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Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

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Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#41

Post by ghaff »

walterbell wrote: post #7
Aloha wrote: post #4

I wish this was extended to all stuff under copyright - I think this could do great things in eliminating the abandoned works problem (in my opinion the largest issue of our current copyright regime).

Anyone know what happened to the 2015 Orphan Works proposal by the US Copyright Office? https://www.copyright.gov/orphan/reports/orphan-works2015.pd...

Basically, a lot of opposition--and not by the people you might assume. Disney doesn't care; they're not going to let their copyrights lapse by accident. But a number of organizations that represent individual content creators, such as photographers, are concerned that upon lapse of copyright, large companies will make a minimal effort to contact the copyright holder or estate, call it a day, and then profit from the work.

Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#43

Post by Gargoyle »

hinkley wrote: post #38
Rebelgecko wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although the article's claim that he represented part of Los Angeles in Congress is kind of a stretch (unless they're being snidely metaphorical and it went over my head)

Sonny Bono was the Representative for District 44. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_44th_congressio... He was referred to in some circles as "The Representative from Disney".

That's the current 44th. When he was in congress, the 44th was more Inland Empire than Los Angeles. "The district encompasses eastern Riverside County, including the sprawling suburb of Moreno Valley, the agricultural fields of the Coachella Valley and such cloistered country club communities as Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage."

Of course, being a former recording and tv star, he had a number of ties to Hollywood.

Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#44

Post by userbinator »

Hundreds of thousands of books can now be liberated. Let’s bring the 20th century to 21st-century citizens. Everyone, rev your cameras!

If this was 10 years ago, they would be talking about scanners --- this brings me back to the days when P2P filesharing was absolutely blooming, and people would freely scan and share in various forums ("bookz scene") the books they had either bought or borrowed.

The average camera of the time was far less capable than ones today, so digitisations made with one were of lower quality than scans, and in the jargon they were known as "cams" - borrowing the term from the film piracy scene. Nonetheless, everyone mostly appreciated someone "camming" a book, especially if it was particularly rare or difficult to scan.

But over time, cameras improved significantly in quality and their speed was unrivaled, so they gradually replaced scanning --- especially with the friendly competition that tended to happen:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14830212

Seeing that we can now again be doing this completely legally and openly to older books, makes me tremendously happy. Nonetheless, I don't think it can completely replace that sense of adventure and thrill of risk involved in participating in a scanparty a decade ago.

Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#45

Post by harry8 »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #34
kazinator wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this "we" include yourself, personally? How many have you fed, housed and cared for this past month, and is it completely with no strings attached (no capital or labor of any kind expected from them --- only from yourself?) Or if not, what is the blocker?

I'd be happy to pay more taxes to get, at the very least, better social services for those who can't support themselves. I want to live in a world that cares for those people. If you prefer a selfish motivation, I also want those services to be available for me and my loved ones, should they be needed in the future. The blocker is that I don't have the time, expertise, bargaining power, or economies of scale to effic…

Take how much extra tax you are willing to pay. Pay it to charity that best supports those ideals.

If you're not already doing this people will suggest talk is cheap and posturing has a negative value to society at large. Good luck with it!

Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#46

Post by Rebelgecko »

hinkley wrote: post #38
Rebelgecko wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although the article's claim that he represented part of Los Angeles in Congress is kind of a stretch (unless they're being snidely metaphorical and it went over my head)

Sonny Bono was the Representative for District 44. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_44th_congressio... He was referred to in some circles as "The Representative from Disney".

The 44th of that time is analogous to the 36th district today. Here's a map: https://github.com/JeffreyBLewis/congressional-district-boun...

Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#47

Post by ghaff »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #10
orblivion wrote: post #6

Does someone know the difference between what archive.org will take and what Gutenberg will take? It seems like they should just coalesce into one data set, right? I imagine archive.org can easily fit the Gutenberg data set; you can reasonably get it yourself via Kiwix.

Archive.org can take and provide works that are still under copyright due to library provisions in the DMCA. Project Gutenberg only provides public domain works, but on a per country basis: https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_FAQ#Copyr... (some works are in the public domain in Australia, but not yet in the US, for example)

There are basically no library exceptions for digital content. It’s more ask forgiveness rather than permission.

Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#49

Post by yuhong »

komali2 wrote: post #9

I'm ambivalent about all the weirdness about digital books. On the one hand, I kinda get why San Francisco Public Library has to "pretend" it can only loan out 20 "digital copies" of "The Subtle Art of not Giving a Fuck" at a time, because I guess if you could just instantly use the Libby app to throw it on your kindle and renew endlessly, why would anybody ever buy a book? Still, it is "fake" prohibitions. There's l…

Interestingly, the Betamax lawsuit came after we got off the gold standard, allowing us to import more than we export.

Re: Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

#50

Post by orblivion »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #10
orblivion wrote: post #6

Does someone know the difference between what archive.org will take and what Gutenberg will take? It seems like they should just coalesce into one data set, right? I imagine archive.org can easily fit the Gutenberg data set; you can reasonably get it yourself via Kiwix.

Archive.org can take and provide works that are still under copyright due to library provisions in the DMCA. Project Gutenberg only provides public domain works, but on a per country basis: https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_FAQ#Copyr... (some works are in the public domain in Australia, but not yet in the US, for example)

> library provisions in the DMCA

There's stuff about archive.org I still don't quite understand. So they use legal hacks to host all the stuff they do? They're legally a library or something?

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