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If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

sbstatesman.com

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

#41

Post by ernopp »

_hfu3 wrote: post #26

Maybe they shouldn't have done something that moronic? If people wanted free books they could always pirate them, openly infringing by hosting copyrighted books for a few people to slightly more easily read them for free... How could they possibly think that was a good idea?

The case for doing what they did is that it helped a lot of people access books (eg school curriculum ones) in the middle of Covid (not everyone knows how to pirate things).

Not saying it was the right move but you can see where they're coming from, they wanted to help people.

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

#42

Post by nequo »

hirako2000 wrote: post #11
rashkov wrote: post #5

This is pretty confusing... is the Internet Archive at risk from this legal decision?

It's at least at risk of being blocked by ISPs in the us and pressured/shutdown if hosting is by a provider in the US.

Even after complying with the court's decision and shutting down unlimited digital lending?

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

#43

Post by wahnfrieden »

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 can find positive effect with it only being an indirect and fragile benefit of the system

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

#44

Post by tablespoon »

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

Yeah, but that's not high culture. It's mass-market culture that makes a lot of money.

I think what the GP is referring to as "culture" is high culture--the kind of stuff that is not popular and requires subsidies and special effort to sustain.

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

#46

Post by wahnfrieden »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #16
jsnell wrote: post #7

The title implies that losing this lawsuit is threatening the existence of the Internet Archive. Is that really the case? If it is true, then maybe IA should be run by somebody with better judgement. This was a project with a massive chance of failure (how could anyone think that this wasn't just blatantly infringing?) and a low payoff. If it's also an existential risk, then wtf are they doing running it?

They're doing us all a favor is what they're doing. Intellectual property is just not that important when compared with ensuring that the powerful can't rewrite history. If they lose their case, I hope the project can be kept afloat in ways that the US government can't interfere with.

A fight against IP is a fight against capital

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

#47

Post by zachh »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #36
boredumb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially a digital museum?

A distributed, highly resilient digital museum. The internet archive meets S3 meets BitTorrent. We’re most of the way there, just need improvements around durability, rebalancing around geographies, and the identity and metadata (item inventory) planes. (no association with IA, just an active contributor)

Do you know if the IA is working on such projects / is there a way to get involved? Or is it mostly third parties doing so?

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

#48

Post by reaperducer »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #16
jsnell wrote: post #7

The title implies that losing this lawsuit is threatening the existence of the Internet Archive. Is that really the case? If it is true, then maybe IA should be run by somebody with better judgement. This was a project with a massive chance of failure (how could anyone think that this wasn't just blatantly infringing?) and a low payoff. If it's also an existential risk, then wtf are they doing running it?

They're doing us all a favor is what they're doing. Intellectual property is just not that important when compared with ensuring that the powerful can't rewrite history. If they lose their case, I hope the project can be kept afloat in ways that the US government can't interfere with.

I hope the project can be kept afloat in ways that the US government can't interfere with.

The U.S. government, oddly, is the least of my fears when it comes to rewriting history.

Private enterprise is already doing it, even going to far as to reach into your private library of books and music to change them after you're purchased it:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/arts/dahl-christie-stine-...

Until yesterday, I used to sync my music library with Apple Music. Not anymore. Apple responding to the Times reporter with a big fat "no comment" tells me that it thinks it's OK to change things on my computer without my knowledge.

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

#49

Post by Xelynega »

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…

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.

They operate in a country where precedent is set in a court of law, how did you expect CDL to "get off the ground" if not challenged in a court of law?

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

#50

Post by lyu07282 »

jawns wrote: post #4

I know the government has viewed certain companies as "too big to fail," because of the negative financial impact we would experience if they were to do so. 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. In the absence of that, anyone who sees high cultural value to the pres…

> we should be looking at ways to preserve those artifacts redundantly, so that even if the IA fails, it's not a calamity

Its 212 petabytes as of december 2021[1], that alone would be a bit less than 12 thousand 18 TB HDDs or LTO-9's. We've made virtually zero significant progress in long-term storage technology.

Its like if they are getting burned like the library of alexandria because of some copyright vampires, I wouldn't even be angry, just sad, its just what we deserve.

[1] https://archive.org/web/petabox.php

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