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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

#311

Post by teh_klev »

majormajor wrote: post #288

> This is fundamentally a strike against taxpayer-funded public services by corporations and private individuals. Wait what? That's not how the Internet Archive is paid for. And because it's private, it could have private replacements/competitors. If another group were to clone all the stuff the Internet Archive doesn't get into hot water for, and not make the obviously hugely risky move that got them in trouble here…

I think the notion here is that the corporations will be coming for the public lending libraries next, and it's not beyond the realms of imagination.

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

#312

Post by disqard »

GenericDev wrote: post #308

I'm so sick of modern businesses and their vampire approach on creativity and intelligent property. I see a lot of comments in this thread with what about-isms or "I don't care, we wouldn't miss anything", but these people are short-sighted. And to be honest the hacker news community is frequently the community I loathe to engage in these topics with. Because they are always looking forward with very little respect f…

Thank you so much for speaking up!

You're not alone in thinking this way. And kudos for investing the Time to write this up -- the sophists are all-too-often over-represented here, and I'm never really sure that they're always arguing in Good Faith, or if they are, they're often being so short-sighted that it's simultaneously funny and sad.

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

#313

Post by anigbrowl »

gcanyon wrote: post #193

Copyright law needs to change. Back in the day, a copyright measured in decades made sense, because it took that long to promote and distribute a work and derive reasonable profit from it. Today that process takes days, maybe months (apart from the rare work that languishes, only to be "discovered" later). Copyright should be much shorter -- a couple years at most -- with renewal available if the creator really belie…

Currently the copyright term in the US is life-of-author plus 70 (edit: corrected from 90) years. Life of author has some reasonable basis. Past death it's understandable that descendants would want the estate to be worth something, if an author was unable to capitalize upon their work in their lifetime, but supporting an author's family for 3 generations is ridiculous.

There isn't a political solution to this. Because the US has a territorial electoral system, no politician is ever going to be representing a constituency who will care about the diminution of copyright terms as their primary issue, and building a legislative coalition to advance a nebulous public interest is hard, massively more so when countered by politicians who are bankrolled by large concentrations of capital.

In this country, any attempt to advance the current and future public interest over private gain is loudly denounced as tyranny by people who are awash in wealth and power. Those who try to undermine the foundations of capital from below are denounced as thieves and terrorists. That's why you get an endless ratchet effect.

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

#314

Post by ineedasername »

tristor wrote: post #56

Frankly, what the IA did here is absolutely the right thing. Copyright in the US is horribly fundamentally broken, and the idea that factual information about our history and world should not be referenceable and accessible for free is a pretty heinous one. Information wants to be free, and the work that IA did for "digital lending" during the pandemic was an essential move in the direction of ensuring that people ca…

>Frankly, what the IA did here is absolutely the right thing.

Sometimes doing the right thing gets you killed.

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This lawsuit could be an existential risk for the IA. In a society that allows vastly different views on what is right and wrong, most people manage to navigate situations in a way that doesn't risk their existence.

Within that line of thinking, what IA did was more or less a form of civil disobedience. If we go back to one of the founders of the philosophy of civil disobedience in the US we get to Thoreau. He was of the mind that the disobedient party should recognize the possible consequences and be prepared to accept them.

None of this means that the IA shouldn't have made this choice. Just that they should have had their eyes wide open to these consequences.

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

#315

Post by PuppyTailWags »

bombcar wrote: post #297
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm completely comfortable with a "if no one's making it available reasonably, it should be made so" policy. I'm only concerned for living creators to retain rights to their work and be compensated for their creations while they are still actively using their work to give themselves a living, so I would be fine with ensuring work isn't irrevocably lost due to lack of copies.

I think the other side of copyrights where you can irrevocably sign over your rights (which may be more of a US thing, UK seems to have some inalienable ones) is a significant issue (as mentioned, the Foster thing where Disney wasn't even paying him because they argued they'd acquired assets without liabilities - https://winteriscoming.net/2021/04/23/disney-star-wars-autho... ). It's hard to fully balance. Another ex…

Alan Dean Foster's situation was not an irrevocably signing over his rights; he signed a specific business agreement that Disney tried to renege on dubious claims that would totally change corporate law if it was made valid precedent.

