Judge decides against Internet Archive • Hacker News Board

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#691

Post by berniedurfee » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 4:34 PM UTC

narwally wrote: post #552

berniedurfee wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But doesn’t that conflict with the practicalities of economics? If everyone freely creates copies of what I produce, because they can, I can’t go buy things that can’t be easily replicated, like food or shelter. If IP is free for everyone, what do we do with all the people who need to live solely by producing IP?

Do we actually need monetary incentives to get people to create new things. Won't people naturally keep creating new things as long as they aren't constrained by a more fundamental need? So we really just need to create a society where nobody has to worry about their basic needs like housing, food, healthcare, etc...and then people are free to create and are even free to fail while doing so.

I agree, but until we get to that new society and new economic system, people need to consider the creators. IP is often all they have.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#692

Post by cbozeman » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 4:37 PM UTC

Apfel wrote: post #629

cbozeman wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Not particularly keen to get in an abortion debate on HN of all places. That being said, regardless of anyone's political stance, you saying 'because you made bad decisions' is inflammatory, and clearly based on the assumption that the pregnancy was a result of fully consensual sex. Don't be that guy.

Even in the 1970s, women had condoms and birth control pills.

You're going to be hard-pressed to find a reasonable, thinking individual who would not allow for abortion exemptions for rape / incest / endangerment of the mother.

We're on Hacker News. A place where - supposedly - thinking people comment.

You "Don't be that guy."

It shouldn't even be necessary for me to have had to type this.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#693

Post by giantrobot » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 4:39 PM UTC

MrVandemar wrote: post #631

giantrobot wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. -- Signed, Not an Artist. (Most artists are paid an absolute pittance for their work. Most work at least one other job. Almost none make even a basic income. I feel artists should have the benefit of the income from their work for their natural life, unless they waive their righ…

Why doesn't the plumber deserve a payment every time you shit then? Effective sewage systems prevent devastating diseases like cholera and typhus. Surely that's a higher social utility than a trashy Harlequin novel or any of the works of Kevin Federline?

Also, fuck you for assuming I've never made any art. I'd be fine if anything I've drawn, painted, or written became public domain after twenty years. If I wanted to sell it that's plenty of time. Works entering public domain doesn't preclude me from selling the physical artifact even after its public domain. It doesn't preclude me from making new art to sell. A musician's work becoming public domain doesn't preclude them performing it for pay.

It would be ridiculous if twenty years from now some poor bastard got sued into destitution because they downloaded some dumb thing I wrote twenty years ago.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#694

Post by berniedurfee » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 4:39 PM UTC

realusername wrote: post #563

berniedurfee wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But doesn’t that conflict with the practicalities of economics? If everyone freely creates copies of what I produce, because they can, I can’t go buy things that can’t be easily replicated, like food or shelter. If IP is free for everyone, what do we do with all the people who need to live solely by producing IP?

Maybe there's a middle-ground between zero IP and the near perpetual IP we have right now. Additionally, we must keep in mind in those debates that piracy causing loss of revenue has never been proven and is an urban legend.

Piracy (stealing) _has_ to cause loss of revenue. It’s right in the definition. There’s no way around it.

There’s also a moral component to all this.

Regardless of the calculus, if a creator says they don’t want to give their product away for free, that they’d like to be paid for every copy, we should respect that.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#695

Post by damoe » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 4:42 PM UTC

philipps wrote: post #521

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a general rule we don't enforce copyright at the point of having an idea, but rather at the point of putting that idea into some sort of medium that can be transmitted to others, and then we enforce copyright at the transmission point. The transmission has concrete, albeit somewhat mutable scarcity.

The characterization that IP law is only intended to spur creative activity is incorrect. It was designed to balance the interests of the creator with those of society. And that balance is off, IP regulation has become a tool for rent seeking.

You are actually incorrect here as far as the US goes.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US constitution states:

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.

The whole constitutional purpose of IP law is to spur creative activity. The interests of the creator are only a means to this end. This has, unfortunately, been perverted by regulatory capture.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#696

Post by cbozeman » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 4:42 PM UTC

LilyFrenchPants wrote: post #620

cbozeman wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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You don't have the right to kill another person. You don't even have the right to kill most animals without sufficient reason (hence hunting permits, fines for not properly caring for agricultural animals, etc.).

