EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers • Hacker News Board

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#141

Post by blacksmith_tb » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

adamsea wrote: post #106

jjcon wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm better off, and you're no worse off. In an "ideal" society, the free sharing of knowledge would be not just allowed, but encouraged. I agree that theft of digital goods is not equivalent to physical goods but abolition of copyright does not follow from that fact nor does it follow that theft of intellectual property is not possible. I also agree this is an important conversation to have. The whole idea around c…

I think if you talked to most authors they would have strong feelings that there need to be some legal means to ensure they are compensated for their work, and that someone else doesn't straight-up copy their novel, and then publish it and make a bundle. I do totally agree that copyright is messed up, big-time. To be honest I'm not sure that "free" sharing of knowledge really exists. Even in scientific communities I…

Isn't that only getting halfway there? No one could "make a bundle" from copying my work if everything could be copied freely (including me, without some other way to get paid). I agree that authors (and musicians, and artists, etc.) would like to be paid for their work, though currently it seems like publishing companies manage to channel most of that money into their own pockets instead (and the costs of 'publishing' and 'distributing' a digital work are certainly a lot lower than a physical copy, yet somehow their prices are often the same).

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#142

Post by lend000 » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

dctoedt wrote: post #107

Gaelan wrote: post #84

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se. If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no w…

You're channeling Thomas Jefferson, who himself channeled a Zoroastrian idea. Jefferson said: "... no one possesses the less because everyone possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me receives [it] without lessening [me], as he who lights his [candle] at mine receives light without darkening me." [0] The flaw in this concept is the free-rider problem: 1. Not all new IP can be created as a side projec…

The fundamental issue with our copyright and patents laws are the length of validity. This in turn breeds more issues (with patents in particular) encouraging frivolous patents because there is such a long potential return on investment period.

I recommend we decrease patent durations of all varieties by about 50% (patents should never last longer than 10 years as they do now [0]). For copyrights, there is some merit to not allowing others to take over your work during the life of the author. But for anonymous works, works that have transferred ownership from the author, and for copyright terms after the death of the author, I would agree to a similar limit of 10 years of copyright.

[0] https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/patents/duratio....

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#143

Post by ALittleLight » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

Gaelan wrote: post #84

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se. If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no w…

I am made worse off if you steal a copy of my book though. Suppose I sell the book for X dollars and the probability that any person without my book will buy it is Y. People who don't have my book have a value to me, specifically, YX dollars.

When you steal my book, you directly cost me YX dollars, which is probably an infinitesimal amount, but if everyone was allowed to freely copy the book, then it would be approximately 100% of the money to be made by writing a book.

Of course there are complications, like, you might buy it after pirating it, or, you weren't going to buy it anyway, or maybe you'll recommend it to a friend, but I think those considerations should be evaluated by the people with skin in the game - i.e the people who will make or lose money if they get it wrong.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#144

Post by HideousKojima » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #143

Gaelan wrote: post #84

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se. If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no w…

I am made worse off if you steal a copy of my book though. Suppose I sell the book for X dollars and the probability that any person without my book will buy it is Y. People who don't have my book have a value to me, specifically, YX dollars. When you steal my book, you directly cost me YX dollars, which is probably an infinitesimal amount, but if everyone was allowed to freely copy the book, then it would be approxi…

You're assuming that Y is evenly distributed amongst all people, which is absolutely not the case. For example, I did most of my game pirating back in high school, when I didn't have a job (nor a car to get to a job and I lived out in the sticks) and had nothing but an allowance from my parents of ~$20 every month.

So the maximum amount I could theoretically spend on games per year? $120. The retail value of all of the different games I pirated annually? Well over $1,000, probably several thousand. So the probability of me paying for any significant portion of the games I pirated was effectively 0

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#145

Post by tluyben2 » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

myself248 wrote: post #119

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EFF is on the wrong side of both the law and common sense here and they will lose no matter how much they pay their legal team. I don't understand how people have such certainty about this. You have a situation where there are libraries who have bought millions of books from authors/publishers. The authors have been paid. Then, there is a pandemic and the libraries are closed, so the public has lost access to all t…

It would've been interesting if they'd tried to compile a list of all the books that existed at all the closed libraries, and then only lent up to the limits of that list (which would continue to expand as more data were added), but I don't think anyone would argue that was practical to do at the time. The whole country can be shuttered at a moment's notice, compiling data like that takes tremendous effort. However,…

> compiling data like that takes tremendous effort.

