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EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

torrentfreak.com

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Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#151

Post by aahhahahaaa »

mantap wrote: post #69
hyko wrote: post #57

How do we back up the Internet Archive? If they lose this case then it will be like losing The Great Library of Alexandria. This is our culture. This is our heritage! Edited to add: when I say “back up”, I mean preserve the data and the archival mission (minus the legal quagmires). The technical challenges can be solved, and we should do this before it’s too late. It seems there was a previous effort, but it has lost…

It's possible that over the long term it could be backed up via torrents. However, in the short term the only way to save the archive is for IA to sell it. I hope they swallow their pride and do so.

I kind of hate to think that someone would want to buy it and attempt to turn a profit.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#152

Post by thrownaway954 »

kick wrote: post #137
thrownaway954 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no worse off. In an "ideal" society, the free sharing of knowledge would be not just allowed, but encouraged." you are so wrong in this mentality. the bottom line is, that someone took the time and energy to write and publish that book to make money, so that person should be paid. wit…

Illegal does not equal immoral; copying does not equal stealing. Piracy of songs, movies, and applications actually improves sales, according to a study that the European Union funded and then tried to keep from getting published: https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-... The law shouldn't guarantee you a successful business model. If you believe in capitalism, this should be self-evident. If yo…

"Piracy of songs, movies, and applications actually improves sales, according to a study that the European Union funded and then tried to keep from getting published"

doesn't mean anything. it's still illegal.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#153

Post by cwkoss »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #134
Gaelan wrote: post #84

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se. If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no w…

If you steal my book, I don't get paid as much for the work I put into the book. So I am very clearly and obviously worse off. I find it really, really strange that some people find this hard to understand. And your "crowdfunded patronage" model is still copyright, it's just copyright with a different revenue model.

I think it is incorrect to assume every free download would otherwise be converted to a sale.

I'd guess it's probably closer to every 100 free downloads, 1 sale is lost.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#155

Post by arkades »

kick wrote: post #137
thrownaway954 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no worse off. In an "ideal" society, the free sharing of knowledge would be not just allowed, but encouraged." you are so wrong in this mentality. the bottom line is, that someone took the time and energy to write and publish that book to make money, so that person should be paid. wit…

Illegal does not equal immoral; copying does not equal stealing. Piracy of songs, movies, and applications actually improves sales, according to a study that the European Union funded and then tried to keep from getting published: https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-... The law shouldn't guarantee you a successful business model. If you believe in capitalism, this should be self-evident. If yo…

> Piracy of songs, movies, and applications actually improves sales, according to a study that the European Union funded and then tried to keep from getting published:

I never understand this argument at all.

Piracy of X improves sales of X is only relevant if you're keeping the business model of selling X.

It's an argument for small amounts of piracy not substituting for market demand in a meaningful amount, and possibly spurring increased market demand.

It's not an argument for it not being stealing, or against having an IP legal framework at all. If you remove the ability to sell things, there will be no sales for it to spur.

Also, only the most extreme liberterian capitalists believe in capitalism without any commercial regulations whatsoever. Literally the bare minimum is property rights.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#156

Post by boomboomsubban »

thrownaway954 wrote: post #152
kick wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illegal does not equal immoral; copying does not equal stealing. Piracy of songs, movies, and applications actually improves sales, according to a study that the European Union funded and then tried to keep from getting published: https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-... The law shouldn't guarantee you a successful business model. If you believe in capitalism, this should be self-evident. If yo…

"Piracy of songs, movies, and applications actually improves sales, according to a study that the European Union funded and then tried to keep from getting published" doesn't mean anything. it's still illegal.

If something is beneficial for everyone involved, why should it be illegal?

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#157

Post by ArnoVW »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #95
WaltPurvis wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your philosophical musings are not uninteresting, but they are irrelevant to the fact that violating copyright is defined as stealing property under US law. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-11...

Wow, I mean, what a counterintuitive coincidence. Trafficking in copyrighted works constitutes theft, but a private equity firm buying a company with debt, transferring the debt onto the company's balance sheet, allowing it to go into bankruptcy because of enormous debt load, and paying themselves huge bonuses along the way is not theft. If it weren't for the fact that the U.S. federal code as it exists in June of 20…

Seems coherent to me: you are not taking ownership of something without a contractual basis. It would I think constitute 'misuse of corporate assets' though.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#158

Post by xhkkffbf »

MereInterest wrote: post #44
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publishers (for books, movies, and music) do not really have much shame when it comes to copyright enforcement. For one, they're natural monopolies, where a given content is solely owned by them, and you can't get it through any of their competitors. And especially in the case of books, very few people think about a book in terms of the publisher who published it, and very few people buy their books based on which pu…

I agree completely on most items, except that copyright is not a natural monopoly. There isn't a high barrier of entry to printing a different book, nor is there a very limited supply of printing presses. Copyright is entirely a government-granted monopoly, intended to serve the public good by promoting good writing. In cases where it doesn't serve the public good, it is reasonable to reduce the strength of copyright…

Exactly. Anti-copyright people love to claim the book author has a "monopoly." But it's only on their own book. Nothing stops someone else from writing a competing book. It's kind of like saying a car owner buys a "monopoly" by purchasing a car. Yeah, only the owner can drive a particular car, but that's not what the word means. Yet people persist with this phony gambit.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#159

Post by xhkkffbf »

enriquto wrote: post #100
mindslight wrote: post #53

I'd love for the Internet Archive to prevail here, but honestly it was quite boneheaded to do this legal experiment under the same corporate umbrella as their archival work. At this point they should proceed with a damage mitigation strategy of selling off their servers and storage to a second entity at fair market value (maybe "Archive Cloud"), and renting continued access. This way even if the IA organization is ba…

> it was quite boneheaded to do this legal experiment under the same corporate umbrella as their archival work. I disagree. This is a wickedly good idea, and a very good hill to fight on. It is not a "legal experiment" but a major battle against evil people. Everybody loves the Internet Archive, it is our sacred castle. If a decisive battle is to be won against the publishing parasites, it may be likely this one, and…

Dude: I'm an author. The books I write pay for the food that feeds my family. Are you saying I'm evil for asking to be paid for my work?

I can tell you that if the IA/EFF prevail, professional authors will disappear and the only people who will get to be artists will be those with trust funds and rich spouses. Is that what you want the world to become?

Do you really think artists are evil for wanting to be paid?

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#160

Post by uluyol »

ALittleLight wrote: post #143
Gaelan wrote: post #84

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se. If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no w…

I am made worse off if you steal a copy of my book though. Suppose I sell the book for X dollars and the probability that any person without my book will buy it is Y. People who don't have my book have a value to me, specifically, YX dollars. When you steal my book, you directly cost me YX dollars, which is probably an infinitesimal amount, but if everyone was allowed to freely copy the book, then it would be approxi…

No, because potential sales are not sales. You never had the XY dollars to begin with.

This is what separates IP theft from physical property theft.

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