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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

#531
post #528
post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I personally have donated previously to IA but now it frankly disgusts me that the project's current management has for the last few years had its focus on fighting windmills in court instead of their core mission - preserving our digital history. I've never donated to them and figured it was the right choice after they started excluding websites from the WayBackMachine - the most vocal case being kiwifarms [1], whe…

You make a good point about the exclusion of sites that probably deserve to be in the Wayback Machine. Would you support a complementary archive that took snaps of the excluded websites? Does anyone know of one or want to set one up? (To be clear, it's not that I'm a big fan of Kiwifarms or anything, but Byuu's tragic story is enough for me to think that the site has significant cultural and historical value, regardl…

Archive.is has a donation page set up on buymeacoffee [1]. I prefer to use them over web.archive.org.

>Would you support a complementary archive that took snaps of the excluded websites?

Now that I have looked at it, I likely will. I never was one to donate my money to anybody (especially with no income...), but now being employed I believe it's only fair to give them a little bit here and there for them to keep afloat.

>To be clear, it's not that I'm a big fan of Kiwifarms or anything

Neither am I. I just believe that an archive shouldn't be biased - and should keep all stuff up as long as it isn't strictly illegal, eg. CSAM or piracy. This is a blurry line though - I myself would like to be able to check out a hypothetical neo-Nazi group's website after they are all arrested for doing X to check what its contents looked like - but I am definitely in a minority here. So, essentially... >the site has significant cultural and historical value, regardless of its ethical orientation. Significant can be discussed, but I see it as a very subjective measure.

[1] https://buymeacoffee.com/archive.today

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

#532
post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still an open matter of law. The core issue is the transformative test in fair use. Is the model sufficiently transformative? The question of what, if any, impact OpenAI has on the copyright holder's income is yet to be demonstrated in court. So far, the lawsuits launched by the authors haven't gotten very far. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/feb/14/two-openai-boo... https://casetext.com/case/tremblay-…

But when they download images, music or videos from Internet they are making non-transformative copy.

The common belief is that copyright covers redistribution, not literal copying. Otherwise, computers and the Internet would not work.

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

#533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the difference between lending a book in the library building and over the Internet from the library website? Lending over Internet is better because it saves the user from transportation cost, allows to read books at night etc.

THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT A COPY IS MADE. They broke the law. This isn't that hard to understand. If you don't like the law then either work to change it, create substitute works, or break the law in a way that doesn't involve dragging down the archive with you.

Again, for clarification: this is the archive which contains copies of all those other web pages?

Should they have waited to start this archive, which is important enough for you to worry about its future existence, until the law on the right to make copies of websites was settled law? Bearing in mind that there are ongoing lawsuits and discussion on this topic right now, over fifty years since the emergence of the digital networks that rely on making copies to disseminate information.

Do you think that there was an open-and-shut case for an online archive in 1996?

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

#534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm starting to think this is the case, but the US is a country that enforces its version of copyright with gunboats. Not an easy task to simply find another jurisdiction.

"US …copyright with gunboats." Right, that's why it will get worse. Unfortunately, we're still only in skirmish territory. And it's a battle we have to win.

I think about time for a third opium war. China is manipulating currency through trade restrictions, and the West wants to sell them poison, maybe it's time to sail a carrier group up the Pearl River!

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

#535

[flagged]

My pet peeve is the usage of vague pejoratives like "neoliberal" without actually describing what it means. I know that the r/neoliberal subreddit, name selected ironically, is fairly pro-piracy.

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

#536

Very much not a surprise. I think the Internet Archive is providing an invaluable service to humanity in preserving works that would otherwise be lost to time. it is one of the crown jewels of the Internet, doing a job that nobody else is willing to do. But at the same time I know the courts side with publishers pretty much every time and copyright law being such as it is they're totally screwed. The only real questi…

>The only real question is how many trillions dollars will the judgment be. Calling it now. The number will be so big that they will take ownership of IA and privately "license" that data to openai and similar.

The data is already available, and IA never "owned" it. Aren't big LLMs already trained on this data?

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

#537
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CDL is how physical libraries work: They buy a book and then lend it out multiple times to multiple people, on a one-in one-out basis, who then do not have to buy the book themselves. They even repair books to avoid purchasing new ones again. Do you think physical libraries harm the people who bring books into being?

A physical library does not involve making a copy, but lending out an existing physical copy. One book, one reader. "Controlled Digital Lending" literally involves making and transmitting a copy to another physical medium electronically. Brewster has endangered the good work done by people at the archive for a case he was never going to win and which was of dubious value. If he wants to be the next Anna's Archive the…

Maybe he was trying to torpedo CDL from ever being viable again? It seems a pretty despicable practice that attempts to shoehorn artificial scarcity to digital media, and I hate the fact the our libraries waste their monies propping up archaic monopolies, so maybe this is a win after all.

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

#538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't lending the physical book and the digital book simultaneously; there's only ever one "book" lent. To my mind this is materially different from sites like Anna's Archive.

The law is the law, and the court doesn't care about your opinion. They broke the law. Seriously, I don't understand the reluctance of some to admit this. It's almost like the rule of law just doesn't exist for you as long as it's a cause you care about. Even more puzzling is the idea that you should just wantonly break the law in a way that drags down good institutions with you as if your own personal battle with ba…

Civil disobedience is breaking the law. Are you suggesting that Rosa Parks should have sat in the back of the bus?

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

#539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rule that allows libraries to work is first-sale doctrine: once you bought a physical book you may re-sell or lend it without permission from copyright owner [1]. However you cannot do this with digital books because DRM doesn't allow that. So IA invented scanning physical books (that are legally bought and not circulated after this) as a countermeasure to allow lending digital books the same way as physical. So…

I'm not sure what you meant by the quote talking about the right to display the copy - again, a material object - publicly. A used book store or record store is allowed to show the book or record for sale. It's not allowed to, say, play the record for a party - that's the performance right - or make a movie out of the book. It's allowed to display the physical object.

It's not totally clear to me that those are different. For example, if you have a painting or some other flat, static creative work, then public "display" and "performance" are the same. You don't need a positive law to say you can show people a DVD box. Additionally, some works are unique or at least not commodities like a Shrek DVD, in this case how can you let the buyer know what they're buying without letting them watch the DVD or open the book?
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