Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost • Hacker News Board

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#21

Post by eikenberry » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:05 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #13

choo-t wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that giving free access to books during a pandemic, in a format that doesn't need physical contact, when libraries were shut down or hard to access for a lot of people should have been praised, not pursued by legal action from rent seeking entities. The copyright system as a whole should by torn up. At least it give a clear signal to anyone with a ounce of moral which publisher to avoid at all cost.

So how do authors make money? Going on concert tours? The copyright system needs reform (Mickey Mouse for example) — but the system protects creators. If there were no copyrights, no author would make any money.

> If there were no copyrights, no author would make any money.

Cory Doctorow showed that this isn't true.

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#22

Post by Worksheet » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:06 PM UTC

nekusar wrote: post #16

What capitalism continues to show us: proof that public libraries, if created in the last 10 years, would be deemed illegal and sued out of existence. It's only because the late 1800's billionaires wanted to leave legacies and made pay-to-enter and free libraries, and migrated them to free, or public libraries. Thats why so many of them are (John) Carnegie Libraries. Only legal when billionaires do it.

Would there be anything worth putting into the libraries if intellectual property rights are not respected?

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#23

Post by birdman3131 » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:14 PM UTC

gdulli wrote: post #20

nekusar wrote: post #16

What capitalism continues to show us: proof that public libraries, if created in the last 10 years, would be deemed illegal and sued out of existence. It's only because the late 1800's billionaires wanted to leave legacies and made pay-to-enter and free libraries, and migrated them to free, or public libraries. Thats why so many of them are (John) Carnegie Libraries. Only legal when billionaires do it.

A lower stakes but still illustrative example I see is that the DVR is an invention that wouldn't be allowed to succeed today. All power is being wielded to its fullest in order to prevent skipping ads. Cable to streaming took us from skippable to unskippable ads. Search results to LLM results will result in invisible/undisclosed ads. Each successive generation of technology will increase the power of advertising and…

Modern DVR's are not the same as classic ones. As per this article from today shows that people have prerecorded are being pulled from their DVR's.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/youtube-tvs-disney-b...

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#24

Post by throwanem » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:21 PM UTC

nekusar wrote: post #18

throwanem wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I hear you say is that Brewster's time would be more wisely spent making friends of billionaires.

Possibly, yeah. Make a "Deal" with AI companies to have back-end access to all the Archive org's content. Get 'permission' to copy EVERYTHING and have billionaires run interference. The AI companies already got blank checks to do that. Anthropic is paying what, like $3000 per book? I remember when the fucks at the RIAA were suing 12 year olds for $10000 for Britney Spears albums. Or better yet, if it's just $3k a boo…

Eh. If patronage was good enough for da Vinci...

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#25

Post by ForHackernews » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:22 PM UTC

Worksheet wrote: post #22

nekusar wrote: post #16

What capitalism continues to show us: proof that public libraries, if created in the last 10 years, would be deemed illegal and sued out of existence. It's only because the late 1800's billionaires wanted to leave legacies and made pay-to-enter and free libraries, and migrated them to free, or public libraries. Thats why so many of them are (John) Carnegie Libraries. Only legal when billionaires do it.

Would there be anything worth putting into the libraries if intellectual property rights are not respected?

...yes? The median book sells ~3,000 copies, ever. But people keep writing them!

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#26

Post by noir_lord » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:24 PM UTC

tototrains wrote: post #14

Remember: If OpenAI/Google does it for $$$, it's not illegal. If idealists do it for public access, full force of the law. Information wants to be free. Oblige it. Fools with temporary power trying to extract from the work of others will be a blip in the history books if we make them.

internetarchive.ai

It's a training set not an archive.

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#27

Post by gdulli » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:25 PM UTC

birdman3131 wrote: post #23

gdulli wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lower stakes but still illustrative example I see is that the DVR is an invention that wouldn't be allowed to succeed today. All power is being wielded to its fullest in order to prevent skipping ads. Cable to streaming took us from skippable to unskippable ads. Search results to LLM results will result in invisible/undisclosed ads. Each successive generation of technology will increase the power of advertising and…

Modern DVR's are not the same as classic ones. As per this article from today shows that people have prerecorded are being pulled from their DVR's. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/youtube-tvs-disney-b...

Exactly. A DVR governed by tech giants rather than just Tivo and the cable companies is going to have compromised functionality because it's the tech industry originating the "innovation" for their own benefit.

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#28

Post by TimorousBestie » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:26 PM UTC

zokier wrote: post #8

> Kahle thinks “the world became stupider” when the Open Library was gutted—but he’s moving forward with new ideas > The lawsuits haven’t dampened Kahle’s resolve to expand IA’s digitization efforts, though. Moving forward, the group will be growing a project called Democracy’s Library please just stop. let IA be what it is. or rather, nothing wrong in doing new projects but don't tie them to IA, just start them as c…

> let IA be what it is

IA is the eccentric, untamed idealism. You can’t have the Wayback Machine without the National Emergency Library and the Great 78 Project.

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#29

Post by noir_lord » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:28 PM UTC

gdulli wrote: post #20

nekusar wrote: post #16

What capitalism continues to show us: proof that public libraries, if created in the last 10 years, would be deemed illegal and sued out of existence. It's only because the late 1800's billionaires wanted to leave legacies and made pay-to-enter and free libraries, and migrated them to free, or public libraries. Thats why so many of them are (John) Carnegie Libraries. Only legal when billionaires do it.

A lower stakes but still illustrative example I see is that the DVR is an invention that wouldn't be allowed to succeed today. All power is being wielded to its fullest in order to prevent skipping ads. Cable to streaming took us from skippable to unskippable ads. Search results to LLM results will result in invisible/undisclosed ads. Each successive generation of technology will increase the power of advertising and…

> All power is being wielded to its fullest in order to prevent skipping ads.

And yet I can go to a site right now off the top of my head and watch any TV show or basically any movie made in the last 50 years for free in HD.

It might be shut down tomorrow and it'll be up against 30s later with a different TLD.

They aren't winning but they really are trying hard to.

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#30

Post by EvanAnderson » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:29 PM UTC

eikenberry wrote: post #21

briandear wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how do authors make money? Going on concert tours? The copyright system needs reform (Mickey Mouse for example) — but the system protects creators. If there were no copyrights, no author would make any money.

> If there were no copyrights, no author would make any money. Cory Doctorow showed that this isn't true.

Cory Doctorow's works that were released under more permissive licensing still reserved some rights for the author. I believe he used some flavor of a Creative Commons non-commercial license, if memory serves. Point being that the method of licensing his works was still fundamentally based on copyright.

(I think the US copyright system is hugely broken and the social contract needs to be re-negotiated, but I comment here in the interests of facts, not in support of the broken system.)