Of all the times for this to be happening. Now is not the time for this.
Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
71–80 of 150 posts
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
They aren’t?
We are, very poorly. With rampant piracy of books (e.g., ruslib), royalties have become quite reduced that would traditionally compensate for low up front payment from publishers. I’d blame publishers for paying so poorly, but the bulk of my irritation goes to entitled consumers who have decided that regardless of the time and effort required to create something, they deserve it for free.
> I’d blame publishers for paying so poorly
That's exactly what you should do. You should have been adequately compensated for the time and effort required to write your book. Instead, your publisher decided to require you to put the work in first and then offer you the chance to get compensated afterwards based on how well your book sold. The expected results didn't materialize because the market conditions that enabled those sales no longer exist.
The world has changed. We're living in the 21st century. It costs $0 to make and distribute copies of information. Only the costs associated with creating the first copy must be paid for. Blaming consumers for this reality isn't going to make it go away. Insisting on copyright doesn't seem to be working either. The sooner people accept this, the sooner we can start working towards alternative business models that don't depend on creating artificial scarcity in the age of free information.
Creators are scarce. Intellectual works, once created, are not. Therefore we must somehow compensate creators for the act of creating and not for the sale of the resulting work.
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#73> 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.
Publishers do a have a legitimate business, since they provide many services to authors. Heck, they even provide useful services to readers since the imprint is usually a good way to filter for better quality publications.
That being said, I don't agree with how they have been handling digital sales or lending.
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#74> 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…
First, I think the legal analysis behind Controlled Digital Lending has a fundamential flaw in the creation of a digital copy and I have serious doubts that it would hold up for commerically published fiction. Having worked in publishing I strongly suspect that publishers didn't care to deal with some minor violations which is why they didn't go to court over it.
Second, even if Controlled Digital Lending is permited what they did is so far beyond that. And they did it with widely avaialble commerical works making fair use arguments of access, academic use etc. non viable.
The internet archive has an important mission, and they may have put that in jeopardy in order to let people get free copies of books that anyone can get from their local library (maybe going on a wait list) or just buy outright for under $10.
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#75I think it’s sad that it comes to this. It’s not as if they were distributing perpetual licenses to these books, and anyone getting a book off the internet archive almost certainly wouldn’t have bought the book anyway.
Large publishers are the worst. And the writers aiming to profit off off the fact people cannot go to a normal library can be dumped in the same bucket.
I’d like to see some numbers from a writer that actually lost income due to this, and maybe I’ll reconsider. As it is, I just see them screaming bloody murder over something that’s completely theoretical.
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#76Are 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...
On a related note (Yes crypto, sorry) Filecoin is encouraging people to help backup certain large data sets: https://filecoin.io/blog/intro-filecoin-discover/
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
The publishers do not have a legitimate business and deserve to go out of existence. Copyright is nonsense.
How do you propose that the authors of creative works be paid for their efforts, outside of copyright?
One way (an old way) is for, say a newspaper or magazine, to publish a novel as a serial. The newspaper pays the author for a few pages at a time, and the newspaper gets subscription fees and ad revenue.
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think if you talked to most authors and asked "would you still do this if it were unpaid" you'd get almost entirely "no"s. Do you expect otherwise?
If you asked most software engineers if they'd code if it were unpaid, you'd also get mostly "no"s. And yet FOSS carries on. There are some people who simply need to create. And yes, some FOSS is subsidized by companies who pay their engineers to contribute, but there are also people who contribute on their own time.
> "And yet FOSS carries on."
Isn't it already very well established that FOSS is currently largely being built by people employed by corporations? They are most definitely not unpaid.
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
I don’t think they actually make more copies? They just allow multiple people to look at the same copy at the same time?
Copyright law is not caught up to how computers operate. There are still arguments that executing a program is creating a copy (into memory) in violation of copyright law. That it is only allowed since the EULA permits it. There is no way to display a picture on two different computer on internet without making many copies in process. Arguments can commence on whether they're transitory or tangible copies according to law.
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are, very poorly. With rampant piracy of books (e.g., ruslib), royalties have become quite reduced that would traditionally compensate for low up front payment from publishers. I’d blame publishers for paying so poorly, but the bulk of my irritation goes to entitled consumers who have decided that regardless of the time and effort required to create something, they deserve it for free.
> I’d blame publishers for paying so poorly That's exactly what you should do. You should have been adequately compensated for the time and effort required to write your book. Instead, your publisher decided to require you to put the work in first and then offer you the chance to get compensated afterwards based on how well your book sold. The expected results didn't materialize because the market conditions that ena…
...and where might the money for that fair compensation of the creative act come from when consumers of the product expect it for free? This is the part that never gets resolved in discussions - someone, somewhere has to cough up money to pay for stuff that people now believe should be consumed for free. Where is this mythical money tree that generates money without consumers putting any in?
Same thing occurs in the OSS world. Unless a project is lucky to fall under the umbrella of a big company that sees value in investing in contributing to OSS, there is no $ to pay creators. Yet, again, people expect free software and assume someone, somewhere, has a magical money tree from which they can fairly compensate producers.
To be honest, I solved it my way: took all of my articles offline, stopped a second book project, and stopped contributing to OSS. I assume some optimistic younger creator will fill the void, until one day they too wake up and say “shit - this isn’t fair”, and will also move on. The changed world you speak of certainly is here - it seems to basically prey upon the endless pipeline of those who have yet to figure out that they deserve to be compensated for their efforts, and just sucks them dry and burns them out until they realize they’re being exploited.