This wasn't the smartest move on behalf of the Internet Archive. One could argue they were pushing boundaries to get courts to rule in their favor but in the process they are putting the whole project in jeopardy. Taking current copyrighted works and just giving them away en-mass is obviously not going to be seen favorably by many.
Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site
191–200 of 409 posts
Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site
#192"Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley [...] sued the organization." Noted. I'll spend my money elsewhere.
It should be noted that the cumulative annual revenue of these four conglomerate were north of $4B in 2017.
Unfortunately, they own so many smaller publishers, that it's very hard to boycott all of their subsidiaries effectively and without harming the small fish.
But I do share your sentiment; I haven't loaned even one single book from IA emergency library and I still stand with them in support against opportunistic greed of these publishers in this case.
Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site
#193"Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley [...] sued the organization." Noted. I'll spend my money elsewhere.
Well, you were not spending money there anyway if you were downloading your books from IA ...
Ad hominem; Not everyone standing in support of IA in this case is even a user of their emergency library.
Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no controversy here though. What IA did was plainly on the "not legal" side of the line. (I mean, there are surely some people who believe otherwise, but you can find someone who believes almost anything.)
Last i checked rosa parks did something illegal too. Not all laws need to be followed. And just because some people will beleive anything doesnt make this belief any less relevant or important.
No, she didn't!
Rosa Parks launched a boycott to protest a bus system that was so racist that even the horrific Jim Crow laws weren't enough for bus drivers who kicked off black people (and police officers who arrested them) who had a legal right to their seats.
Other protests broke the law with sit-ins.
Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Are yo…
I would rather support organizations that make strategic blunders than organizations which compromise their principles.
You can't when organizations make blunders that destroy themselves.
Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Whoa, you have very inflated view of how much an author makes. I follow Myke Cole on Twitter his tag line is: 9 fantasy novels, 1 sci-fi novel, 2 history books, 2 TV shows, 1 comic series, 1 day job, 0 sleep The guy has published 12 books and STILL needs a day job.
This is the fallacy of assuming that people would pay for content they can't pirate.
Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If I lend you my book and you make a persistent copy, am I the copyright violator?
Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whoa, you have very inflated view of how much an author makes. I follow Myke Cole on Twitter his tag line is: 9 fantasy novels, 1 sci-fi novel, 2 history books, 2 TV shows, 1 comic series, 1 day job, 0 sleep The guy has published 12 books and STILL needs a day job.
This is the fallacy of assuming that people would pay for content they can't pirate.
That’s a reply to an argument for abolishing BitTorrent, and not on-topic. What the Archive did is obviate the need to even pirate: everyone could get content “for free” from a legal entity operating under US laws and subsuming all liabilities.
Suddenly you can get your book for free without even the legal or ethical hazards.
Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would rather support organizations that make strategic blunders than organizations which compromise their principles.
You can't when organizations make blunders that destroy themselves.
I can, do, and will. There has to be room in the charity ecosystem for organizations that take risks.
It remains to be seen whether this blunder will actually destroy the Internet Archive.
In general, I think the idea that good things have to last forever is overrated. Organizations willing to compromise their values eventually drift away from those values completely, which is worse than simply ceasing to exist--such organizations can linger on and do more harm than good.
Re: Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
By exactly this same line of reasoning, don't libraries present a loss of revenue for publishers because people can borrow a book that they otherwise would have to pay for and purchase? One book may be borrowed hundreds, if not thousands of times.
> One book may be borrowed hundreds, if not thousands of times. Except requiring the physical book (or single book digital equivalent) controls the pace. If a standard checkout is 2 weeks, and if the book is always checked out, it will still take 4 years to hit 100 lends. And a thousand lends? Close to 40 years.
That's a difference in scale, but it doesn't make libraries right at the spot they sit. Do libraries pay 100x price for their books?
Be careful to avoid reasoning from an axiom that the way things worked when you grew up was the correct way. It's a pernicious psychological bias we all suffer from.