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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

#491

Post by WalterBright »

belorn wrote: post #431
WalterBright wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the more important point is that you can surely make money off of people by becoming their only source of food/money If you the only source, there is a reason for that, usually because you are shooting people who try to leave. I'll cite a counter for you. The US was the first country in the world to eliminate the specter of famine (around 1800). Free labor was the distinguishing ingredient, not slave labor. (The sl…

In the past there was a fairly common practice to create a monopoly by outlawing people from importing food to a local economy. People may recognize the concept of mining towns, company stores, or its role in debt slavery. The practice back in those days were to advertise inflated wages for a job in remote areas. People then traveled there, only to find out that food and living costs, all under the control of the com…

> outlawing people from importing food

I.e. the government is doing it.

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

#492

Post by gaganyaan »

mardifoufs wrote: post #267
Dylan16807 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if an author explicitly doesn't want to distribute their works or to distribute an alternative version of their works? Too bad. Once you publish it the first time, the cat is out of the bag. Eventually it's going to go into the public domain whether you like it or not. > 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…

Should we apply that logic to gplv3 code too? Just basically disregard the license since knowledge should be completely free? Or maybe impose some burden on the maintainers to keep the code active and constantly changed so that the codebase doesn't lose its license after an arbitrary period of time? I'm genuinely wondering , because to me there's a clear parallel yet in tech circles we almost always see defense of co…

The GPL is a clever hack of a broken system. Given copyright existing, I like the GPL's protections. I would rather take no copyright, as that would address many (but not all) of the reasons the GPL exists.

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

#493

Post by WalterBright »

eat_veggies wrote: post #393
WalterBright wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good thing we don't measure wealth by photos and paintings Do you really think that photos and paintings are all lies? > Be serious, think about why an economy based on slave labor and agriculture would not build a network of railroads even if they had the money for it. I'm sorry, I can't take that comment seriously. > slave labor was so profitable that they did not see the need to industrialize Or that one. Sorry.…

If you recall, the original contention was that "You cannot make money off of people who are starving." Clearly you can—in the short term, and enabled by violent coercion, as you've helpfully added. My argument summed up is that slavery was a "local maximum" that A) generated an enormous amount of wealth early on, and was thus a crucial factor in developing the American economy, even if it was no longer the main driv…

> enabled by violent coercion

The violent coercion is key, not starvation. Isn't it interesting that every example of an abuse by free markets actually turns out to be the government doing it? The anti-chinese laws, debt slavery, slavery, Jim Crow laws, etc.? It's almost as if these things won't happen with free markets!

> generated an enormous amount of wealth

I dispute that. Slavery was dying out in the US by 1800 (as evidenced by its disappearance in the northern states). The cotton gin revived it, but only for cotton, and it was dying out again by the time of the Civil War. The South though the North needed its cotton, but the North was importing it from Egypt. Egyptian cotton (not raised by slaves) was cheaper even including shipping it across the Atlantic.

> made it unattractive for the south to risk seeking a global maximum (investing in industrialization) a strategic misstep for sure.

So they sent their money north to found industries? That doesn't make any sense. Why didn't they invest locally, and get more slaves to work them, if slavery was so enormously profitable?

Slavery is terribly inefficient. First of all, your slaves hate you. They will work as little as they can get away with. They'll sabotage anything they can get away with. They'll piss in your oatmeal. They'll kill you if they can. You have to employ armed guards at all time. You have to provide cradle to grave care for them. They are expensive to buy. If your slaves don't have the right skills, selling them and buying ones with the right skills is far less efficient than just hiring a plumber. And so on.

The Nazis had all these problems with their slave labor war production. Sabotage by those workers was a constant issue.

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

#494

Post by WalterBright »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #396
WalterBright wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

All you said was “You cannot make money off of people who are starving.” Yes you can, by coercing them in various legal and illegal ways. Your original comment was just the one quoted sentence above. It is not correct.

