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Judge decides against Internet Archive

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Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What IA is doing is removing the physical copy from circulation, making a digital copy, and lending out the digital copy. I don't see the argument that this is "distribution" any more than regular (obnoxious) ebook lending is.

If the IA is creating their own digital copies of physical books, it could be argued that that the IA is creating and distributing derivative works. I'm not certain, but my impression is that derivative works have little in the way of legal protection.

They very much do in cases of backups and even VCR/DVR recordings of live TV.

The courts have gone back and forth on this issue, and I would expect this ruling to be appealed by either side if they had lost.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said it before on this very forum. Wikipedia does not really need your donations these days. IA just might.

IA and Signal are two nonprofits I donate to and recommend everyone donate to regardless of their political or religious convictions (or lack thereof). The Internet Archive very well may be the only way to know a lot of important things from the past -- things that libraries used to keep track of but can't in the internet age.

I would add FSF and/or EFF. FSF is more uncompromising with respect to their original principles of defending digital freedom, whereas EFF sort of shifts with time (gradually giving up grounds).

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We will appeal.” https://twitter.com/internetarchive/status/16394247772647219...

I said it before on this very forum. Wikipedia does not really need your donations these days. IA just might.

Thanks. I just donated to support them, and encourage everyone to do the same.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#284

I don't understand why users would voluntarily move away from piracy. I prefer "you can't do anything about it" to "please let us." Why the norm, base line expectation of the end user is not identity obfuscation and free access to information without hindrance I just don't get.

I like IA for what it is, but I would prefer a more hardline stance like this too. However, there is a place for an organization like this to attract good will. It would be much better to just have a backroom deal between IA and libgen to upload everything it have there in a plausibly deniable way, though.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#285
Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct that will one day be seen as ridiculous as absolute monarchy is today. If we are going to allow it and penalize people who are doing natural human things like sharing with friends, there has to be a specific benefit to society in every instance. For example, pay taxes on copyrights and patents, increasing every year to reflect disturbance caused to society.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, IA has followed a similar tragic arc as Google Books, another martyr to the dream of a truly 21st century library. What's most tragic about it to me is that that vast majority of works affected are "zombie" copyright works that have no actual commercial value. Someone, somewhere holds the copyright, but no one has sold a copy in years or decades. For the sake of protecting the tiny sliver of commercially valuabl…

What happened to Google Books? I would argue the artist still deserves to retain value, regardless of the size of it unless they give it up. If it expires, sure it's public domain.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-t...

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#287
I saw this coming. A few days ago, I read that IA's lawyers argued fair use in part based on "transforming" the content by making copies at scale. I was surprised & astonished that they'd try such sophistry, since a verbatim copy isn't transformative at all. I felt IA's lawyers were grasping at straws if they were making that fair use argument.

Everyone would do better to lobby Congress to change the law to allow for limited digital lending kind of like what IA did (notwithstanding the "emergency" lending).

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#288

Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct that will one day be seen as ridiculous as absolute monarchy is today. If we are going to allow it and penalize people who are doing natural human things like sharing with friends, there has to be a specific benefit to society in every instance. For example, pay taxes on copyrights and patents, increasing every year to reflect disturbance caused to society.

Democracy will one day be seen as ridiculous as absolute monarchy is today.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet, we should proscute GPL violations when the original GPL code is untouched.

You're comparing apples and oranges. In the case of a physical object needing to temporarily go digital, it needs to be sent digitally and the records kept, and of course the physical copy has to be kept. In the case of the GPL there's no physical copy and thus there's no need to consider how to move from one form to the other. To require that a physical object never be used digitally is bad for society.

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