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AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

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Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#821

Post by avidiax »

shagie wrote: post #805
avidiax wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright law desperately needs a production requirement or allowance. The copyright owner must make new copies of the work available; the price must be no greater than the original price (not inflation adjusted). And if they fail to do so, anyone may produce copies and escrow the original price (less the cost of production) for collection by the copyright holder. That means that orphan works are effectively in the p…

As a photographer, do I have to make every photograph that I've ever sold available to anyone to buy forever more? Can I refuse to sell a print to someone? I wasn't famous when I sold one for $20 back in the 90s... if I became famous, would I still need to sell that at $20 (inflation adjusted)? What happens to limited editions of print runs? Can I not make a run of 200 prints anymore because the 201st will be somethi…

Under my proposal, if someone wants to make prints of one of your old photographs, you are getting ~$20, which is ~$20 more than you are getting now. So it doesn't seem like a damage to you. If you get famous and now you could sell a print for $2,000... how is this helping society since the work has already been produced, so no new incentive is necessary?

I suppose the rule could make reference to a rival good, i.e. the 22nd and 23rd editions of the calculus textbook. It should not be reasonable for the publisher to make the 22nd edition only available for $1,000, and the 23rd edition for $250. But that definition would invite many lawsuits and chilling litigation in general. A clear definition based on the historic price is much simpler.

You can still number your limited runs, and your limited runs still have increased numismatic value over some other reproduction.

I don't envision licensing of performance rights in this system, just recordings or reproductions.

Is this a reduction of the rights granted by copyright? Yes, intentionally so. It is stripping copyright holders of the right not to copy, against the interests of society in granting that copyright in the first place.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#822

Post by demibabs »

wasmperson wrote: post #751
pshirshov wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read more about this. Depends on the definition of the "big deal" but from what I can understand the problem is that they buy rare things - which exist in just several copies - and they tend to buy _all_ copies.

I was also skeptical of this claim but managed to find someone who explains it: https://downtownbrown.substack.com/p/five-fallacies-ai-and-d... It's not that individual companies buy all copies of a given book, but that there's more than one book scanning company, and they aren't sharing the scans with each other. The result: books that were rare but nevertheless easy to find for purchase (thanks to the internet) are…

Good article, but I still feel unsatisfied because even it cannot find an example of a book that’s actually been lost because of the destructive scanning frenzy (it only lists books that hypothetically could be lost because there’s not many physical copies available for sale online.).

If anyone has an example, I’d love to hear it.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#823

Post by allturtles »

cube00 wrote: post #745
allturtles wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this was a great tragedy. I was very sad to see academics at the time arguing against Google providing what would have been one of the greatest storehouses of readily available knowledge in the world, in favor of an imaginary alternative that didn't exist and never would.

> Google providing what would have been one of the greatest storehouses of readily available knowledge in the world I'd be worried about how much they'd be charging for access once they had the monopoly on so many rare books.

This is exactly the kind of pointless concern I'm talking about. How many legal digitial providers of those rare books are there now? Zero, I believe.

It's the logic of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face, which prefers that no one benefit rather than Google see any benefit.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#824

Post by ndiddy »

SideQuark wrote: post #781
ndiddy wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why they got sued, but the suit is mainly over whether controlled digital lending is legal at all rather than their "emergency library". Archive.org lost the case on summary judgment, meaning that they could not come up with a single fair use argument for CDL that the judge found compelling enough to let the case go to trial. The full judgment is here https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.5…

> suit is mainly over whether controlled digital lending is legal at all No, it was not, even supported by the quotes you pulled. Libraries right now, with publisher blessing, offer all manner of controlled digital lending. The suit was because IA did it buy undercutting the publishers copy rights to that legal market. Had IA simply done what every other library has done to provide controlled digital lending, there w…

"Controlled digital lending" is not a generic term for "lending digital items". It specifically refers to the practice of a library digitizing physical materials in its collection, then lending them digitally based on a 1:1 owned-to-loaned ratio. The idea is that the library should be able to treat digitized versions of a book the same way it treats the physical book, and the total number of physical and digital copies of the book that are lent out at once should never be more than the number of physical copies that the library has.

In contrast to this, the e-book lending practiced by most libraries with publisher blessing involves the library purchasing special library-specific e-book licenses from the publisher. These licenses contain various contractual restrictions, such as the library having to re-purchase the e-book after a certain amount of time or after a certain number of borrows.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#825

Post by ndriscoll »

shagie wrote: post #817
ndriscoll wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, that's why I said we should make copyright require deposit and registration (like it used to). Publish your work without its copyright ID for people to use to reference the LoC database? It is now public domain.

