Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win • Hacker News Board

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

#311

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

hbbio wrote: post #45

Looks like the publishers are doing their best for libgen/ipfs to succeed. Makes you wonder: Do they even have data on their business growth factors? I don't but I'd guess that: 1. nobody is printing downloaded books 2. instead, people like me _buy_ printed books after browsing through them online

Even being good for it I can’t stand how most books are like $19.99, knowing I can find it in very good condition on ebay for $6 and get it from the library for free. If they want to sell a lot more books out of the little shops at the airports or wherevers left that books are sold today, make them cheap enough to be a spontaneous purchase again. I have some old paper backs that were like 99 cents new.

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

#312

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:51 AM UTC

FpUser wrote: post #149

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…

Most financially successful humans only care how to increase their already huge amount of money. they do not give a flying fuck about advancing humanity as a whole.

The neato thing about free markets is in order to make more money you have to please other people so those people will freely give you their money.

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

#313

Post by mlyle » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:51 AM UTC

mardifoufs wrote: post #267

Dylan16807 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if an author explicitly doesn't want to distribute their works or to distribute an alternative version of their works? Too bad. Once you publish it the first time, the cat is out of the bag. Eventually it's going to go into the public domain whether you like it or not. > And who sets the standard for readily available? If I offer my book for sale for $100 is it readily available? At what price is something no…

Should we apply that logic to gplv3 code too? Just basically disregard the license since knowledge should be completely free? Or maybe impose some burden on the maintainers to keep the code active and constantly changed so that the codebase doesn't lose its license after an arbitrary period of time? I'm genuinely wondering , because to me there's a clear parallel yet in tech circles we almost always see defense of co…

> doesn't lose its license after an arbitrary period of time?

The whole thing that allows copyright in the US is in the Constitution:

> To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

The original term was 14 years, with one 14 year renewal allowed.

This was probably a little short, in my opinion. 25+20 seems reasonable; most works have no commercial value after 25 years, and 45 years is already a long time to keep things that have become cultural touchstones locked up. The present legal regime of life of the author plus 70 years is clearly excessive.

> but we are talking automatically putting copyrighted/licensed material in the public domain

This already happens: just after an unreasonably long period of time.

> which isn't GPL compatible.

Code which is in the public domain is freely compatible with code under the GPL.

The whole point is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts". Stuff kept locked away beyond its useful commercial life is no longer promoting progress (the authors have already gotten paid anything they're going to get). Indeed, most of present works borrow deeply from the public domain but the authors seek to only return the same favor to future authors in a few generations.

How long should Nintendo be able to rent-seek and convince/force the same people to buy the original Super Mario Bros. over and over again? Should that be done in 2030, or 2080? What about operating systems of the 1980s-- should they be locked up to 2090, even though no one will sell them to you?

At some point, there are substantial impediments to legitimate archival and research purposes; to keeping existing important systems working; and to allowing the free exploration and creativity that comes from remixing and building upon past works.

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

#314

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:52 AM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #26

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…

[flagged]

The irony is very, very few book authors make much of any money off of their books. It's much like the athlete and musician business.

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

#315

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:53 AM UTC

slothtrop wrote: post #91

627467 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahhh we forgot about the music dark ages when piracy meant artists couldn't make a living from their art and music died completely

Most musicians don't make a living from their art, they work day jobs. That doesn't mean piracy is the only factor or a strong one, but it's part of the equation.

Ironically, piracy can make a musician popular, and when they're popular they can make bank doing live performances.

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

#316

Post by hmry » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:53 AM UTC

CSMastermind wrote: post #245

cwillu wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authors should have that inalienable right, and it should not transferable via contract or any other means. Publishers, on the other hand, should have no such rights: they own the presses, their inalienable right should be to refrain from using them.

Should I be allowed to commission a work under the understanding that I own the rights after it's created? If yes, then how do you regulate who is or is not allowed to transfer ownership of rights to or from whom?

That part is already solved. Under current international law, if you commission a work then you own the economic rights, but the original author retains the moral rights. In fact, selling your moral rights is not possible.

