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AI companies are shredding rare books

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Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#491

Post by s1artibartfast »

Legend2440 wrote: post #313
s1artibartfast wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this misconstrus what public domain is. It provides a freedom to circulate, but not access to the material. It is not a public owned resource. Turning a copy over to the public or state might be an interesting requirement for obtaining a copyright, but instituting that fix for new works now would have a 70 year lag time. Think of it this way, if I copyright a book and put it in my dresser for 70 years, that d…

>Turning a copy over to the public or state might be an interesting requirement for obtaining a copyright This has been a requirement in the US since 1790. It is called mandatory deposit: https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/mandatory_deposit.html They don't keep every book though.

Oh, that is fascinating! I stand corrected. Then the question is really about non copyrighted works

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#492

Post by tesseract »

eudamoniac wrote: post #423
jolmg wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is not a shortage of books in print. I don't understand why people get so hung up on a few of them being out of print. Because the point isn't so much in reading whatever text as if all text is the same. The point is the spreading of knowledge. A single book can contain knowledge not present in any other. > But I don't see how that desire results in the laws needing to be changed so that you can read everythi…

Which books are in copyright, not being published, and contain unique valuable knowledge? I've never seen this be the case. It's always some genre fiction or obsolete botanical text or something. I've never seen valuable knowledge locked away like you are describing.

You're going to make me quote the "Dive Manual" scene from _Cryptonomicon_ again, aren't you.

(It features a software engineer introspecting about the fact that his line of work has caused him to dramatically overvalue recency when evaluating books about... pretty much any other technical field.)

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#493

Post by rolandog »

qingcharles wrote: post #488
pfdietz wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the fibers in paper can become brittle if they are too dry. However, this doesn't cause the paper to break down, it just makes it vulnerable to damage if flexed. So storing paper dry is fine if it is then humidified before being stressed.

It's possible. My only experience is with vintage newspapers that were allowed to dry out, and then when trying to open them just shatter like a carbonized volcano scroll.

It's truly humbling how much knowledge professionals from different fields have, and how easy it is to fall into a Dunning–Kruger effect trap where a bit of knowledge — extremely extrapolated — would've led me down the path of hubris and guessing so many wrong answers. Thanks all.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#494

Post by lsaferite »

altmanaltman wrote: post #478
monknomo wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Why should the state grant you a monopoly at all? The reason is to encourage people to create useful writings and make useful discoveries. But we need to balance this encouragement with the benefit we get by making these writings and discoveries available to everyone. By granting a time-bound monopoly the state rewards creators, and by ensuring this time period is not excessive, spreads the benefit among the…

The point isn't why the state should grant me (or writers) a monopoly. But rather, why should the principle not be applied to all property and ownership and not just copyright for creative works? Why should one lose ownership over their said work if they are a writer but they shouldn't lose ownership of their trade secrets because they are a high-frequency trader? Or more so, why should only the creative field worry…

Funny that you are comparing Copyrights and Trade Secrets. The monopoly granted on Copyright is predicated on it being published. Trade Secrets, by definition, are not published. Copyright is granted based on the value to the public provided by the author publishing their works. Trade Secrets have no such protection as they are not meant for the public good. They have other protection from theft, but once they are published, there is no protection of the information.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#496

Post by greenlimetea »

59percentmore wrote: post #485
greenlimetea wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing what reading a word in that book like sousveillance can do. I looked it up. surveillance , sousveillance - sure, why not? Seems harmless. But it's as if the more people know the word sousveillance , the word and even the act of surveillance actually loses a little bit of power (its embedding changes, if you will!) All our fears about the end state of surveillance can now be countered by an end state of s…

What.

[dead]

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#497

Post by dspillett »

qwytw wrote: post #411
monknomo wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years to make some money, and then we set the work free for the public benefit. If it's good enough for patents, I don't see why it isn't good enough for copyrights.

For corporations sure. For individual authors that's certainly not fair. Especially since it makes it easier for corporations to exploit their work without paying them anything. > If it's good enough for patents, I don't see why it isn't good enough for copyrights Because there are fundamentally differ concepts and serve different purposes?

> For individual authors that's certainly not fair.

How about lifetime of the author? Or "lifetime or 25 years whichever is longer" so those writing in their later years (or dying young) can pass on the time they didn't get chance to fully use.

> Especially since it makes it easier for corporations to exploit their work without paying them anything.

That ship has sailed. We've seems "big corp" commit mass piracy and get the lightest slap on the wrist, I doubt they'll get less brazen going forwards.

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#498

Post by efreak »

goldlimetea wrote: post #377
sidewndr46 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so if I base64 encode my blog, have some Javascript that 'validates' an authorized viewer and then decodes the base64 into HTML which is added to the DOM does that constitute DRM ?

[dead]

The DMCA doesn't care exactly how the authorization works, it only cares that it's needed.

Quote from Wikipedia[0] of DMCA section 103:

> No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. > "circumvent a technological measure" means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and > a technological measure "effectively controls access to a work" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention_laws#Circum...

Re: AI companies are shredding rare books

#500

Post by abdullahkhalids »

Aurornis wrote: post #320
squidbeak wrote: post #114

I've limited sympathy for the publishers. It pisses me off to reflect that they can sit on works until copyright expires, keeping them out of print. There's no real need for any of these so-called rare books to be rare while they're under copyright. And related to this, the books that are in print are mostly only in print in the shittiest way. I often see well-made books from the 17th or 18th centuries which are stil…

> It's ridiculous that in the 21st century, publication standards have fallen to the point where for most works a disposable format is the only type available - where no amount of money could buy a truly decent hardback copy. This is purely a response to market demand. Publishers aren’t going to put in the extra expense of binding high quality versions of every book so it can occupy warehouse space while consumers ev…

Large publishers are optimizing their overall revenue/profit, not the revenue/profit per book. Given that large publishers dictate a significant fraction of what appears on bookstore shelves, how concentrated publicity drives of new books/authors drives their sales at the expense of old books/authors, and how the emergence of second hand books outside their control drives sales in different categories, its extremely likely that the advantageous strategy often is to not print older titles even when there is demand for them.
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