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

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

#311

Post by granzymes » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 7:51 PM UTC

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…

> If they simply streamed the undecoded TV signals to their customers, they would have been fine. The Supreme Court decision constantly compared the Aereo service to previously litigated cases involving "antenna on top of hill really far from house as a service" (deemed to be legal).

Those cases were Fortnightly and Teleprompter and were overturned by Congress in 1976. If those cases were litigated again today the the CATV providers would have been shut down.

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

#312

Post by mthoms » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 7:58 PM UTC

52-6F-62 wrote: post #177

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…

Only speaking for Toronto here, but the Toronto Public Library very quickly amended their application process to allow you to get a card/membership online. (For any faults in this city, the TPL is amazing)

Good to hear. I was looking into this for my young nephew who lives there. I was very surprised to find they offered no way for him to get a card.

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

#313

Post by intopieces » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 7:59 PM UTC

miles wrote: post #268

intopieces wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When America fixes copyright to be life of the author only, I will agree with your concerns.

Life of the author seems potentially too short. What if an author is struck down early? Shouldn't their family left behind be able to enjoy some of the profits for a period of time?

> Shouldn't their family left behind be able to enjoy some of the profits for a period of time?

It doesn't take copyright to make a profit off of a work. the Criterion Collection includes Charade, which is out of copyright: https://www.criterion.com/films/603-charade

I'm sure the children of the author can come up with inventive ways of selling the work.

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

#314

Post by MattGaiser » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #156

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?

The problem is libraries got into the game of paying for first run titles. They started measuring themselves on checkouts and not what they provide for the community. Is the library really helping the community by overpaying for 50 Shades of Gray the week it comes out so all the soccer moms can read it for 'free'? I'm not saying libraries shouldn't provide access to all types of books, but they could cut their costs…

The problem is that without the political support of soccer moms, the libraries are not used by the majority of the population and they wither and die.

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

#315

Post by mycall » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #281

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…

Scanning and providing access to digital copies of books was the dumb move---without that, they would not have attracted the enmity of publishers. The fastest and most successful way to avoid the destruction of an organization is always to concede to the wishes of its enemies. Preemptively, if possible.

If they were a global organization, they couldn't be shutdown completely. Like Pirate Bay.

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

#316

Post by myself248 » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 8:18 PM UTC

kempbellt wrote: post #274

6510 wrote: post #219

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?

The archive is closer to 60PB - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23485594 So, more like 300,000 people storing 200GB, which is quite a tall order to fill.

> There are 237,000 members of this subreddit. > If each of us on average contributed 1TB (I know many people, myself included, would give a more than that for IA), we'd have 237PB, which feels like it's the right ballpark of raw storage to host 30PB in a reasonable, redundant, "not ideal but at least functional" manner.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/h02jl4/lets_sa...

I'm small-potatoes for a datahoarder, but I could chip in a couple tens of TB to a project like this. If only I knew what button to push to make it do the thing.

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

#317

Post by AsyncAwait » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 8:19 PM UTC

kick wrote: post #310

Vinnl wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd swap Khan Academy for OSM any day.

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

#318

Post by ascorbic » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 8:22 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #284

ascorbic wrote: post #10

The publishers should stop now that they've taken them down, but this was grossly irresponsible of the Internet Archive to do this, and they brought it on themselves. Releasing all of these copyrighted books for free hurt authors who rely on royalties to live, and it was inevitable that publishers would sue. I honestly don't understand why they did it. They have a responsibility as custodians of the archive to not pu…

" Releasing all of these copyrighted books for free hurt authors who rely on royalties to live... " Clearly, we should shut down all the other libraries, too.

Libraries buy the books, and pay further royalties when they're lent out.

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

#319

Post by gigama » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 8:24 PM UTC

HellsMaddy wrote: post #61

I'm surprised and disappointed that the IA ever thought this would go over well, though I do respect the reasons for which they took these actions. Circumstances around the COVID-19 lockdowns have been very unusual. If you consider the hundreds of millions (+?) of books in libraries around the world that were temporarily inaccessible to people, including children and students, I feel the IA's actions were somewhat ju…

My thoughts exactly, thanks for summing up so nicely. (upvoted)

IA's decision was apparently done with good intentions and under extraordinary circumstances. The "open sharing" was not meant to be permanent, and anyway has been discontinued. IA never sold the content for profit so any "harm" should be similarly limited.

Publishers would generate nothing but good karma by dropping their lawsuit. As an author it is more valuable to me to know my words and ideas are being preserved so they can be read and absorbed by future generations. Trying to extract every last dollar from such works undermines the pursuit of knowledge and human potential.

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

#320

Post by shervinafshar » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 8:39 PM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #306

shervinafshar wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I beg to differ. I see at least two main arguments here:

Argument 1: Since these publishers are suing IA (premise), I find it justified for myself to boycott them (conclusion)

Argument 2: Well, you were not spending money there anyway (conclusion) if you were downloading your books from IA (premise).

Why did I feel that Argument 2 was unsubstantiated and ad hominem? I asked myself, how did the person making Argument 2 know that the OP...

(a) ...has used IA National Emergency Library at all? may be they are just unhappy with these publishers bullying an NGO?

(b) ...has used IA NEM to download books from these particular publishers? may be they are buying everything Penguin publishes, but enjoyed using NEM for reading other books from other publishers?

Assuming things about the characters and actions of the person you are discussing with and making your argument about those rather than the topic of discussion, is a sign of a logical fallacy to me.