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Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

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Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#231

Post by foobiekr »

weinzierl wrote: post #36

The Internet Archive does great work and please support them if you can[1]. Still, they are a single point of failure[2] and if they should falter one day it will be a big loss. What we really need - in my opinion - is a second mainstay - an archive of the archive so to speak. [1] https://archive.org/donate/ [2] Yes, I know about archive.today (formerly archive.is) but their extent is no way comparable to archive.org…

1. One Time 2. $500 3. Nothing in terms of payment is clickable. I disabled ublock origin so it's something else.

note: it works in Firefox, not Chrome. YMMV.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#232

Post by ghaff »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #216
boplicity wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>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.

I'd be very afraid that "new business model" is that you have to watch an ad every 10 pages or books are only available through a subscription model of some sort--and they're only available through a SaaS.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#233

Post by mantap »

mardifoufs wrote: post #224
cygx wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please clarify: Are you against the practice of controlled digital lending of books scanned from physical copies in general, or do you merely have issues with the 3 months of unrestricted lending?

I think his issue is with the IA unilaterally deciding that they can chose that they want to simply ignore the authors rights to get compensated for their work at any moment they want. And I totally understand his frustration. It's one thing to have pirating websites that have always distributed copyrighted material illegally. But for IA to decide that they only play by the rules when they want to is different imo. N…

Do authors have rights to be compensated? If I go to a library and take out a book, the author doesn't get compensated again. The book may be read by hundreds of people but it was only paid for once.

If I lend a book I own to a friend, the author doesn't get compensated again. It's my book, not the authors, and I can let anybody I want read it.

There has never been an expectation that authors get compensated for each person who reads a book. The system has never worked like that. A book is a physical object and authors get compensated for each physical book that gets sold.

It's only with the recent advent of ebooks in recent decades that "pay per reader" has even become technologically possible. Since the 90s.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#234

Post by marcus_holmes »

api wrote: post #84
BitwiseFool wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

The third option, which works very well, is just by people donating to writers they want to.

The maths works out pretty well if you look at it as a marketing funnel for the author.

In the "traditional" model the author/publisher has to persuade a potential reader to part with money before reading the book, which has huge friction and costs lots of marketing money to persuade people that the book is good enough to buy before they read it - no "one month free trials" here. Using standard marketing funnel maths, they have to get the title in front of 10,000 people to get one sale (assuming a 1% conversion rate for the 2-step funnel). The net profit of this model is lower (for the author) because so much money is spent on marketing.

In the donation model, the author gives the book for free, and then asks for a donation afterwards. They only need to get 100 people to read the book (assuming a 1% conversion rate of people who have read it and want to donate). The cool thing is that those 100 people have read the book, and know it, will talk about it, will recognise the author when their next book comes out, etc.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#235

Post by freedomben »

ikeboy wrote: post #65
zozbot234 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're also a library, and copyright law has broad exemptions for libraries that enable them to scan books for preservation purposes. So it's not clear that the "tangible medium" issue matters here.

There's an ongoing lawsuit involving a non-profit offering free live TV using what appears to be a loophole in the copyright laws. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locast That particular loophole probably doesn't apply there, but similar ones might.

Haven't heard of Locast and it looks like they aren't available in SLC unfortunately, but that looks neat. I hope they win! I'd pay a small amount monthly for something like that. Unfortunately you have to start at around ~$25/month with current providers, which is outrageous IMHO for something broadcast for free. That structure needs to die, but there are powerful, wealthy organizations profiting off of it, so it's an uphill battle for sure.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#236

Post by zucker42 »

jawns wrote: post #158
VonGuard wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many views does your book have on IA. Very curious to know if it's actually impacting your sales.

I don't think it's affecting sales of my book, but that's beside the point. Copyright is about more than sales. It's about the author having the right to determine who gets to distribute and profit from their creative works. That's why you'll hear about authors and their estates turning down seemingly lucrative deals, such as movie adaptations. If the copyright holder doesn't want their work to be used in that way, t…

> Copyright is about more than sales. It's about the author having the right to determine who gets to distribute and profit from their creative works.