[flagged]

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

#495

Post by WalterBright »

BSDobelix wrote: post #407
WalterBright wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>History shows us that slave labor cannot compete with free labor. History shows us that you can build Pyramids and the Chinese wall with slave labor, probably not affordable with "free labor". But maybe we should also look at "modern slavery" that is "free labor" but without any chance to get another job or get reported to the police. >it's about forcible slave labor, forced with guns and whips. Worked incredible we…

> or get reported to the police

That's not free labor. It's government coercion, again.

> Worked incredible well for Belgium

???

> works incredible well for every warlord in west-Africa

None of them have been able to compete in the free market.

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

#496

Post by franga2000 »

paulcole wrote: post #487
franga2000 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the digitising part is what I find the most acceptable. Why shouldn't they be allowed to do this? Would you have the same problem if they bought ebooks in MOBI, converted them and then lent out EPUB versions. The lending out more copies than they bought part is what there are some good arguments against.

> Would you have the same problem if they bought ebooks in MOBI, converted them and then lent out EPUB versions. Yes. > Why shouldn't they be allowed to do this They bought a paper book, not the right to lend out an ebook.

The contents is the thing that deserves protection, not every individual instance of a medium it's stored on. If I buy a music CD, I paid for one license to play that album plus some plastic and distribution fees. If I make a copy to play because I don't want to damage the original, if I then lend that copy to my friend, if I rip it to mp3 because nothing plays CDs anymore - in all those cases, only one copy is being used so my one "license to play" should suffice.

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

#497

Post by WalterBright »

BSDobelix wrote: post #463
defrost wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> History shows us Does it? Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t slaves who built the pyramids. We know this because archaeologists have located the remains of a purpose-built village for the thousands of workers who built the famous Giza pyramids, nearly 4,500 years ago. https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/were-the-egyptian-pyram... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Egypt#Great...

Yes, maybe the slaves did the less "worthy" jobs: >Slaves were a constant presence in ancient Egypt. Starting with the Old Kingdom (2613 - 2181 BC), slaves took on different roles. Some became soldiers, others scribes. https://www.worldatlas.com/ancient-world/were-slaves-used-to... >Does it? Yes it does, or do you have another argument against the Chinese wall or Belgium for example? Do you really want to argue again…

Slave labor can indeed accomplish things, but it cannot compete with free labor.

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

#498

Post by anigbrowl »

throwAGIway wrote: post #380
lloeki wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If we exchange ownership of ideas, we end up with one idea each. That's different from providing usage rights to our ideas to each other.

Surely you end up with one abstraction (of ownership) each. If you teach me some idea, I still know it even if we've agreed that I won't teach it to others for profit.

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

#499

Post by WalterBright »

mandmandam wrote: post #395
WalterBright wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> make every thread on HN Only in response to posts that extol the virtues of collectivism and/or how bad freedom is. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it :-) > Tell me your secrets Walter Too bad it seems to be a secret that free markets are far more successful. My dad was a finance professor at a college in his later years. He said students would tell him from time to time that they had never heard of a case…

I'm sure your "dirty job" makes sense to you , and it's clear you even feel very righteous about it. Be that as it may, ideological crusades such as this are explicitly disallowed on here. "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity." Dang has been very clear on that, many times - whatever he "knows about you". You really think it's "impossible" for a corporation with St…

[flagged]

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

#500

Post by racional »

WalterBright wrote: post #493
eat_veggies wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you recall, the original contention was that "You cannot make money off of people who are starving." Clearly you can—in the short term, and enabled by violent coercion, as you've helpfully added. My argument summed up is that slavery was a "local maximum" that A) generated an enormous amount of wealth early on, and was thus a crucial factor in developing the American economy, even if it was no longer the main driv…

> enabled by violent coercion The violent coercion is key, not starvation. Isn't it interesting that every example of an abuse by free markets actually turns out to be the government doing it? The anti-chinese laws, debt slavery, slavery, Jim Crow laws, etc.? It's almost as if these things won't happen with free markets! > generated an enormous amount of wealth I dispute that. Slavery was dying out in the US by 1800…

Isn't it interesting that every example of an abuse by free markets actually turns out to be the government doing it?

Government instrumentalized to serve the interests of the wealthy elites, that is. So at the end of the day, it's the latter who are "doing" it.

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