The point, which ought to be obvious to HN readers - and would have been 10 years ago - is that we as a nation never sat down and decided, "What constitutes a person?"

Personally I'm on board for telling you what you can do with your uterus in the same way European nations are - you have 12 weeks to decide. After that, you keep the baby and it's illegal to abort it. I believe every single one of the vaunted Scandinavian nations has a 12 week limit on abortion. Many tech people want to model society after them, so there you go. Start there.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#697

Post by mindslight » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 4:44 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #673

dahart wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The current law is broken I think many agree that copyright needs to be shortened, but what does “broken” mean, exactly? I have good feelings for the Internet Archive, but in this case it’s about a handful of books that are being copied and distributed a mere 5 years after initial publication, which I think a lot of people who want copyright shortened would still agree is quite a bit too short. Books frequently get…

Really the main (even only?) thing "broken" about copyright is the terms. (ADDED: I generally favor orphan works legislation but I also get the argument that this is also more likely to favor corporations than individuals.) And basically all the schemes to make copyright more expensive, difficult, requiring jumping through hoops and paying increasing amounts of money to renew? That just basically screws individual cr…

Besides the lengthy term, another major problem with copyright is how forcefully it has been applied to the personal realm. If it were a limited commercial right that made companies play fair with each other while leaving individuals alone, I wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem with it. But from yesterday's nastygrams near libraries' xerox machines [sic] and stores' blank tape aisles, to today's shakedowns of torrenters and kneecappings of software developers, the way it has been conceived as some absolute property right is utterly draconian.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#698

Post by cbozeman » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 4:44 PM UTC

starkd wrote: post #628

LilyFrenchPants wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Well, thanks for the strawman. When you debate in strawman arguments, you block constructive debate from moving forward. The issue is one of judicial discernment. It is the ability for a supreme court to make up rights not written into the constitution. This is not difficult to recognize, whether you are pro-choice or pro-life. The correct place for this is in legislation. It is an emotional topic that is constantly…

> What is going to happen when a fetus can survive in an artificial womb?

We're going to see a wave of hilariously (in the worst possible way) maladapted babies, because I'm almost certain we'll find that the constant "noise" of the mother's body, plus hormonal changes, are critically important for proper development.

Sure, maybe researchers and scientists will factor all of this into the development of such a technology, but so far Humanity doesn't have a good track record with getting everything right on the first go-round.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#699

Post by libraryatnight » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 5:06 PM UTC

scoot wrote: post #634

libraryatnight wrote: post #82

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The logic you use to dismiss the sandwich example extrapolates to your own examples. "Shut off the lights and go to bed or go to the ER" "Stuff a cloth in your underwear" "Don't have sex" "Don't you have any sterno or mouthwash?!" Why even do this to someone if you understood their meaning and more or less agree?

So your argument is that no shopping is an inconvenience, not an imposition? I ask because you did the same thing you're arguing against, and yet failed to provide any counter examples.

I have no argument other than your comment was silly and pointless. This is you realizing that without realizing that.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#700

Post by SideQuark » Sat, Mar 25, 2023, 5:15 PM UTC

ipcress_file wrote: post #537

SideQuark wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The previous poster made a more defensible statement given the totality of outcomes when breaking the law. If I told someone smoking is bad forr their health, would you follow with "I know a person that smoked till 98" as reasonable advice? This is the same argument. And in this case, the actions of IA may well end them for all of us. That's not such a good outcome for breaking the law, is it?

This is a faulty parallel. Someone who smokes until they're 98 is not engaged in a quest to change the general outcome of smoking for all others.

Not many lawbreakers are doing it to change the law either.

And we're seeing the IA possibly going to end because they wanted to break the law, and not completely for some moral cause, but because breaking it helps them. There was plenty of reasonable calling out Brewster's ignorant and self-serving choices on this issue for some time. He didn't need to do this, and he put the entire operation at unnecessary risk, as his critics claimed would happen.

This is what lawbreaking generally does.