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Tell HN: Internet Archive is facing a Big 4 Publishers lawsuit

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Re: Tell HN: Internet Archive is facing a Big 4 Publishers lawsuit

#141

Post by xhkkffbf »

dbingham wrote: post #97
liquidise wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The mission of preserving human culture is far more important than respecting rent-seeking copyright holders That genuinely may be so, but "this law i broke shouldn't exist" is not an advisable legal defense. Also, what you call "rent seeking" others would call "return on investment". I do think there is a grey area here, "fair use" being one example, but i think summarily discounting distributors and publishers wh…

"This law I broke shouldn't exist" is the basis of civil disobedience and is how many of the freedoms we enjoy were won and the oppressive laws of recent history were struck down. It may or may not succeed in courts, because our "justice" system is anything but. Even if it doesn't succeed in court, it's still a worthwhile stance and it may succeed in other ways. Especially if enough people who recognize where justice…

Rent is the basis for all forms of savings through investment. It allows people to work hard for a time and then take some time off. Yes, some will be rent seeking while drinking rum at the beach bar, but so will the sick people and the retired people. Rent makes it possible for society to offer disability insurance and retirement savings.

Re: Tell HN: Internet Archive is facing a Big 4 Publishers lawsuit

#142

Post by xhkkffbf »

yellowapple wrote: post #65
liquidise wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The mission of preserving human culture is far more important than respecting rent-seeking copyright holders That genuinely may be so, but "this law i broke shouldn't exist" is not an advisable legal defense. Also, what you call "rent seeking" others would call "return on investment". I do think there is a grey area here, "fair use" being one example, but i think summarily discounting distributors and publishers wh…

> Also, what you call "rent seeking" others would call "return on investment". Which they've largely already enjoyed many times over. I have precisely zero sympathy for the poor widdle publishing corporations.

Just remember that there are thousands of authors who are only paid because the publishing company is able to charge for books. The same goes for software firms that also depend upon copyright. So if you're a programmer, ask your boss if he or she would be willing to put all of your work into the public domain.

Re: Tell HN: Internet Archive is facing a Big 4 Publishers lawsuit

#143

Post by orev »

somenameforme wrote: post #112
orev wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using your same logic, I will single-handedly decide that all software companies (and the developers working there) have received enough compensation for their efforts, and demand all their services and code be made available for free. As long as you got one paycheck from those months of work, now I want it for free. /s

It's interesting to consider that there are books, still in copyright , that were published before any digital computers, let alone software companies, existed. It puts the extreme absurdity of modern copyright law in context. 20 years is extreme. The modern "standard" is the entire life of the author + 70 years on top. This is indefensible.

I agree and not going to argue that here. But that’s the way the rules are right now, and publishers have the full weight of the law to enforce their rights as that’s what the current state of things allows.

Re: Tell HN: Internet Archive is facing a Big 4 Publishers lawsuit

#144

Post by ghaff »

molticrystal wrote: post #66
COGlory wrote: post #6

So...they didn't think the law should apply so they just decided to ignore it? What were they expecting? How can they possibly expect to win this lawsuit? I hate copyright with all my soul but this is just stupid. You can't just decide to take the law into your own hand. This is just a waste of money and effort.

They didn't ignore it, they are very familiar with the terms. What they can do depends on if the government ends up classifying them as a warez site or a library/archive. And, if they are a library/archive, if their actions can be considered part of the copyright exceptions. The publishers lawyers will argue they are just a warez site, and use everything in their power to do such, jurisdiction, case law, confusing te…

>if they are a library/archive, if their actions can be considered part of the copyright exceptions.

Libraries/archives actually have fairly limited exceptions. And the category isn't even especially clearly defined. It's definitely not an anything goes get out of jail free card.

Re: Tell HN: Internet Archive is facing a Big 4 Publishers lawsuit

#145

Post by dmitriid »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #133
BitwiseFool wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If libraries hadn't already been in existence since antiquity, copyright holders would never have allowed them to exist.

But why do you say that? Kindle unlimited is a pretty similar to a library and many publishers support it and include their books. Yes, it costs something per month, but it's much less than the overhead costs for librarians, heat and a building. Many municipalities could actually save money by closing their libraries and giving everyone with an active library card a subscription to Kindle unlimited. I'm not suggestin…

> Kindle unlimited is a pretty similar to a library and many publishers support it and include their books. Yes, it costs something per month, but it's much less than the overhead costs for librarians, heat and a building.

