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Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early

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Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early

#21

Post by jawns »

DecoPerson wrote: post #17

The Internet Archive is so incredibly important. There’s a lot of different views about the purpose of life or lack thereof, but for all except a few beliefs, having access to past writings is very important. Humanity is only at the very beginning of its existence. The success or failure of projects like the Internet Archive will drastically change our future. If you think the loss of the Internet Archive won’t signi…

> the IA was shut down because its leadership decided to be philanthropic during a period of human history that lacked freedom of information

Philanthropic by massively infringing on copyright. Giving away something you own and have a right to give away is one thing. But critics of the emergency library allege that because the IA doesn't own the copyright to these books, they don't get to make and lend unlimited copies. Under the first sale doctrine, they can only lend out as many copies as they own.

Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early

#22

Post by [deleted] »

nordsieck wrote: post #11
geofft wrote: post #8

> We moved up our schedule because, last Monday, four commercial publishers chose to sue Internet Archive during a global pandemic. Did this come as a surprise? Did Internet Archive not expect publishers to sue? The Archive launched the emergency library during a global pandemic. Lots of people, myself included, said that this was a risky move because they would obviously get sued and it would put not only the Archiv…

> Publishers and authors alike like physical libraries because when more people check out books from libraries, more copies get purchased. I don't think they like libraries per se, they've just made peace with the first sale doctrine. On the upside, libraries are a stable source of demand for new books. On the downside, libraries' collection are generally used more intensely than private collections - each book in a…

[deleted]

Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early

#23

Post by andrewmunsell »

Are there any technologies today that would enable a distributed backup of IA? Something like BitTorrent, but where I can specify I want to host XXX GB of data, and all the nodes in the swarm would provide a redundant, distributed backup in aggregate?

I realize things like IPFS exist, but as far as I'm aware those require manual file pinning. I want to just donate storage and bandwidth to back the files up, not have to specify which ones to back up.

Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early

#24

Post by karaterobot »

hopfscotch7 wrote: post #15
jawns wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you propose that the authors of creative works be paid for their efforts, outside of copyright?

They aren’t?

Your position is unusual enough that I don't really understand it. If you laid out an argument, I'd be happy to read it and have my mind changed. Terse responses are not persuasive, though.

Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early

#25

Post by jmeyer2k »

andrewmunsell wrote: post #23

Are there any technologies today that would enable a distributed backup of IA? Something like BitTorrent, but where I can specify I want to host XXX GB of data, and all the nodes in the swarm would provide a redundant, distributed backup in aggregate? I realize things like IPFS exist, but as far as I'm aware those require manual file pinning. I want to just donate storage and bandwidth to back the files up, not have…

IPFS works based on files visited. I wonder if you could write a script that crawls randomly until it hits a certain threshold stored...

Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early

#26

Post by chipotle_coyote »

hopfscotch7 wrote: post #15
jawns wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you propose that the authors of creative works be paid for their efforts, outside of copyright?

They aren’t?

Better yet, nobody should be paid for any work whatsoever. We should all love what we do, and if we won't do what we do for free, we clearly don't love it enough. We should all put our lack of money where our mouths are.

Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early

#27

Post by geofft »

jawns wrote: post #18
geofft wrote: post #8

> We moved up our schedule because, last Monday, four commercial publishers chose to sue Internet Archive during a global pandemic. Did this come as a surprise? Did Internet Archive not expect publishers to sue? The Archive launched the emergency library during a global pandemic. Lots of people, myself included, said that this was a risky move because they would obviously get sued and it would put not only the Archiv…

I'm an author, and from my perspective, CDL seems like a reasonable way (if not the most reasonable way) to apply the first sale doctrine in the digital age. Publishers would prefer to instead license ebooks and pretend first sale doesn't apply at all for digital books. I understand why that irritates a lot of people. The Internet Archive, on the flip side, is pretending that copyright infringement doesn't apply duri…

Yeah - I think CDL is great. But it worries me that CDL doesn't sit on established caselaw (let alone established legal code... really we should pass an amendment to the Copyright Act saying that CDL is fine) and that the Internet Archive is relying on the same legal arguments for CDL to support their uncontrolled model, because it means there's genuine validity in a judge ever saying "if we allow CDL it's a slippery slope." The Internet Archive has demonstrated that they are very interested in sliding to the bottom of the slope as fast as possible

Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early

#28

Post by ghaff »

jawns wrote: post #21
DecoPerson wrote: post #17

The Internet Archive is so incredibly important. There’s a lot of different views about the purpose of life or lack thereof, but for all except a few beliefs, having access to past writings is very important. Humanity is only at the very beginning of its existence. The success or failure of projects like the Internet Archive will drastically change our future. If you think the loss of the Internet Archive won’t signi…

> the IA was shut down because its leadership decided to be philanthropic during a period of human history that lacked freedom of information Philanthropic by massively infringing on copyright. Giving away something you own and have a right to give away is one thing. But critics of the emergency library allege that because the IA doesn't own the copyright to these books, they don't get to make and lend unlimited copi…

>Under the first sale doctrine, they can only lend out as many copies as they own.

TBH, even that is not established as a point of law (if the lending is digital copies of physical books) but it seems a reasonable position and publishers/authors weren't pushing on it.

Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early

#29

Post by andrewmunsell »

jmeyer2k wrote: post #25
andrewmunsell wrote: post #23

Are there any technologies today that would enable a distributed backup of IA? Something like BitTorrent, but where I can specify I want to host XXX GB of data, and all the nodes in the swarm would provide a redundant, distributed backup in aggregate? I realize things like IPFS exist, but as far as I'm aware those require manual file pinning. I want to just donate storage and bandwidth to back the files up, not have…

IPFS works based on files visited. I wonder if you could write a script that crawls randomly until it hits a certain threshold stored...

Just a cursory look at the CLI, it looks like you have the ability to get stats on each block (including size, https://docs.ipfs.io/reference/cli/#ipfs-block-stat), and pin them (https://docs.ipfs.io/how-to/pin-files/#three-kinds-of-pins).

I'm betting someone could create an open source project to traverse the Merkel tree, choose random blocks, and pin them... It could be made smarter by also checking the number of peers per block and prioritize the least pinned blocks.

Edit: And a related discussion I found: https://www.reddit.com/r/ipfs/comments/b4he2m/idea_partialse...

Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early

#30

Post by geofft »

hopfscotch6 wrote: post #12
geofft wrote: post #8

> We moved up our schedule because, last Monday, four commercial publishers chose to sue Internet Archive during a global pandemic. Did this come as a surprise? Did Internet Archive not expect publishers to sue? The Archive launched the emergency library during a global pandemic. Lots of people, myself included, said that this was a risky move because they would obviously get sued and it would put not only the Archiv…

The publishers do not have a legitimate business and deserve to go out of existence. Copyright is nonsense.

I don't disagree with you in principle, but it's the system we have. So,

1) What's a good way to ensure that authors continue to author books while not dying of exposure (or, more practically, that authors continue to author books instead of deciding to go work at a tech company or something)?

2) How do we implement that system?

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