Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive • Hacker News Board

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#241

Post by EvanAnderson » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

Zonulet wrote: post #230

EvanAnderson wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was being hyperbolic in that question, to be sure. It's probably better asked as: When will the publishing industry finally accept that it exists in a world where counting copies made doesn't work as a business model anymore? Technology isn't going away. The business models will have to change. Some businesses will fail. Some creators will have tragic outcomes. Some works will never be created. Entire classes of wo…

In the UK, revenue from ebook sales grew 3% between 2018 and 2019. Where is your evidence that the business model of "counting copies" – i.e. selling books to people who want to read them – doesn't work any more?

I'm seeing reports of a 5% decrease (a ~152 million pound decrease) in print book sales in the UK from 2018 to 2019. "Selling books to people who want to read them" seems to be a declining business.

The 3% increase in ebook licensing revenue from 2018 to 2019 was an absolutely increase of ~20 million pounds. That doesn't absorb event a quarter of the decrease in print sales. Given the relative price parity between the two, I'd say that people who aren't purchasing print books aren't licensing ebooks, by and large, either.

Unless the book publishing industry can come up with some analog to subscription streaming services, or can use their lobby to kill general purpose computing devices, I don't think the long game looks very good for their business model. Video and audio media are well suited to the streaming market because there's enough inconvenience in making infringing copies to make paying license feeds worthwhile (at least, with current media file sizes and network speeds).

I don't think ebooks have as strong a value proposition for paying the license fee vs. making an infringing copy.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#242

Post by Zonulet » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:12 PM UTC

EvanAnderson wrote: post #217

boplicity wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 electroni…

If all book sales were electronic, that might indeed invite a reassessment of publishers' value in securing distribution. But ebooks are only about 20% of book sales (and that figure is not rising).

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#243

Post by bllguo » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:15 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #172

jaywalk wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're equating what we have now (people wanting to make money off their intellectual property) with a fictional scenario where money is no longer needed. We have to stick with the old way for now, otherwise it would only take one library buying one copy of anything, and it being available to any and everyone on an unlimited basis. That can't work.

I don't know that we have to stick with the old ways, but more importantly, it's depressing when technology is limited in this way. This isn't even morally arguable technology like genetic manipulation, this is simply a post-scarcity situation made, um, artificially scarce. It's never the right time for change; if some companies had their way a post-scarcity world would never arrive ("now is not the time! Think of th…

but this is _not_ just a distribution problem like you seem to be implying. Yes, digital solves distribution, so we are post-scarcity in that sense, but someone also needs to put in the intellectual labor to write a book in the first place. That has always been scarce. And if you don't incentivize it properly, people will have no reason to put in the effort to write books.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#244

Post by EvanAnderson » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:20 PM UTC

Zonulet wrote: post #237

EvanAnderson wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 – inclu…

If a market's survival is incumbent upon screwing-up new technology for everybody then I say "Let it die". It it means having draconian laws that tie up the most precious products of human toil in too-lengthy "protection" terms, to the point that works of culture are lost, then I say "Let it die".

Not being able to make a living producing something that no one will pay for sounds very much like a natural, preordained process to me. I can't make a living manufacturing buggy whips or operating elevators anymore. Technology made those jobs go away. It's sad perhaps, from a nostalgic perspective, but the world moved on.

If a business model needs "defenders" in the face of technological change then it's no longer a viable model.

I don't believe a transactional model is the only one that can work. It happens to be convenient for a certain type of creator, but that doesn't mean it's the only one.

I will clarify that I'm most certainly not anti-copyright. I think a lot of value can be derived from a copyright regime based on a more balanced social contract. US copyright law, and those who have "harmonized" with the US, has shifted much too far in the direction of favoring the owners of "intellectual property".

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#245

Post by colejohnson66 » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:20 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #54

throwanem wrote: post #4

Even the press release doesn't do a good job supporting the infringement claim. They just baldly state IA isn't a real library and then hurry back to reiterate their infringement claims and talk about why infringement is bad, without ever actually explaining how IA's actions qualify as infringement. Looks like palming a card, to me.