How much do you think you personally pay for libraries? 1 cent a year? Half a cent a year?

And it's not "many publishers support ", it's "libraries are obliged to have all books, and in many countries publishers are made by law to provide libraries with copies of their books".

> But it's important to note that copyright holders are coming up with many new and innovative ways to help readers get books and authors get paid.

None of those ways are innovative.

Re: Tell HN: Internet Archive is facing a Big 4 Publishers lawsuit

#146

Post by orev »

plebianRube wrote: post #102
orev wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using your same logic, I will single-handedly decide that all software companies (and the developers working there) have received enough compensation for their efforts, and demand all their services and code be made available for free. As long as you got one paycheck from those months of work, now I want it for free. /s

This is infact what companies currently do. Your argument would make sense if developers got paid per run of their code, instead of only for new code they write.

Every company is different, but the vast majority are moving to a subscription model where users are charged monthly to use the same code over and over. For licensed (non-subscription) software, code can live through many major revisions where the customer pays over and over for the same code to renew their license.

If you think it would be nice to get paid per run, then you should have gone into mainframe programming, because that is (more or less) how it works (licensing fee based on how many units the code could process, which would go up if you upgraded the CPU). Moving away from that was one of the innovations of UNIX and PC style licensing.

Re: Tell HN: Internet Archive is facing a Big 4 Publishers lawsuit

#147

Post by _ktx2 »

gojomo wrote: post #127

Some people here say they like the Internet Archive, and resent copyright maximalism, but wish IA would be more legally conservative around copyright law: "follow the law!" "ask permission!" "work through other libraries!" They may not understand that none of what they like about the Internet Archive would've been possible without a bold willingness to probe the boundaries of copyright law. If you'd asked any mainstr…

One of the things I dislike the most about Internet Archive is their relatively open attitude of flaunting privacy on purpose: http://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-sear...

Do you know what system they replaced robots.txt with? Email, one that is filed as a DMCA request: https://medium.com/wednesday-genius/how-to-remove-your-websi... https://jonathanwthomas.net/how-to-get-your-website-out-of-t...

Sometimes, it's probably good to not push the envelope without trying to establish consensus in good faith first.

Re: Tell HN: Internet Archive is facing a Big 4 Publishers lawsuit

#148

Post by gentoo »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #133
BitwiseFool wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If libraries hadn't already been in existence since antiquity, copyright holders would never have allowed them to exist.

But why do you say that? Kindle unlimited is a pretty similar to a library and many publishers support it and include their books. Yes, it costs something per month, but it's much less than the overhead costs for librarians, heat and a building. Many municipalities could actually save money by closing their libraries and giving everyone with an active library card a subscription to Kindle unlimited. I'm not suggestin…

there is a massive difference between a company selling a subscription service and the government using public money to provide free access to everyone with no strings attached

Re: Tell HN: Internet Archive is facing a Big 4 Publishers lawsuit

#149

Post by 13amxn13 »

eropple wrote: post #71
tenpies wrote: post #68

Quoted post unavailable.

Taylor Lorenz has a track record of some gross stuff. The Internet Archive regularly does not display archives of content that they've indexed (which also doesn't mean that it's been deleted!) when content creators ask them not to. A `robots.txt` file does for the Wayback Machine is asking the IA that, though in that case I don't know if it's indexed and not displayed; I would assume not, as it's a go-away to a crawl…

No post body was provided.

Re: Tell HN: Internet Archive is facing a Big 4 Publishers lawsuit

#150

Post by greycol »

SkyBelow wrote: post #132
BitwiseFool wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If libraries hadn't already been in existence since antiquity, copyright holders would never have allowed them to exist.

Libraries are government approved piracy. This can be taken as being positive about piracy or negative about libraries. I think the real question is not which way I mean it but why does the average user see one as positive and the other as a negative, thus causing the conflict when the two are linked by this statement.

You are implying that two people reading the same physical book is piracy with your statement. With that kind of logic someone reading the same book twice that they only paid for once would be piracy if the author wished that they could have the book burnt after one read through.

The natural state of copyright is that it doesn't exist, it's only created because governments believe there is a benefit in enforcing it, be that benefit a greater production and distribution of works or more money in politicians pockets from lobbyists.

Implying that there is any legal copyright piracy is ridiculous as by it's definition the copyright does not extend to that area so there is no piracy. The closest you can come to the concept of legal piracy would be copyright privateering across legal jurisdictions.

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