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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

#471

Post by joquarky »

throwAGIway wrote: post #428
lloeki wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we exchange ownership of ideas, we end up with one idea each How would that work? Given that one exposed to an idea, a person cannot exactly erase it from their mind... I mean if I have an idea and I give it to you the idea itself is still in my mind . And in order to give it to you I have to communicate it to you, so now it is in your mind too. So innately, while physical objects are physically moved , ideas ar…

If I sell you copyright of my code, I might still have it on my computer but I lost any rights to use it. This is a standard business arrangement that anyone on this site knows and uses. I don't think it's as complicated as you make it sound.

>I might still have it on my computer but I lost any rights to use it.

Just step back and think about how irrational this is. Abstract constructs like this are arbitrary.

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

#472

Post by persnickety »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #330
incompatible wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should we turn information into a "product", introducing scarcity where none is required? It's just a misguided attempted to force every part of society into a capitalist system, regardless of whether it makes any sense. It will probably fail in the long run anyway, since who wants to pay for something that they can get for free, even it involves circumventing the rules. How many here would pay $30 to take a casu…

>Why should we turn information into a "product", introducing scarcity where none is required Because expert information comes from experts who are paid a lot to do stuff not involving the authoring of their ideas. And we need to incentivize them to get said valuable information. How many people here have some novel expertise in their fields? How many would help produce technical articles pro Bono? Or for pay but end…

> we need to incentivize them to get said valuable information.

Why should that incentive take form of making information a product?

"just provide knowledge out of thr good of your heart" is a gross misrepresentation of what the person before said, and you even quote the passage indicating as much.

It seems like you're trying to portray the problem as a dichotomy: "product" vs "goodness of heart". That other ways pose problems doesn't mean much. The current side of the false dichotomy causes problems as in the OP.

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

#473

Post by joquarky »

talldatethrow wrote: post #259
anigbrowl wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of hectoring discourse is aggressive and rude. You can do better. Authors that get paid can certainly leave the assets they received to their families. They could also transfer ownership of unpublished intangible assets. More than that sucks the general public into a quasi-contractual relationship with a posthumous person; I disclaim fiscal obligations of strangers toward ghosts.

People don't just write books to profit while they are alive. They write books so their families have something to pay the bills once they die as well. Books are hard enough to write and sell successfully. The few that make it are special for the families of the writers, and you want to take them. You're free to give away your work. Stop telling others what to do with their work and that you want to take it because t…

This sounds like an appeal to tradition.

And an appeal to putting all your eggs in one basket and then demanding that eggs remain valuable long after you're dead and replicators are invented.

Also, why does your family get to shirk their obligation to contribute to society?

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

#474

Post by thefringthing »

iandanforth wrote: post #120
troad wrote: post #105

Should it be legal for IA to offer this, especially for older and out of print books? Yes, almost certainly. Is it legal? No, not as the law currently stands. You can support Robin Hood, but you shouldn't be shocked when Robin Hood is caught and sent to jail. It was a mistake and a huge legal risk for IA to do this. It could easily have brought down the whole organisation, and all that they've archived to date. I wis…

Are you a lawyer? Can you point to the relevant statutes? I don't ask this flippantly as there exist many forms (private / public / academic) of library which allow for both physical and digital lending of owned assets and are not subject to lawsuits like this. It's not at all obvious that IA's interpretation of the law is in error.

> Can you point to the relevant statutes?

This is about sound recordings rather than books, but one of the more insane features of US copyright law is that the copyright status of sound recordings made before 1972 is governed by state rather than federal law, and many states are thought to have no applicable statute. Some of these states determine copyright status for these works by deferring to federal law, which does not cover them.

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

#475

Post by BSDobelix »

m3kw9 wrote: post #275
ryandrake wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe in hundreds, maybe thousands of years, after humanity has finally evolved past our current monkey mentality, future historians will look back at this time period in awe: "They had the technology to make the sum of all human knowledge available to everyone... And they blew it! Further, they had the means to feed everyone, clothe everyone, house everyone, but they just walked away in the other direction, pure…

The country that allowed replicators would be no.1 fairly quickly

>The country that allowed replicators would be no.1 fairly quickly

No.1 in jobless, fat and addicted peoples. You need the full Star Trek experience/mindset before you introduce unlimited everything. Also the first thing that would be produced are weapons, drugs and food....and everything sex.

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

#476

Post by joquarky »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #347
kibwen wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enough with this nonsense. A book isn't a family business, it's not the family home, it ain't the family farm, it's an artifact that you produced once, it makes no sense to inherit the right to copy it . We allow inheritance to exist because it creates social good by facilitating community continuity. And the best social good when it comes to copyright is to let it expire as soon as possible; let's be honest, "until…

A book is knowledge, knowledge can 100% be a family businesss to be continued. I don't see it as any different from a family restaurant protecting their recipes in an otherwise cutthroat industry. The terms is too long as is, but I see no reason to not have any posthumous transfer period so the family can figure out what they want to do with their knowledge.

Family recipes are kept secret.

If you don't want to share your knowledge, the solution is simple.

Once you've put it out there, it becomes a tiny piece of human culture that can be referenced and discussed, and ultimately reproduced.

Just because an artist releases a work to the world, doesn't mean they have any natural rights to own what the culture does with it.

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

#477

Post by joquarky »

encomiast wrote: post #177
kibwen wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enough with this nonsense. A book isn't a family business, it's not the family home, it ain't the family farm, it's an artifact that you produced once, it makes no sense to inherit the right to copy it . We allow inheritance to exist because it creates social good by facilitating community continuity. And the best social good when it comes to copyright is to let it expire as soon as possible; let's be honest, "until…

> We allow inheritance to exist because it creates social good FWIW, this is also why we have copyright. In fact, this is explicitly why we allow copyright in US.

Incorrect.

We have copyright "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"

If our current implementation is not an optimal way to achieve this goal, then it needs to be re-evaluated.

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

#478

Post by joquarky »

encomiast wrote: post #134
kibwen wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason that "selling copyrights" needs to a be a thing. If the author themself wants to profit from their work, sure, but once they die, that's it, and there's no excuse for it to not be in the public domain at that point.

So the wife that supported the author can't profit off their assets? The author can't pass on this to children? Should we do the same thing for other property like land and money?

If the author desires for their wife or children to inherit the results of their work, the author should keep the works private and give it to their survivors for them to release over time.

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

#479

Post by joquarky »

vwkd wrote: post #346
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…

> In such an economic system, the need for automation would be obvious and once implemented, all people would receive the benefits of automation. This would include such a wide allowance for leisure and free time that authors would no longer need to restrict access to their books to extract profits from their value their shared knowledge creates. All people would be free to do what they will. Oh, hello there, dear co…

This subjective labelling contributed nothing to the conversation. Back up your statement.

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

#480

Post by tim333 »

ryandrake wrote: post #80
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…

I believe in hundreds, maybe thousands of years, after humanity has finally evolved past our current monkey mentality, future historians will look back at this time period in awe: "They had the technology to make the sum of all human knowledge available to everyone... And they blew it! Further, they had the means to feed everyone, clothe everyone, house everyone, but they just walked away in the other direction, pure…

The sum of human knowledge in written form is largely available on pirate sites like scihub or libgen. And the feed clothe house stuff is coming along. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prevalence-of-undernouris...
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