Don Rosa's situation doesn't really have much to do with the original advocacy to do away with copyright altogether, so I don't understand your point here. Are you arguing that copyright is bad because it's sellable under unfair terms, and therefore no one should be able to sell their work?

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

#316

Post by anigbrowl »

Mezzie wrote: post #264
coldpie wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it is true, then maybe IA should be run by somebody with better judgement. I'm skeptical that you even get the IA without someone like these folks running it. Imagine you're the type of crazy person who starts and runs the IA, the pandemic starts and libraries and schools shut down, and there's a big button in front of you saying "give people access to knowledge that was just removed from them". I dunno man, I c…

It's an argument for the separation of library and archival work. Access to knowledge and preservation of knowledge are separate things, even if they have a lot in common. It might be wise for someone to consider a truly archival only organization.

Perhaps we could let the publishing industry operate the turnstiles and collect a small but increasingly large fee from people trying to use it, until the public commons was indistinguishable from private property?

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

#317

Post by Dalewyn »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #302
tablespoon wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. The question isn't "is it important for someone," it's "is it too big to fail" (i.e. does the government think it's sooo important that it must swoop in and save it). If the Internet Archive shuts down and its archive lost, the economy will keep humming, masses of people won't lose their jobs let alone be inconvenienced, etc. Sure, some paper about Geocities culture cira 1997 won't get writt…

> and no one will lose an election because they failed to act to save it. At the very least in a just world, I think the ability to reference historical data from the web probably would influence some elections. In the unjust world we actually live in, access to historical data can be used as a tool (or weapon!) by journalists, pacs, candidates, etc. to find strengths and weaknesses, and to influence elections. "back…

I agree with tablespoon that the demise of IA would not even be a footnote for the commons. So what if an archive of the internet goes away? Most people aren't going to care, and that's the brutal and apathetic reality.

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

#318

Post by moffkalast »

> If you’ve ever researched anything online, you’ve probably used the Internet Archive (IA).

Wow, pretentious much. The Wayback machine is an interesting passing curiosity that with great luck sometimes saves a webpage that isn't completely broken. The average person has never heard of its existence. Sure it's fun looking at how web pages used to look like and laugh at terrible designs but it's not exactly part of anyone's real workflow and surely violates right to delete and a bunch of other copyright laws.

You've stolen and rehosted the world's content and now you're surprised people are suing you? Do these people hear themselves? Did they not see pirating sites being fought tooth and nail in the past decades? I'm frankly surprised that the FBI hasn't sized their domains years ago.

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

#319

Post by crazygringo »

tablespoon wrote: post #117
crazygringo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> certain weird technology and library subcultures, but few people outside of them would even notice it if disappeared It's pretty much indispensible to anybody who's a researcher. It's very frequent that you're tracking down citations to webpages that don't exist anymore, and the IA is the only way to find sources. Not to mention that it's also often the only way to quickly get access to non-bestseller books that ar…

> It's not weird or a subculture unless you think those labels apply to researchers. And there are a lot of researchers out there, across academics, non-fiction authors, and journalists. I do think the label applies to researchers. And except for the case of "tracking down citations to webpages that don't exist anymore," researchers can continue to do all those things using traditional methods (which may be a harder,…

> researchers can continue to do all those things using traditional methods

No they can't, as I stated. Citations that point to URL's that no longer exist require IA. There's no other tool currently.

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

#320

Post by EamonnMR »

sp332 wrote: post #222
EamonnMR wrote: post #33

The internet archive served two distinct but important functions: one as a backup of the web which was important for accountability and history, and the other as a repository for archiving the world's non-web digital information. I personally scanned a whole bunch of ephemera and IA was the obvious place to put it. Why jeopardize those functions to do something brick and mortar libraries already did better, and legal…

None of those things are on the line. We will continue our work as a library. This case does not challenge many of the services we provide with digitized books including interlibrary loan, citation linking, access for the print-disabled, text and data mining, purchasing ebooks, and ongoing donation and preservation of books. http://blog.archive.org/2023/03/25/the-fight-continues/

It doesn't legally challenge those activities, but I'm worried about a situation where they get their proverbial pants sued off.
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