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

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

#171

Post by Aurornis »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #25

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…

> we should move to models of publishing that do not require this restriction of information.

It’s interesting how this comment veers into a completely hypothetical overhaul of society in which money doesn’t matter, for reasons which of course are hand-waved away.

On one hand: Sure! Sounds great! If someone can reinvent all of society in a way that everyone is free to do whatever they want and not worry about getting paid, then by all means let’s go for it.

On the other hand: These proposals are so fanciful and far-fetched (at least in our lifetimes) that these comments read more like a tacit admission that the current system is indeed necessary.

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

#172

Post by dabraham1248 »

throwAGIway wrote: post #112
PostOnce wrote: post #108

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.

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.

> Sounds like that would severely decrease what authors can earn, especially older ones.

I mean, I know a bunch of authors. All of them wrote because they needed to write (even the textbook authors). And almost none of them earned much of anything from it (even the textbook authors). One English prof told me that he received almost enough for his morning coffee for about three years. Then he didn't. And he drank just plain coffee.

"The problem for most artists isn't piracy, it's obscurity." "Less copyright" != "piracy", but I think it has the same effect in this case (theoretically less value placed on the work of an author, but not practically).

Also, this might be coincidence, but copyright has gotten extended at the same time as most authors have received less from publishing.

All that said, I want society as a whole to be better, people to have more opportunities to grow, good ideas more of a chance to flourish. I think that overly strong copyright fights against that. And IME (ok, secondhand experience) that 99.9% of the profits added by strong copyright goes to the publishers, not the authors.

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

#173

Post by Aurornis »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #128
spankalee wrote: post #104

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.

[flagged]

> Why should someone be thrown in jail for singing the happy birthday song in front of a crowd of people?

This is not a thing that happens, and it’s hard to take anyone seriously when they’re presenting this as a counter argument.

If you can’t even understand the difference between criminal and civil matters, how can you even begin to discuss this topic?

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

#174

Post by kibwen »

encomiast wrote: post #134
kibwen wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Enough with this nonsense. A book isn't a family business, it's not the family home, it ain't the family farm, it's an artifact that you produced once, it makes no sense to inherit the right to copy it. We allow inheritance to exist because it creates social good by facilitating community continuity. And the best social good when it comes to copyright is to let it expire as soon as possible; let's be honest, "until the death of the author" is still eons longer than any author deserves. It shouldn't be more than 20 years, max.

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

#175

Post by romwell »

encomiast wrote: post #134
kibwen wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>So the wife that supported the author can't profit off their assets? The author can't pass on this to children?

They certainly can. Certain assets are depreciating with time though, like copyrightable works. They only have value because of the law in the first place, and the law sets the timeline for that value to depreciate to zero.

Perhaps supporting a writer shouldn't be a career/investment opportunity though.

>Should we do the same thing for other property like land and money?

Like, with taxes on inheritance? We should and we do. And arguably, we don't do it enough.

The question is: are the authors that much better off from the way the laws are now? Is the society overall? If we tell the authors that, in fact, their grandchildren won't be able to profit off of their books, what kind of literature shall we lose?

We already have the answer, since the draconian copyright laws are pretty recent. Great works of literature have been written before such laws existed, and introduction of these laws hardly improved writing overall (or the plight of the author, for that matter).

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

#176

Post by dylan604 »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #25

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…

> There is no greater folly of contemporary human society than the purposeful restriction of such vast and easily shareable repositories of knowledge.

This is exactly how people stayed in power. Knowledge is power, so keep the masses uneducated so they are subservient. I once asked an Englishman why if the British Empire was so great did all of its colonies revolt against it. His response was not what I expected when he said they taught them how to read.

So watching how the school systems keep getting dumber really does get those conspiracy theory synapses firing. Make great again by taking power away from people really goes towards that.

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

#177

Post by encomiast »

kibwen wrote: post #174
encomiast wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Enough with this nonsense. A book isn't a family business, it's not the family home, it ain't the family farm, it's an artifact that you produced once, it makes no sense to inherit the right to copy it . We allow inheritance to exist because it creates social good by facilitating community continuity. And the best social good when it comes to copyright is to let it expire as soon as possible; let's be honest, "until…

> We allow inheritance to exist because it creates social good

FWIW, this is also why we have copyright. In fact, this is explicitly why we allow copyright in US.

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

#178

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

encomiast wrote: post #155
anigbrowl wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of hectoring discourse is aggressive and rude. You can do better. Authors that get paid can certainly leave the assets they received to their families. They could also transfer ownership of unpublished intangible assets. More than that sucks the general public into a quasi-contractual relationship with a posthumous person; I disclaim fiscal obligations of strangers toward ghosts.

But it's not hectoring (and was not intended to be rude). Authors build things. Just like people who build companies, houses, inventions, etc. There are a lot of theories of how ownership happen, but many (at least in the US and Europe) come from some for of the labor theory of ownership. We own the things we put labor into and create. Unless you have a competing theory of ownership that explains why other assets can…

The big difference between copyright and propery is that me owning a table doesn't stop someone else from making a similar looking table. Copyright that lasted forever would mean that new adaptations of anything could never be made without licensing from the hedge fund that had bought up the original rights from 500 years ago.

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

#179

Post by romwell »

encomiast wrote: post #155
anigbrowl wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of hectoring discourse is aggressive and rude. You can do better. Authors that get paid can certainly leave the assets they received to their families. They could also transfer ownership of unpublished intangible assets. More than that sucks the general public into a quasi-contractual relationship with a posthumous person; I disclaim fiscal obligations of strangers toward ghosts.

But it's not hectoring (and was not intended to be rude). Authors build things. Just like people who build companies, houses, inventions, etc. There are a lot of theories of how ownership happen, but many (at least in the US and Europe) come from some for of the labor theory of ownership. We own the things we put labor into and create. Unless you have a competing theory of ownership that explains why other assets can…

> Unless you have a competing theory of ownership that explains why other assets can benefit the family of those who create things of value after death but not works of art, music, writing, etc., you haven't really made a cogent argument.

Easy. The ownership of intellectual property can indefinitely remain with the author (or be passed on to their children, spouses, etc).

We even have a great model for it now: NFTs.

The right to copy that work, however, isn't something that was either created or owned by the author. That exclusivity is a privilege granted by the state, introduced because it was believed to benefit the society overall.

You can inherit a car, but not a driver's license. The argument is that the exclusive license to copy a work of art is really more like the latter.

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

#180

Post by liendolucas »

tombert wrote: post #133
liendolucas wrote: post #110

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…

E-readers for me are one of the best gadgets ever invented. Prices though are still high compared to few years ago. I own a Kobo Aura H20 and almost every time take it with me, possibly the best purchase I ever made. They are great for reading regular books, but I repeteadly find online that in general technical books still do not render properly and a lot of people complain after purchasing them.
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