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

I'm talking about the unfair allegation of privacy violations, here.

Note that when the Archive shares crawled content with other libraries, those other libraries often have their own legal right to collect, preserve, and make-available that data even stronger than the Archive's rights via fair use, implied-license, library privileges, and other grounds. For example, many of the Archive's partners in government libraries, archives, & educational institutions have a statutory right & mission to collect copies of everything 'published', including via the world-wide-web, in their sphere of national interest.

As to what some unstated jurisdiction might consider "within reason", I prefer to think they'll find what's reasonable what I find to be reasonable – the IA's crawling policies – unless & until some actual governing authority finds otherwise in a clearly applicable/legible decision.

See my root post (ggggggp): in a vital, evolutionary, true-law-made-on-the-ground civilization, what actually winds up as "within reason" depends on the real implementations & multi-decade demonstrations of how things can beneficially work, as much or more than any copyright loyalist's strict reading of older statutory laws.

There is an overlap in the two. Copyright can be used as a defense against folk who believe, "Everything on the internet not behind authentication is commons". Often these folks point to books, magazines, etc in reference to their argument, which is certainly bad faith, but that's why copyright arguments come up.

A reference to one such comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32150193

> Lots of folks in the comments acting like lawful actions, by their very nature of being lawful, are correct action

Ofc just wait for the case which involves some law they hate and watch the song change.

I will agree with the thought, though, that picking a fight you can't win is probably dumb. I doubt the IA would become a martyr.

> Wait, why are books, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, pamphlets, & flyers a bad faith analogy?

Because they're comparing an individuals blog or Twitter profile to those things, of which they are not analogous. Not to mention you use rhetoric like this:

> If copyright maximalists & DRM fans

It just goes to show the juvenile nature that some people will stoop to in order to prove their point. In this case, "some people" is you. Not everybody out here are the little demons you've dreamed up in your soul; most of the people responding on this thread are just privacy advocates who have seen how these policies go wrong, often first-hand. A little further down the thread someone makes a very salient point about the queer community and how these tools are used in unmasking.

> Nor, allege criminality or 'bad-faith' against people just using the worldwide-web as it was designed, and enjoying readers' rights as they've been traditionally interpreted.

The internet as a technological invention did not arrive with legalities already paved. They were very much in flux and have been in flux. It's okay if you don't like that, but asserting that the internet was created with commons as the default is junk; that's a very US-American law that has dominated cultural perception. Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, we have countries figuring out nuanced ways to implement the right to be forgotten - notice none of that legislation is geared towards large corporations, it's focused on individuals.

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Getting to the rest of your argument that wasn't distastefully written: I do agree that it shouldn't be a copyright free for all, but you can't have the Internet Archive and other folks creating weapons. There should be limits on both ends and I don't think those exist.

One really obvious limit is stop treating government entities and individuals the same. Stop treating large publishers and individuals the same. The former have immense resources to coordinate their communication and undergo thorough review processes, so their publications are more well thought out. Most blogs and social media posts are not nor do they have the same level of impact. Privacy advocates wouldn't need a copyright crutch if people could summon enough humanity and empathy to understand that. That would separate privacy advocates from copyright trolls on this issue.

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Another edit

This is rich: https://twitter.com/gojomo http://xavvy.com/

You used to work for archive.org? That might be a thing you should call out in discussion.

Some posts:

- http://gojomo.blogspot.com/2001/01/

- http://gojomo.blogspot.com/2000/08/

- http://gojomo.blogspot.com/2002/07/

- http://news.oreilly.com/2008/06/gordon-mohr-takes-us-inside-... (This link looks dead)

- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,42438,00.html (This link looks dead, but was summarized by you as, "about the tug-of-war between personal privacy and copyright enforcement, March, 2001.")

The internet has given everyone the tools to publish a personal newsletter/blog/profile-page, just as only the few could do so earlier. It not only allows essentially-free publishing to the whole public, but also extreme narrowcasting with any level of access-control one desires.

You've not made a case that personal writings should be treated any differently, on either copyright or privacy grounds, nor that the law does treat them any differently.

You've made unsupportable allegations of "flaunting privacy" or "direct attack on individual privacy", and accused those who simply reason from copyright-history as making "bad faith" arguments. And, you are asking for the roughly the same level of expansive copyright interpretation – not at all a feature of the jurisdictions where the Internet Archive primarly operates – that copyright maximalists and DRM advocates do.

Just as you misrepresented the Archive's process for exclusion as requiring a DMCA request – even though your own links complimented the Archive's "straightforward" process – you're now confusing an imaginary claim of "commons" (no rights) versus my narrower claim of traditional balance, fair use, and implied licenses.

And if you think the straightforward, sympathetic, norm-respecting noncommercial policies of the San Francisco' based Internet Archive are a threat to queer and other often-persecuted lifestyles – rather than the opaque data-collection efforts of hundreds of other unobserved entities, platforms, apps, & persistent threats, up to and including actual nation-states – I believe you've made a dangerous category error. The Wayback Machine is a friendly canary reminding people of the risk and responsive to their concerns; others represent the fatal dangers of privacy blowback.

Thanks for promoting my Twitter & old blog posts!

My current & former affiliations are well-disclosed across my web presences - and I often mention my once-upon-a-time Archive involvement here on HN if more directly commenting on Archive details, as opposed to broad principles involved.

But I've not been full-time there for about a decade – and the specific blogspot posts you've chosen to highlight actually predate my tenure at IA. I don't speak for IA nowadays, only myself, as myself.

Yes, my work history is congruent with my beliefs about privacy & copyright on the internet, and prominently disclosed. (My jobs don't dictate my views; my views dictate my jobs.)

Your broken links are, thankfully, available at the Wayback Machine:

2008 "Gordon Mohr Takes Us Inside the Internet Archives" https://web.archive.org/web/20080619045327/http://news.oreil...

2001 "Security Fears for Peers" https://web.archive.org/web/20010331094133/http://www.wired....

How heavenly it might be if only every paid employee (and potentially, compensated advocate) of big tech, big copyright, big nation-state, big regulation, and big ideologies – as they pile-on the votes & comments here & elsewhere – were similarly open about their affiliations!