those who say we’re stealing from authors & publishers? Has any normal human being who is not a publisher or an author actually made this claim?

I'm not a publisher or an author (I'm an SRE, I've never made income from the sale of anything I have copyright from, and I've many times been on the side of fair use as a hobbyist musician) and I'm willing to make that claim. It's as straightforward, IMO, as the claim that not tipping is stealing. Yes, technically, it's merely not giving them money that they expect, it's not taking money they already have. But the practical effect is that it subverts a revenue stream that, for better or worse (definitely worse, in the case of tipping), they rely on, and it was reasonable (legal and socially acceptable) for them to rely on that revenue stream.

I'd like to live in a world where authors didn't rely on copyright law for their living. I'd also like to live in a world where waitstaff didn't rely on tips to make minimum wage, let alone a living wage. I don't.

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#62

Post by geofft » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 2:44 AM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #39

comex wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trouble is, this mob was so successful at Berne that ever since they've assumed that they've a god-given right to take umbrage and raise utter hell whenever anyone takes the slightest liberties with copyright—even if those actions are lawful. It's true, they do do that even when the actions are lawful. However, in this particular case, the Internet Archive's actions are almost certainly not lawful, although the who…

Lots of physical books not available otherwise due to lockdown. I figure that is sufficient justification.

What's preventing a library whose physical premises are closed from saying, "Okay, there are 10 copies of this book that literally nobody can get to, we'll lend out 10 e-books," using the old Controlled Digital Lending model?

That is, what about the lockdown requires moving away from the established (even if not court-tested) one-to-one basis and making a new fair use argument about uncontrolled digital lending?

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#63

Post by eatonphil » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 2:48 AM UTC

I'm unfamiliar with their library contents and this thread didn't go into a lot of detail. Their sci-fi section (sorted by most "viewed") includes many classics by authors such as Asimov, Phillip K. Dick, Bradbury, Vonnegut, etc. Looks like a good offering.

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#64

Post by geofft » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 2:56 AM UTC

hilbert42 wrote: post #58

comex wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trouble is, this mob was so successful at Berne that ever since they've assumed that they've a god-given right to take umbrage and raise utter hell whenever anyone takes the slightest liberties with copyright—even if those actions are lawful. It's true, they do do that even when the actions are lawful. However, in this particular case, the Internet Archive's actions are almost certainly not lawful, although the who…

"Internet Archive's actions are almost certainly not lawful " This raises an even more important point: what do citizens do when laws are enacted that do not have acceptance or are not considered as legitimate by a majority of citizens? This is why enacting treaties such as the Berne Conventions (WIPO etc) are so damned dangerous. By their intrinsic nature, it's quite possible for small non-representative groups to h…

The Berne Convention only took effect in the US in 1989, well after Victor Hugo was dead and quite thoroughly decomposed. (I mention the US because the Internet Archive is in the US and subject to US law, as is the Author's Guild. The National Emergency Library is tied to the duration of the US national emergency.)

The idea that the majority of people in the US are dissatisfied with the 1989 changes to US copyright law is a pretty strong one, and is at least nominally at odds with the fact that it finally got passed after a century - how did it finally become time to pass it if people were against it?

(Take care to distinguish opposing the law from being indifferent to it - certainly there are many laws that do not affect me that I'm indifferent to, such as the Railroad Retirement Act of 1974, and even if the majority of the country feels as I do, it would not really follow that that law is illegitimate.)

Yes, it's a serious problem when there are laws that the majority of citizens find illegitimate - but the contrapositive of that is that most of the time the default assumption is that for any given law, it probably is legitimate.

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#65

Post by geofft » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 3:10 AM UTC

bsanr2 wrote: post #56

geofft wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They offer an opt-out process that suspends lending completely. That's not how copyright works in the US. Maybe it should be, but it's not. The owner of a copyright gets to say how it's used, they don't merely have a right to refuse to uses if they're aware of them. There are certain exceptions, such as compulsory licensing (e.g., in the US you can get a license to cover a song at a fixed-by-law rate) and fair use,…

> That's not how copyright works in the US. Maybe it should be, but it's not. The owner of a copyright gets to say how it's used, they don't merely have a right to refuse to uses if they're aware of them. I'm not sure how Youtube et al.'s situation is different in these regards. In both cases, the takedown process is covered under the DMCA, no? > Copyright doesn't protect data, it protects the creative expression of…

> I'm not sure how Youtube et al.'s situation is different in these regards. In both cases, the takedown process is covered under the DMCA, no?

