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Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

publishers.org

211–220 of 358 posts

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exists in the UK, it's called Unbound. They've been around for ten years and they've done... fine. Some decent books. But their business model has not exactly conquered the world. As an author myself, I would never consider defecting from my "legacy" publisher to a service like that, because my publisher has been extremely valuable to me.

How valuable? 85-90% of the cover price for digital copies (35-40% for physical)?

The percentages aren't particularly relevant to me, because I live off advances, not royalties. Sales are still meaningful, because they help determine what advance I get next time, but in my case the idea that I'm getting a cut of each one is basically just symbolic – I've already been paid. Just one of many reasons I could never have had the same career without my "legacy" publisher.

(I should note that your percentages are way off, by the way – in the US I "get" 25% of the cover price for digital and between 7.5% and 25% for physical depending on the edition.)

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Implementation detail I gloss over for the audience.

Would you call Netflix a rich client for s3 though? 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.

No, I'd call Netflix a rich client for Netflix's OpenConnect appliance network.

To be clear, I have a deep appreciation for SciHub and LibGen, I just don't have the energy to dive in depth in this forum.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you call Netflix a rich client for s3 though? 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.

No, I'd call Netflix a rich client for Netflix's OpenConnect appliance network. To be clear, I have a deep appreciation for SciHub and LibGen, I just don't have the energy to dive in depth in this forum.

I thought the openconnect network was basically just a cache which tries to serve popular media directly from the providers?

They didn't have enough storage for their full library on the appliances previously. So that'd be like a caching proxy in front of the service

Maybe that changed with how tiny their library became over the years. (Edit:it didn't change. That's what it is.)

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#214

> 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…

Uh, publishers understand libraries and they've made their peace with physical books. They're just suing about someone who is undermining this balance.

As it is, real libraries are bad deals for everyone. Libraries spend too much on books that aren't read and they don't spend enough on books in demand. A digital system that charges per reader makes more sense.

But I don't expect anyone to believe this because people have some weird attraction to something that they think is "free" even though it costs millions in tax dollars.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#215

> 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…

If libraries weren't an ancient concept that preceeded copyright law they'd be illegal today.

Thank you, this is a brilliant comment.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#216

Why can't the publishing industry just hurry up and die? They provide fewer and fewer valuable services as the marginal cost of content distribution approaches zero and they just seem more like rent seekers.

> Why can't the publishing industry just hurry up and die? Yeah, let's get rid of all the authors, newspapers, magazines, journalists, etc. I mean, what does the publishing industry even do? It serves no value! And the gall they have to actually try to protect their work and make a living from it? Ridiculous!

I was being hyperbolic, to be sure.

After dealing with decades of "intellectual property" industries waging war against general purpose computing I'm heavily biased against their interests. The amount of needless complexity I've had to deal with, and money I've seen wasted, service of DRM fills me with a simmering rage. They burned much of their goodwill with me a long time ago. Perhaps I take it too personally, but it certainly feels personal when the things I want to do with technology I own are thwarted in the name of serving DRM.

I'm exceedingly frustrated at the concessions made for owners of "intellectual property" in copyright law, too.

I'm particularly miffed by egregiously long copyright terms. These terms prevent derivative works from being made in a culturally-relevant timescale. They prevent the copying of "unprofitable" works that lack mass market appeal and become "out of print". They send orphan works in a legal limbo that prevents their use for fear of litigation. They hold back the progress of "science and the useful arts" for the benefit of incumbent owners by creating a barrier to entry. They create little incentive for new works to be created.

I'm frustrated that the "intellectual property" industry has worked to brainwash the public into believing that the public domain is the exception, instead of the default. They've promoted a believe to creators that their works need to be "owned" by rent seeking middlemen. They've sold a moral argument about creators being deprived of their compensation. St the same time, they use "creative" accounting practices to divert compensation away from creators.

All of that frustration fuels my hyperbole.

We live in a world with ubiquitous copying machines with ubiquitous connectivity. That genie can't be put back in its bottle. It can't be legislated away without ending up in a dystopian "Right to Read"[1] future.

From where I stand the "intellectual property" industries want the "Right to Read" future, to the detriment of the good computing provides to humanity. Rather than change their business models and cope with a new reality, the "intellectual property" industries claw fitfully at whatever legislative means they can to preserve their dying business models.

Perhaps it'll take a generation or two dying off before we can come up with new business models that'll make this all irrelevant. I don't have the answers, but I really think that "don't use technology to do what it does best" is a very viable answer.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#217

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…

I'm ignorant about the way the industry works, for sure.

I'd love to know how much of the publishing and book-selling industries are coasting on inertia of "we've always done it this way", or the fear of "we've never done it this way".

It seems like electronic distribution should have massive ramifications for the business model. Does the publisher/distributor/retailer model really still need to exist in an electronic distribution world? I don't know enough about the value, beyond purchase aggregation, that distributors in that market actually provide.

What you see as "building relationships" sounds, to me, like needless middlemen exacting a tax on commerce.

Many businesses are little more than expertly coordinating a supply chain. That's a competency that offers a competitive advantage. Why is this business so different?

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#218
post #96
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably right, but this doesn't solve the fundamental problem. People who do intellectual labor, such as writing books, must be paid because everyone must be paid. Nothing is free. There are two options: (1) Copyright law, which allows them to erect toll booths and charge readers and users for their work. (2) A socialist type of system where writers and other intellectual laborers are supported publicly. The…

no it is not the default that " intellectual labor" must be paid for in currency (which is the assumption of your post) my comment here for example is " intellectual labor" but i am not paid for it There are all kinds of labor that people do with out being paid in currency for it, they derive other value from that labor. You then present a false dilemma in that it is either copyright law or socialism (public funding)…

i personally enjoy generating knowledge based products the payment being the edification of other person[s] in particular when the result is a synthesis beyond the original publication[s].

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#219

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…

I don't think a reinterpretation where anyone is allowed to make and lend as many copies of works as they want is workable though. Like we haven't found another way to incentive producing content.

Why does the business model have to be based on counting copies of information being made (and hamstringing technology to serve that purpose)?

What about patronage? What about public performance? What about merchandising rights? (I actually have very little beef w/ Trademark law. It seems like it's functioning well and provides value to society.)

What about the idea certain livelihoods and classes of works just go away? Maybe that's sad, but maybe it's also just what happens.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#220
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wonder how they feel about actual libraries, which make published works available for free to many people as well. If we're talking about "digital" lending instead of physical books, the traditional libraries "play nice" with publishers by buying DRM ebooks and lending out a limited number of copies. This is what they mean by traditional public libraries being "participants in lawful copyright marketplace" . IA sc…

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.

> The books are still restricted by DRM

I don't think this is true for many books, which are scanned copies and available as PDFs or EPubs.

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