But I can borrow ebooks from other public libraries.
Is there something specific about IA or is this ruling making the concept of epub borrowing a copyright infringement (in the US)?
Judge decides against Internet Archive
371–380 of 835 posts
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#372Intellectual 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.
"Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct" So, what laws and constructs of civilized life are not an unnatural made up constructs? You seem to be suggesting there is some natural law that excludes things like intellectual property. Which natural laws, specifically, are you talking about?
The most obvious distinction between intellectual property and ordinary property is their history. Ownership of things has existed for longer than reliable records are available. Copyright and patents, by contrast, were created during the late Renaissance in response to the particular economic circumstances of the time. They have since become the tools of entrenched interests who would rather suggest that things have always been this way and we couldn't live without it.
Is anything humans do natural? The only thing that can make something unnatural, so far as we understand it, is human intervention. Insofar as we conceive of unnaturalness as a recognizable quality of phenomena, it is more acute when the humans responsible are more sophisticated in their methods. We can easily observe a very large difference between the primitiveness of human society when it created the ownership of things and the much more advanced culture that devised what we now call intellectual property. From this construction of what is natural and what is not, we clearly find that intellectual property is much less "natural", though there is still the necessity of accepting that "natural" can be a meaningful idea at all.
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quite possibly, society doesn't sit still, but it's still an improvement from before in modern constitutional republic context. Beats going to war to change rulers.
>an improvement I'm sure some think it is. I think dictating power based on war ability makes way more sense than everyone having a say simply by virtue of breathing. Egalitarianism is not consistent with nature. But these things go in cycles, the flaws and contradictions will accumulate and the system will collapse eventually, like they all do.
Nature doesn't have F35 fighter jets, fully autonomous drones that can duty cycle 24/7 for months, hackernews discussion boards built on the internet, that benefited from thousands of years of physics breakthroughs. Nukes, medicine, ect, you know the list of technologies..
Even in a war-economy, the majority of the civilian populace has to provide all the complicated logistics, food, services, entertainment, ect to keep the war effort going. Being a wage slave to a warlord isn't a magic fix to "egalitarianism".
We can already live outside of egalitarianism. I can guarentee you Bill Gates, Stephen Hawkings and Jeff Bezos (and the lowest of society too) have no need for my input on their life, and don't know I exist.
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is interesting, from that section: Nor does IA’s promise not to lend simultaneously its lawfully acquired print copies and its unauthorized reproductions help its case. As an initial matter, IA has not kept its promise. Although the Open Library’s print copies of the Works in Suit are non-circulating, IA concedes that it has no way of verifying whether Partner Libraries remove their physical copies from circulat…
This is such an “ackchully” argument from the ruling. It’s not the spirit of the law and the principles behind the idea of free access to information. Instead it’s narrowing in on the specifics of physical lending of books, grasping for analogies to the 20th century, in a world which has transformed and moved on decades ago. But even if all those things weren’t true, or important, it’s profound that there’s enough co…
Make no mistake, the law is specific made to limit free access to information. Originally this was a reasonable concession to encourage creative work, but as the length extended and copyright starts to be controlled by massive corporations, they gradually became a way to protect profits.
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#375Earlier 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.
If artists deserve money every time you read a book then your plumber should get paid every time you take a shit. Copyrights have been abused to the point of absurdity. They should last no longer than patents.
A writer/artist/whatever can make some money off a work for two decades and then their work goes to the society that enabled its creation.
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct" So, what laws and constructs of civilized life are not an unnatural made up constructs? You seem to be suggesting there is some natural law that excludes things like intellectual property. Which natural laws, specifically, are you talking about?
It’s kind of true that idea of IP is entirely made-up, but it’s also important to recognize that it was made up to support and safeguard author’s living . IP allows authors to require values of content to be preserved, recognized, and financially rewarded(in one-time or recurring payments). In the absence of IP, printing companies can take manuscripts and contents to profit off of copies free-for-all style, bankrupti…
It was created to allow the United States to make money printing books without paying for them but not allowing other countries to print their books.
Later it was expanded to keep poor countries and people from affording medicine.
All enforced by threat of economic sanctions with the full backing of the US armed forces.
Reading on the history of copyright would be a good start before perpetuating misconceptions.
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you. We can simply say IP is a concept that we need to bust. And that's fine. No need to invoke weird "reasoning" like that.
I personally like that movies and videogames exist and can be made with large budgets because that generally makes them better. I don't see how that continues without IP.
There will still be a first to market advantage.
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#378I thought the IA only archives websites and digital contents, which are in danger of being lost? eBooks are seldom the only form of publishing, thus I believe there is always at least an archive copy of them. Making them accessible for all is clearly very controversial.
IA has tons of stuff. Scroll down past the Wayback search on https://archive.org/ to the more advanced search and you can see more categories. You can play a lot of the audio, video, and even some software right in the browser. Their physical archive is also huge. Here are some pictures from 2012 https://scldigital.wordpress.com/internet-archive-gallery/
Oh, I didn't know they even have a physical store! Thanks for pointing out. Yeah, I know they also archived digital audio and other stuffs, but never thought book archiving lies in their realm as well.
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct" So, what laws and constructs of civilized life are not an unnatural made up constructs? You seem to be suggesting there is some natural law that excludes things like intellectual property. Which natural laws, specifically, are you talking about?
The most obvious distinction between intellectual property and ordinary property is their history. Ownership of things has existed for longer than reliable records are available. Copyright and patents, by contrast, were created during the late Renaissance in response to the particular economic circumstances of the time. They have since become the tools of entrenched interests who would rather suggest that things have…
Nearly everything humans do is natural. We have just made up clever ruses to hide the vulgarity of much of it and to dissuade ourselves that the disparity caused by the natural order has no chance to be solved.
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a such thing as morality or ethics? Is there any action that is unethical?
There is, but not one imposed by the laws of physics or some universal given. ] For example it was moral and ethical (and you were considered a good person regardless of whether you did it) to own slaves when that was the prevalent morality of a societies. So, there are actions that are unethical based on made up human constructs of morality. Nature and physics doesn't care either way. Which is the parent's point: wh…
It was accepted as an economic reality but it was never considered moral or ethical to own slaves any more than it’s considered ethical to own a tool shed today.