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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

#511

Post by 627467 »

luckylion wrote: post #472
nuodag wrote: post #467

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. If you think about how cruel it is to make illegal the way human culture has worked for millenia, to listen to the storys you hear, retell them, remix them and make them your own in a new context. That is against the law now.

No it's not. Go ahead, tell your friends the book you recently read. As a matter of fact, go ahead, read that book to your friends. Perfectly legal. Oh, you want to "retell" it and make money off of it? Yeah, that's something else.

Its a vacuous argument: it's very obvious that any domain hosting such content for free incurs in costs of hosting and handling legal threats for doing so. So any income received would be another excuse for legal threats.

On the other hand: why are these public goods services still hosted in infra/protocols exposed to western/us legal arm?

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

#512

Post by 999900000999 »

faeranne wrote: post #419
999900000999 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh. I'm not really buying the Robinhood theory. This feels like some techies thinking their above the law and getting a reality check. It's not like actual libraries don't offer digital lending. You might need to wait a week for Gane of Thrones, but it'll be OK. IA decided the world was unfair and with a bit of arrogance decided to 'correct' it. Let's hope IA is able to just stop lending books and still exist.

There's a seperation between a library and a pirate site, so it's kinda a bad faith argument, but even going on the merits of your argument, I am pressed to point out that, yes, other libraries have digital lending. It's called Controlled Digital Lending. CDL. The thing that this current lawsuit is trying to remove. So this isn't just an argument against IA's library wing, but a move to remove all library and archive…

Other libraries actually pay for a license to to lend out Ebooks. And they need to comply with different terms depending on the publisher.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/l...

Now you can argue if this is fair or not, but this is how Ebook lending is legally done. CDL, where you lend out one Ebook per physical copy was never established as legal.

It was tolerated, until IA decided to allow for unlimited lending.

I don't see how books are special here. If I buy a bunch of DVDs off eBay, I can't set up a streaming service tomorrow hosting this content.

Even if only one person can watch a movie at a time, I've no right to redistribute that content. If CDL is legal, then why limit it to books. Why not movies, games, TV shows ?

See the problem here, the laws of physics and basic wear and tear create a fundamental difference between physical media and digital media.

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

#513

Post by modriano »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #499
modriano wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless you know a bevy of small creators now living in mansions in Beverly Hills? Per a google search, it seems that mainly very famous actors, actresses, and generally people who've contributed significantly to our culture live in Beverly Hills. The google results are definitely biased towards celebrities, but Beverly Hills seems to be a very odd example to choose when trying to point out how copyright isn't helpi…

The story goes that many people in the creative professions earn very little or even can't make ends meet; thus mansions in Beverly Hills are only available to the few. This is especially true of small creators afaict.

I've heard of the trope of the "starving artist", but mainly in the context of the art world Vincent Van Gogh and his contemporaries lived in. I do not have any data to corroborate it as a true representation of any significant population that exists in reality today.

Can you point to examples of any small creators who would be better off if they had no legal copyright over their works?

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

#514

Post by jurynulifcation »

ShamelessC wrote: post #507
rhtgrg wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'm entirely out of the loop with the LessWrong crowd. Could you explain what you mean by your comment? I saw the interview between Friedman and Yudlowski and was less than impressed.

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

#515

Post by jurynulifcation »

TylerE wrote: post #501
justinpombrio wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

Fees that scale on a linear, quadratic, or exponential schedule (or any other above-unity schedule) is a regressive tax. It would disproportionately harm smaller creators. I would run out of money for my IP far before Disney. Unless this scaling was also based on the amount of revenue produced thus far, it wouldn't achieve equitable aims. Even that proposition is dubious since Disney can afford better lawyers to parse the revenue streams to their benefit.

Note that I'm not for the proposition of revenue-based scaling. That would just be a tax on success.

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

#516

Post by spacemadness »

ShamelessC wrote: post #507
rhtgrg wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Humility and self-awareness is something I’ve given up expecting on this site. Although sometimes I’m surprised, like reading the parent of this post.

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

#517

Post by totetsu »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #305
gcanyon wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair arguments, thanks for the thoughts. I think all of it needs to be taken in the context that "helping" creators is a secondary goal in service to the prime goal of maximizing creative output overall. That said, I'm sympathetic to creators; I've written several (unpublished) novels myself. Most novels don't support the authors that write them. There's no argument to be made that Jane Doe's 20,000th-ranked novel ma…

I'm not asking whether or not George R.R. Martin would or wouldn't be fine: I'm asking whether or not it's reasonable for HBO to make a killing off his work without him being paid at all as an example of how it doesn't seem reasonable on its face that smaller authors should just get shafted if someone makes a huge profit off their work. Since we want to talk about mid-tier authors, I think you'd be surprised how long…

> But should any of those authors become sick, disabled, or otherwise no longer able to produce, should they end up never making another cent of any of their works? How would they support themselves 5, 10, 15, 20 years?

Isn't this an issue about social security or income insurance or pensions.. why should this be specifically different for an author than a bricklayer?

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

#518

Post by frankfrankfrank »

7speter wrote: post #466
ThunderSizzle wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree until your ending qualification. Being picky and choosy on when it's good to be a Constitutional Originalist means you might as well not be. If the Consitution is a dynamic living document beyond just amendments on one topic, then an originality argument loses weight even on another topic

Constitutional originalism is a rather recent construct. Its just that no one points out it was something mostly crafted by antonin scalia and friends that we think its some idea someone like Thomas Jefferson came up with.

It would be funny if I didn’t think you were actually serious. It may be a recent term, but only because so many have arrayed against the Constitution and all the freedom and liberty it provides. It is solely a function of the enemies of freedom and self-governance that we even require such a ludicrous category as constitutional originalist, aka abiding by the Constitution.

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

#519

Post by Kim_Bruning »

modriano wrote: post #513
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story goes that many people in the creative professions earn very little or even can't make ends meet; thus mansions in Beverly Hills are only available to the few. This is especially true of small creators afaict.

I've heard of the trope of the "starving artist", but mainly in the context of the art world Vincent Van Gogh and his contemporaries lived in. I do not have any data to corroborate it as a true representation of any significant population that exists in reality today. Can you point to examples of any small creators who would be better off if they had no legal copyright over their works?

So many assumptions in that question!

I think the site rules do imply you're not supposed to go for the straw man argument that ends a debate, but rather for the steel-man argument that stimulates further curious conversation.

So let's go for that then... :

People often build on each other's work. Can you imagine situations where people can take inspiration from each other a whole lot earlier, or are allowed to borrow ideas sooner and more often?

This does happen in eg. open source and open content. More traditionally, scientists also reference each other's papers. Sometimes there's also times like eg. when sampling first became popular: this lead to a period of creative bloom in music.

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

#520

Post by sfifs »

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…

Part of the problem is that there is a natural tendency for people taking extreme positions to begin dominating non-profit, academic etc types of organizations. This results in unnecessary risk taking or alienating different groups in the society that risks the organisation's core deliverable. In this case, management adventurism in an area they were widely advised as legally risky has led to existential risk.

On this specific issue, there was very much a fully compliant way to dramatic increase the number of copies in circulation - which was to reach out to all the libraries which were closed, get their catalogues all of which is electronic anyway and administer lending with a much expanded collection. It is just extra work - which likely would have gotten funded. Instead the management irresponsibily tried to score political points.

We need to have the right governance & KPIs in the charters of these critical organizations to prevent extreme people from grabbing their agenda

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