It is a lifetime ago, but when I still went to the library in my country, about 27 years ago for the last time, there was already a system which had all books of all libaries at every library, where you could look up which copy of what book was in which library, how many of those author’s books all libraries had together etc. This was 27 years (and longer) ago; you are saying that, in 2020, I cannot press one button and get this info in all, at least, western countries?

That is pretty depressing if so.

Edit; come to think of it, it must be longer ago as I tried to copy (the UI and functionality without networking of) that system for my own books at home on my MSX; I stopped using that system when I got an Amiga more than 30 years ago.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#146

Post by Gaelan » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

thrownaway954 wrote: post #130

Gaelan wrote: post #84

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se. If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no w…

"If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no worse off. In an "ideal" society, the free sharing of knowledge would be not just allowed, but encouraged." you are so wrong in this mentality. the bottom line is, that someone took the time and energy to write and publish that book to make money, so that person should be paid. wit…

> the bottom line is, that someone took the time and energy to write and publish that book to make money, so that person should be paid

I agree with you! As I said lower down in my comment:

> Of course, we can't just abolish copyright with no replacement; it's certainly necessary to reward the creation of this work somehow.

I absolutely believe that we need to pay the creators of [what we would currently call] copyrighted works somehow. I'm just not convinced that the best way to do that is with a "per-consumer" cost. I go on to discuss some alternatives that still reward creators, but reduce some of the harmful impacts of copyright. I'll readily admit that I haven't thought those ideas through that much, but that's a far cry from completely failing to consider that creators need to be paid, as you seem to be implying I did.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#147

Post by enriquto » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:54 PM UTC

WaltPurvis wrote: post #139

enriquto wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your philosophical musings are not uninteresting, but they are irrelevant to the fact that violating copyright is defined as stealing property under US law. Your philosophical musings are not uninteresting, but they are irrelevant to the fact that freeing slaves legitimately bought is defined as stealing property under US law.

That's not cute. It's incredibly appalling to compare the institution of slavery to people who pirate books simply because they want the benefits of authors' work without compensating those authors.

I'm not making that comparison. I'm not even saying that I disagree with your view on copyright. I'm just setting up this correspondence to show that the argumentation that you use is not valid.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#148

Post by Gaelan » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #134

Gaelan wrote: post #84

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se. If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no w…

If you steal my book, I don't get paid as much for the work I put into the book. So I am very clearly and obviously worse off. I find it really, really strange that some people find this hard to understand. And your "crowdfunded patronage" model is still copyright, it's just copyright with a different revenue model.

> And your "crowdfunded patronage" model is still copyright, it's just copyright with a different revenue model.

I was thinking it would go something like this:

I write a book. I decide that I want to make $100,000 from the book, so I put up a Kickstarter for that much. Once it hits the goal, I release the book into the public domain. Before then, I don't publish the book at all.

Unless your definition of "copyright" is much broader than mine, I don't think it's involved in that process.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#149

Post by xhkkffbf » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

Gaelan wrote: post #84

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se. If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no w…

What if I just borrow your car when you're sleeping? You lose nothing.

What if I break into your house and use your TV while you're at work? You lose nothing.

What if I set up a tent on your lawn and take it down whenever you want to play frisbee? You lose nothing.

What if I grab some girl's butt at a dance club? She loses nothing.

As you can see, requiring an act to explicitly deprive someone of property is a slippery slope. There are dozens of examples of "borrowing" that just aren't done in polite society because the owner doesn't want them to be done.

The same is even more true here. Piracy hurts the author's ability to sell books. Free copies just have that effect. Every normal human understands it. Only a few computer people like to pretend that their "borrowing" is somehow magic.

Piracy destroys artists.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#150

Post by aka1234 » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

chadash wrote: post #71

aka1234 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "No, the criminal in the above is absolutely on the wrong side of the law. That's the assumption after all." In America at least, the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. So the assumption should be that the defendant is on the right side of the law. It's the prosecutor or complainant's job to prove the defendant is in fact on the wrong side of the law. To call a defendant 'the criminal' (and saying…

> In America at least, the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Is this true for civil cases? I presume no one is being charged with a crime here...

> Is this true for civil cases? I presume no one is being charged with a crime here...

Yes. The publishers are saying 'the Internet Archive violated my rights and has caused monetary damages. They owe us for those damages.' It's up to the publishers to provide that the Internet Archive violated those rights.

Now civil trials and criminal trials have different standards for evidence and determining guilt. In criminal trials, the prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone committed a criminal offense.

In civil cases, the complainant (plaintiff) just has to prove via a 'preponderance of the evidence' that their rights were violated. Meaning, it's more likely than not their rights were violated.