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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

#521

Post by lkbm »

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…

I don't know what you're talking about. White Rabbits Can't Jump is available for purchase right now on Abe Books for the low, low price of $222.22 ($4.25 shipping, US only, only one copy available)[0].

The emergency library lending seemed questionable, but the current system they're doing—they have a physical copy of the book and lend out a single scanned copy to one patron at a time—sounds legal, and certainly should be legal. Doubly so when it's out of print.

[0] https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=3145733862...

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

#522

Post by totetsu »

legitimayzer wrote: post #398
lenocinor wrote: post #140

I appreciate the metaphor with the Library of Alexandria, but TIL that it may not have burned catastrophically and may have been rebuilt after: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria “Despite the widespread modern belief that the Library of Alexandria was burned once and cataclysmically destroyed, the Library actually declined gradually over the course of several centuries. This decline began with the…

the roman catholics burned it so to make their mythical "jesus" figure stick. with the info destroyed in that fire we became 'disconnected' from the real historical jesus; thereby enabling the rise of the mythical figure tweaked to allow easier control of the masses. "what would jesus do?"

This is what I was thinking reading the part of the discussion here about IA being too big or important to fail.. Important to who, to which type of society and social order.. In a post truth antagonistic tribal world, archives are not important to society

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

#523

Post by School-Cotton »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #152
simiones wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so at all: the IA has little to do with what is normally termed "high culture", and much more to do with "low culture" (lots and lots of internet trivia that would mostly be of interest to archeologists).

The IA is the only way to see a lot of what was written and widely read starting in the 1990s onwards. Libraries used to keep archives of old newspapers and publications on microfilm, and anyone who needed to research something could go and look through those archives. The IA holds a similar function today - but it's the only one with its breadth and age. If we lose the IA, we lose a lot of important historical infor…

> The IA is the only way to see a lot of what was written and widely read starting in the 1990s onwards.

Indeed, but that’s not the definition of “high culture” as proposed a few posts up, so I don’t see how it’s relevant to the thread.

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

#524

Post by cataphract »

UberFly wrote: post #483
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it would be great if creators get to eat. Right now though many people don't get to eat (enough) no matter what, many other people don't get to make use of creative work, and a small number of big players walk away with all the money. IMO pretty much literally anything else would probably put us in a better situation. At this point after several decades of experience, I think even just outright abolishin…

How would abolishing copyright law not make everyone (but the content creator) basically the equivalent of a vampire AI corporation slurping up what they please? Why would anyone create when everyone instantly gets to use their hard work in any way they want? It's like abolishing all property rights.

The answer to your question depends on the field in question. Plenty of areas have no or little copyright protection and still have thriving creativity: cooking, fashion, comedy routines, etc. It can be a first mover advantage, social conventions, or other reasons.

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

#525

Post by alephnerd »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #141

So if I'm reading the law[1] right, which I'm probably not, the damages for the 127 books should be around $3.8 million, with ~$20 million the absolute max? Neither of those amounts seem high enough to destroy the IA. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/504

Their operating expenses in 2020 hit almost $20mil [0] and they only raise around $21mil in donations. In addition they only have $9mil in assets. That means they could potentially shut down if a hardline litigation strategy is persued. In addition, this opens the gate to additional litigation to any other potential claimant (eg. Warez copyright owners or video copyright owners - there is a lot of pirated material hosted on IA).

[0] - https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/internet-archive,94324...

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

#526

Post by School-Cotton »

birdyrooster wrote: post #484
int_19h wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Organize" is hot air without specific plan that has a realistic chance of success. Voting for "copyleft politicians" doesn't, if only because there are so few of them, and further because a candidate has no chance of winning on this as their single issue - it's the rest of their platform that will decide the vote.

How about a pirate party? I think we could find huge amounts of people sympathetic because most consumers would stand to gain materially from it. It's realpolitik and could be effective in creating a culture support for dismantling copyright. That is what was starting to happen when the MPAA and RIAA started litigating against individuals. They didn't just stop because it was ineffective at recouping losses, it was a…

They said “realistic”. There is zero hope of such a party gaining any traction in the US, partly because of the largely undemocratic way the political system works, but also just because the vast majority of people don’t care about this issue at all.

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

#527

Post by robocat »

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 unsure if you were trying to be intentionally ironic, but the tone of your comment seems to me to fit right in with exactly what you are complaining about. . .

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

#528

Post by Vecr »

marwis wrote: post #211

Amazing how reckless IA is with their library program while at the same time being extremely cautions with Wayback Archive to the point of retroactively applying robots.txt and removing website archives because "they can't afford even the smallest risk of being sued".

I don't think they do that because they might get sued. I think they do it because they might get canceled.

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

#529

Post by halostatue »

Robotbeat wrote: post #453
halostatue wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Various treaties that have been signed and approved prevent that. Copyright longer than 14–28 years is not a bad thing, but copyright for longer than ~50 years is IMO questionable. I’d love to see some of those treaties renegotiated to limit copyright duration for Works for Hire (e.g., most software out there), but also to reduce the overall length of protection…BUT. I’d also love to see RAND compulsory licensing on…

Nope, there is no such moral right. It’s an artificial right we created (actually mostly taking away the natural right for people to free copy whatever). And then through corruption, ended up expanding to absurdity and locking it in via treaties and all the propaganda that the vast majority of people swallow whole and take it for granted like fish take water for granted.

The European Union disagrees with your assertion, as do I.

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

#530

Post by pncnmnp »

pgalvin wrote: post #426
Aachen wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have in the past, but I'm also holding off until this lawsuit nonsense is done with. Don't need to fatten the lawyer industry with my money for their own mistakes. Running the wayback machine and things like flash emulation is what I want them to do: y'know, archiving stuff and making it available to current systems. I should really look into whether this books lending branch has a chance of taking the web archive…

There is no decentralised backup of the IA. They’re using 100-200 petabytes of storage. The wayback machine alone is still in the tens of petabytes.

In 2020, the estimated number was around 50 petabytes. I came across an interesting discussion on r/datahoarder regarding this: https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/h02jl4/lets_sa...
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