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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

#101

Post by alwa »

missinglugnut wrote: post #46
TimorousBestie wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> let IA be what it is IA is the eccentric, untamed idealism. You can’t have the Wayback Machine without the National Emergency Library and the Great 78 Project.

As the project matures, the risk tolerance should mature too. Betting your own time and money on the realization of a crazy ideal can be very noble. Betting a resource millions of people are relying on is destructive hubris. They should take the untamed idealism to a separate legal entity before they ruin all the good they've done.

I wonder if there would be appetite for a sister organization—one with a more conservative, risk-averse, long-horizon attitude—to emerge to mirror IA’s core archives. Let IA keep doing what it’s doing, crazy risk and all; duplicate the conservative functions in a conservative organizational structure.

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

#102

Post by PeaceTed »

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.

The last few years have really put to test copyrights limits and uses. As someone that falls more in line with Copyleft ideals (do whatever you want with my stuff!), it is very funny.

I just grab the popcorn and watch from the side lines, see where it all lands.

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

#104

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

fooqux wrote: post #34
wmf wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was also a lawsuit over Google Books.

Sure, which Google won. Which was basically the point of the person you replied to I think.

Google wins on summary judgment

https://storage.courtlistener.com/harvard_pdf/8726429.pdf

"For the reasons set forth above, plaintiffs motion for partial summary judgment is denied and Googles motion for summary judgment is granted. Judgment will be entered in favor of Google dismissing the Complaint. Google shall submit a proposed judgment, on notice, within five business days hereof."

Affirmed on appeal

https://storage.courtlistener.com/harvard_pdf/3124896.pdf

"In sum, we conclude that: (1) Googles unauthorized digitizing of copyright-protected works, creation of a search functionality, and display of snippets from those works are non-infringing fair uses. The purpose of the copying is highly transfor-mative, the public display of text is limited, and the revelations do not provide a significant market substitute for the protected aspects of the originals. Googles commercial nature and profit motivation do not justify denial of fair use. (2) Googles provision of digitized copies to the libraries that supplied the books, on the understanding that the libraries will use the copies in a manner consistent with the copyright law, also does not constitute infringement. Nor, on this record, is Google a contributory infringer."

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

#105

Post by PeaceTed »

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.

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

#106

Post by nine_k »

PeaceTed wrote: post #102
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.

The last few years have really put to test copyrights limits and uses. As someone that falls more in line with Copyleft ideals (do whatever you want with my stuff!), it is very funny. I just grab the popcorn and watch from the side lines, see where it all lands.

I'm used to think that "copyleft" is "do whatever you want with my stuff, but you must agree that others must be able to do whatever you want with your stuff you made out of mine".

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

#107

Post by floxy »

BEEdwards wrote: post #88
floxy wrote: post #82

The Wayback Machine has been broken for me for about a month or so. Is that the case for everyone? Like when you stick in a URL, it just goes to a "landing page" that says: "The Wayback Machine is an initiative of the Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Other projects include Open Library & archive-it.org. Your use of the…

works for me

Huh. Works for me at home as well. Must be something with the firewall at work or similar. Thanks!

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

#108

Post by wtfwhateven »

Permit wrote: post #48
fsckboy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a big, transformative, difference with freely giving out books to read on a small, measured in human reading pace, scale compared with using them at a massive scale at internet and computer memory speeds to train an ML model even if the intellectual property used to train the ML was from unlicensed copies, and which the model regularly and with some frequency regurgitates verbatim. not wanting you to be in…

> some frequency This is a weasel word you've inserted to be intentionally misleading.

Saying "some frequency" instead of "often" doesn't mean their overall point is wrong. You know that, you're just being intentionally deceitful.

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

#109

Post by machomaster »

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?

It's hard to convince people of X, if their earnings depend on them not agreeing.

Management and lawyers are paid to be busy and "defend rights", not on sitting still and saying that nothing should be done. Even if it true, they still need look busy and "earn their check", otherwise their numbers/salaries can be reduced.

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

#110

Post by cookiengineer »

Fun fact: the only complete copy of the Internet Archive's library is in Alexandria.

How's that for historic irony and "unteachability" of the human species.

Honestly, now's the time to make copies of it, while we still can. Torrents need seeders and people that care, and we are the last generation that cares about knowledge.

We need to prevent the following generations to grow up as mindless clickmonkeys of the digital Orwellian world.

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