Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site

decrypt.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 409 posts

Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site

#131

Post by thomaslord »

jariel wrote: post #79
kalium-xyz wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The archived internet is far larger in text alone than everything published before the information age.

" far larger " ... 'size' is really not that important. What matters is the content, it's uniqueness and relative importance. Libraries, even books (let alone literacy) during antiquity were rare and generally unique, remember, this is before the printed press. The Library at Alexandria was a 'first-order' source of knowledge and wisdom, a place where 'intellectual luminaries' (i.e. big rabbis of the day) would have…

They don't necessarily fit the definition of "arcane", but there's certainly specialized knowledge that at this point exists primarily on the Internet Archive.

At this point in time, there have been lots of niche websites and forums and many have shut down. In some cases, those websites housed actual practical knowledge. Example: I drive a Mazdaspeed3. There was a forum dedicated (partly) to that car, and it went down. Now that it's gone, a lot of information on how to work on it is also gone or much more difficult to come by.

Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site

#132

Post by Mindwipe »

cygx wrote: post #37
ascorbic wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you think there were no people at all who downloaded for free rather than paying, then it cost authors royalty payments.

It probably did, but note that the scope was limited: Books released too recently were excluded (if I remember correctly, the cut-off was 5 years?), and they are still DRM protected and have to be returned at the end of the 3 month period, when the waitlist will kick in again. Also note that the publishers' problem is not just the 3 months of waitlist suspension (supposed to offset the closure of physical libraries d…

Publishers will also be able to trivially show that the Piracy subreddit found the DRM and geofiltering to be below industry standard and how there were literally thousands of posts there about people downloading books for permanent retention because they could.

Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site

#133

Post by macintux »

ascorbic wrote: post #93
efreak wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know only a comparatively small number of people who own library cards. You cannot check out an ebook from the library without a library card. You cannot get a lovely card without physically entering the library. If you did not have a library card when the library closed, or you left it unused until it expired, then you cannot check out ebooks from the public library. Last I checked, there was, I think, 3 public li…

Right, bit the justification for this was that libraries were closed because of covid. If people weren't using them before then it doesn't affect them

There are a lot of people who use libraries without a card. Admittedly, many of them only use the computers, but in most locales anyone can wander in and read as much as they want.

Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site

#134

Post by s1artibartfast »

winkeltripel wrote: post #101
beebmam wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, I can't help but place blame on the actual agents of its potential demise: the plaintiffs of this lawsuit

"Without any license or any payment to authors or publishers, [Internet Archive] scans print books" That's a lie, unless they are alleging that those print books were stolen, they were bought and paid for. That is how print books work, for the most part?

That is not how digital lending libraries work. You must only lend out the number of copies you own. Similarly, you can’t buy a movie and set up a free streaming site. IA has no legal leg to stand on

Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site

#135

Post by sergeykish »

zozbot234 wrote: post #35
sergeykish wrote: post #33

> Libraries pay three-to-five times more than retail price for eBook access. If an individual is charged $15 for an eBook license, a library often pays $50 or even $84 for one license. Why? I should be able to donate book to the library. Is it possible with eBook?

Because an eBook is not at all like a physical book. It's more like a service that interacts with DRM to provide an illusion of physicality. Libraries should be enabled to digitally lend their physical holdings and not have to rely on these eBook licenses, and CDL is a great model to that effect.

So it is like software license - different plans for individual, commercial, education, no ability to transfer ownership.

And it run on DRM hardware only...

oh my, we live in the future https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site

#136

Post by ComputerGuru »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #49
ComputerGuru wrote: post #27

I warned about this very outcome when they announced the initiative [0]. The Internet Archive is too big and too important to gamble on this short term of a win (giving everyone free and unlimited access to all books for a few months at most). Assuming the organization continues to exist after this ordeal, their entire board should step down for putting at risk one of the most invaluable archives in existence. I’m an…

If you want to establish a legal precedent, you can't just go to a court and ask them to. Courts only hear "cases and controversies" -- to establish what the law is, you have to get somebody to sue you. The reason this could bankrupt them is mostly because they don't have a lot of money. Their net assets are only a couple million dollars. They have to raise more than that every year just to keep operating. But it's a…

That’s not a very believable scenario. First, the precedent is not worth much as all it would say is when all libraries in the whole country are closed, they can give away books for free - how often do you see that happening? Second, that’s not how precedent is established: typically a single case is hand-picked to serve as the exception to the rule taking great care to make it as palatable, appealing, and free of recriminations as possible and you take that to the courts. You don’t make available millions of books to billions of people, you make available a book or a hundred books or whatever number that it takes to prove your point without making matters worse for you and opening you up to such a massive liability. Third, you are making my point for me: again, some other website or organization should gamble their entire existence that isn’t worth as much as the Archive to get this precedent: whatever the reason, it’s a massive and hugely irresponsible gamble.

