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

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

#461

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If they're selling an ebook, I'm pretty sure that counts as in-print. You don't have to finance that. We don't need to kill trees to read, just like at one point we stopped killing goats to read. > That's why current copyright status should be the bar --- that or granted permission from the copyright holder. Copyright terms are nearly infinite at this point.

Some were pushing for it to be literally infinite.

Mary Bono, speaking to the House of Representatives:

> "Actually, Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. I invite all of you to work with me to strengthen our copyright laws in all of the ways available to us. As you know, there is also Jack Valenti's proposal for term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress."

7 Oct 1998 Congressional Record, Vol. 144, page H9952.

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

#462
post #36

This is why Piracy is good for humanity.

I don't think I'd blanket it so far, but I'm this case, the greater good was probably being served by IA, true.

One of my books is on Anna's Archive. Since I give them away for nothing on my website, it's more flattering than anything. :)

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

#463

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>History shows us that slave labor cannot compete with free labor. History shows us that you can build Pyramids and the Chinese wall with slave labor, probably not affordable with "free labor". But maybe we should also look at "modern slavery" that is "free labor" but without any chance to get another job or get reported to the police. >it's about forcible slave labor, forced with guns and whips. Worked incredible we…

> History shows us Does it? Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t slaves who built the pyramids. We know this because archaeologists have located the remains of a purpose-built village for the thousands of workers who built the famous Giza pyramids, nearly 4,500 years ago. https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/were-the-egyptian-pyram... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Egypt#Great...

Yes, maybe the slaves did the less "worthy" jobs:

>Slaves were a constant presence in ancient Egypt. Starting with the Old Kingdom (2613 - 2181 BC), slaves took on different roles. Some became soldiers, others scribes.

https://www.worldatlas.com/ancient-world/were-slaves-used-to...

>Does it?

Yes it does, or do you have another argument against the Chinese wall or Belgium for example? Do you really want to argue against the fact that slaves did (and do) the hardest, most back-breaking jobs?

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

#464
post #149

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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.

>"you have to please other people "

Nope. Comparatively to what it used to be some 25 years "pleasing" factor went down the tubes. In many cases modern capitalism looks more and more like an extortion business

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

#465

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A reason for subsiding this group but not others is that our economic system is so bad at utilizing the potential of their work. It's literally free to distribute all books/newspapers/magazines to all people in the world. Why aren't we? It's common to have state intervention in markets that are unable to utilize resources efficiently on their own. About UBI, sure! The point of my comment was that this isn't a "fancif…

How would you determine if someone qualifies as an author deserving full salary? Can I become an author by simply meeting a word count quota? What prevents a large portion of the population from quitting their jobs and becoming authors instead?

My understanding is that most bands make more on merch than the actual distribution of their music, because fans always want more and are willing to pay them directly to encourage more works.

There has to be a better way than the model we have now where everything is so tightly controlled.

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

#466
post #294

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All information is freely available somewhere in /dev/random. It is worth some value to share the more interesting offsets. Now I'm not saying that capitalism is the best way to distribute this value, but at least some effort is required in curating all knowledge.

Can you prove your first statement? I assume you cannot as it's nonsense. Lookup how /dev/random is not really random, but relies on interrupts occuring at random timestamps. That's like saying f(x)=x is a random function, if x is random.

Substitute the Library of Babel¹ for /dev/random and the point still stands.

¹ https://libraryofbabel.info/

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

#467

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> 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…

Have you heard of the Global Village Construction Set? I think you’ll appreciate it.

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

#468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property rights solve the problem of physical goods being rivalrous. We can't both eat the same portion of food; if one person has it another doesn't. Information is not rivalrous in that way: an additional person having it doesn't take it away from anyone else. Many people can read the same (e-)book. There are other reasons why societies originally granted a completely artificial temporary monopoly on information: t…

>Information is not rivalrous in that way: an additional person having it doesn't take it away from anyone else. Not literally, but in every other sense, yes. It does. You make a great idea, and someone with more money, time, and resources will mass produce your product. They become ubiquitous with the product and the creator is now disincentized from sharing more potentially great ideas.We use copyright to make sure…

> the creator is now disincentized

How can we be sure of this?

Some artists create art for fame, or just to be in that zen-like zone of consciousness that happens with making art

Also, why is the current model assumed to be the best, when it is based on a lot of outdated assumptions (e.g., physical copies)?

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

#469

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How does this account keep managing to make every thread on HN into 'communism bad' without getting flagged? Tell me your secrets Walter.

As an anarcho communist and prolific HN commenter I sigh every time I see his name. Sadly he doesn’t actually understand communism and seems to be stuck in 1980’s anti communist propaganda. For example the sibling comment to this one where he conflates collectivism with being “anti freedom” (lol). At least he’s getting the downvotes he deserves in this thread.

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

#470
post #240

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The big difference between copyright and propery is that me owning a table doesn't stop someone else from making a similar looking table. Copyright that lasted forever would mean that new adaptations of anything could never be made without licensing from the hedge fund that had bought up the original rights from 500 years ago.

> owning a table doesn't stop someone else from making a similar looking table. and copyright doesnt prevent you from writing a story about a boy wizard attending a school and fighting against a evil big bad. Nor does it prevent you from writing a story about a rag tag group of rebels fighting against an empire.

It's not that simple .

Copyright puts a chilling effect on making anything resembling the original work, so long as the plaintiff (usually a large corp or hedge fund) has a better team of lawyers than the defendant (new writer)

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