Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by spankalee » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 6:03 AM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #280

throw10920 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is the correct solution - reduce copyright term . I don't know if I agree that 14 years is right, but I'm sure that pretty much everyone can agree that 1 year is too short, and 60 years is too long.

1 year is 1 year too long, but reducing to 14 years would at least be an improvement over the current effectively perpetual system..

I just don't understand this take. Why should authors not be able to reap the economic benefits from their work? Someone write a novel and everyone else should be able to copy it? It just doesn't make sense to me.

Why wouldn't this line of reasoning apply to physical property? Why can't I just go live in any house I want? Take any car I want?

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

#322

Post by owisd » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 6:03 AM UTC

mhh__ wrote: post #208

SanjayMehta wrote: post #103

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?

Is there some technicality whereby one could still hold rights to illustrations and the colour of the bindings and so on.

Not sure if it applies in this case, but yes the exact typesetting is a separate copyright.

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

#323

Post by johnnyanmac » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 6:06 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #229

ysavir wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing to the free tiers of Spotify and Youtube, which in effect is saying that we should put ads into our books.

Libraries tend not to put ads into books to fund them. The physical restrictions in a library - ala, only 1 person could read it at a time - is what prevents publishers from trying to charge more or prevent it. The basic issue is that if a library is filled with electronic books, the publishers will stand to lose a lot of profit. Now I'm not arguing that they deserve this profit, but there's no good model so far that…

> Libraries tend not to put ads into books to fund them.

They do not, they are government funded. But to say they are funded insufficiently as is (without this advent of better electronic resources) is under selling the issue.

>Perhaps there could be a form of library "fee" that is funded by tax payers, in a similar way to how public radio gets funded.

If your local, that's called taxes. And people reaction to paying more taxes is pretty much why corporations always win. We'd rather sacrifice time with intrusive ads than pay more for a community effort.

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

#324

Post by eat_veggies » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 6:09 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #300

deaddodo wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You cannot make money off of people who are starving.

You can force starving people into unfair arrangements where the choice is between getting screwed or dying of hunger. You can use the existence of starving people as a threat to keep your work force in line. Sometimes it's not even the starving people that you're making money off of, but their minerals and land.

There are a lot of ways to profit from suffering. And sometimes it's not even about profit—it can just feel so good to have an Other to oppress.

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

#325

Post by emporas » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 6:09 AM UTC

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…

I believe in 5 years time, digital information will be so easily transformable, that copyright holders (and patent holders) will have a very difficult time enforcing the property rights.

When a book can be readily transformed into audiobook, or even a song, a movie and anime, a sketch, a scientific diag or anything else, how you define property in that environment? Pretty impossible.

I think a useful analogy is when we lived in caves. A cave is given as is, no way to transform it, to evolve it and optimize it. As long as we found new ways to create an enclosure, then technology advancement really took off. Houses made of rocks, clay, concrete, wood started popping off everywhere.

The same way with books. A printed book is not transformed to anything else really. As long as written words can be represented in a more flexible way, then they are on to the race for technology advancement.

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

#326

Post by almatabata » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 6:09 AM UTC

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #269

spywaregorilla wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're undercutting us by virtue of labor standards and other corners that we don't cut.

Honestly I know that used to be true, but how true is that today? Laborers in the USA don’t have great standards either. What proportion of the cost reduction comes from lower labor standards and what proportion comes from the fact that they absolutely have invested more in manufacturing than we have? I order my PCBAs from JLCPCB in China and they’re about 1/10th the cost of ordering something from the USA. But you c…

It can be multiple things at once. They did indeed invest a lot more into manufacturing but they are also definitely using slave labor to cut on costs (see https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/02/01/china-carmakers-implicat...). Who knows as well to which extent the government funds these companies and keeps them afloat.

> But you can watch a factory tour, it’s not some horrible labor conditions it’s huge highly automated machines: https://youtu.be/jTBOSob5MLg

Rhetorical question but do you really believe they would be allowed to publish anything showing a human rights violation on youtube?

To get this footage he probably had to agree that all footage has to be reviewed by the company. There is no way they green light anything that makes them look bad. I would not be shocked if a party official had to be there to make sure he only shows the great side of everything.

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

#327

Post by johnnyanmac » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 6:10 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #247

chii wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libraries tend not to put ads into books to fund them. The physical restrictions in a library - ala, only 1 person could read it at a time - is what prevents publishers from trying to charge more or prevent it. The basic issue is that if a library is filled with electronic books, the publishers will stand to lose a lot of profit. Now I'm not arguing that they deserve this profit, but there's no good model so far that…

> The basic issue is that if a library is filled with electronic books, the publishers will stand to lose a lot of profit. Profit they're only getting because they figured out a way to cheat the concept of ownership and get around the first sale doctrine. > The physical restrictions in a library - ala, only 1 person could read it at a time - is what prevents publishers from trying to charge more or prevent it. Publis…

>they figured out a way to cheat the concept of ownership and get around the first sale doctrine.

How do you figure we get around this problem? The ability to reshare infinite electronic copies of a work does make this a legitimate issue compared to a physical good. I don't have any good answer.

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

#328

Post by monero-xmr » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 6:13 AM UTC

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…

It might take decades and billions of dollars to prove a molecule can cure disease XYZ. Once you know the molecule, copying it is cheap. Only intellectual property rights can provide the incentive to find said molecule, safe in the knowledge that once it is found, all of the costs can be recouped plus profit.

That is the clear-cut case for intellectual property, but it’s the same principle for books. I’m not going to write a book that takes tons of effort and exposes my hard-won knowledge if I can’t profit from it, despite how easy it is to copy text. Food for thought

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

#329

Post by johnnyanmac » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 6:14 AM UTC

throw10920 wrote: post #277

theendisney4 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give people a book coupon? Then they can chose what they think important?

There's no need . Memoirs, political books, fiction - no need for the taxpayer to subsidize, people can buy themselves. Actually useful technical material: already available for free on the internet. Poor people are not dying on the streets because they can't read the autobiography of the latest president. Tax dollars going to that instead of climate change or cancer research or something similar is incredibly immora…

1. Not a fan of privation fallacy

2. Your view on books and by extension, long term education is well, short term. A classic issue used to defund libraries. You don't give proper resources and knowledge to get the homeless today off thr street. It's to ensure much less of the next generation isn't also on the street.

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

#330

Post by johnnyanmac » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 6:22 AM UTC

incompatible wrote: post #255

Aurornis wrote: post #171

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…

Why should we turn information into a "product", introducing scarcity where none is required? It's just a misguided attempted to force every part of society into a capitalist system, regardless of whether it makes any sense. It will probably fail in the long run anyway, since who wants to pay for something that they can get for free, even it involves circumventing the rules. How many here would pay $30 to take a casu…

>Why should we turn information into a "product", introducing scarcity where none is required

Because expert information comes from experts who are paid a lot to do stuff not involving the authoring of their ideas. And we need to incentivize them to get said valuable information. How many people here have some novel expertise in their fields? How many would help produce technical articles pro Bono? Or for pay but end up mass pirated?

I 1000% agree the publishers themselves take way too much off the top of these authors, but the concept of "just provide knowledge out of thr good of your heart" doesn't work at scale.

>If we are sticking with a mostly capitalist system so that money is so important to get things created, then a government can provide some for this purpos

Which runs into all the problems we all know too well. Something something politics, something something taxes, something something lobbying.

On top of all that, the government just simply doesn't compensate as well as the private sector. I'm not sure if this will ever change.