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Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

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131–140 of 582 posts

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#131

There is no greater folly of contemporary human society than the purposeful restriction of such vast and easily shareable repositories of knowledge. Perhaps these schemes made sense in the past but with the advent of the internet and independent groups willing to fund all hosting fees, we should move to models of publishing that do not require this restriction of information. Library genesis exists but necessarily mu…

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You could also loan the book to people. At which point -of course- what you're doing is called a library.

Libraries have historically not been considered communistic per se (rightly or wrongly). But they have not commonly been considered a failure.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should an author be forced to give away their work for free? They can already choose to give it away for free if they wish. We already have the Creative Commons licenses, and there are many open textbook projects.

Dead authors can't choose to give away their works, they're dead. Yet someone still owns the rights 60 years later.

Not sure this argument works unless you are willing to give away the other property on death like houses, stocks, farms, etc. Maybe 60 years is too long, but that doesn't seem to be your argument.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#133

What I will never understand is why this is needed at all. The books that I do find interesting I buy them. Sure, you can bypass paper by having ebooks. But is it really a replacement for a printed book? There is nothing like a printed book. No power needed, nor devices needed, you can go back to any page, any chapter instantly and if you have stomach even write on them. On the other side having the possibility to ju…

Meh, I have a lot of trouble reading small print. I'm not dyslexic (I've been tested), but my brain just doesn't like small text, I have trouble parsing it and retaining stuff I'm reading. I might just be dumb, but sadly I cannot change my brain so thems the breaks.

Something I really like about ebooks and e-ink displays is that I can set the font as big as I want and it updates instantly. I read a lot better, and as a result I enjoy it a lot more. For me, the Kindle was kind of revelatory.

I borrow books from my library, which allows me to read the Kindle version, and I don't need to pay anything (outside of my taxes, I suppose).

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#134
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an author sells the rights and does, should the buyer automatically lose what they bought? Sounds like that would severely decrease what authors can earn, especially older ones.

There's no reason that "selling copyrights" needs to a be a thing. If the author themself wants to profit from their work, sure, but once they die, that's it, and there's no excuse for it to not be in the public domain at that point.

So the wife that supported the author can't profit off their assets? The author can't pass on this to children? Should we do the same thing for other property like land and money?

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#135
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't a counterpoint, it is exactly what OP is saying–there is already a way to give away a book for free if they author/copyright holder wants to without the IA deciding what should be free.

I think it’s pretty clear I am not saying “there outta be a way to give books away” which would be a very stupid thing for me to say. I’m saying we should legalize the giving away of all books, but must rearrange society to ensure authors and all people still have the support the previously got from the existing system. Engaging only with the stupid point I didn’t make is a waste of time honestly and is seriously mis…

>I think it’s pretty clear I am not saying “there outta be a way to give books away” which would be a very stupid thing for me to say.

Ehh.. by this thread and other comments I'm not sure it is very clear. It sounds like you are saying all books should be free.

> Engaging only with the stupid point I didn’t make is a waste of time honestly and is seriously missing the point.

I think you may be getting a little heated around some friendly discussion. You see books different than other goods–which is great–but not everyone does. We can all still converse and hopefully all grow and understand each other better. <3

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#136

Why does Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer (for example) show up in their 1300 banned books list? It’s not under copyright and is available on Gutenberg. Is this some legal angle I’m missing which benefits the plaintiffs in some way?

A republication of something in the public domain can be copyrighted.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#137
post #45

Looks like the publishers are doing their best for libgen/ipfs to succeed. Makes you wonder: Do they even have data on their business growth factors? I don't but I'd guess that: 1. nobody is printing downloaded books 2. instead, people like me _buy_ printed books after browsing through them online

They're actually pretty different sets of books. LibGen/IPFS is heavily biased toward books from the past ~3 decades, especially books that are cracked EPUB's and PDF's. IA seems to be much more scans of library books from ~1930-1980, many of which are out of print and probably only available to you via interlibrary loan, which you might wait a month for. IA is a huge boon for academic research when you need to go ba…

Extremely grateful for IA indeed, and as you say they have more scans that for sure are super useful for research, LLM training, etc.

Like this: https://archive.org/details/landau-and-lifshitz-physics-text...

Where LibGen only has the first volume in French and Portuguese only...

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#138
post #105

Should it be legal for IA to offer this, especially for older and out of print books? Yes, almost certainly. Is it legal? No, not as the law currently stands. You can support Robin Hood, but you shouldn't be shocked when Robin Hood is caught and sent to jail. It was a mistake and a huge legal risk for IA to do this. It could easily have brought down the whole organisation, and all that they've archived to date. I wis…

Are you a lawyer? Can you point to the relevant statutes? I don't ask this flippantly as there exist many forms (private / public / academic) of library which allow for both physical and digital lending of owned assets and are not subject to lawsuits like this. It's not at all obvious that IA's interpretation of the law is in error.

Are you aware of a form of library subject to US law that lends copyrighted digital assets without either a license from the copyright holder or legal trouble from the copyright holder?

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#139
post #105

Should it be legal for IA to offer this, especially for older and out of print books? Yes, almost certainly. Is it legal? No, not as the law currently stands. You can support Robin Hood, but you shouldn't be shocked when Robin Hood is caught and sent to jail. It was a mistake and a huge legal risk for IA to do this. It could easily have brought down the whole organisation, and all that they've archived to date. I wis…

Are you a lawyer? Can you point to the relevant statutes? I don't ask this flippantly as there exist many forms (private / public / academic) of library which allow for both physical and digital lending of owned assets and are not subject to lawsuits like this. It's not at all obvious that IA's interpretation of the law is in error.

You really don't need to be a lawyer to understand the extent to which Internet Archive really screwed up here. For starters they lost on Summary Judgment, which means they couldn't come up with a single issue of fact that the judge thought deserved a trial. Read the Order, the Judge obviously has it straight. Then check archive.org's Form 990s and see how little money they run on, how much they pissed away on legal fees so far, and also infer the amount they had to pay in damages, which was obviously very tiny.

You are welcome to argue it as a matter of culture (and I'm inclined to agree and cheer you on) but from a legal perspective, Brewster should be removed and they need to find competent people to put on the board because they really did put the entire organization at risk over an idiotic decision. And the ramifications continue.

Internet Archive's "we own a copy of a book, we scan it and loan out one digital copy" policy was already on shaky ground. When Covid hit and everyone lost their minds, letting homeless people sleep on the stairs of their building apparently wasn't enough so they just turned into The Pirate Bay and loaned out infinite copies of everything.

In discovery for the case, it turned out they weren't even tracking the "we own one copy" part to begin with correctly. None of this should be surprising to anyone who actually attempts to use the site. The whole thing is duct tape and string.

They have a tiny budget and the do amazing things with it, but it really deserves to be treated like a business and not be run like an art project. If they wanna stick your neck out and push for CDL reform, great. Just do it under a different LLC so you don't tank the 50 other important things you've got going on. And it's time for Brewster to move on. In any other non-profit he'd be gone by now.

Re: Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dead authors can't choose to give away their works, they're dead. Yet someone still owns the rights 60 years later.

Not sure this argument works unless you are willing to give away the other property on death like houses, stocks, farms, etc. Maybe 60 years is too long, but that doesn't seem to be your argument.

Genuine question since I don’t know much about inheritance. Don’t things like houses, stocks, etc get taxed in certain places? Whereas I don’t think copyright does? In a way, that is similar to having to give property away upon death (can’t pay the tax, forced to get rid of it).
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