Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

sbstatesman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 614 posts

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#221

Post by causi »

tracker1 wrote: post #216
legitimayzer wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Controlled digital lending had a chance of getting off the ground. sure, it may have worked, but fuck me if that's what we get. controlled digital lending means we throw away[1] the great advantage brought by digital technology. controlled digital lending is a very stupid thing to do. I saw megaupload. it showed us all that we can all share it all; we just don't seem to want to, or rather, the American government p…

Might be interesting to start a large "online library" that does physical books by mail. Similar to Netflix original dvd model, but for books. An annual membership fee of like $20/yr to help maintain storage infrastructure. Then ship those books to/from people in reusable boxes for bigger/unwieldy books or padded envelopes if that's sufficient for less expensive paperback. Small per-lend fee to cover the shipping cos…

I don't see how the shipping costs could ever be low enough for that to make sense. Even after my organization's massive UPS discounts, shipping a paperback one state over still costs $4.30. Would you rather spend five bucks to rent a used book or fifteen to buy a new one?

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#222

Post by sp332 »

EamonnMR wrote: post #33

The internet archive served two distinct but important functions: one as a backup of the web which was important for accountability and history, and the other as a repository for archiving the world's non-web digital information. I personally scanned a whole bunch of ephemera and IA was the obvious place to put it. Why jeopardize those functions to do something brick and mortar libraries already did better, and legal…

None of those things are on the line.

We will continue our work as a library. This case does not challenge many of the services we provide with digitized books including interlibrary loan, citation linking, access for the print-disabled, text and data mining, purchasing ebooks, and ongoing donation and preservation of books.

http://blog.archive.org/2023/03/25/the-fight-continues/

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#223

Post by reisse »

causi wrote: post #19

which made copyrighted books available for free during the COVID-19 pandemic. The publishers behind the lawsuit alleged that this entailed copyright infringement. Along with everybody with two brain cells to rub together. We all screamed "Hey, you idiots are going to ruin everything if you act like the pandemic has magically nullified the concept of copyright" and they fucking did it anyway, and now exactly what we s…

> Controlled digital lending had a chance of getting off the ground.

Fuck it. It should never get off the ground, really. We, as a society, don't need controlled lending for something that can be copied for free.

What we need is a fair mechanism to keep authors whole while keeping digital copies available for all, free of charge. And the system slowly changes by itself, discovering multiple such mechanisms. Like, for example, making physical books collectibles; or paying for early access (not for the access per se).

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#224

Post by MilnerRoute »

causi wrote: post #19

which made copyrighted books available for free during the COVID-19 pandemic. The publishers behind the lawsuit alleged that this entailed copyright infringement. Along with everybody with two brain cells to rub together. We all screamed "Hey, you idiots are going to ruin everything if you act like the pandemic has magically nullified the concept of copyright" and they fucking did it anyway, and now exactly what we s…

My issue is with the headline: "If we lose the internet archive, we're screwed." But no one is saying we're in danger of losing the entire Internet Archive.

They do many many things - most of which are not in any way affected by this lawsuit. The judge even specified that the Internet Archive can still scan and publish copies of books in the public domain.

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#225

Post by jahsome »

causi wrote: post #19

which made copyrighted books available for free during the COVID-19 pandemic. The publishers behind the lawsuit alleged that this entailed copyright infringement. Along with everybody with two brain cells to rub together. We all screamed "Hey, you idiots are going to ruin everything if you act like the pandemic has magically nullified the concept of copyright" and they fucking did it anyway, and now exactly what we s…

I appreciate your passion!

Unsolicited advice: IME I've found being angry because I was right serves no one, least of all myself. I would recommend you soften your language. Harshness, even if warranted, turns people off, especially those who could learn most from what you have to say.

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#226

Post by DanTheManPR »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #219

> When Julius Caesar burned the Library of Alexandria, it was harder to imagine a greater destruction of scholarship. Dude. We're not talking about losing secret ancient knowledge. We're talking about losing pictures of cats. There is nothing on the internet that's so valuable that we couldn't live without it. Real research, real knowledge, makes its way out of the internet. And besides, most of the internet that we…

>Dude. We're not talking about losing secret ancient knowledge. We're talking about losing pictures of cats.

But we're literally talking about book lending, and preserving the old knowledge of the early internet. However lofty and pretensions the analogy may seem, comparing it to the burning of the library of Alexandria actually does seem like a better analogy than "we're just losing pictures of cats"

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#228

Post by boucher »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #20

I agree. And I told my friends at the IA from the beginning that their plan was very, very foolish. People can look the other way at copyright infringement of web sites when it's just used for archival work. But when you're directly destroying an artist's livelihood by undercutting their income stream, well, you shouldn't be surprised if they'll be upset.

Are they really "directly destroying" anyone's livelihood? Are authors actually upset? [1][2]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/author-coalition-bl... [2] https://www.authorsalliance.org/2021/08/17/library-lending-a...

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#229

Post by patcon »

tablespoon wrote: post #23
jawns wrote: post #4

I know the government has viewed certain companies as "too big to fail," because of the negative financial impact we would experience if they were to do so. I wonder if there needs to be a cultural equivalent, where a repository of digital or physical artifacts is "too big to fail" because of the negative cultural impact their failure would have. In the absence of that, anyone who sees high cultural value to the pres…

> I know the government has viewed certain companies as "too big to fail," because of the negative financial impact we would experience if they were to do so. > I wonder if there needs to be a cultural equivalent, where a repository of digital or physical artifacts is "too big to fail" because of the negative cultural impact their failure would have. If there is, the Internet Archive isn't it. Yeah, it's super import…

> but few people outside of them would even notice it if disappeared.

Um... I don't get the impression that you are speaking from any sort of authority

Look up any of their stats and tell me that's librarians and "weird technologists".

Small example: 600,000 new users per month are niche technologists?

https://archive.org/about/stats.php

More ppl in every town prob use IA than their local library. It's important (albeit overly central, but they are working on resolving that via IPFS and other technologies)

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#230

Post by TylerE »

digging wrote: post #81
TylerE wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should tax dollars be used for this?

> Why should tax dollars be used for this? Because: > We already have laws for historical landmarks. These laws ensure the protection of things of societal significance

The Statue of Liberty is an historical landmark.

Random Geocities pages are not.

Post reply on HN