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The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

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Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#491

Post by zelphirkalt »

hilbert42 wrote: post #432

Things will get worse before they're get better, but ultimately the publishers will pay dearly for this. First, the IA should move to a more favorable copyright jurisdiction to preserve the collection. Second, there's no point fighting the copyright lobby, especially so in the US. We need to build an alternative access to knowledge that bypasses the copyright/ownership of knowledge paradigm.

How about we feed an "AI" with it, like MS does with licensed code? Then we can host that AI and let people use that, without having it output where some text is from, just like MS does for code.

Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#493

Post by gizmo »

vesinisa wrote: post #446
lolinder wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you about copyright, but the fact is that the IA never had a chance and we knew it years ago. The top comment on HN a week after their launch of the EL is critical [0], right at the moment when HN would be most expected to rally to their defense. By the time the lawsuit was actually starting to take shape most commenters had become very concerned for the fate of the IA [1]. This is on a forum that reliab…

Ditto. Worth also noting is that IA lost the case by summary judgement. This usually means that the legal matter was so clear that the judge didn't even see a reason to start a trial. This judgement has now been confirmed on appeal. Just about any lawyer could have probably told them this was the inevitable outcome had they listened. I personally have donated previously to IA but now it frankly disgusts me that the p…

You approach this from a perspective of realism. The law is what it is and IA is wrong according to the plain interpretation of the law. Except that's not how everybody lives. Some people do what they believe is right regardless of the consequences. They will fight fights they are guaranteed to lose. Not because it makes sense but because that's who they are. The people who get mad that idealists fight losing battles tend not to be pragmatic fighters for change but people who will never fight at all because "it's just not worth it" or "the risk/reward doesn't make sense". Idealism doesn't make rational sense. Idealists mostly just lose. But the world still needs people who are not motivated by pragmatic self-interest.

Your disgust is misplaced. Your disgust should be reserved for those who exploit and hurt others. Not for idealists who fight against impossible odds. Especially when the cause (challenging how copyright law works) is one you support.

Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#494

Post by rakoo »

vesinisa wrote: post #470
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one has to be honest and realize that the desire of digital preservation stands in conflict with present day laws.

Yes, but this case was not about digital presevation but lending out scanned traditional books without proper controls, presented as some sort of a social welfare project. Choose your battles.

What's the point of having digital preservation if noone can read the archives ? Digital access make sense, it's the logical conclusion to what IA does

Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#495

Post by immibis »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #435
caseyy wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech companies have large legal departments which find ways to skirt around existing laws. Where these companies break laws, they almost never challenge them. When they are prosecuted for breaking laws, they draw attention to orthogonal issues in court proceedings and hearings, delay the process, and involve a lot of other legal strategies. When they are sued by competitors for infringing on other's interests by brea…

In Russia similar situation effectively is called an oligarchy. If you have money, you can count on law being on your side despite the case. If companies having a lot of money can change law to be on their side, this is the same. Becoming a martyr in US law system (precedential) does not make much sense in my honest opinion. Look at Disney Mickey Mouse casus - nothing will change in here

FWIW Steamboat Willie (the first appearance of Mickey Mouse) is no longer copyrighted.

Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#496

Post by immibis »

pastage wrote: post #469
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If IA had won, IA would be hailed as a cultural hero This is ends justifying the means logic. (More accurately, it is showboating.) Let’s concede for the sake of argument what they wanted to do was unarguably good. It’s still an astronomical long shot. And one with real costs, financial and institutional. IA incurred those costs, and in the process not only destroyed the library but set a harmful precedent. They th…

I honestly think what IA did was vital for their survival. The IA can not exist without the media library. I see that many people here do not care about IA and their goal. I am not sure why that is. Maybe HN is filled with people in places were access to books is easy and think that there is an alternative. What IA did was the only sane option, I agree that it was bound to be destroyed the same way Google Books was.

Maybe because other shadow libraries exist. IA could have sneakily donated a copy of their data to one of these openly illegal ventures, instead of being illegal itself.

Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#497

Post by immibis »

api wrote: post #344
TeMPOraL wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labor should not be free, but it should also not serve to establish rent to be paid in perpetuity. > Mass indirect piracy via AI being used to flood the Kindle market with slop is bad enough. That just amplified the problem that already existed before LLMs - human-written slop already flooded the Kindle market, and has been flooding paper book market too - and yes, "ending book writing as a profession" is likely the…

This is the fallacy of using the pathological case to argue against the normal case. Copyright is in need of reform but without it there is no intellectual labor, or at least no compensation for it. In the Information Age where everything else is increasingly automated, this eventually converges with all labor being uncompensated since all labor is eventually intellectual in nature if we are sufficiently advanced.

If this comment from you wasn't copyrighted, would you have written it?

Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#498

Post by rockskon »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #421
Dylan16807 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then find a lawsuit that specifically goes against the instantaneous part, because a ruling that says "no lending at all" is just awful.

The word “lending” doesn’t even make sense with digital goods. Nothing tangible is being lent or borrowed. Another perfect copy is being allowed to be made. Ironically it might not even be the same copy! Someone “borrowing” a digital good might download a copy of a new version or in a different language.

The idea is to impose the restrictions of physical goods onto the digital one.

Your idea is to eliminate the very concept of a library where ebooks are concerned.

You may want to rethink your argument.

Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#499

Post by immibis »

bawolff wrote: post #423
teruakohatu wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In his many interviews with U.S. media, he portrays the court cases and legal judgements as a crusade against the Internet Archive and all librarians. It's not. It's the logical outcome of one man's seemingly fanatical conviction against the law and the people who work very hard to bring new books into being. If IA had won, IA would be hailed as a cultural hero. They hit and they missed. Claiming Brewster Kahle is…

The correct way is to change laws is to lobby your elected representitive. Blatently breaking them generally doesn't work. It can when the laws are morally repungent, but the majority of the population are never going to find copyright law repungant the same way society found, say segregation, repungent. Copyright law may suck. The IA's actions were an extremely silly way to fight it, really didn't help anybody, and…

Do you really think the political system is functional?

Re: The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive

#500

Post by rockskon »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #266
Amezarak wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people that would borrow the game from the library to play it might at best pirate it if they couldn’t get it from the library. Maybe they’d pay a few bucks tops rather than $60-80. Library game borrowers are not big game buyers in the first place. Games can and do already get around this anyway via software, if you want to argue the laws should work differently for them then I’m open to that, but I also don’t th…

If your goal is to prevent orphaned works there's much better and more targeted changes that could be made to the law! Don't need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. > Library game borrowers are not big game buyers in the first place. That's because today there is effectively no such thing as digital game borrowing. If there were then there would be a platform that seamlessly grants and revokes licenses on appl…

Steam effectively implemented digital game borrowing years ago. Works just fine.
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