We're already screwed because the internet is dying. Everyone is just using phones now, all the forums are shutting down. IRC is dead. Matrix is dead. Discord lives because it's a gamer/trans rights echo chamber. but that's it. The late 90s and early 2000s was the golden era of the internet. we're living in the detritus now.
If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
101–110 of 614 posts
Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
They were only sued after they launched the Emergency Library. Also, Koeltl's current ruling applies in particular to lending without the waitlist restriction is legal. CDL in general isn't yet ruled on. IA's actions with the NEL not only prompted the lawsuit in the first place but have almost certainly poisoned the well with regards to the final ruling on CDL.
Koeltl's current ruling applies in particular to lending without the waitlist restriction is legal. CDL in general isn't yet ruled on. That’s not the case. The decision is clearly written, and clearly about CDL. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.53...
Ok, that appears correct. Still, the NEL prompted the suits in the first place and, among other things, proved that when the IA says it cares about the legal rights of publishers and authors it is lying. That's tremendously influential. If CDL had more years to become a regular thing that a significant fraction of people use, it would've had a much better chance in court.
Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#103[deleted]
Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#104which made copyrighted books available for free during the COVID-19 pandemic. The publishers behind the lawsuit alleged that this entailed copyright infringement. Along with everybody with two brain cells to rub together. We all screamed "Hey, you idiots are going to ruin everything if you act like the pandemic has magically nullified the concept of copyright" and they fucking did it anyway, and now exactly what we s…
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Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#105The title implies that losing this lawsuit is threatening the existence of the Internet Archive. Is that really the case? If it is true, then maybe IA should be run by somebody with better judgement. This was a project with a massive chance of failure (how could anyone think that this wasn't just blatantly infringing?) and a low payoff. If it's also an existential risk, then wtf are they doing running it?
They're doing us all a favor is what they're doing. Intellectual property is just not that important when compared with ensuring that the powerful can't rewrite history. If they lose their case, I hope the project can be kept afloat in ways that the US government can't interfere with.
Archiving is typically protected. Lending of currently available works is not archiving.
Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#106The article is extremely misleading. It makes it seem like the 4 publishers are against Internet Archive as a whole, when all they sued for was for the unrestricted publication of copyrighted books during the start of the pandemic.
It was prompted by the unrestricted lending, but it's pretty clear that the fight is now about lending at all.[0] That may still only be the OpenLibrary, but it's not just the unrestricted lending, and I wouldn't be surprised it it also has a chilling effect on other scans. I'm curious how letting people view scans of obscure 1940s magazines is legal if doing it for books is not. They're not even restricted to one "b…
Pretty much "everything" (other than public domain) on the IA is on shaky ground. It's been mostly OK because very few people object to the archiving of their public web pages (especially given the IA respects robots.txt even retroactively) and, as you say, old magazines that basically have zero commercial value.
Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I know the government has viewed certain companies as "too big to fail," because of the negative financial impact we would experience if they were to do so. > I wonder if there needs to be a cultural equivalent, where a repository of digital or physical artifacts is "too big to fail" because of the negative cultural impact their failure would have. If there is, the Internet Archive isn't it. Yeah, it's super import…
Internet Archive is likely the only memory of the digital world. They may or may not have made a mistake during the covid pandemic by extending their book lending program, but in the age of IA where many text and images are going to lack any source of truth, they may be one of the very few ways to document modern history.
I'm not saying it's not valuable, I'm saying not that many people would even notice, let alone care, if it disappeared.
You may personally be one of the people who cares about the IA, or know a lot of people who care, but if you go to a shopping mall six months after the IA shuts down and ask people about it at random, you'd find that level of knowledge and caring is unusual. It's not the kind of too-big-to-fail that the government would take interest in.
Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#108I don't know how their finances are structured but the way you solve this problem is with a big endowment.
Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#109We need an IA backup project right now :/
Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
The USA's biggest export is our culture...like it or not. Think of movies, music, etc. Some of it is intangible.
>> You can wonder all you like, and call me a cynic, but the US runs on money not culture. The American identity is built on money and wealth and excess, not on anything you might describe as "culture". > The USA's biggest export is our culture...like it or not. Think of movies, music, etc. Some of it is intangible. Yeah, but that's not high culture. It's mass-market culture that makes a lot of money. I think what th…
I don't think so at all: the IA has little to do with what is normally termed "high culture", and much more to do with "low culture" (lots and lots of internet trivia that would mostly be of interest to archeologists).