201–210 of 358 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like that role is just waiting to be taken over by a kickstarter like model though.
It is happening (I recently got a kickstarted atlas of Mars - how fricking cool is that?!). But then the authors also have to do their own marketing and promotion, another care taken over by the publishers for these few authors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the US through it's massive influence and bullying would undoubtedly force it upon other countries, as they have done countless times including in the context of copyright.
In the case of copyright, at least nominally, it's the more-restrictive (and European) Berne Convention (1886) terms which have been adopted elsewhere. To what extent this reflects European rather than US interests I'm uncertain, though the latter certainly exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention
As far as it reflecting European interests, the Berne convention is against European interests as it pertains to US copyrighted work as it offers them less protection than US works and forces a higher standard for US copyright than domestic copyright in many cases.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the US through it's massive influence and bullying would undoubtedly force it upon other countries, as they have done countless times including in the context of copyright.
In the case of copyright, at least nominally, it's the more-restrictive (and European) Berne Convention (1886) terms which have been adopted elsewhere. To what extent this reflects European rather than US interests I'm uncertain, though the latter certainly exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention
When those laws are passed they try to get the laws to be stronger than the treaty. Thereby leading to differences in laws and a push for a new treaty to "harmonize" different copyright regimes. Strangely, the new treaty harmonizes on the strong end of the laws passed, thereby creating a ratchet effect.
After decades of success on things like copyright terms, Disney finally reached the end of the road when the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement died. As a result Steamboat Willie, written in 1924, will become public domain in 2024, some 68 years after it was originally supposed to do so.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like a creator or their commissioned agent coordinating a disintermediated "supply chain" of service providers, with the creator retaining ownership of the intellectual property rights, could be a viable and lower-overhead alternative.
That exists in the form of "vanity" publishers and "hybrid" publishers, which tend to rip off their clients, instead of providing actual value. In addition, people tend to vastly underestimate the difficulty of building a successful marketing campaign to actually sell books, in addition to the extreme difficulty of actually building relationships with distributors. Successfully selling a book is not that different th…
Individual book sellers still could do some marketing simply to increase sales once such a good book shows up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah but you didn't buy that book. You merely accepted the EULA for a license to read the content of the pages, as written, in the order presented.
You're joking, but this is the kind of thing that becomes true when enough people think it's true. What does a reasonable person think they're getting when they buy a book? That's the implied contract.
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.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd just like to jump in here to point out that most intellectual laborers in the modern world are not paid, at least in terms of a livable wage. Even those intellectual laborers who are paid specifically for intellectual labor, are not paid for writing, for example; they are paid for some other activity with writing as a required side-project.
I'm quite aware that intellectual laborers are underpaid. I'm pointing out that abolishing copyright without any replacement system would make the situation far worse, effectively eliminating many careers. If this work didn't have much value that would be one thing, but it clearly does. Otherwise people would not be clamoring for access to it. Nobody cares if crap is freely available. People really want this stuff. T…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't SciHub just a rich "client" for LibGen?
Implementation detail I gloss over for the audience.
I think there is value in the destinction if it's only used as a storage backend, but actually gets the media through different sources.
> Despite the self-serving library branding of its operations, IA’s conduct bears little resemblance to the trusted role that thousands of American libraries play within their communities and as participants in the lawful copyright marketplace. IA scans books from cover to cover, posts complete digital files to its website, and solicits users to access them for free by signing up for Internet Archive Accounts. I wond…
I think this press release is missing an important details. While previously IA only allowed the same number of books that they owned to be lent out as part of their response to covid they've dropped that restriction. As much as I like IA if copyright is to continue to exist that can't be legal. http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-eme...
I think the publishers are using the emergency library as cover for a much more broad-reaching lawsuit.
Indie publisher here. My company publishes mostly how-to guides relating technology, personal finance, and health. In fact this afternoon I am reviewing proofs of a new title written by a surgeon meant to inform patients (and their family members) dealing with thyroid cancer and thyroid nodules. What I and my peers do for a living is nothing like building rocket ships or designing amazing software applications, but i…