The DMCA (specifically OCILLA / section 512) is about the liability of YouTube as an intermediary who hosts other people's videos. If I decide to post a YouTube video where I do a dramatic reading of the Windows source code, I am still breaking the law - the DMCA merely protects YouTube from liability from making copies of my video and therefore making copies of the Windows source code. In return, the DMCA gives Microsoft an easier-than-usual process to ask YouTube to take my content down. They can still sue me, if they want; they'd have to go to court instead of just sending a letter, so they'd probably decide that it's enough to just get YouTube to remove the video and not bother suing. But they could.

Notably, you can't use the DMCA safe harbor provisions to give yourself safe harbor. I cannot, on my personal blog which I host, post a DMCA contact address and avoid liability for posting copyrighted content. (Probably I'd trick some copyright-scanning bots and get away with it in practice provided I took down anything they complained about promptly, but it's legally meaningless.)

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#66

Post by silverreads » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 3:10 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #59

JadeNB wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Otherwise it seems a bit excessive for IA to suddenly bet the whole house on this. What is the proper and proportionate response to a pandemic? I think that no-one knows, and, if I were in their shoes, then I'd rather history see me as the one who went too far in pursuit of the public good than the one who didn't do what I could have for fear that it was too much.

A lot of terrible things have been done by people who went too far in pursuit of what they thought was the public good. One potential proportionate response, in my opinion, would have been to lean harder on the existing model of Controlled Digital Lending (where each lent e-book is backed by a physical book), and instead of saying they're going to move to uncontrolled lending, put out a call for people to buy more ba…

This comment hardly adds anything productive here and makes a heck of an accusation. What damage has sharing books freely during a national emergency ever done to anyone? The authors lose nothing and gain readers.

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#67

Post by yesenadam » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 3:13 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #61

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #3

> What about those who say we’re stealing from authors & publishers? Has any normal human being who is not a publisher or an author actually made this claim?

I'm not a publisher or an author (I'm an SRE, I've never made income from the sale of anything I have copyright from, and I've many times been on the side of fair use as a hobbyist musician) and I'm willing to make that claim. It's as straightforward, IMO, as the claim that not tipping is stealing. Yes, technically, it's merely not giving them money that they expect, it's not taking money they already have. But the p…

> I'd also like to live in a world where waitstaff didn't rely on tips to make minimum wage, let alone a living wage. I don't.

You do, mostly. I believe it's just the USA where obligatory "tipping" is a thing. I learnt a bit about the history of tipping from Adam Ruins Everything S01E05 Adam Ruins Restaurants, highly recommended.

Excerpt about tipping, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_vivC7c_1k

(Yes, his style is a lil in-your-face, but the content is excellent, and often shows onscreen the title and author of papers referenced - how many shows do that?!)

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#68

Post by sneak » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 3:16 AM UTC

flafla2 wrote: post #57

ooobit wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, they're renting games that aren't widely available for purchase anymore? At what point do we sit back and agree that it makes no sense to extend protections to IP that isn't being sold anymore? Forgive my possible naivety here, but we grant patents/copyrights/trademarks to mitigate opportunity costs in markets, not to stop someone else from taking credit for an idea. So, if there's no continuous market, the risk…

The problem is that for game ROMs specifically, opening them to the public domain devalues potential opportunities for re-releases and remasters. The Nintendo virtual console service and S/NES classic are prominent examples. So it isn't so simple that there is "no harm done" by forcing game ROMs to fall into public domain. That all being said, I still agree with you. I really don't care how much money Nintendo, Micro…

> I really don't care how much money Nintendo, Microsoft, or Sony wants to make on decades-old games, at a certain point it becomes a cultural artifact.

Why does time need to pass for that to be true?

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#69

Post by sneak » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 3:18 AM UTC

ddevault wrote: post #13

btilly wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly.

That is obscene . Screw copyright.

I agree; but think of it this way: if lending libraries hadn't been a thing for a long time when ebooks came along, they wouldn't even be allowed to do CDL. They'd have said "no transfer of ownership whatsoever", just like iTunes does.

The fact that CDL is allowed at all is a victory against these greedy copyright types.

Re: Internet Archive responds: Why we released the National Emergency Library

#70

Post by thescriptkiddie » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 3:27 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #41

mcherm wrote: post #24

Dear Internet Archive: Not only do I support the measure you have taken and feel that it falls within the bounds of pro-social fair use, but I applaud the measures you have taken that are so important in this extreme time. Furthermore, if any court finds that your action was not appropriate, I will urge my lawmakers to craft a specific exception to copyright law to support the internet archive lending at all times, n…

> Furthermore, if any court finds that your action was not appropriate, I will urge my lawmakers to craft a specific exception to copyright law to support the internet archive lending at all times, not just during a national emergency. Would there be any limits to your proposed exception? Or could they buy a single copy of a book and lend out as many simultaneous copies as readers asked for?

Congratulations, you have invented the library.

Snark aside, how is this any different than going to your local library and feeding quarters to the photocopier? Scale?