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

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

#131

Post by aequitas »

stubish wrote: post #87
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…

Piracy does not hurt sales because it has a lot of friction. There have been zero studies on piracy in a low friction environment, because there was no need. Such as in countries where pirated Video CDs where endemic and not policed, it was completely obvious and distributors didn't even bother putting product onto the market. Or back in the days where mp3 music sharing apps became mainstream and got integrated with…

GOG shows that paying for drm-free games in a country where copyright was unenforced and piracy offered a better UX can still be profitable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com#Launch_of_Good_Old_Gam..., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffngZOB1U2A

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

#132

Post by Yeul »

gloosx wrote: post #122
fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 quo…

Hell I have a premium Netflix and premium Spotify account that I don't even use very often.

Gabe Newell was right. I subscribed to those on my phone without having to go out of the house. It was just a few touches.

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

#133

Post by RobotToaster »

lateforwork wrote: post #55
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.

> 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.

Don't most authors make literal pennies out of royalties?

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

#134

Post by RobotToaster »

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.

It wasn't poking a bear, it was poking a monster.

Just like in Frankenstein, that monster was created by someone, and those who created the monster are the true villains.

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

#135

Post by fngjdflmdflg »

gloosx wrote: post #122
fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 quo…

I don't think this is true. Many video game companies pay for DRM protection only for the first few months to a year, then remove it after most of the sales are generated. And before the current mostly uncrackable DRMs came out (denuvo) they would still use DRM that they knew would be cracked eventually as long as it wouldn't be cracked in the first few months. They are not simply blindly acting out of fear, they are estimating the actual cost of piracy. In fact someone recently did an analysis of this and came that conclusion.[0] The companies likely have much better data than this external researcher.

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

It is true that how good the service is is an important factor and can be more important than lets say a $10 difference in price. I think that is what is meant by this quote. However if piracy was easy and legal much fewer people pay for it. Assuming that "piracy is a service problem not a pricing problem" if anything would prove that there are a significant number of people who pay for something if it is easier than pirating. Usually people that claim that anti-piracy measures have no effect say something like "people that can afford to pay for a given media will always pay for it, and people that cannot will always not" or "people who are going to pirate something will never pay for it even if it becomes impossible to pirate." But if pricing is not actually the main issue at hand here then this not correct.

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

This doesn't say anything about income generated. He's basically remarking about how successful the show was.

>Radiohead

This is a special case where consumers have a special attachment to the producers of their entertainment and buy their products specifically to support them. You can see a similar idea with YouTubers that sell everyday items (eg. coffee) with their name on it and people buy it mainly to support them, and this is even how the sales pitch is phrased. So if you are (at least partially) selling the ability to support the creator, then it is impossible to pirate that, as piracy (obviously) does not support the creator.

>act out of fear of losing control

Even after now 20 years of digital media existing?

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S18759...

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

#136

Post by ranger_danger »

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.

For my friends... everything.

For my enemies... the law.

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

#137

Post by Loughla »

HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #96
Loughla wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The publishers are playing shit games with faculty and providing free access for them to high quality instructional materials. To the point that the faculty doesn't really have to do anything for online classes(which is a whole other ball of shit). The secret to why they can provide this? The content is locked behind a code the student has to buy that provides access to the book or comes with the book. It's absolutel…

You are talking about textbooks, I was talking about research publications: monographs, collections of articles, and reference books.

That's fair. I apologize for turning left instead of following your lead.

But I still stand by my rant. It's a garbage system.

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

#138

Post by typpilol »

cookiengineer wrote: post #118
typpilol wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we know how much data the internet archive has? Is it even viable to replicate to multiple regions if it's 1000s of PB?

Anna's archive has the metadata on it. IA was around 300TB last time I checked. libgen was around 190TB. For my own at home cluster I decided to go for 512TB but I can't host nor upload in these bandwidth requirements from here. I started to build sth like a torrent splitter tool yesterday because I realized that all torrent clients just crash when you try to open, modify, or seed those torrents. Edit: correction, th…

300tb seems insanely small so that 15pb number is probably closer

Id say though with the rise of video on social media, if they didn't 3x or 4x that 15pb number since then.

I'm sure there's plenty of room to replicate to aws but I'm sure they couldn't afford to host 60pb of data on aws. They have their own Colo or data center if I recall.

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

#139

Post by cookiengineer »

typpilol wrote: post #138
cookiengineer wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anna's archive has the metadata on it. IA was around 300TB last time I checked. libgen was around 190TB. For my own at home cluster I decided to go for 512TB but I can't host nor upload in these bandwidth requirements from here. I started to build sth like a torrent splitter tool yesterday because I realized that all torrent clients just crash when you try to open, modify, or seed those torrents. Edit: correction, th…

300tb seems insanely small so that 15pb number is probably closer Id say though with the rise of video on social media, if they didn't 3x or 4x that 15pb number since then. I'm sure there's plenty of room to replicate to aws but I'm sure they couldn't afford to host 60pb of data on aws. They have their own Colo or data center if I recall.

I think the general issue is that Annas Archive only has the metadata that's searchable, in a second step with downloading the parts you want/need you'll see the real storage requirements.

Most of their stuff is uploaded on ipfs mirrors as it looks like, though.

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

#140

Post by fooqux »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #69
harrall wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google didn’t “win.” Google Books is currently a shell of its former self.

you're right - really, it's in the opinion of all copyright / IP lawyers & thinkers in this country that Google lost, because it didn't get to do what it wanted to do, even if it "won", it is Pyrrhic. the balance of comments in Hacker News about a topic like this: it tips towards the wrong understanding of that case. There's Gell Mann Amnesia in every comment section.

Well I learned something at least, thanks!
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