Making unauthorized copies of copyrighted material is infringement. That is why you weren't allowed to photocopy entire books before electronic distribution was viable. IA isn't on solid ground here.

You’re missing the point that IA is a library, and, as such, is awarded certain protections that an archival site might not otherwise have.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#246

Post by Zonulet » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:26 PM UTC

EvanAnderson wrote: post #241

Zonulet wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, revenue from ebook sales grew 3% between 2018 and 2019. Where is your evidence that the business model of "counting copies" – i.e. selling books to people who want to read them – doesn't work any more?

I'm seeing reports of a 5% decrease (a ~152 million pound decrease) in print book sales in the UK from 2018 to 2019. "Selling books to people who want to read them" seems to be a declining business. The 3% increase in ebook licensing revenue from 2018 to 2019 was an absolutely increase of ~20 million pounds. That doesn't absorb event a quarter of the decrease in print sales. Given the relative price parity between th…

2018 was also the first time in five years that overall revenues fell – 2018 was still better than 2014 and 2015. The idea that we should scuttle the entire publishing industry and switch to Spotify because of these minor fluctuations from year to year prove the "business model is dying" is absolutely cockamamie. "Legacy publishing" continues to support the production of great work – that is what counts. (It is also my livelihood as an author, so yes I'm biased.) I shudder at the alternative – say Kindle Unlimited, the closest thing that's been tried to a streaming model, which has worked well for romance novelists and romance readers and pretty much nobody else.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#247

Post by EvanAnderson » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:27 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #232

EvanAnderson wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't like that future either, but it sure seems like a lot of people do. It disturbs the heck out of me, but I have to consider that perhaps I'm just an out-of-touch oldster, too.

I'll keep buying physical articles as long as I can-- books, optical discs, etc. I'll reward creators who continue to make their works available that way. I'll buy a ticket when an author comes thru on a lecture tour. I'll attend a live concert and buy a shirt. (Admittedly, our current pandemic situation makes some of that difficult, but I do think it'll eventually pass, or we'll come up with new ways to do those things.) I've been reticent to enter into the patronage ecosystem (primarily because I'm concerned about the cut the middlemen take and the value they actually provide, as well as what the user experience is like) but I'm leaning more toward doing some of that too.

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#248

Post by extra88 » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

Zonulet wrote: post #238

mantap wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It looks like Public Lending Right schemes for printed books exist in only a couple dozen countries and even fewer implement them as the UK has with payments per-loan (Canada does a one-time payment per copy).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Lending_Right

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#249

Post by NOGDP » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:43 PM UTC

ilamont wrote: post #179

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…

> But when it comes to outright republishing of in-copyright printed works, the rights of creators and publishers need to be recognized.

Is there something morally objectionable you find going on here, or are you just bringing up 'rights' and 'laws of the United States' because these fairly arbitrary laws happen to benefit you?

> How would you feel if someone took your output without permission, whether it's designs or code or something else unique and hard to make?

Let's be clear - we are not talking about taking something away from someone. We are talking about copying something. And I would be fine with that.

> How would you feel if people cheered this on, or called for your demise, suggesting that the world would be a better place without your work?

How is copying something a suggestion that the world would be a better place without that thing? That's completely backwards.

> Finally, even if you don't personally care for the book industry, try to show some respect for what we're doing, and the legal and business frameworks we need to do what we do.

What? Why should I show respect for something I'm against and don't like? 'Even if you don't like the cigarette business, please show some respect for what they're doing.' How about no?

Re: Publishers File Suit Against Internet Archive

#250

Post by Zonulet » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #234

api wrote: 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…

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…

I think your maths is off. A literary novel is a success if it sells 10,000 copies in hardback. I'm pretty sure that doesn't entail getting the book in front of a hundred million people.