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Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site

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

#301

Post by ghaff »

OldHand2018 wrote: post #298
ghaff wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Or those companies that would set up 1000 TV antennas in a datacenter and then stream the signal. Aereo lost their case at the SCOTUS level. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo IANAL, but I have trouble believing that the number of antennas matters. (And I assume Aereo tried every workaround they could think of. Although I believe there's another case at the moment with another organization trying a non-profit looph…

Aereo lost their case because they received a signal, decoded it, saved the video to a hard drive, and then streamed the video from the hard drive to the customer. Their business model clearly depended on them offering DVR capabilities to customers, deduping videos, etc. - why else save the videos to disk and then stream from disk? If they simply streamed the undecoded TV signals to their customers, they would have b…

I think I read the judgement at the time. I should re-read.

Though CDL would seem (IANAL) to be more analogous to the DVR in that it's transforming the original product in some manner rather than just boosting a signal.

ADDED: Would it actually be fine to stream an OTA channel? I don't actually know. I'm not sure it would be a business model for anyone but would that be considered a public performance?

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

#302

Post by ben_w »

a1369209993 wrote: post #251
ben_w wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inco…

This has little or nothing to do with any supposed reduction in book sales the Internet Archive or any other library, dead-tree or bittorrent, has caused, and quite a lot to do with publishers screwing authors out of royalties for books they do sell. I have no sympathy any author too stupid to realize that publishers are to blame for their still needing a day job after (for example of Myke Cole) twelve books, two TV…

If piracy had zero or positive impact, a genuinely greedy publisher wouldn’t care or would actively encourage it.

When I do finally finish this thing and try to get it published, I will go though a normal publisher, because I like listening to the advice of people who’ve been though things before: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/03/why-i-d...

Also, no: most authors need day jobs because sales are a generally power-law distributions.

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

#303

Post by Ensorceled »

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.

There is no fallacy in my statement, it's an anecdote supplied to show some fairly popular, published authors are not making enough money to quit their day job. For those authors, losing income would be painful. It's an example that proves the comment I'm replying to isn't correct.

I'm not even arguing that they would lose money.

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

#304

Post by thescriptkiddie »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #43
zozbot234 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Why must we come up with increasingly complicated ways to hide the fact unlimited copies are available? The right thing to do is to abolish copyright. It's time to stop pretending copyright makes sense in the 21st century.

This comes down to the distinction between labor-value and use-value, and how they relate to exchange-value. The marginal labor-value of information is zero, therefore the exchange-value should also approach zero. However, if there is an artificial constraint on supply, the exchange-value can be driven up until it approaches the use-value. So naturally shortsighted publishers have every incentive to come up with increasingly hair-brained schemes to artificially constrain supply.

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

#305

Post by ben_w »

a1369209993 wrote: post #248
cmiles74 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That's what sukilot said: it is a fallacy to assume that people would pay for content that they can't pirate. In actuality, it's the other way around: people pirate content that they can't pay for (either because they have no money (at all or in a currency that the publisher accepts), or because the publish refuses to deliver the content (either at all or in a format they can actully use, ie not DRM-encumbered or oth…

That would be great if I’ve misunderstood and the Internet Archive is really only lending our books that aren’t for sale. (And, as is probably universal on this site, I think DRM in books is both bad and dumb: bad for accessibility, dumb because of how easy it is to OCR text).

Likewise, unless I misunderstood, they already had a legit lending library system set up, but they broke the rules and made it infinite free copies for everyone.

I hope there is a happy ending to this story, because I like the internet archive, but at the moment it looks like they got their legal advice from the same minds who came up with Freeman Of The Land.

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

#306

Post by Ensorceled »

shervinafshar wrote: post #193
Ensorceled wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I guess it's an ad hominem, except the original comment made no argument, just implied they were boycotting those publishers going forward. I made no argument, just implied their boycott would probably be infective because they probably weren't buying books anyway.

Ad hominem is a logical fallacy where the debaters character is attacked rather than their point addressed. There is no argument being made here on either side.

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

#307

Post by Rebelgecko »

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...

What libraries use a similar system? Every one I've been to limits the number of ebooks that can be checked out

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

#308

Post by csharptwdec19 »

ghaff wrote: post #301
OldHand2018 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aereo lost their case because they received a signal, decoded it, saved the video to a hard drive, and then streamed the video from the hard drive to the customer. Their business model clearly depended on them offering DVR capabilities to customers, deduping videos, etc. - why else save the videos to disk and then stream from disk? If they simply streamed the undecoded TV signals to their customers, they would have b…

I think I read the judgement at the time. I should re-read. Though CDL would seem (IANAL) to be more analogous to the DVR in that it's transforming the original product in some manner rather than just boosting a signal. ADDED: Would it actually be fine to stream an OTA channel? I don't actually know. I'm not sure it would be a business model for anyone but would that be considered a public performance?

> Would it actually be fine to stream an OTA channel? I don't actually know. I'm not sure it would be a business model for anyone but would that be considered a public performance?

The answer is no, and that's why Aereo lost their case.

It is important to note that Aereo lost their case under a specific carve-out for broadcast transmission. Back in the 70s there were a few cases around CATV operators doing the exact same thing Aereo did. The end result was a series of regulations that made rebroadcasting in the fashion you describe an act that required licensing from the original broadcaster.

This is also why the Slingbox back in the day survived legal challenges (if there even were any.) The Customer had to have their own physical hardware at the location receiving the signals.

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

#309

Post by TaylorAlexander »

ghaff wrote: post #280
JoshTriplett wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't fail, they were sued out of business. They had a good, innovative product that people wanted, and they got killed by a lawsuit. This is the tradeoff we're making when we grant more exclusive privileges over works: we kill innovations like these, and we get...probably not any more creative works than we would have gotten otherwise.

>They had a good, innovative product They had a product that involved giving away other people's stuff. Yes, copyright terms are too long. But I'm pretty sure that a vanishingly small amount of that stuff they were giving away would be out of copyright even with a copyright term of 20 years.

Well I really take issue with the idea that IP is "other people's stuff". I might say they were giving away copies of data that the government had granted others a monopoly on. I am being intentionally pedantic because copyright is much more harmful than people give it credit for. The internet archive is desperately trying to give people free books and others are trying to stop them.

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

#310

Post by kick »

Vinnl wrote: post #207
jacquesm wrote: post #89

I have three favorite properties on the web: Wikipedia, the Khan Academy and the Internet Archive. Whoever thought this was a good idea should own up to it and step down, this was a dumb move if there ever was one and risking one of the prime - and very fragile - properties on the web like this was highly irresponsible. Keep in mind that IA already has plenty of enemies who are continuously monitoring it and hoping t…

That's a good list, but OpenStreetMaps should really be added to it :)

I like OSM as much as anyone, but out of those four, it'd be fourth by a mile or two in terms of usefulness. The English Wikipedia (especially if including other Wikimedia projects) on its own would be practically enough to get humanity back to the current day if things were set back a few hundred years. The Internet Archive would be, too, and probably a bit further. OSM would just get you a slightly better map.

That said, 'jacquesm's comment is beyond stupid, really.

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