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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

#171

Post by stubish »

gojomo wrote: post #165
_ktx2 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be! However, making a direct attack on individual privacy should never have been an option. To make matters worse, the logic of, "We did this to government and military websites, so now we're going to roll it out everywhere" was quite broken for the time and remains so. There's examples of how this works in a healthy way. Martin Manley is one scenario that comes to mind, where he overtly opted-in to having an a…

Neiher 'flaunting privacy' nor 'direct attack on individual privacy' are fair descriptions of any of the Archive's web collection policies. People who freely publish information, to the worldwide public, on the 'World Wide Web' should reasonably expect all sorts of entities to collect, save, analyze, & repurpose that info, unless they take specific steps to discourage such access & use. The Archive's crawlers identif…

This is victim blaming. In my jurisdiction, you retain copyright under any information you publish, even to the worldwide public. This means I can reasonably expect entities to collect, save, analyze and repurpose that info within reason, and without specific steps to discourage access & use. This is why there are laws such as 'fair use' and 'satire', because we wanted to extend what is considered reasonable use of public works. But redistributing copyrighted works without permission? Legally actionable, if you have the money and lawyers and access to the necessary courts. If this was software, such as free software license violations, people in this forum would be calling for the lawyers to nuke them from orbit.

Thankfully DMCA should make the removal process easier now, especially in situations where control over the domain has been lost or being hosted by a third party. Although last I saw there were still artificial barriers, such as needing to list every single individual page needing to be taken down. But this is after the fact, after you discovered your reasonable expectations and privacy have been violated. And then you have to track down the other copies that IA illegally distributed your now-private and copyrighted information to, such as a few libraries around the world with similar projects.

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

#172

Post by freeflight »

solarkraft wrote: post #155

I'm torn about this. I don't want my money going to silly lawsuits, I want it to go towards archiving important cultural goods. Copyright infringement is exactly what makes it possible to provide me with that collection of Windows 7 UI sounds and similar things, but I don't know about books. There are already people archiving books and providing them to people for free, so I think this is not a role the Internet Arch…

> I'm torn about this. I don't want my money going to silly lawsuits, I want it to go towards archiving important cultural goods.

We live in a world where one corporation can singlehandedly change copyright for the worse for the majority of humanity, where copyright is actively being used and abused, not just for profit maximation but also for the suppression of information.

In such a world lawsuits sadly are a part of enabling to do what IA is trying to do; Set precedents for what doesn't fall under copyright, fighting for interests that are not 100% based on profits.

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

#173

Post by stubish »

ipaddr wrote: post #90
pavon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This wasn't about preserving archives, or distributing old works that should have been in the public domain by now, or even "lending" out digital copies backed by physical copies they owned. This was about distributing unlimited digital copies of current works (some published just the year before). Legally and morally I cannot see this as any different or better than blatant copyright piracy. The Internet Archive doe…

They are lending with limitations like a library. If the nation was founded today people would never build a single library and they would be deeded evil. Requiring libraries to buy books is an evil practice. As a function of copyright you should have to donate a book for every 10 numbers sold. Libraries create readers who are necessary for writers/publishers.

If they want to change the laws, they could be agitating for a system such as Australia where authors get paid when their books are checked out from libraries. For many Australian authors, it is where the majority of their writing income comes from. Note that it is authors and not publishers receiving this money from the Australian Government. It wouldn't even cost that much, given how little people actually read on average.

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

#174

Post by freeflight »

TekMol wrote: post #42
rwmj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsers copy and store websites as part of their normal functioning. If you didn't want your website to be copied and stored then maybe it was better not to put it up in the first place? Anyway the IA will remove everything with a very simple, automated text file placed in the root directory.

So you say copyright does not apply to websites?

They are saying that your overly theoretic application of copyright is in absolute contrast to the technical realities of how the web works.

It's a discussion that's been had for literally decades, because most tech-fluent people realized a long time ago how a copyright that's designed for physical distribution does not lend itself well to the intangible nature of the web, were replication is trivial and in many cases a mandatory necessity to enable a lot of functions in the very first place.

Sadly that discussion simply died out at some point, I think it was around 2010 when smartphones and social media started to boom, so the copyright reform that was supposed to "fix" all this never came.

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

#176

Post by Mindwipe »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #88
capableweb wrote: post #2

I love the Internet Archive and frequently donate to them (2 times so far this year). What I'd love to see improved is the ability to be less "fragile". Currently it's all located in the US and they have a huge focus on the US, both technically and politically. But why not try to replicate it all over the world? There seems to have been some smaller efforts inside the Internet Archive to make it more decentralized, b…

is there any group lobbying for the abolishment of all copyright? I'd like to donate to them.

> is there any group lobbying for the abolishment of all copyright? I'd like to donate to them.

No, because they would get laughed out of the room.

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

#177

Post by Mindwipe »

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.

> Libraries are government approved piracy.

In most countries around the world libraries pay a license for loaned out books, so not really.

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

#178

Post by ChrisLomont »

dmitriid wrote: post #145
xhkkffbf wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 countr…

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

More on the order of $40/yr.

https://www.amacad.org/humanities-indicators/public-life/pub...

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

#179

Post by Nemo_bis »

Werewolf255 wrote: post #67

Lots of folks in the comments acting like lawful actions, by their very nature of being lawful, are correct actions. Internet Archive took extraordinary measures during extraordinary times when these same four publishers could have done something similar. They should be nationalized, dismantled, and have their archives released into the public domain, as punishment for trying to hoard our collective knowledge to them…

I assume that by "they" in your second sentence you mean the publishers.

One relatively innocuous way to neutralize the hoarders of exclusive rights is a compulsory license. It was proposed in the context of the TRIPS waiver: https://www.communia-association.org/2021/03/22/communia-sup...

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

#180

Post by Nemo_bis »

metadat wrote: post #51
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…

I'd be completely sympathetic if the commercial entities were willing to work with (or had tried) and strike a reasonable compromise with TIA. Instead, they've chosen to go for blood and sue a valuable, well-intentioned organization who tried to help folks have access to information during the pandemic. There is no end to the greed. Fuck 'em.

Why do you (and one other person in this thread) write "TIA" instead of "IA"?
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