Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by coldpie » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 3:30 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #202

coldpie wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People have a right to own and control the distribution of their works that they invested in creating. I don't agree. People should be paid for the work they do, yes, but look at all the crap we've had to put up with for trying to restrict an infinite supply. The right model is to pay people to do work, not to pay them for having done work. Yes, it's hard to transition from one model to the other, but the inability…

What did you have to put up with? How do you pay people to "do work" instead of "done work"? What's that mean exactly?

All the stupid crap we've been dealing with for the past 20 years. Stupid DRM; HDCP compatibility issues; YouTube copyright strikes; this lawsuit which threatens to kill a valuable resource; $222,000 penalties against an individual for pirating 24 songs; large companies locking our shared culture away for centuries. It's trivial to think of more examples of the harmful effects of copyright. It's all caused by an old business model that depends on scarcity trying to force an artificial scarcity into a domain where scarcity doesn't exist.

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

#212

Post by kerkeslager » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 3:33 PM UTC

bart_spoon wrote: post #152

mimi89999 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that this reasoning is quite naive. The most basic counterexample I can give is a person who downloaded the content, but wasn't able to afford it. If that content was not accessible on IA, that person wouldn't be able to access is. The publisher would still not earn anything.

I think it is your reasoning that is naive. Of course there are people using IA to access a book that, were it not free, would not buy the book. These people are neither plus nor minus in terms of revenue. But for your point to hold, everyone who downloaded the content would have to fall into this category. Almost certainly a large number of users would be those who might potentially buy the book but will simply down…

We can go back and forth with thinking each others' reasoning is naive, but reasoning isn't how we discover the truth. Frankly, to both sides of this argument, real-world evidence or GTFO.

There's plenty of totally reasonable hypotheses for why giving away content can be profitable OR unprofitable, and plenty of real-life examples of both as well. The fact is, with regards to this situation, we don't know, and this conversation shouldn't center around a problem that some people have only hypothesized exists.

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

#213

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 3:35 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #203

ComputerGuru wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is staying out of this altogether “compromising their principles?”

"Our mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge."[1] That is pretty unambiguous. [1] https://archive.org/about/ EDIT: The previous version of this post was unnecessarily combative, in response to what may have been a good faith question. Sorry.

[deleted]

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

#214

Post by vulcan01 » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 3:41 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #141

polytely wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's the only place of its kind, it's more like it's too important to allow to be destroyed. Because you know that these copyright holder do not actually care about history or culture. Look what happened to what.cd, they will burn down everything to protect their profits

Maybe someone can buy their assets when they go trough bankruptcy

The fear is that the "someone" will be the selfsame publisher companies.

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

#215

Post by dhosek » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

basilgohar wrote: post #54

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.

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.

You over-estimate the lifespan of physical books and the physical stress of lending. 25–40 times is a more likely lifespan for a physical book. With digital lending, there are actually specific contractual limits on the number of lends and the cost per lend which vary based on the publisher. And the average number of lends per library book is probably close to 1.

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

#216

Post by dhosek » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

nix23 wrote: post #161

slim wrote: post #140

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.

Same here! That is a digital lending system like every other public-library does it...

No, it really isn't. Library contracts for digital lending vary based on publisher and service provider, but aside from some very small publishers (if that), there is no publisher that allows for unlimited unmetered lending of e-books and certainly not for the price of a print book. Note also that physical books face physical wear and usually have to be retired after 25–40 (at most) lends.

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

#217

Post by cmiles74 » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 3:56 PM UTC

sukilot wrote: post #196

Ensorceled wrote: post #162

Earlier 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.

I haven't seen any evidence that the shrinking earnings of authors are related to piracy. From what I've read, publishers are simply retaining more of the profits for themselves and, often, theorizing that piracy is somehow raising their costs yet providing little by way of documentation.

https://www.statista.com/topics/3928/reading-habits-in-the-u...

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

#218

Post by dhosek » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 3:59 PM UTC

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?

If you donate a print book to the library, it will almost always be handed off to the Friends of the Library (or similar organization) for their book sale to raise money. If there's something special about the book, it might be added to special collections (e.g., if you're an important public figure or you've donated a research collection on a special topic). Almost never will the book be added to the lending collection.

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

#219

Post by 6510 » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

Yeah, its only 10 PB, why don't we p2p a copy? 1000 people with 10 TB to spare wouldn't work but 50 000 storing 100-400 GB each would be managable. 50 k pp is ofc nothing and probably not even enough to get it done before everyone gets bored. (you know who you are) Tubing it into the boxes would be the hard part. Most wouldn't need to do much more than contribute bandwidth and temp storage.

Why isn't file coin done?

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

#220

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

waheoo wrote: post #178

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #173

Earlier 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.

You may feel that the dismantling of copyright is an issue on par with civil rights. However, that sentiment is rare, and isn't supported by any plain reading of the constitution, unlike racial equality. IA's not going to be setting any precedents in the defense of the lawsuit. They are going to be handed a swift, expensive, and one-sided defeat.