I’m inclined to admit the possibility that the library model doesn’t work in the electronic world, and maybe it’s a bad idea. Perhaps money for community spaces should not be used to pay for electrons.
Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
141–150 of 150 posts
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I can agree that uncontrolled digital lending for all future wouldn't be in the best interest of society under the current economic system, but while the letter of the law might not change during a chrisis, how it is interpreted very well might. After all, the law is but a contract between us and ourselves throught a governing body, nothing is fixed, and nothing is entirely objective. But, more importantly, the chara…
> the characterization of libraries as something that actually hurts publishers and writers, as implied by writing that CDL would hurt publishers "no more" than ordinary lending, is something I feel compelled to oppose.
I don't think you understood me correctly.
I'm not saying that I personally believe libraries hurt publishers and writers. I'm saying, "Here's how to rebut publisher's concerns about CDL."
Publishers have already made their peace with libraries with regard to the lending of physical books. The first-sale doctrine protects what libraries do. Publishers already know there's nothing they can do about that, even if some of them might think it hurts sales. And so the argument for CDL is that it mirrors physical lending and thus puts them in no worse position than if the digital books were physical books.
Again, to reiterate, I'm not saying that libraries are bad for publishers or authors. I'm saying that if you're trying to address publisher's concerns about CDL, then pointing out that it's no worse than physical lending is an effective way to argue your case.
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Serialized novels have perverse incentives in the form of puffing up word count and frequent cliffhangers to keep readers coming back. I cannot find it at the moment but there was a fascinating article comparing excerpts from a serialized novel versus a standalone novel to illustrate these effects.
Aside from that, it also hampers authors creatively. The difference between a great film and bad film can hinge on what happens in the editing room. It has to be the same for books.
Consider how hard it would be for a programmer to do their job if they could only write programs concatenatively (e.g. if the code you committed last week were a real commitment—set in stone and you were never able to refactor it or clean up the architecture, etc.)
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If not, I guess we'll just have to live with less creators in general. That is fine. I was wondering if someone was going to make this argument. 1. Why is it fine? 2. How is "Actually, it's okay if there are fewer books in the world" a defense of "Internet Archive was in the right to give people access to books, because it's very important that people have access to books"? If the world doesn't actually need people…
My original comments were not directly related to the Internet Archive situation. I replied to an author who blamed consumers for the lack of profits when in reality it is the business model itself that is failing. > Why is it fine? > And why abolish copyright? Because these days a world without copyright is how things are in practice. Copyright infringement is trivial . People do it even unintentionally. Might as we…
I think I would take books and copyright over a free internet, and a lot of other people would too.
>Enforcing copyright in the 21st century requires sacrificing computing freedom as we know it today. Computers would only execute approved "lawful" software.
License keys are a simple and effective solution that works 99% of the time
>Subversive programs which do things like play movies without consulting the rights holders first would be banned. That would surely mean the end of playful hacking and the free and open source software community.
How does the second part follow the first? 100% freedom in all forms is not a pre-requisite for opensource software. There are plenty of things you can't and shouldn't be able to do. I think this is a false dichotomy.
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> (or, more practically, that authors continue to author books instead of deciding to go work at a tech company or something) Have you done or read research to suggest this is something to worry about? There are other concerns certainly. But I have trouble understanding how someone who has ever visited Wikipedia or visited github could even ask this question. It sure sounds like a conceptual anachronism to me. (Thoug…
> Have you done or read research to suggest this is something to worry about? Yes, I've heard many authors saying that they're unhappy with the emergency library in particular because they are concerned they won't be able to get paid to write books if this happens. And, based on my training and experience, if someone isn't paid to do their job anymore, they'll look for another job. I'm aware of GitHub. I've published…
I thought the greater implication of your parenthetical was that there is a danger that down the line fewer books of probably less quality would end up being written.
I gave an example in the context of encyclopedias where vastly more articles of at least equal quality ended up being written.
I'm asking for any citation you can give of trends that go in the opposite direction of encyclopedias, music recordings, blogs, citizen journalism, propaganda, to name a few. It's my observation that when the cost to publish and read hits essentially zero the amount of content goes up, not down.
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems like a great way of making sure that only popular pulpy books get written, in the same way that the cannibalization of the classified ads space mostly resulted in traditional media turning clickbaity.
I don't think it would be effectively any different than right now. Majority of the content is 'pulpy' right now and then there are a million niches filling the demand. It would likely be no different. Just look at all the types of people that support themselves through patreon. There are many different types of people, and some of them are incredibly niche. Some are technical, some are artistic. Really, the demand i…
Some books are capable of making their own niches. Under the current system they become bestsellers and then their authors become well compensated for all their hard work. You can't really have patrons for a market segment that doesn't exist, or doesn't know that they want that content yet.
It's hard to see how under this funding model something as revolutionary as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle or Rachel Carson's Silent Spring would even get published. The research in those took years and there was no demand for such titles on those topics previously.
