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

arstechnica.com

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

#41

Post by nequo »

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]

> 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.

Counterpoint that is decidedly not motivated by communism:

https://dev.realworldocaml.org/

There are many books like it, comprehensive, written with great effort, and free for anyone to read.

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

#42

Post by bilbo0s »

r0s wrote: post #37
MattGaiser wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Many many authors publish work freely, now more than ever. Without monetary reward. Here's a tiny tip of the massive iceberg https://independentbookreview.com/2020/07/30/10-free-literar...

I think the point the commenter was making is, why not just archive those books in that case?

Just ignore the books with authors that have released the works for monetary gain. I don't know whether or not such an archive is at all attractive to anyone? But maybe over time it might start to move the needle?

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

#44

Post by Spivak »

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]

Of all the things to juxtapose as a contrast to communism and the failures of an overbearing government mucking too much in natural market forces you pick copyright?!

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

#45

Post by hbbio »

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

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

#46

Post by 999900000999 »

chx wrote: post #27

Oh this appeal to the public, pithy empty words about openness and shit. Here's the plain truth: IA ran a gigantic book piracy site during covid. They should've known they won't get away with it. I remember several authors begging them not to do this because it affected their income. I personally thought it monumentally stupid to put the Wayback Machine at risk. They said, there are enough physical books in closed li…

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.

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

#47

Post by Hikikomori »

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]

Open source?

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

#48

Post by crazygringo »

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

They're actually pretty different sets of books.

LibGen/IPFS is heavily biased toward books from the past ~3 decades, especially books that are cracked EPUB's and PDF's.

IA seems to be much more scans of library books from ~1930-1980, many of which are out of print and probably only available to you via interlibrary loan, which you might wait a month for.

IA is a huge boon for academic research when you need to go back to midcentury books. I don't know which 500K the IA is being required to remove, but I'm very worried.

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

#49

Post by groby_b »

chx wrote: post #27

Oh this appeal to the public, pithy empty words about openness and shit. Here's the plain truth: IA ran a gigantic book piracy site during covid. They should've known they won't get away with it. I remember several authors begging them not to do this because it affected their income. I personally thought it monumentally stupid to put the Wayback Machine at risk. They said, there are enough physical books in closed li…

Yup. Worse, people told them what that meant in terms of risk and begged them to reconsider, for the benefit of the larger archive.

And even worse, it was an epic strategic blunder. A campaign of "in this emergency, we would love to share books, but publishers don't agree" would've put massive pressure on publishers. They could've had a shot at advancing the legal situation of digital lending. Instead they opted for a publicity stunt.

Yes, sure, people couldn't go to libraries. That's when you collaborate with Project Gutenberg to address the actual need for reading material, highlight great free books, and keep hammering "and we could also lend you XYZ, if publishers only worked with us".

Then you reach out to publishers like Tor, who are already leaning further on the "unencumbered access" spectrum. And work out a deal with them. Promoting their books in return for larger lending count. Giving people the opportunity to buy additional copies for the digital library. (There's plenty of folks in the donor list)

And you continue saying "Hachette, HC, Wiley, and Penguin still don't want you to read their books".

Yes, what they did was the most idealistic approach. Sometimes, pragmatism is better in the long run.

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

#50

Post by crazygringo »

mike_d wrote: post #20
jesprenj wrote: post #8

Is there a communuty project that maintains a copy of the 500k books? Is there a libgen torrent or anna's archive torrent?

https://libgen.is/repository_torrent/ If you are upset about this, commit to seeding as many of these as you can until the IA service is restored.

Those are torrents for LibGen, not IA, correct?

Very different sets of books. I don't see how this will help. LibGen isn't going away, not that I'm aware of.

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