261–270 of 358 posts
My friends at neighborhood watches in Minneapolis said some people have been trying to start fires at libraries, to say nothing of the pandemic. If you can't loan a book at the library right now, where the hell else can you?
I am involved with a business that is attempting to do a lot of the same things that Internet Archive is doing. I think they do a lot of really good things, and I'm happy that they exist, but I believe they are on the wrong side in this matter. I don't know what they were thinking. I'd love to hear how they arrived at the decision to just brazenly flout copyright law like this. I fear that they have put a lot of thei…
Tell us about your business! Do you have a profitability model yet?
I recently bought out another company that was doing the same thing and ran out of money. I'm still trying to get everything up and running before I start charging people, but my burn rate and cost structure should be manageable.
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. The Internet Archive's Chris Freeland is the Director of Open Libraries and wrote the IA blog post[1] announcing the NEL change and he acknowledges that it is "unlimited" [2] -- and yet you say it isn't. I don't understand why you contradict IA's own representative. Are you affiliated with IA in an official capacity? - >Stephanie Willen Brown:…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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? While I'm somewhat ambiguous about this IA matter, the example you bring up is rather unconvincing on HN. I, just like many other fellow users here, publish our code (both end product and tools) to public, and to organizational, Git repositories. We have structured our work and o…
> I, just like many other fellow users here, publish our code (both end product and tools) to public, and to organizational, Git repositories. Sure, but that code is generally tied to a license. Very rarely are people releasing things into the public domain. All that code people are releasing are being released with the support of copyright. In fact, people here on HN and other communities very much oppose people tak…
That's a whataboutist tangent, but let's entertain it for a while.
The copyright law is usually restrictive, in the form of "everything which is not explicitly allowed is forbidden", and some of the openings - like Fair Use - are somewhat contentious. Thus a specially crafted free license is used to make the work legally accessible & reusable in an unambiguous way in such legal environment.
A free license for software is generally used to unambiguously establish the legal status - that simplifies dealing, especially for organizations and professionals. It effectively increases ability to access and re-use the software [1].
A license & copyright information is used to convey authorship and guarantee certain author's rights, like the right to attribution. Some licenses (eg. copyleft) are also used to prevent certain misuses (eg. tivoization), again with aim of increasing availability of the software for access and re-use.
Conversely, releasing into public domain (which is a limited legal concept, not available in certain countries) runs with the risk of somebody else slapping a restrictive license on the code and making it unavailable via legal mechanisms.
Free licensing is not only about improving availability and protecting the author and the reuser, it's also about preventing subsequent yanking of the code via machinations by a 3rd party.
While those concerns are valid and need taking care of, pretty sure they aren't at the stake in the IA vs book authors discussion. They aren't mentioned in the OP either.
>In fact, people here on HN and other communities very much oppose people taking things without permission. I challenge you to demonstrate otherwise with your own repositories.
Ah yes, a challenge to prove a negative. I'll rise to it right after solving the halting problem :^)
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…
> 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? I believe that being able to profit strictly from control of intellectual property is on the decline and will ultimately disappear. "Payment for access" to IP will be outcompeted by easy and ubiquitous technology for IP distribution (and thus infringement). I believe we'll move…
There is no incentive to invest substantial resources in development if there is no ability to profit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a flawed comparison. Libraries exist because they can lend a book to only one person at a time. They don't try to provide full access to a book to an unlimited number of people around the world.
> Libraries exist because they can lend a book to only one person at a time. this phrasing confused me for a minute, so to clarify: do you mean that if libraries could magically create infinite copies of a book, they wouldn't be allowed to exist, and are only tolerated because their presumed impact on copies-sold is limited?
Libraries are allowed to only lend the number of books they have bought because it's a good compromise between public interest and copyright protection. It has nothing to do with scarcity.
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…
I want authors I connect with to be paid, but the best way of doing this is paying for their living expenses independent of their publishing schedule. All the while voluntarily promoting their public persona to my peers.
Direct "sales" of information only deserves to have a future insofar as the buyer of the information gets important social signaling value from it, per GitHub sponsorships.
It isn't limited to GitHub sponsorships, either. Use your imagination. Use your grasp of modern technology.
In the publishing model of the future, authorship is financially compensated based on how much social signaling value their readers derive from monetary patronage.
Rather than paywalling my work, or hyping it up using immoral sales psychology techniques which are extractive not contributory, I would much prefer rewarding individual patrons, who opt to voluntarily pay for any of my work, with social credibility. I think that's healthier for everyone, and I fully trust online communities dedicated to information consumption will be better than I am at packaging my information for further public consumption and distributing it far more widely than I could ever achieve as a lone individual.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
It reflects the interests of special interest copyright groups who work both to get these treaties written with terms favorable to themselves, and to get laws passed to enforce them. 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 th…
Point being that the initial push in the present direction came from Europe in the 19th century, no matter how influential the 20th century US publishing sector eventually became.
And to be clear, I don't think the "US, no, Europe" blame game accomplishes or illuminates much. Far more useful is to note that monopoly power seeks to extend itself, regardless of origin.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And they don’t have to pay inflated prices for a “license” that can be revoked at any time.
https://cheshirelibraryblog.com/tag/how-much-do-libraries-pa...
> "Libraries must pay up to 4X the retail price for digital versions of books (which only one user can have access to at a time)."