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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

#331

Post by jessriedel »

zucker42 wrote: post #230
jessriedel wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I honestly don't understand why they did it. >Its right there in the article. The grandparent isn't questioning the motivation for breaking the law, they are asking why the organization would possibly think it's a good idea given the likely consequences. Q: "Why do you rob banks?" A: "Because that's where the money is."

To pick an analogy that is biased in favor of the IA, isn't it a better comparison to say, Q: "Why did you violate that segregation law?" A: "Because it's immoral and bad for society."

I actually think that even that analogy favors the restraint argued by the original comment. The civil rights movement was highly strategic in their choice of when and where to violate the law. The most successful leaders of those organizations would never have gambled the existence of the orgs on a purposeful violation of a law merely because it was unjust.

But really that's besides the point. If someone wants to argue the IA should gamble the entire organization on this issue, they should explain why rather than pretending its obvious and "right there in the article".

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

#332

Post by Dylan16807 »

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.

They were renting out equipment, and the equipment captured free OTA signals for the renter to view later. If they were offering a datacenter where people put their own DVR boxes, it would be unquestionably legal and ethical. It's stupid that there is a distinction.

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

#333

Post by a1369209993 »

ben_w wrote: post #305
a1369209993 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

> That would be great if I've misunderstood and the Internet Archive is really only lending our books that aren't for sale.

I'm not sure if they are only lending books that aren't for sale, but my understanding is that the overwhelming majority of the books involved are in fact not available for purchase. A book that is only available in DRM-encumbered form is not available at all.

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

#334

Post by Dylan16807 »

ghaff wrote: post #275
jedberg wrote: post #260

The more interesting thing here is the "controlled digital lending" test case that will almost certainly come of all of this. If they somehow prevail on that aspect and set a legal precedent there, that would resolve a lot of issues for a lot of companies. For example, Netflix could stream every movie ever, as long as they bought enough DVDs for peak demand. Or those companies that would set up 1000 TV antennas in a…

>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…

> 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 loophole.)

The main reason for the original cable companies to pay is a loophole about 'distribution' because they're taking one antenna and boosting+splitting the result. Having separate antennas is a way to remove a loophole, IMO.

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

#335

Post by sonofaplum »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #309
ghaff wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Nothing is stopping the IA from buying books and giving them to people, or paying authors to write books and then giving them to people. What they are suing is to prevent IA from scanning books and giving those copies to an unlimited number of people, which is, no matter what your moral feelings about the matter, quite different!

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

#336

Post by rbanffy »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #171
rbanffy wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make it sure the torrented data is always available. The index is important, but the data and its metadata are much more important.

Right, which is why you want to start getting the data served by seeders outside of the Internet Archive proper. The Pirate Bay is all magnet links. A model to be considered.

That still doesn't ensure all the data is available all the time.

A solution should be one where whoever hosts the data can't pick which pieces they want to host. Otherwise content that's not popular will disappear.

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

#337

Post by rgbrenner »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #309
ghaff wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Are you planning to make all your code on GitHub public domain? Or are you just referring to other people’s copyrights?

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

#338

Post by sonofaplum »

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...

I'm sorry, but this is absolutely not true. You don't do IA or the discussion any favors by being inaccurate.

I live in San Francisco, whose library participates in a digital ebook lending program through Libby. They have a certain number of copies of each ebook available, and allow each copy to be checked out by one person at a time. As a consequence, i've had to wait 7 or 8 weeks for popular books to become available, something which works the same way as physical books at the library. The library buys or is given a copy of a book (whether physical or digital) and then can loan out that copy of the book.

Notably, this is how IA's lending program worked BEFORE the pandemic. They just decided unilaterally to change it to loan out unlimited copies of books. It is this change that the lawsuit is about.

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

#340

Post by monocasa »

ghaff wrote: post #327
cfmcdonald wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aereo's business model was almost exactly identical to how the cable industry started - capture an over-the-air signal and deliver it to customers over a landline channel. If Aereo was in the wrong than the cable industry probably should never have existed.

There were lawsuits around the cable industry and they ended up having to re-license content as I understand it.

And Aereo tried to pay for the content under the same terms as the cable companies, but that was squashed on appeal as well.
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