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If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

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Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#201

Post by jtode »

MattGaiser wrote: post #177
thaumaturgy wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, their mission statement is "universal access to all knowledge". They had to push these boundaries because it's their purpose. The boundaries themselves are dumb and arbitrary (see e.g. https://www.npr.org/2022/11/09/1135639385/libraries-publishe... ). Maybe the publishers are deserving of more criticism than the Archive here?

Have the risky stuff done by another legal entity perhaps?

Creating proxy entities to protect oneself is only available to people who hold a lot of capital.

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#202

Post by tracker1 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #116
Xelynega wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not in court for the emergency library. They're in court for the 1-1 CDL lending they did. I'm tired of seeing this "well IA shouldn't have done the emergency library" line. Do you honestly believe the only reason publishers went after IA is the emergency library? I think this would have happened eventually, so pointing to the emergency library does nothing but tell everyone that you were right all along. The…

The “emergency library” was a gift on a silver platter for the publishers. It was a reckless and stupid action that made the worst case scenario that the publishers wouldn’t have been taken seriously about a reality. Obviously the 1-1 lending was an issue to the publishers, but higher risk from a litigation perspective.

They really should have tried to work with the publishers to introduce maybe a reduced rate rental interface if a work wasn't available from their "digital library" as a loaned book. More work, but if they have loan mechanics worked out, then rental is just a payment above that.

Or, if Amazon had/has a rental system in place, just affiliate link through to amazon when unavailable for rent/purchase there... that could fund IA without the minefield at all

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#203

Post by pasquinelli »

Fr3ck wrote: post #30
bruce511 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I wonder if there needs to be a cultural equivalent, where a repository of digital or physical artifacts is "too big to fail" because of the negative cultural impact their failure would have. You can wonder all you like, and call me a cynic, but the US runs on money not culture. The American identity is built on money and wealth and excess, not on anything you might describe as "culture". The IA would not "fail" i…

The USA's biggest export is our culture...like it or not. Think of movies, music, etc. Some of it is intangible.

you don't export culture, you export stuff. it sounds like you're disgreeing with "america runs on money, not culture", but the fact you conflate culture with, like, movies sold internationally proves the point: american culture is in the form of market transactions. given that, how do you end up with "culturally too big to fail?"

and i'd dispute that entertainment is our #1 export. not all exports are on the books; i'd bet arms is our real #1 export.

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#204

Post by gjsman-1000 »

causi wrote: post #19

which made copyrighted books available for free during the COVID-19 pandemic. The publishers behind the lawsuit alleged that this entailed copyright infringement. Along with everybody with two brain cells to rub together. We all screamed "Hey, you idiots are going to ruin everything if you act like the pandemic has magically nullified the concept of copyright" and they fucking did it anyway, and now exactly what we s…

I actually wondered initially, even if CDL was legal, how are they going to enforce the actual Controlled part? What's the standard for that?

Is simply not having a download button sufficient? Do you need to prevent people from right-clicking and choose "Save Image"? Or do you need to run the book through a video stream encrypted with Widevine L3 so screenshots don't work? Or heck, why not Widevine L1 which requires hardware not found on Windows because L3 will always be exploitable?

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#205

Post by boucher »

twblalock wrote: post #199
thaumaturgy wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing this really bad take repeated on this site in the absence of more nuanced, informed legal opinions. Whether CDL is legal under Fair Use or not was/is legally unresolved. Whether it's legally permissible to copy a printed material and distribute that copy as though it were the printed material was/is unresolved. Lots of organizations have been skating along under one interpretation of Fair Use as a worka…

It's not the Internet Archive's job to be the first one to try to resolve fair use questions like this, and attempting to do so put the organization's orginal core mission at risk. They should have let someone else take the risk, and continued archiving the internet. That is all that most of their supporters expected of them, for good reason. Their attempt to pivot toward being a generic, universal library was bad sc…

Seems to me like the Internet Archive can determine for itself what it's job is, and they've determined that this is in fact part of their core mission.

Your perception that their purpose is solely to archive the Internet is at odds with their actual demonstrated activities for many years (the home page says: "Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more"), as well as their public mission statement: "Our mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge."

I've talked to the founder of the IA who told me he doesn't believe the lawsuit puts the IA at risk of having to shut down.

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#206

Post by tablespoon »

breck wrote: post #187
tablespoon wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd extend this to say, if we don't abolish (c)opywrong, we're screwed. Then consider us "screwed," because what you propose has a snowball's chance in hell of actually happening. Also, too many software engineers overreact to some reformable problems with the IP system with burn-it-all down radicalism. I think your proposals would cause more harm than good. They'd likely stop most media creation that you're used t…

> * Tell me, who's going to invest 10-200 million dollars to make a movies or TV shows on a regular basis, without copyright? We can have a world where: - Every child has access to humanity's best information - We cure cancer - 90% of American's media is controlled by 6,000, not 6, corporations - College tuition costs drop dramatically - Lower taxes - More income equality - No more opioid pandemics - Making the world…

>> * Tell me, who's going to invest 10-200 million dollars to make a movies or TV shows on a regular basis, without copyright?

