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Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

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Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#131

Post by VonGuard »

ghaff wrote: post #127
VonGuard wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're both so right. The only thing that matters is money.

You are free to give away whatever you want so long as it's yours to give away. For example, the ACM has opened up their pubs during this health emergency which is a nice move on their part. Do I think it would have been preferable for the publishers and IA to reach some sort of agreement? Of course. But, much as I'm a fan of the IA, they shouldn't IMO be doing this unilaterally.

Again, libraries are closed. Libraries do this every day. People are locked in their homes with nothing to do, so they opened their archives as a gesture of goodwill and generocity to a nation of people who cannot get books from libraries. While this may not be legal, it is humane. The problem with this country is that the humane thing is often illegal. We cannot give this food to the hungry, we could be liable.

It's honestly what sucks most about this country: if someone is making money on it, everyone else who comes near it is powerless against it.

Yes, they are breaking copyright law. Who gives a flying fuck about copyright law when there are 100,000 dead people and riots in the streets?

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#132

Post by StormChaser_5 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #123
StormChaser_5 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will agree that the writing is not stolen when you give every line of code produced by you or that you will produce in the future or any code produced by any company you have ever been part of or invested in to me for free to use as I wish. Until then if you want to read an authors work then you need to pay their (usually very small) fee.

If someone pirates my code that's not stealing, that's copyright infringement. I would love to live in a society that would recognize the post-scarcity nature of many goods nowadays and de-commodifies them, including computer programs, basic food, and in certain cases housing.

Me too. I would love to be able to make anything I write free while having all my material needs seen to and only writing for the love of it/prestige.

But we don't live in that society.

I guess we could argue about semantics but depriving me of my ability to legitimately profit from my work while the IA wrapped itself in a flag of doing good seems like at the very least a very low form of behaviour, as well as illegal. And I doubt many people would describe us any word other than theft.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#133

Post by EvanAnderson »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #118
EvanAnderson wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright doesn't exist as boolean. It's a social contract-- a give and take between the owners of "intellectual property" and society-- and exists along a continuum. Copyright in the US has, in the last 50-ish years, taken a hard turn toward benefit for the owners of the "intellectual property" (not requiring registration anymore, increased duration of terms, the DMCA and everything that came along with it). I'd arg…

One clarification: copyright was never a (direct) tradeoff between desires of the public and desires of copyright holders. It's a tradeoff between two desires of the public: the public wants plenty of works created, and the public also want plenty of rights over those works (for purposes such as building more works upon them, remixing, etc). The desires of copyright holders should only enter into that indirectly, ins…

The desires of the owners should be indirect. I wish they were. I think it's fair to say the owners likely started exerting their influence (money for legislative influence) a long time ago. That copyright law has continued to move toward the owner's rights end of the spectrum serves as an indicator that legislators see the owner's interests as an explicit part of the contract, intended or not.

Aside from that, insofar as US copyright takes inspiration from the Statute of Anne, I'd say that the interests of copyright holders were never completely indirect ("... and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families...").

re: The "what we should be asking" - I don't think we can conceive of the possible business models that could spring up if changes were made to copyright law. Sure-- some business models might become untenable-- but I don't think entire classes of works would just disappear. I'd rather ask "What new business models or classes of works would be permitted if this particular exclusive privilege were relaxed?"

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#134

Post by sudosysgen »

StormChaser_5 wrote: post #132
sudosysgen wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone pirates my code that's not stealing, that's copyright infringement. I would love to live in a society that would recognize the post-scarcity nature of many goods nowadays and de-commodifies them, including computer programs, basic food, and in certain cases housing.

Me too. I would love to be able to make anything I write free while having all my material needs seen to and only writing for the love of it/prestige. But we don't live in that society. I guess we could argue about semantics but depriving me of my ability to legitimately profit from my work while the IA wrapped itself in a flag of doing good seems like at the very least a very low form of behaviour, as well as illega…

Sure, but as it's going to only way for this to happen, and it certainly is possible, is if people start acting against large actors that have a vested interested against this in ways that make de-commodification necessary for the existence of the industry.

