Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win

Post by kjkjadksj » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:44 AM UTC

throw10920 wrote: post #264

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Such a system exists. You can publish a book and give it away freely. But few do. This is book communism and fails for the same reasons as regular communism. It is in nobody’s interest to do any hard work. If you don’t reward great effort, virtually nobody provides it." Why does open source / free software exist then? "Nobody puts in hard word if it's not rewarded" hasnt the cURL guy been maintaining cURL/libcurl fo…

> "Nobody puts in hard word if it's not rewarded" hasnt the cURL guy been maintaining cURL/libcurl for decades and gets paid nothing? If you replace "nobody" with "very few people" then the statement is mostly true. The vast majority of open source software is crap. Sure, a lot of it is passion projects made by enthusiasts, and there's nothing wrong with that from an artistic hobbyist standpoint, but the quality of t…

Post by cookiengineer » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:45 AM UTC

shagie wrote: post #190

kibwen wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason that "selling copyrights" needs to a be a thing. If the author themself wants to profit from their work, sure, but once they die, that's it, and there's no excuse for it to not be in the public domain at that point.

Lets change from "selling" to "assigning". Could you assign the copyrights to a corporation (that then doesn't die). Would that prevent them from going into the public domain? If I write some software and assign its copyright to the Apache Foundation or FSF or some other organization through a CLA, what happens to the license if I kick the bucket tomorrow? For that matter, what happens if I don't assign its copyright…

Post by kjkjadksj » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:46 AM UTC

bandrami wrote: post #238

rty32 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't agree. Even as recent as about one decade ago, the best way to learn a programming language is often buying a book or checking out a book from the library, because that's the only high-quality source on the topic. Since then we have had people creating complete tutorials like the Rust book and distribute it on the Internet, for free. In the US, some professors profit from selling textbooks that get updated ever…

> the professors are literally practicing communism and giving away the book for free No, that's more like potlatch. "Book communism" would be if authors owned the printing presses. (Or maybe if printing press technicians owned the printing presses.)

Post by TaylorAlexander » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:47 AM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #288

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah some Ferengi actually did this in an episode of TNG! They showed up on a random planet with a replicator and then used their ability to produce anything as a means to subjugate the population.

I believe that was Voyager and the Ferengi were stranded in the delta quadrant after the incident with the stable-on-one-end wormhole in TNG. Imo it wasn’t the worst strategy in their situation. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/False_Profits_(episode)

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:50 AM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #176

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #25

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…

> There is no greater folly of contemporary human society than the purposeful restriction of such vast and easily shareable repositories of knowledge. This is exactly how people stayed in power. Knowledge is power, so keep the masses uneducated so they are subservient. I once asked an Englishman why if the British Empire was so great did all of its colonies revolt against it. His response was not what I expected when…