This is not sound justification for the existence of copyright. You're asserting that an author is deserved a special personal benefit even if that benefit hurts the general public. What other worker is afforded similar protection?

In the case of the Internet Archive, they've taken a book you've already made money on, and are lending it to one person at a time. And if it's not affecting your sales, you are preventing other people from benefiting from the book for no good reason.

I understand the appeal of controlling your writing, but I don't think we as a society should be giving individual authors an unbridled license to decide how we share and experience works.

Furthermore, the legal (and historical) basis for copyright in the United States is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Copyright is a special monopoly, given only to promote the general welfare.

This is not to say I'm against any use of copyright in principle. But the purpose of granting such a monopoly has to be to provide incentives to create writings are art, not to protect a purported natural right. I hope my message doesn't come off as disparaging to your desire to support yourself or the importance of creative work.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#237

Post by Zonulet »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #219
space_fountain wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 aw…

You're admitting what most anti-copyright people don't want to admit – if instead of bookshops we only had the Emergency Library, certain classes of works would indeed go away, including most good fiction, not to mention history, biography, reportage etc. You say that's "just what happens" like it's some ineluctable natural process, but none of this is preordained. The traditional model has a lot of defenders – including the majority of readers who are still happy to pay for books – and with those defenders' help it can survive.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#238

Post by Zonulet »

mantap wrote: post #233
mardifoufs wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his issue is with the IA unilaterally deciding that they can chose that they want to simply ignore the authors rights to get compensated for their work at any moment they want. And I totally understand his frustration. It's one thing to have pirating websites that have always distributed copyrighted material illegally. But for IA to decide that they only play by the rules when they want to is different imo. N…

Do authors have rights to be compensated? If I go to a library and take out a book, the author doesn't get compensated again. The book may be read by hundreds of people but it was only paid for once. If I lend a book I own to a friend, the author doesn't get compensated again. It's my book, not the authors, and I can let anybody I want read it. There has never been an expectation that authors get compensated for each…

Here in the UK, if you go to a library and take out a book, the author does get compensated, it's called the Public Lending Right. Apparently in Denmark they've had it since 1941 so I don't think it took ebooks to make it technologically possible.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#239

Post by Groxx »

Shank wrote: post #116
weinzierl wrote: post #36

The Internet Archive does great work and please support them if you can[1]. Still, they are a single point of failure[2] and if they should falter one day it will be a big loss. What we really need - in my opinion - is a second mainstay - an archive of the archive so to speak. [1] https://archive.org/donate/ [2] Yes, I know about archive.today (formerly archive.is) but their extent is no way comparable to archive.org…

Archive.is/Archive.today is currently embroiled in a petty battle against CloudFlare DNS users, which is, imho, contrary to the spirit of an "archive" that is supposed to serve as a backup for things. I would rather support essentially any other service than one that actively tampers with DNS resolution for petty reasons. https://community.cloudflare.com/t/1-1-1-1-does-not-resolve-...

Is this relevant to archive.org at all? It doesn't seem to be affiliated in any way.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#240

Post by ruanmed »

Zonulet wrote: post #191
VonGuard wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I am an author and I making my living from book sales. You're right, I'm absolutely obsessed with money, in the sense that I need money to buy food and pay my electricity bill.

> Robbing a bank and giving away the money is a decision not based on money or liability, but you shouldn't be very surprised you still get put in prison for it.

Quoting the other comment here to make my point.

AFAIK IA they did not give away the books, the books still were shared the same way as before, with DRM and expiration dates. They just temporaly removed the limitations of amount of books you can loan and increased the loan period with an initial max end date of June 30.

So, yeah, what IA did is pretty different from robbing anything, in unprecedented times of a global pandemic they provided access to a digital library the same way a public library which holds those books would in normal times.

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