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My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive
151–160 of 242 posts
Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes me sad we live in a society where profit is the first and foremost consideration for anything. Preserving history, human creativity, the progress of society, the betterment of future generations all comes second to profit. How many things will get or have been lost to time or just lost in general because they didn't make or cut into profit? The internet archive may have its faults, but its value to humanity…
The law actually balances many considerations, profit is only one of them. Maybe educate yourself, archival copies are one of the many exemptions to copyright. https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107
> The law actually balances many considerations, profit is only one of them. Maybe educate yourself, archival copies are one of the many exemptions to copyright.
One can say a lot about copyright law, but saying it 'balances' many considerations is a bit of a stretch, to put it mildly. Copyright law pays lip service to a number of non-commercial interests, like archiving (up to a point).
On the whole, it is strongly biased toward the interests of the big publishing industry that has managed, over the years, to greatly expand its scope and duration.
Just wait for it, it's almost time for another term extension, or else Steamboat Willy is going to become public domain in a few years.
Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes me sad we live in a society where profit is the first and foremost consideration for anything. Preserving history, human creativity, the progress of society, the betterment of future generations all comes second to profit. How many things will get or have been lost to time or just lost in general because they didn't make or cut into profit? The internet archive may have its faults, but its value to humanity…
I think that's an unfair take on the law. If you create something you decide what happens with it. That seems reasonable to me. Why are the rest of us entitled to your creation?
No man is an island.
There are explicit influences in things that are created, but there are many implicit influences too. That thing that was created, could it have been made without this society or culture? Could it have been made in a different culture? Didn't we all contribute a little bit to it?
So, while I do agree with your general point that people must have incentive to create and profit/control is one way to do that, my concern is that when things are locked up tight they die and our culture does not benefit from their creation. It would be easy to say that if they are forgotten then maybe they weren't of any use, but history of full of art and science that was not appreciated until much later.
Or conversely, a creation that is a clear product of the zeitgeist could be very influential but if no one can use it, then waiting decades for rights to clear will render it useless.
Imagine if cooking were invented today. Only one individual in the world would be allowed to make sausages without paying royalties.
Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this does not mesh well with their mission. They are the Internet Archive , the archive of freely (in the past) available stuff that can't be found anywhere else, in most cases. This is much more fragile than old books which likely exists in thousands of copies anyway. I do not admire their stance, and am unhappy that they are recklessly jeopardizing their unique thing to make a case where they have a very bi…
Let's go ahead and put to rest this theory that they're going to cease to exist. They don't have enough resources to be destroyed. Suppose the naysayers are right and they're going to go bankrupt. What happens in bankruptcy? They sell their assets for fair market value. To a new non-profit that uses them for the same purpose. All that requires is that they raise an amount of money similar to what they ordinarily have…
Right. And furthermore, if they could be taken down, that's a bug, and it ought to be fixed. As I understand it, they're already somewhat decentralized, and it wouldn't be a huge stretch to become fully decentralized.
Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes me sad we live in a society where profit is the first and foremost consideration for anything. Preserving history, human creativity, the progress of society, the betterment of future generations all comes second to profit. How many things will get or have been lost to time or just lost in general because they didn't make or cut into profit? The internet archive may have its faults, but its value to humanity…
Without profit, people couldn't have created those things in the first place. Not because nessarily even they wouldn't have wanted to out of greed: if you can't feed your family at all with something it is less likely you will spend the amount of time on it that you would on something you can. Not to mention a lot of movies/books (Because of printing costs)/shows would just not have been possible without enough capti…
That is an argument for the existence of some ip laws, not that the current incarnation of them is the right one.
But I would also draw your attention to the fashion industry. Before the 1980s logomania allowed for trademark law to be applied, there was basically zero IP protection on fashion... but it turns out it was a pretty robust industry anyway.
As a society we've gotten pretty hooked on IP law, but I'm pretty convinced we'd all be a lot better off with MUCH much less.
Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes me sad we live in a society where profit is the first and foremost consideration for anything. Preserving history, human creativity, the progress of society, the betterment of future generations all comes second to profit. How many things will get or have been lost to time or just lost in general because they didn't make or cut into profit? The internet archive may have its faults, but its value to humanity…
The law actually balances many considerations, profit is only one of them. Maybe educate yourself, archival copies are one of the many exemptions to copyright. https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107
I assume you intended to link to 108 (Limitations on exclusive rights: Reproduction by libraries and archives) rather than 107 (Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use): https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#108
In any case, profit is a specific limitation on what libraries and archives can do:
108(h)(2) -- No reproduction, distribution, display, or performance is authorized under this subsection if—
(A) the work is subject to normal commercial exploitation;
(B) a copy or phonorecord of the work can be obtained at a reasonable price; or
(C) the copyright owner or its agent provides notice pursuant to regulations promulgated by the Register of Copyrights that either of the conditions set forth in subparagraphs (A) and (B) applies.
Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
They were doing controlled digital lending (CDL) with a strict owned-to-loaned ratio. Then, during the emergency, they waived all waitlists and limits, allowing an unlimited number of loans for a single owned copy. They no longer could claim that they were still engaged in CDL, so there was no legal justification to make all of those copies.
I wonder if perhaps they are sitting on data showing that no individual page of any book was ever being viewed by more than one person at a time, and therefore they were still effectively just redistributing the physical book pages they already owned. If so, their legal basis looks much much stronger.
There's definitely some open questions about how efficiently one should be allowed to 'multiplex' a piece of media between consumers, but I don't think anyone will get away with splitting the logical unit they were given/sold into pieces. Just checking whether a digital book is open at all probably has over a 50X efficiency gain versus physical lending. If you let the lender split it up there's no clear place to stop and the limits are absurd. You could buy a movie, split it into frames and service 1000s of simultaneous viewings with small offsets from each-other.
Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes me sad we live in a society where profit is the first and foremost consideration for anything. Preserving history, human creativity, the progress of society, the betterment of future generations all comes second to profit. How many things will get or have been lost to time or just lost in general because they didn't make or cut into profit? The internet archive may have its faults, but its value to humanity…
Without profit, people couldn't have created those things in the first place. Not because nessarily even they wouldn't have wanted to out of greed: if you can't feed your family at all with something it is less likely you will spend the amount of time on it that you would on something you can. Not to mention a lot of movies/books (Because of printing costs)/shows would just not have been possible without enough capti…
I could list countless examples of things created without profit in mind just for the sheer joy of creation, I could list countless things where profit was not in mind, yet profit was generated, I could list countless things where things were created without profit as a motivation, those things never really generated profit, yet profit was generate later on future creations because of previous creations.
Assuming everything is created with profit as a motive is fairly disingenuous. Look at the open software community just for a start. How many person-hours of labour has been put into those alone without profit ever coming into play as a motive? How much profit over how many people has been generated because of that work? Take say linux for example. What is the sheer number of people that have profited off of linux and the insane amount of overall profit generated vs. Linus, the 'original' creator of the kernel? Just to take one very small example. I'm guessing at least to start, and I may be wrong, but Linus probably isn't struggling financially, meanwhile just how many people now make a living off of linux existing?
I imagine anyone would be hard pressed to actually calculate the amount of people that have profited off of linux being available freely, the actual amount of money made by literally everyone that's made money off it being created and distributed the way it has been, without profit being a sole motivator.
Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive
#159> With this suit, the publishers are saying that in the digital world, we cannot buy books anymore, we can only license and on their terms; we can only preserve in ways for which they have granted explicit permission, and for only as long as they grant permission; and we cannot lend what we have paid for because we do not own it. This is not a rule of law, this is the rule by license. This does not make sense. If tha…
It makes me sad we live in a society where profit is the first and foremost consideration for anything. Preserving history, human creativity, the progress of society, the betterment of future generations all comes second to profit. How many things will get or have been lost to time or just lost in general because they didn't make or cut into profit? The internet archive may have its faults, but its value to humanity…
I don’t think it’s a moral or cultural failure but a political one. A high level politician is successful by being able to convince large donors that they should govern, not by being able to convince the populace that they’re good an analyzing policy and laws to steer them to a better place. That, I believe, is the root of the current imbalance in copyright and patent law.
Re: My thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Without profit, people couldn't have created those things in the first place. Not because nessarily even they wouldn't have wanted to out of greed: if you can't feed your family at all with something it is less likely you will spend the amount of time on it that you would on something you can. Not to mention a lot of movies/books (Because of printing costs)/shows would just not have been possible without enough capti…
I could list countless examples of things created without profit in mind just for the sheer joy of creation, I could list countless things where profit was not in mind, yet profit was generated, I could list countless things where things were created without profit as a motivation, those things never really generated profit, yet profit was generate later on future creations because of previous creations. Assuming eve…
Your response can be defeated by tweaking their statement, for charitable interpretation, into this: "Without profit, people couldn't have created [most of] those things in the first place [that people want the most]."
It's not the free, hobby stuff that's giving IA trouble. And if you look at what people are consuming the most (games, books, movies, tv shows), they obviously prefer the content made by people trying to make a living, not the free-time hobby projects. The biggest games on Twitch are League of Legends and Fortnite, not The Battle of Wesnoth.
Pointing out that people will make some content for fun doesn't really mean much because a world where we depend on hobby/passion projects is obviously not the optimum. I want someone to profit by making the exact content that I want.