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it would be effectively any different than right now. Majority of the content is 'pulpy' right now and then there are a million niches filling the demand. It would likely be no different. Just look at all the types of people that support themselves through patreon. There are many different types of people, and some of them are incredibly niche. Some are technical, some are artistic. Really, the demand i…
Some books are capable of making their own niches. Under the current system they become bestsellers and then their authors become well compensated for all their hard work. You can't really have patrons for a market segment that doesn't exist, or doesn't know that they want that content yet. It's hard to see how under this funding model something as revolutionary as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle or Rachel Carson's Silen…
I know this isn't books, but let's look at 2 examples of games that came out through community funding, either through something like Patreon were people make donations or something like Kickstarter.
A) Dwarf Fortress. It's an incredibly niche game where the creator has spent literally decades of his life working full-time towards the game. He has a vision for the game and he doesn't compromise. The community funding allowed him to do this. It realistically would not have been possible in the current system.
B) Pillars of Eternity 1 (and 2) were both great games that simply weren't getting funding to be made in the business world. Yet it was successful and both were very good games.
I'm not going to claim they are revolutionary or even that great. But I am going to say that without the process, they wouldn't have been developed. I also think that demand would work the same regardless of the system.
If somebody creates a book like The Jungle, it would become a success anyway and more people would fund the author through consistent or one-time donations.
Really, we've hit the point with technology that we simply don't need the middle men anymore. The creators themselves can work directly with the consumers. I don't see a reason to continue the current system besides inertia.
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
My original comments were not directly related to the Internet Archive situation. I replied to an author who blamed consumers for the lack of profits when in reality it is the business model itself that is failing. > Why is it fine? > And why abolish copyright? Because these days a world without copyright is how things are in practice. Copyright infringement is trivial . People do it even unintentionally. Might as we…
I think I would take books and copyright over a free internet, and a lot of other people would too. >Enforcing copyright in the 21st century requires sacrificing computing freedom as we know it today. Computers would only execute approved "lawful" software. License keys are a simple and effective solution that works 99% of the time >Subversive programs which do things like play movies without consulting the rights ho…
> License keys are a simple and effective solution that works 99% of the time
It's not just DRM. There are plenty of software that can be used for good and bad and in many cases the line is blurry. Their use would be prevented just because someone might misuse them.
File sharing, software development tools, debuggers, reverse engineering tools, network analysis tools, penetration testing software... All of these and more are likely to be banned from the computers of mere consumers. Computers would become mere media consumption machines just like modern locked down video game consoles.
> How does the second part follow the first?
Respect for the user is a basic principle of free and open source software. This means the software is supposed to do what the user wants, not what society wants. The only way to perfectly align the two is to stop unauthorized software from running on the user's machine. Society must the computer away from the user. It's not the user's machine anymore, society is just letting them use it and only on society's terms.
Do you want a world where only licensed programmers can develop software? A world where only software developed by these people will ever run?
> 100% freedom in all forms is not a pre-requisite for opensource software.
It is a prerequisite for software freedom. What good is open source software if you can't run it on your machine?
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some books are capable of making their own niches. Under the current system they become bestsellers and then their authors become well compensated for all their hard work. You can't really have patrons for a market segment that doesn't exist, or doesn't know that they want that content yet. It's hard to see how under this funding model something as revolutionary as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle or Rachel Carson's Silen…
I know this isn't books, but let's look at 2 examples of games that came out through community funding, either through something like Patreon were people make donations or something like Kickstarter. A) Dwarf Fortress. It's an incredibly niche game where the creator has spent literally decades of his life working full-time towards the game. He has a vision for the game and he doesn't compromise. The community funding…
> If somebody creates a book like The Jungle, it would become a success anyway and more people would fund the author through consistent or one-time donations.
But you need something to actually get this going in the first place. It's worth noting that Dwarf Fortress only started getting a financially stable stream of donations because an alpha was bootstrapped. You can't really bootstrap a book based on investigative journalism, there aren't really stretch goals that a book can hit, etc. It works for small tidbits on a regular cadence like a podcast, but this isn't how a book works.
Books are also different from games, in that generally speaking when it comes to community funded games the creator and the patrons are broadly aligned. This is not a good dynamic for book publishing, because then people won't write content that for all its truths may just piss off their existing patrons and leave them destitute.
Re: Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I would take books and copyright over a free internet, and a lot of other people would too. >Enforcing copyright in the 21st century requires sacrificing computing freedom as we know it today. Computers would only execute approved "lawful" software. License keys are a simple and effective solution that works 99% of the time >Subversive programs which do things like play movies without consulting the rights ho…
> License keys are a simple and effective solution that works 99% of the time It's not just DRM. There are plenty of software that can be used for good and bad and in many cases the line is blurry. Their use would be prevented just because someone might misuse them. File sharing, software development tools, debuggers, reverse engineering tools, network analysis tools, penetration testing software... All of these and…
It seems like you are taking everything to the extreme. We have legal copyright protections now and all of the tools you mentioned still exist. Copyright holders are going after major distributors, and a few pirates to make examples of them.
>Do you want a world where only licensed programmers can develop software? A world where only software developed by these people will ever run?
While I think conclusion is absurd, I would prefer it to one where content creators have no rights.