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

arstechnica.com

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

#191

Post by vineyardmike »

Aurornis wrote: post #171
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…

Spotify has a free tier where you can listen to any song for free. YouTube lets you watch almost anything for free. Both of these also pay the creators. There are many more services peddling free content and even covering hosting costs.

Libraries are free.

We have plenty of completely non-hypothetical non-society-overhauling ways to access information for free. Lots of information is free, lots of it is accessible.

> the current system is indeed necessary.

Not all of the current system is equally necessary. Maybe not necessary at all, it just so happens to be the system we have now. There have been plenty of radically different models of society over the years. Yea, they're gone now, but this current one isn't particularly old either.

Just to be more concrete - if you stop using and protecting your trademark, you can lose it. If you just hoard and don't use a copyright, you won't lose it. We already have systems in place that can provide similar info exchange for free.

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

#192

Post by lloeki »

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…

If I build a house and you build a house and we exchange houses, both of us end up with exactly one house each.

If I have an idea and you have an idea and we exchange ideas, both of us end up with two ideas each.

There may be labour in both but there's a fundamental difference between physical property and intellectual property.

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

#193

Post by aprilthird2021 »

Aurornis wrote: post #171
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…

Yes, I agree with you about this comment specifically. But on this issue in particular, we do not need to overhaul society so drastically. We have laws about lending out books one has purchased. We have laws about how long copyright should last. We can change these laws but still retain much of their benefit while allowing much more freedom to access knowledge.

There is a line here and we may be walking too far on one edge of it. But the comment you replied to does have a utopian tone far from the pragmatism this case actually revolves around.

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

#194

Post by deaddodo »

ryandrake wrote: post #80
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…

I believe in hundreds, maybe thousands of years, after humanity has finally evolved past our current monkey mentality, future historians will look back at this time period in awe: "They had the technology to make the sum of all human knowledge available to everyone... And they blew it! Further, they had the means to feed everyone, clothe everyone, house everyone, but they just walked away in the other direction, pure…

> If Star Trek Replicators were invented today, we're so stupid we'd outlaw them.

You're so optimistic to think the law would even be this fair. More like limit access to corporations as "the only custodians responsible enough to wield them", while still allowing the developing world to starve and further increasing their profit margins simultaneously to decreasing working wages and employment levels.

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

#195

Post by vineyardmike »

poikroequ wrote: post #158

> "I understand that publishers and authors have to make a profit, but most of the material I am trying to access is written by people who are dead and whose publishers have stopped printing the material," wrote one IA fan from Boston. This really is the crux of the problem. Copyright should be "use it or lose it." If you don't make your books readily available, then you should have no right to demand copies of your…

> Copyright should be "use it or lose it."

Which is basically how trademarks are. So we even already have a system in place to manage something like this.

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

#196

Post by ekianjo »

lupire wrote: post #142
hysan wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Income is taxed, obviously. Copyright is taken away, originally after 14 years, now 70(?) years. After the death of the creator

its necessary to make sure dead authors have an incentive to keep on writing great books

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

#198

Post by FpUser »

encomiast wrote: post #160
FpUser wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most financially successful humans only care how to increase their already huge amount of money. they do not give a flying fuck about advancing humanity as a whole.

[citation needed]

Look around and see what big corporations are doing. You woll be flooded.

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

#199

Post by nanovision »

This is sad. If this was indeed copyright infringement, what was the rationale behind the Internet Archive initially adding these books? The Internet Archive has never been a pirate site, so there must have been some logic or justification for indexing these books.

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

#200

Post by DamnInteresting »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #82

Copyright lasts too damn long.

I am an author who relies on copyright for part of my living, yet I agree that copyright protection lasts too long. I feel like it should protect the work for a reasonable time--say 20 years--after which one must pay an initially modest but exponentially increasing fee to renew the copyright every X years. Big players like Disney could afford to keep their stuff out of the public domain for a while, but not forever. And many deceased artists' work would slip into the public domain when their estate could no longer afford the renewal fee.
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