161–170 of 582 posts
I hope they do a data dump or leak of the archive before they comply. It’s a shame to lose so many actually scanned hardcover books.
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Are you a lawyer? Can you point to the relevant statutes? I don't ask this flippantly as there exist many forms (private / public / academic) of library which allow for both physical and digital lending of owned assets and are not subject to lawsuits like this. It's not at all obvious that IA's interpretation of the law is in error.
You really don't need to be a lawyer to understand the extent to which Internet Archive really screwed up here. For starters they lost on Summary Judgment, which means they couldn't come up with a single issue of fact that the judge thought deserved a trial. Read the Order, the Judge obviously has it straight. Then check archive.org's Form 990s and see how little money they run on, how much they pissed away on legal…
The world locked down u necessarily precisely because the population has not been getting smarter the past 50 years because copyright has poisoned our information wells.
This is a fight worth having.
It's time to abolish copyright.
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It lending done flagrantly in violation of the licensing. They were taking a copy licensed to be lent ONCE and giving it to thousands of people at once.
You’re confusing the COVID “emergency lending” period (which was highly dubious, I agree) with their normal lending system. They track borrows against physical copies of the books stored in their warehouse. Typically you can only borrow a book for one hour before having to renew in the viewer.
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Who's been jailed for singing Happy Birthday? How many people have been jailed for copyright violations at all? If you're arguing that copyright length should be shortened, I strongly agree. If you're arguing that we should eliminate copyright completely because we should only regulate things you would immediately throw people in jail for, I strongly disagree. As a society we need to be able to regulate some behavior…
No one. Copyright infringement is not a criminal court matter; it is a civil one.
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That isn't a counterpoint, it is exactly what OP is saying–there is already a way to give away a book for free if they author/copyright holder wants to without the IA deciding what should be free.
Parent is also saying that virtually nobody does it. This is not true. What I linked is one example, given away for free by an engineer at a prop trading firm and a CS professor. Similar to the linked example, we have excellent books on many technical subjects, available for free. And not because the authors are communists but because they want to share the knowledge or because it helps their broader business.
Comparing number of books released for sale vs for free, is isn't unreasonable to use the phrase "virtually nobody". I would guess less than 1% of books are released free.
> What I linked is one example, given away for free by an engineer at a prop trading firm and a CS professor. Similar to the linked example, we have excellent books on many technical subjects, available for free.
That's right. There are lots of free books and still almost all books are not free. That's okay, though. People can write a book and choose what to do with it. What IA tried to do removed that option.
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Europeans and Americans are now taxing green technology, which they said in the past they want, because it is built in another country...
Because they don't want to be dependent on another country for energy infrastructure.
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So the wife that supported the author can't profit off their assets? The author can't pass on this to children? Should we do the same thing for other property like land and money?
This kind of hectoring discourse is aggressive and rude. You can do better. Authors that get paid can certainly leave the assets they received to their families. They could also transfer ownership of unpublished intangible assets. More than that sucks the general public into a quasi-contractual relationship with a posthumous person; I disclaim fiscal obligations of strangers toward ghosts.
There is no greater folly of contemporary human society than the purposeful restriction of such vast and easily shareable repositories of knowledge. Perhaps these schemes made sense in the past but with the advent of the internet and independent groups willing to fund all hosting fees, we should move to models of publishing that do not require this restriction of information. Library genesis exists but necessarily mu…
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Genuine question since I don’t know much about inheritance. Don’t things like houses, stocks, etc get taxed in certain places? Whereas I don’t think copyright does? In a way, that is similar to having to give property away upon death (can’t pay the tax, forced to get rid of it).
Income is taxed, obviously. Copyright is taken away, originally after 14 years, now 70(?) years. After the death of the creator
There is no greater folly of contemporary human society than the purposeful restriction of such vast and easily shareable repositories of knowledge. Perhaps these schemes made sense in the past but with the advent of the internet and independent groups willing to fund all hosting fees, we should move to models of publishing that do not require this restriction of information. Library genesis exists but necessarily mu…
Why should an author be forced to give away their work for free? They can already choose to give it away for free if they wish. We already have the Creative Commons licenses, and there are many open textbook projects.
"Why should we lessen or diminish the legal right of authors to control how copies of their work are distributed; the way we've been doing it works well."
is what you SHOULD have said. Doesn't sound as sexy, but here, the accuracy matters.