That would require a renegotiation of the TRIPS Agreement and the Berne Convention with the rest of the countries of the WTO. https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/ta_docs_e/modul... (iii) Automatic protection A key feature of the Berne Convention, and thus also of the TRIPS Agreement, is that copyright protection - unlike most other forms of IPRs - may not be subject to any formality of registration, deposit,…

So? Of all the aggressive things the US forces upon the world (or just unilaterally does, ignoring agreements), undoing its own bad policy would be a drop in the bucket, and would be doing some good for once. I'm sure if we just did it, others would respond tit-for-tat and require registration of our material, and then mission accomplished.

(And at the end of the day, sovereign people are never required to do anything. The concept of international law is an oxymoron)

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#826

Post by bhelkey »

toast0 wrote: post #808
bhelkey wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it would be easier for them to distribute the work after the copyright of the work expires Copyright does not expire for a very long time. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was released ~30 years ago in 1997. It remains protected for the duration of the life of the author (J.K. Rowling) plus 70 years. Given actuarial tables from the UK[1], this works out to be around ~95 years from now (~2120). [1] https://www.…

Certainly. But the rare books under discussion are closer to the end of their life and less likely to have been already digitized. The library of congress does distribute some digitized works that are out of copyright. And it does digitize some works for archival and distribution, but having additional works digitized for (eventual) public use could be nice.

> But the rare books under discussion are closer to the end of their life and less likely to have been already digitized.

It is not at all clear that this is true.

The number of books published every year is growing rapidly. According to Bowker the number of books published in the US every year has increased ~15x in the past two decades [1].

Because of this, I suspect that the median age of the books we are discussing is below 30 years.

[1] https://www.writercosmos.com/blog/how-many-books-published-p...

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#827

Post by shagie »

ndriscoll wrote: post #825
shagie wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would require a renegotiation of the TRIPS Agreement and the Berne Convention with the rest of the countries of the WTO. https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/ta_docs_e/modul... (iii) Automatic protection A key feature of the Berne Convention, and thus also of the TRIPS Agreement, is that copyright protection - unlike most other forms of IPRs - may not be subject to any formality of registration, deposit,…

So? Of all the aggressive things the US forces upon the world (or just unilaterally does, ignoring agreements), undoing its own bad policy would be a drop in the bucket, and would be doing some good for once. I'm sure if we just did it, others would respond tit-for-tat and require registration of our material, and then mission accomplished. (And at the end of the day, sovereign people are never required to do anythin…

I don't believe it is a bad policy that copyright on anything that is copyrightable is automatic (I don't need to register this comment with the Library of Congress).

... And it would require renegotiating the treaty with all of these countries so that AI training is easier. https://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/treaties/parties/231

... Or it would require the US to withdraw from the WTO and pass new laws for how copyright works.

I don't believe that neither the renegotiation nor the withdrawal would be something that would be done.

... And I believe that automatic copyright (as has been part of the Berne Convention since 1886) is a good thing.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#828

Post by FeloniousHam »

TFNA wrote: post #703
FeloniousHam wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it is a pretty common position that all people should have access to art and culture. Access to _all_ art and "culture"? For free?

Even if not all art, once something becomes canonical, it then becomes something that people should be able to easily familiarize themselves with for the sake of an educated and edified citizenry. And indeed, many countries subsidize public libraries and live performances for this very reason. But no state can manage to provide free or nearly-free access to the entire canon, so piracy helps fill the gap.

Do you have any examples of art or culture that is unavailable?

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#829

Post by winrid »

userbinator wrote: post #147
winrid wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a copy of Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book (it's like 1k+ pages) with DESTROY written in red on the sides. I appreciate that someone saved it and sold it to me for cheap :)

That's an example of a "very much NOT rare" book, as you can easily find dozens of sources of scans online.

I wanted a physical copy, good ones are a few hundred bucks.

Re: AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

#830

Post by bigbadfeline »

ndiddy wrote: post #643
probably_wrong wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I need something from Google Books I inevitably reach the message that this is a limited preview and the part I need is not included. I therefore feel the same way about Google Books that how I felt when I learned that What.cd went down: that I don't gain or lose anything anyway because I never had access to begin with, and that by not making it 100% publicly accessible you're asking for the data to one day…

At one point Google Books was supposed to act as a clearinghouse for scans of out-of-print books. You could have purchased a scan of any book on the site for a reasonable price, and libraries could subscribe to a service where the full text of all books was available. This settlement then got shot down because some research libraries and authors argued that this was anti-competitive, and instead wanted Congress to pa…

> It's not a flashy issue

It's a very serious issue, very well known to the people with the connections and power to affect it.

> [ it wouldn't ] make a ton of people vote for you to get re-elected

The tons of people are moved by the media, people are oblivious to the tricks of that trade, for the same reasons, obviously. In other words, this issue isn't something that happens to slip below the radar, it's kept stealthy by well organized engineering and considerable expense.

> and it won't create a ton of new jobs

Nothing ever creates tons of new jobs, the "tons" are reserved for promises and other useless noise.

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