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

arstechnica.com

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

#121

Post by wobfan »

tqi wrote: post #114
alt187 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be glad to learn a number of studies (mostly commissioked by the European Union) agree on the fact that piracy doesn't hurt sales. The main consensus is that people who illegally access content wouldn't have bought it otherwise, and that they still advertise it (thus, still driving up sales). These studies have then been systematically strong-armed into silence by the EU and constituent countries' anti-pira…

If hypothetically the study had said that piracy does hurt sales, would you change your position on piracy? Because what I'm seeing in this thread is just a bunch of people pointing to studies when they support their priors, or to limitations of studies when it doesn't...

Affirmation bias leads to people usually using stuff that prove their point, so probably the commenter would not have changed his position from one study - which is fine. This is how a discussion works. But your comment leads to a dangerous path of just disregarding people defending their positions with studies, and make it seem like these studies don't hold any value beyond elaborating what the people are saying, which isn't true.

Studies, if done correctly, hold massive scientific value and (at least a bit) of "the truth". Especially in the current climate we should never go down the path of disregarding studies.

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

#122

Post by gloosx »

fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #58
alt187 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be glad to learn a number of studies (mostly commissioked by the European Union) agree on the fact that piracy doesn't hurt sales. The main consensus is that people who illegally access content wouldn't have bought it otherwise, and that they still advertise it (thus, still driving up sales). These studies have then been systematically strong-armed into silence by the EU and constituent countries' anti-pira…

Why do companies attempt to prevent piracy if it doesn't hurt sales?

Because companies are reactionary structures of power, they often act out of fear of losing control, not out of data or reason. It's easier to lobby governments for harsher copyright laws instead of modernising business model.

There are many counter-examples.

Gabe Newell (Valve co-founder) famously said:

"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem."

Jeff Bewkes (CEO of Time Warner) famous quote about piracy:

"Game of Thrones being the most pirated show in the world? That's better than an Emmy."

Radiohead released their In Rainbows album as "pay what you want", directly online. It generated more revenue than their previous label-backed album.

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

#123

Post by extraduder_ire »

PeaceTed wrote: post #105
endgame wrote: post #32

It was an absolutely bone-headed poke-the-bear move and we should count ourselves lucky that it was only a chunk of the library and not the whole archive that got nuked. IA holds priceless and irreplaceable data, and while the library initiative was a well-intentioned move during the pandemic it was way too radical for the keepers of our shared digital history.

I am just hoping they get on top of the massive trove of game ROM's before Nintendo's lawyers have a field day. Personally, I say they should be free for everyone, the lawyers however think the complete opposite and they have the means of enforcing this.

Don't they still have safe harbour protections if they remove those in response to a DMCA? Those were all uploaded by users unrelated to IA.

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

#124

Post by alt187 »

tqi wrote: post #114
alt187 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be glad to learn a number of studies (mostly commissioked by the European Union) agree on the fact that piracy doesn't hurt sales. The main consensus is that people who illegally access content wouldn't have bought it otherwise, and that they still advertise it (thus, still driving up sales). These studies have then been systematically strong-armed into silence by the EU and constituent countries' anti-pira…

If hypothetically the study had said that piracy does hurt sales, would you change your position on piracy? Because what I'm seeing in this thread is just a bunch of people pointing to studies when they support their priors, or to limitations of studies when it doesn't...

No.

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

#125

Post by alt187 »

whynotmakealt wrote: post #71
alt187 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be glad to learn a number of studies (mostly commissioked by the European Union) agree on the fact that piracy doesn't hurt sales. The main consensus is that people who illegally access content wouldn't have bought it otherwise, and that they still advertise it (thus, still driving up sales). These studies have then been systematically strong-armed into silence by the EU and constituent countries' anti-pira…

As someone actually living in the third world country, I agree to this message so much. Yes I advertise the games and actually want to buy the games once I feel like the money would start mattering less than it does right now to me. Its also about sending a message though. As an example, I have never bought any online subscription or any online game and yet I wanted to buy silksong purely because of the sheer dedicat…

This is pretty much how I feel about the whole ordeal too. Vote with your wallet, and all of that.

Thanks for sharing.

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

#126

Post by reedciccio »

hamdingers wrote: post #80
lateforwork wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Information wants to be free. Those who create information may have families to feed, house and clothe. Until those items (food/housing/clothes) are also free, information cannot be free.

How many artists will be fed, clothed, and housed by the 500,000 digital files IA is no longer hosting? Unrelated: I wonder how much the publishing industry spent on lawyers.

Same as today? Empirically demonstrated: The only ones getting richer and richer after the Napster wars are the publishers, like Apple Music, Spotify and the other mega corporations. :)

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

#127

Post by RobotToaster »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #45

I am sorry to say that, but copyright protection time should vary on the subject. Programming books - 10 years maybe? 10 years is ages in computer science. TV shows? 5-7 years maybe. After that time nobody wants to pay for watching old big brother or another Fort Boyard... Nor pay for storing it in archive. And this is the culture other creations are referring to. We've run in Poland into very strange situation - Pol…

Many original episodes of Dr Who were destroyed by the BBC, some have only been recovered because of "pirate" home recorded VHS, or people that "stole" tapes from the dumpster.

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

#128

Post by edgineer »

rcxdude wrote: post #9
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.

Copyright needs torn up or at the very least significant reform but if you're going to be skirting around the edges of it to try to do a good thing it's probably a good idea to not just straight up obviously and blatently break the letter and spirit of the law. CDL is an awkward and dubious workaround but if you drop the 'C' you're just doing copyright infringment and that would be much better left to entities like A…

There may be newer laws with different spirits, but I thought the original copyright spirit was "other people can't sell your work without permission" and not at all about preventing free sharing.

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

#129

Post by DoctorOW »

edgineer wrote: post #128
rcxdude wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright needs torn up or at the very least significant reform but if you're going to be skirting around the edges of it to try to do a good thing it's probably a good idea to not just straight up obviously and blatently break the letter and spirit of the law. CDL is an awkward and dubious workaround but if you drop the 'C' you're just doing copyright infringment and that would be much better left to entities like A…

There may be newer laws with different spirits, but I thought the original copyright spirit was "other people can't sell your work without permission" and not at all about preventing free sharing.

Common misconception. The original spirit is "Others can't copy your work without permission", hence why piracy is a violation.

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

#130

Post by dangus »

choo-t wrote: post #6
bobsmooth wrote: post #2

That's what happens when you practically beg book publishers to sue you.

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.

The copyright system should perhaps be torn up (or maybe not…) but you can’t just blatantly violate it at massive scale and expect to face zero consequences.

And anyway, why is it unreasonable for copyright holders to expect to be able to get paid for their work rather than have a massive library loophole where they just never get paid as long as you're a nonprofit?

Here you go, you can steal beer from my store as long as you’re a nonprofit organization.

> For a decade, the Archive had loaned out individual e-books to one user at a time without triggering any lawsuits. That changed when IA decided to temporarily lift the cap on loans from its Open Library project

So stupid. They had a working system that they blew up through their own actions and now the library is dead.

IMO the only two reform the copyright system needs are DCMA takedown abuse and copyright term length. All the other concepts of copyright make perfect sense. If I create something I should be able to consent to giving or not giving it to someone.

A lot of the software engineers on this forum wouldn’t like what happens to their profession without copyright.

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