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If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

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

#501

Post by TylerE »

justinpombrio wrote: post #370
modriano wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am so sick and tired of the copyright laws that play counter to productive creation and stymying efforts to preserve anything. The fact that I have to wait until people die until copyright is up is god awful. So what's the right way to balance the need to preserve artistic/creative works and the rights of the creator to monitize or permit usage of their works? It seems rather gross to just say that the creator ha…

How about copyright reverts to its original duration of 14 years with an opt-in renewal for an additional 14 years? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_St...

An idea I’ve always liked is increasing fees over time. Make it renewable in, say, 5 years terms after an initial ten year period. Double the price for each.

So, everything has some prot cation, and valuable stuff can be protected for a long time (at a a cost).

This would seem to strike a good balance… obscure stuff will enter the PD quickly, because the publisher isn’t going to pay even $100 for something they’ve forgotten about, while not kneecapping someone who has a massive breakout success.

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

#502

Post by zouhair »

GenericDev wrote: post #308

I'm so sick of modern businesses and their vampire approach on creativity and intelligent property. I see a lot of comments in this thread with what about-isms or "I don't care, we wouldn't miss anything", but these people are short-sighted. And to be honest the hacker news community is frequently the community I loathe to engage in these topics with. Because they are always looking forward with very little respect f…

There is way more pros than cons for just scratching Copyright as it is. Patents are another insanity. Money should be a mean not the goal. We are literally living in a dystopia and most of us are so mired in it we can't see it.

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

#503

Post by MrVandemar »

justinclift wrote: post #488
pessimizer wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, especially since the Internet Archive (as an organization) has proven itself to be irresponsible. I think the archive made a bad decision. I do not think it is generally irresponsible.

Hmmm. When they decided to do something so boneheaded, and so obviously going-to-seriously-piss-off a bunch of famously deep pocketed litigious publishers, they crossed a whole bunch of lines. Not just a "this was a bad decision" line, but past a few others as well. eg "reckless behaviour", "wilful disregard", and probably more. :( Hopefully some kind of Hail Mary saves the day. But at the _very_ least the senior peo…

> Hmmm. When they decided to do something so boneheaded, and so obviously going-to-seriously-piss-off a bunch of famously deep pocketed litigious publishers, they crossed a whole bunch of lines.

But if no-one pushes against the encroaching draconian copyright laws, then they will continue to get worse. The IA has a philosophy that is counter to a lot of entrenched mainstream organisation, and this move was aligned with their philosophy, if not necessarily their best interests.

It was bold, and we're talking about it, and even testing it in court. So it went against them, which is not surprising, but it's better than if they'd just been meek, battened down the hatches, and not do anything at all.

I applaud them.

And if anyone in this thread is using the IA and hasn't donated to them recently, it's a good time to do it.

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

#504

Post by lolinder »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #365
EamonnMR wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder if we're rapidly entering a world where finding sources, doing research, etc is going to only be interesting to weird subcultures and everyone else will be satisfied with whatever the first Google result says, or a confident bot's fabrication.

It was always this way. Replace Google with your neighbor who owns an encyclopedia, or the local priest. Caring about research, truth, and sources has always been something that only a minority cares about.

> the local priest

Or any other authority figure. My favorite exchange that I personally witnessed during early COVID was this one:

A, conspiratorially: You should hear what the dentist has to say about the COVID vaccine.

B: Why, does it affect my teeth?

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

#506

Post by lolinder »

monknomo wrote: post #420
tablespoon wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not weird or a subculture unless you think those labels apply to researchers. And there are a lot of researchers out there, across academics, non-fiction authors, and journalists. I do think the label applies to researchers. And except for the case of "tracking down citations to webpages that don't exist anymore," researchers can continue to do all those things using traditional methods (which may be a harder,…

What is the traditional method for finding a webpage that does not exist anymore?

The Internet Archive.