It’s not like the Archive doesn’t know what kind of people they are dealing with. They know publishers are out to stop second hand sales, ebook lending, right of resellers to set prices, and a million other things. It’s like expecting the RIAA or the MPAA to settle for an injunction when they have the chance to kill Napster/TPB/IsoTorrent/whatever. If it’s really in order to set a precedent then that’s damn short-sighted.

Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site

#137

Post by ben_w »

cmiles74 wrote: post #129
raxxorrax wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think that perspective is actually more relevant, even if the IA might have made a mistake. But I see only victims in this conflict. Most authors today don't really eat with golden spoons and to have an organisation that helps them get their fair share of the work they put into the books is certainly necessary in the internet age. On the other hand the internet archive is an extremely valuable service. I hope…

Personally, I find it hard to be sympathetic to the publishers and authors when they are so over-the-top. Painting the Internet Archive as "vile" and claiming they don't provide any valuable service strikes me as so far from the truth as to be insulting. It feels like they are targeting people who don't really know much about what IA is or what they do... That makes me wonder if it's really about more than IA and the…

I’m writing a novel. I’ve been at it since 2016, partly because project planning is just as hard outside of software and partly because I have a full-time job too. Based on what people like Charlie Stross blog about, and based on the few sales estimates I can find, even if I reach the heady highs of ranking 214th biggest SciFi writer by sales, I will make less than $40k in lifetime sales for four year’s work.

As income goes, this is a lottery.

Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site

#138

Post by AmericanChopper »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #120
AmericanChopper wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I stated in a different response, I don’t think there would be anything immoral about abolishing copyright in general (for newly created work at least). But if you did that then you would most certainly see much less people investing their time and money into creating it, I also imagine it would create a resurgence in draconian practices such as chained libraries. How does cinema-only releases sound to you? For bo…

> To remove that protection from people who have already invested their time and money into creating content under those conditions, is simply to defraud them of that time and money, which for a lot of people could amount to their lives work. No. Laws can change unilaterally and society does not owe them anything. If they created something today and the law changed tomorrow thereby destroying the economic value of th…

Since this is the second time you’ve posted basically the same same comment in response to one of mine, I’ll just copy paste what I said last time. Perhaps you’ll respond to it this time?

> Whether or not you think the existing copyright laws have exceeded their purpose is a completely different discussion, and one that is not at all related to this particular topic at all. Because the Internet Archive did not only violate copyright for content benefiting from whatever your opinion of excessive copyright is, they violated it for all the content they had.

> No. Laws can change unilaterally and society does not owe them anything.

Technically this is correct. The state is generally able to set whatever laws it likes. It was be a bit difficult in the USA as copyright is enshrined in the constitution. But there are examples in history of governments stripping all sorts of property rights from their citizens. It tends to go quite poorly though, for many reasons, but at least in part because people in that situation tend to view the government as stealing from them.

If the government sets the law in such a way that people who do X will be entitled to Y, then people who did X would be rightly upset if the government summarily decided they were no longer entitled to Y. The only thing that would seperate such a scenario from legally actionable fraud is sovereign immunity.

Most of the anti-copyright comments I’ve seen in this tread seem to really just be thinly veiled anti-private-property comments. So why not just come out and state your case if that’s what you’re getting at?

Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site

#139

Post by ComputerGuru »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #81
ComputerGuru wrote: post #27

I warned about this very outcome when they announced the initiative [0]. The Internet Archive is too big and too important to gamble on this short term of a win (giving everyone free and unlimited access to all books for a few months at most). Assuming the organization continues to exist after this ordeal, their entire board should step down for putting at risk one of the most invaluable archives in existence. I’m an…

Isn't it better to have people learn from their mistakes (if this is a mistake) - at least, perhaps, learn to be more circumspect - rather than just getting rid of people who have experience of making mistakes? I hate that whole thing about requiring people to resign because they made a mistake (if it's genuine); obviously a pattern of mistakes is different. An obvious blunder would also be different, where it was se…

No. A board that collectively shirks its responsibilities to the stakeholders needs to be replaced. It’s not like no one could have predicted this was a possibility- and even their board did too, but they gambled that it was worth it.

What that tells you is that their board does not place the sustainability and long-term availability of the archive over all other metrics and I think that’s a fundamental issue that can’t be corrected. If growth, popularity, increasing in scope, etc are more important to the archive’s board than the guaranteed existence of the content they’ve curated ten, twenty, or a hundred years from now then they are not worthy protectors of it. The archive’s worth isn’t the data they have today, it’s the fact that they promised to safekeep it for the years to come. If they can’t be trusted to do that and place that over everything else, then they are failing what the whole world has been sharing data and making donations in the name of.

Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site

#140

Post by slim »

I stand behind Internet Archive on this. It was the right opportunity to try and push our freedoms forward. Internet Archive is political by design, it's very existence is merely tolerated by the Intellectual Property Feudalists. It was the good fight to fight.
Post reply on HN