> We can have a world where:

> - Every child has access to humanity's best information

> - We cure cancer

> - 90% of American's media is controlled by 6,000, not 6, corporations

> - College tuition costs drop dramatically

> - Lower taxes

> - More income equality

> - No more opioid pandemics

> - Making the world resilient against AI domination

LOL. The thing preventing us from curing cancer is copyright?

Sir, you have created an entertaining satire of software engineers. I congratulate you on your achievement. Good job!

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#207

Post by bdw5204 »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #172
rsync wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm tired of seeing this "well IA shouldn't have done the emergency library" line." I appreciate that. However, as a long-time, regular, sustaining financial benefactor of IA, I was annoyed that they strayed into this set of activities in the first place and then dismayed when they pushed the envelope on it during C19 quarantines. I, and others, predicted this trouble and even if there is not direct causation why do…

I mean, their mission statement is "universal access to all knowledge". They had to push these boundaries because it's their purpose. The boundaries themselves are dumb and arbitrary (see e.g. https://www.npr.org/2022/11/09/1135639385/libraries-publishe... ). Maybe the publishers are deserving of more criticism than the Archive here?

Just because something is in your organization's mission statement does not require you to make imprudent and likely suicidal decisions in pursuit of it. That is not a means to accomplish your cause but rather a means to harm it.

But in our time it seems like there is no such thing as a prudent leader of any organization who understands just how high you can fly without pulling an Icarus and flying into the sun. Even those who know better fear the fanatics enough that they cannot tell them no since those who recommend moving with caution are branded as enemies of the cause and marginalized by the fanatics. And then people wonder why everything seems to end in disaster. The Internet Archive is far from the only institution to make this particular category of error.

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#208

Post by thaumaturgy »

twblalock wrote: post #199
thaumaturgy wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing this really bad take repeated on this site in the absence of more nuanced, informed legal opinions. Whether CDL is legal under Fair Use or not was/is legally unresolved. Whether it's legally permissible to copy a printed material and distribute that copy as though it were the printed material was/is unresolved. Lots of organizations have been skating along under one interpretation of Fair Use as a worka…

It's not the Internet Archive's job to be the first one to try to resolve fair use questions like this, and attempting to do so put the organization's orginal core mission at risk. They should have let someone else take the risk, and continued archiving the internet. That is all that most of their supporters expected of them, for good reason. Their attempt to pivot toward being a generic, universal library was bad sc…

Ah, I see, there seems to be a misunderstanding of what the Archive is about. They have been doing a lot more than just "archiving the internet" for a long time. Their blog posts from 2013 (https://blog.archive.org/2013/) for example include writeups about magazines they had digitized, tv news they had recorded, and music. Montana State Library was uploading to the Archive in 2010 (https://blog.archive.org/2010/12/30/how-montana-state-librar...) in addition to the Archive's own digitization efforts (https://blog.archive.org/2010/12/10/internet-archive-needs-y...). Book digitization goes back to at least 2005 (https://blog.archive.org/2005/11/08/bookscanning-launch-and-...).

According to Wikipedia, you'd have to go back to 1999 to find an Internet Archive that was solely the Wayback Machine.

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#209

Post by tracker1 »

kodah wrote: post #170
Xelynega wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not in court for the emergency library. They're in court for the 1-1 CDL lending they did. I'm tired of seeing this "well IA shouldn't have done the emergency library" line. Do you honestly believe the only reason publishers went after IA is the emergency library? I think this would have happened eventually, so pointing to the emergency library does nothing but tell everyone that you were right all along. The…

Frankly, this isn't out of character for the IA. They want to be treated as a global system of record, but then started hostile initiatives like ignoring robots.txt. They've somewhat rectified this now, but their blog post about brazenly doing this is still up. It's good insight to how they think about themselves. They want protection but none of the regulation that will come with it. The proof of their character has…

I don't mind their desire to slurp up all the things... my bigger/biggest issue is probably the reproduction/distribution by making what they slurp generally available (when they bypass said robots.txt as an example).

For expired works, or works that are no longer published, I'm pretty morally flexible here and lean towards making it available.

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#210

Post by causi »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #153
causi wrote: post #19

which made copyrighted books available for free during the COVID-19 pandemic. The publishers behind the lawsuit alleged that this entailed copyright infringement. Along with everybody with two brain cells to rub together. We all screamed "Hey, you idiots are going to ruin everything if you act like the pandemic has magically nullified the concept of copyright" and they fucking did it anyway, and now exactly what we s…

I keep seeing this really bad take repeated on this site in the absence of more nuanced, informed legal opinions. Whether CDL is legal under Fair Use or not was/is legally unresolved. Whether it's legally permissible to copy a printed material and distribute that copy as though it were the printed material was/is unresolved. Lots of organizations have been skating along under one interpretation of Fair Use as a worka…

it was going to be tested, and IA are exactly the right organization to test it

CDL being legalized is dependent on the concept that it respects copyright and is only a digital version of rights and practices that already exist. The NEL proved that as far as the IA is concerned, CDL is nothing of the sort and is in actuality just a method of keeping rightsholders from suing them and what they'd really rather be doing is copying every work in existence and giving it away to everybody. They proved they don't want to be a library. They have destroyed their credibility. Other than the operator of Z-Library there is no worse entity to be litigating this.

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