201–210 of 582 posts
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…
> "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…
What if an author explicitly doesn't want to distribute their works or to distribute an alternative version of their works? There was the recent case of the company that owns the rights to Dr. Suess choosing not to publish old versions of books they felt had racist depictions.
And who sets the standard for readily available? If I offer my book for sale for $100 is it readily available? At what price is something no longer readily available? Does it depend on the type of book? What if it's for sale broadly but not in the state where you live? What if it's free but must be read in person and cannot be taken home with you?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.…
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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> But few do.
Are you kidding? It's true that few people do this in the same sense that it's true that few people publish books at all, whether they give them away freely or not.
But far more people publish books and give them away freely than publish books and offer them for money. Remember Livejournal?
With this judgement, does this force them to write a tool that determines whether a book is in print or not? Are there any good webservices, or will they just have to scrape Amazon, etc.? I've noticed a lot of their lending library is definitely out of print; is "out-of-print and public domain" just the ars writer's interpretation of the judgement? If it isn't, a tighter awareness of what is in print and out of print…
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> That's why current copyright status should be the bar --- that or granted permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright terms are nearly infinite at this point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re confusing the COVID “emergency lending” period (which was highly dubious, I agree) with their normal lending system. They track borrows against physical copies of the books stored in their warehouse. Typically you can only borrow a book for one hour before having to renew in the viewer.
Under discovery in the case it turned out that nope, they weren't doing that right either.
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. There’s no way to implement this without taking away the freedoms of the author to choose how to distribute the fruits of his labor. Just because you think the world would be a better place if they all did that does not mean it’s…
In practice, almost no author gets to choose how the fruits of their labor are distributed. Their rights are gobbled up immediately by one of the big publishers, who then dispose of their captive intellectual property as they see fit.
Is the value of the work of the author to be measured against their remaining lifetime?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> this is explicitly why we allow copyright in US The founders of the US intended copyright to last for 14 years, with the ability to renew for a single extra 14-year extension. Like patents, copyright was intended to expire quickly in order to serve the good of the public. Thank Disney for fucking that up for everyone. You have refuted your own argument.
But specifically a lot of us have an issue with the fact that beginning in the 20th century, copyright durations have been increasing so quickly that it's starting to look more like copyright is becoming permanent.
The founders were well aware of the negative societal effects of monopoly. We are well aware of them and suffering under several forms of monopoly today, many of which are enforced through copyright. The founders chose to grant a LIMITED and TEMPORARY monopoly to copyright holders, not an UNLIMITED and PERMANENT one, because of this. The eminently reasonable and middle of the road position is that we should reduce the duration of copyright, restoring it to its original intent. This corrects one of the general class of pro-monopoly errors we have made which have increased wealth inequality and damaged our society.
It is truly extraordinary how much damage Disney has done (with government as a willing collaborator) against the original intent of the founders and the will of the people.