It is theft in the same way that someone squatting unused land in the north of Canada and being granted ownership is theft. The fact that we live in a system where this might cause loss of income for someone is neither necessary nor the moral responsibility of the Internet Archive, SciHub or Library Genesis.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#135

Post by jawns »

VonGuard wrote: post #25

Publishers: You cannot save our books without our permission. Also Publishers: Oh, damn.... uhm... you want THAT book? Uhm... we don't even have a copy anymore... Sorry.

This is addressed within the press release.

IA is claiming that they're mostly making available copies of out-of-print books that are hard to find.

But that's not true. Within their "Emergency Library," there are quite a few books that were published relatively recently.

For instance, I'm an author of several books. I found one of my books, from 2014, which is still in print, on their list.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#136

Post by EvanAnderson »

jfk13 wrote: post #94
EvanAnderson wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't "steal" anything. If you mean copyright infringement, say "copyright infringement". There's no scarcity involved-- nobody lost the use or ownership of any physical article-- so nothing was "stolen". re: your business model being sustainable if the current "industry" goes away - Maybe that ship has sailed. You can't make a living being a buggy whip manufacturer or an elevator operator anymore either.

> nobody lost the use or ownership of any physical article Presumably the author and/or publisher lost the use of the income they could reasonably have expected to receive corresponding to a certain number of copies of the work going into circulation. Anyhow, physical articles are not the only things that can be stolen.

Each act of copyright infringement does not equate to a lost sale.

We have a term for copyright infringement. We have a term for unlawfully taking things that are subject to scarcity. They are two different things. The lack of scarcity matters.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#137

Post by ghaff »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #105
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as people conflate the last step's marginal cost with the amortized cost of making a thing that ends up in your hands, we're gonna be stuck arguing about this.

There are certainly expenses incurred by the publisher that have nothing to do with the physical articles. It seems like the marginal cost of the "last step" cost is still a very significant component, though. High-touch sales channels, handling returns (consignment sales), and co-promotion expenses all seem tightly coupled to that "last step" and sales of physical articles.

It's been a while since I've looked at it but, basically, the cost of the physical article is a smaller slice of the pie than many think. There was a lot of discussion about this when e-books first got big and weren't that much cheaper than mass market or trade paperbacks. As I recall, the number was around $2/copy.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#139

Post by jawns »

sp332 wrote: post #44
mrgalaxy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay that seems like pretty brazen copyright infringement then. That's crazy! Maybe they hope to disrupt the publishing industry, but really just sounds like a way to get sued.

There's an opt-out. And they're partnering with a bunch of other libraries that are closed due to the pandemic so maybe they'll get to count all of those copies as well. They also excluded all books published recently. So I doubt any author or publisher will be able to show significant damages in court.

> They also excluded all books published recently.

One of my books was published in 2014 and is on the list.

> There's an opt-out.

Because authors can opt out of having their books pirated, that makes it OK? How are authors notified about the existence of the opt-out? Oh, they're not? Hmm.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#140

Post by Wowfunhappy »

jasode wrote: post #72
zozbot234 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IA's lending is not unlimited, even with the National Emergency Library. The books are still restricted by DRM, they do keep track of how many copies are out for each book, and they do monitor the system to prevent abuse. It's a real library lending system, nothing like what they do with actual public domain works.

>IA's lending is not unlimited, even with the National Emergency Library. I'm not debating with you about the details since I haven't used IA's system myself but the last time this came up, a commenter explained that there were a bunch of loopholes in IA's "limits" that it was effectively "unlimited". E.g. after the checkout period expires, you just check out the ebook again. Again, I don't know if this is true. EDIT…

> Physical books are already limited in the sense that libraries' limited budgets only buy limited copies of paper books.

And just to drive this completely home, it's not an arbitrary restriction—if a library has a larger budget or a book is more popular, they can buy more copies of the book, which also benefits publishers.

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