It sounds like the suggestion is that retracting / completely discontinuing a book should only be part of the moral rights, not the economic rights.

I'm not sure how feasible that is, but it's not totally unprecedented. For example, one of the moral rights recognized by many countries is the right not to have your works destroyed. E.g. even if someone else owns the physical object of your painting, they are not allowed to set it on fire, and you could sue them if they did.

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

#317

Post by johnnyanmac » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:54 AM UTC

spywaregorilla wrote: post #157

coliveira wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans and Americans are now taxing green technology, which they said in the past they want, because it is built in another country...

Because they don't want to be dependent on another country for energy infrastructure.

In that case, Great job divesting in domestic labor in lieu of offshoring. Mission accomplished

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

#318

Post by johnnyanmac » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:57 AM UTC

KerrAvon wrote: post #278

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the truth is we just failed to invest in the manufacturing tech and now they’re beating us in the market, so we’re taxing them to make it hard for them to compete. I’d way rather we just invest and outcompete them. I don’t think they’re intentionally undercutting us they just have lower costs from decades of investment that we haven’t been doing ourselves.

The USA absolutely fucked manufacturing into the sun, but that doesn’t come back overnight, and China cheats in ways that we can’t. You have a comment below that seems to indicate you have no clue how bad they have it vs US blue collar workers. You might want to do some reading on that before pontificating on this subject.

I get what you're saying. But at the same time, the whole Boeing debacle makes me wonder how many other skeletons we're hiding.

Either way, this is the consequences of letting corporations lobby to stifle innovation. They wanted short term money and we're all paying the price.

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

#319

Post by sitkack » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 5:58 AM UTC

jordanb wrote: post #60

999900000999 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best part had to be the whole moral grandstanding they had when doing it. Controlled digital lending was tolerated. It was never legal. I can't buy a bunch of DVDs and start a streaming service even if a each copy can only be watched by a single person at a time. It really sucks since they do a lot of good work aside from this.

The emergency library wasn't what publishers sued over. They used it perhaps as a rhetorical cover but what they were actually suing to prevent is IA offering digital versions of scanned hardcopy books. With IA's loss, publishers get to control the way libraries lend digital media because you can't take a hardcopy and legally "scan" it into a digital copy, so the only way to get a digital copy for lending is as a DRM…

> It's been observed that libraries would be illegal if they didn't already exist, and I think we're starting to walk down the road where they are illegal in the digital world.

I believe this is the crux of the attack by publishers. They don't want libraries to be able to buy books and lend them out. They want libraries to pay a huge monthly fee for every book lent.

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

#320

Post by johnnyanmac » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 6:02 AM UTC

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #261

Aurornis wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should move to models of publishing that do not require this restriction of information. It’s interesting how this comment veers into a completely hypothetical overhaul of society in which money doesn’t matter, for reasons which of course are hand-waved away. On one hand: Sure! Sounds great! If someone can reinvent all of society in a way that everyone is free to do whatever they want and not worry about getting…

I don’t really understand this logic. Are you saying that multi generational projects are… well I don’t really know what you’re saying. When the world was dominated by the divine right of kings, and changing that was going to take hundreds of years… should people not have discussed what to do to move down a better path? My plan as a robotics engineer is to prove that open source robotics can be a viable industry by b…

>When the world was dominated by the divine right of kings, and changing that was going to take hundreds of years… should people not have discussed what to do to move down a better path?

We could. But historically, it ends in a bloody battle of nobles vs nobles and sometimes they break off and become the next generation of noble. Despite the name, their goals are not necessarily that.

>This does not discourage me from laying the ground work and having the conversations. Just as I am working on open source robotics for farming, I encourage other people to contribute to open culture so that we can some day build a better world.

What ultimately discourages me is that the person who does this will not reao the rewards they sow. On the contrary, the next generation noble may contort it into something absolutely dysyopic.

Conversation doesn't mean much without action. But us non-nobles talking about bloodshed is seen as passe and uncouth. Not much will happen until we take it back by force (not necessarily violent, but a huge, unignoreble gesture coordinated by millions... A very hard problem to do as a grassroots movement)