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

#507

Post by ShamelessC »

rhtgrg wrote: post #329
GenericDev wrote: post #308

I'm so sick of modern businesses and their vampire approach on creativity and intelligent property. I see a lot of comments in this thread with what about-isms or "I don't care, we wouldn't miss anything", but these people are short-sighted. And to be honest the hacker news community is frequently the community I loathe to engage in these topics with. Because they are always looking forward with very little respect f…

> very little respect for domains outside of technology. The HN community can also be out of touch with technology. If you are an AI researcher this becomes plainly obvious the moment you visit any of the AI threads (if it isn't obvious already from the 6 to 12 month delay on the posting of cutting edge developments here). Sometimes it's hard to argue with zwj.org's assessment [0]. [0] https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2016…

Not just misinformed and outdated, but people here seem to have think _very_ highly of their own intelligence - often being dismissive of frankly incredible ideas because “why didn’t they just…”

I’ve never been less impressed with the supposed elite class of Ivy League “hackers” than when I’m on this site. Get over yourself. You didn’t just solve AI with your “recursive LLM”. No one with ADHD is going to benefit from your pomodoro app that is…slightly more visible than the other thousands of pomodoro apps? Also - half of you don’t have ADHD. Believe it or not - coding is an attention drain and taking stimulants to gain an advantage so that you can ship in 3 months instead of 12 is toxic as fuck.

Don’t get me started on LessWrong.

FWIW, while I agree with the sentiment - not everyone is prepared to see an unsolicited photoshop of a testicle in a wine glass. Might want to edit a warning in if you still can.

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

#508

Post by pdntspa »

GenericDev wrote: post #308

I'm so sick of modern businesses and their vampire approach on creativity and intelligent property. I see a lot of comments in this thread with what about-isms or "I don't care, we wouldn't miss anything", but these people are short-sighted. And to be honest the hacker news community is frequently the community I loathe to engage in these topics with. Because they are always looking forward with very little respect f…

"bUt cReAtOrS NeEd tO bE pAiD!!" whined the masses

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

#509

Post by namibj »

DamnInteresting wrote: post #378
0xfffafaCrash wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d argue that copyright and intellectual property more broadly shouldn’t exist. That wouldn’t lead to the end of culture but a cultural explosion as people became able to remix and propagate ideas more freely without the fear of punishment for violating artificial state-enforced monopolies. No one is obligated to create a work and no one is obligated to share their created works with others. There’s no inherent righ…

Copyright and intellectual property exist because we've decided as a society that we want people to spend serious time and energy making these worthwhile things. Absent protections, the upfront investment of time and effort aren't worth it. If one cannot control the use of one's original works, only the wealthy can afford to chase that sense of accomplishment. I am an author who is able to earn a modest income from m…

Plagiarism done for profiting from book sales is a symptom of copyright in this form (punishment over monetary loss, not lack of attribution).

Having consumers of the artworks (if they aren't commissioned) donate to the author along with severe enforcement of attribution requirements (especially bans on claiming other's work as one's own, so the donations wouldn't go to the plagiarizer), doesn't require bans on copying/reproduction.

Yes, it would change what art gets the funding: e.g. less Marvel Avengers (dominated by casual consumers), more art house cinema (say, something like "Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri"). Less autotune'd popstars, more "Nirvana"/"Taylor Swift"/"Marina and the Diamonds".

But in the realm of the "useful arts ", we're talking more about commissioned works, be it the way an architect is commissioned by a bank that needs a new HQ, or be it the way a fan base causes so many sales of the new Final Fantasy that the creators make a sequel (the commissioning tactic would be one exhibited by, for example, "Dropkick on My Devil! X" (the third season of a splatter (in the way Doom is) comedy anime, which reached its crowdfunding goal in 33 hours)).

I strongly believe that for useful arts, like, say, engineering reference books and ISO standard documents, crowdfunding could sufficiently cover cost of creation, using for example selling of voting power in the ISO standard creation process for individual standards as the incentive to coax industry into paying up-front instead of afterwards for their paper/digital copies. Or have that industry's guild/association sponsor the standard writing.

After all, IETF RFCs prove that standards don't need to be paywalled to continuously be created.

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

#510

Post by pdntspa »

tablespoon wrote: post #107
drdebug wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet Archive is likely the only memory of the digital world. They may or may not have made a mistake during the covid pandemic by extending their book lending program, but in the age of IA where many text and images are going to lack any source of truth, they may be one of the very few ways to document modern history.

I'm not saying it's not valuable, I'm saying not that many people would even notice, let alone care, if it disappeared. You may personally be one of the people who cares about the IA, or know a lot of people who care, but if you go to a shopping mall six months after the IA shuts down and ask people about it at random, you'd find that level of knowledge and caring is unusual. It's not the kind of too-big-to-fail that…

Stop giving a shit about what "many people" care about. "Many people" are dumb, hardly aware of the world that isn't directly in front of them. Their opinion here is worthless, doubly so because of how easily they can be misled.
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