Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win • Hacker News Board

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

#541

Post by account42 » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 7:39 AM UTC

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…

> 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.

Agreed. But the problem here is not the daring action but linking it to a sadly unique resource.

> You can support Robin Hood, but you shouldn't be shocked when Robin Hood is caught and sent to jail.

You can however still protest robin hood being sent to jail and you can shame the fat nobles calling for robin hood to be hanged and you can grab the pitchforks and make sure they loose more than they gain. The law is meaningless if it doesn't have the support of the people. Copyright is already routinely ignored by almost everyone when its convenient (outside commercial activity).

Lobbying is all well and good but that's the corporations' turf. Nothing wrong with deciding not to play their game and choose other ways to fight the absurd copyright laws.

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

#542

Post by account42 » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 7:53 AM UTC

badlibrarian wrote: post #139

iandanforth wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You really don't need to be a lawyer to understand the extent to which Internet Archive really screwed up here. For starters they lost on Summary Judgment, which means they couldn't come up with a single issue of fact that the judge thought deserved a trial. Read the Order, the Judge obviously has it straight. Then check archive.org's Form 990s and see how little money they run on, how much they pissed away on legal…

> from a legal perspective, Brewster should be removed and they need to find competent people to put on the board

I don't like that the IA risked the actual internet archive with this or that they chose to engage in DRM at all but let's be reall: "competent people" would have sold the IA to the advertisement moloch or another horror of modern civilization long ago. The IA does need a leader that puts principles above financial security.

> it really deserves to be treated like a business

That would be the absolute worst thing that could happen to the IA.

> And it's time for Brewster to move on. In any other non-profit he'd be gone by now.

Consider doing something worthwile of your own instead of trying those who have but aren't perfect enough in your opinion.

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

#543

Post by account42 » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 7:59 AM UTC

mardifoufs wrote: post #265

rwasco wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Brewster demonstrated real courage. The world locked down u necessarily precisely because the population has not been getting smarter the past 50 years because copyright has poisoned our information wells. This is a fight worth having. It's time to abolish copyright.

There's absolutely no courage in putting that's been built and used for almost 2 decades on the line because of the wave of "we must do something" that was so common in March and April 2020 even when in most cases, doing nothing would've been more helpful. It would be like if Mozilla decided to stop taking any google funding overnight because they felt like their values didn't fit with Google's. Sure, it would be wel…

> It would be like if Mozilla decided to stop taking any google funding overnight because they felt like their values didn't fit with Google's.

That would be the best thing that could happen to Mozilla becose then the vultures would move on and the project could get back to its mission without the MAJOR conflict of interest fucking up their incentives.

> But then you also guaranteed that Firefox won't be able to exist for more than a few weeks.

Firefox doesn't need Mozilla to continue existing. But even if it died that would at least make space for an alternative that isn't just controlled opposition doing the bare minimum to protect Google from antitrust lawsuits while continuuously disrespecting user choices and preferences.

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

#544

Post by account42 » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:14 AM UTC

CSMastermind wrote: post #203

poikroequ wrote: post #158

> "I understand that publishers and authors have to make a profit, but most of the material I am trying to access is written by people who are dead and whose publishers have stopped printing the material," wrote one IA fan from Boston. This really is the crux of the problem. Copyright should be "use it or lose it." If you don't make your books readily available, then you should have no right to demand copies of your…

>If you don't make your books readily available, then you should have no right to demand copies of your book be removed from places like IA What if an author explicitly doesn't want to distribute their works or to distribute an alternative version of their works? There was the recent case of the company that owns the rights to Dr. Suess choosing not to publish old versions of books they felt had racist depictions. An…

> What if an author explicitly doesn't want to distribute their works or to distribute an alternative version of their works?

Then they should lose the rights of the originals. The point of copyright is to enrich society not to satisfy any want of the author.

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

#545

Post by account42 » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:21 AM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #313

mardifoufs wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we apply that logic to gplv3 code too? Just basically disregard the license since knowledge should be completely free? Or maybe impose some burden on the maintainers to keep the code active and constantly changed so that the codebase doesn't lose its license after an arbitrary period of time? I'm genuinely wondering , because to me there's a clear parallel yet in tech circles we almost always see defense of co…

> doesn't lose its license after an arbitrary period of time? The whole thing that allows copyright in the US is in the Constitution: > To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. The original term was 14 years, with one 14 year renewal allowed. This was probably a little short, in my opini…

> The original term was 14 years, with one 14 year renewal allowed.

> This was probably a little short

Strongly disagree. And for anything that's distributed digitally it's an eternity.

The goal should be that as an adult you can build on the things you grew up with as a child. Anything longer than that is absurd. Remember that copyright is an infringement on your right to free speech so should need extraordinary evidence for that any additional second of the copyright term actually fulfils its constitutional purpose. You don't need to allow maximum commercial exploitation to encourage more works. In fact I would question if commercial exploitation is something that needs to be made possible at all considering that humans are naturally driven to be creative and we have a giant corpus of creative works to fall back on which can now be copied and distributed easier than ever.

The current terms that won't even let your grandchildren benefit from the work your generation funded are an outright affront to the spirit of the constitution. At this point we would be better off scrapping the whole concept of copyright.

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

#546

Post by account42 » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:32 AM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #438

CSMastermind wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you don't make your books readily available, then you should have no right to demand copies of your book be removed from places like IA What if an author explicitly doesn't want to distribute their works or to distribute an alternative version of their works? There was the recent case of the company that owns the rights to Dr. Suess choosing not to publish old versions of books they felt had racist depictions. An…

> There was the recent case of the company that owns the rights to Dr. Suess choosing not to publish old versions of books they felt had racist depictions. This is actually exactly why I agree with OP. See also the changes made to Roald Dahl books. Future generations deserve to be able to read the content that their forebears produced as they produced it . I'm supportive of an author's right to not initially publish…

You have really hit the crux of the issue. We shouldn't allow corporations or individuals to control something that has become part of our shared culture. Beyond shortening copyright lengths to the absolute minimum required for the statet purpose of encouraging more creation we probably also need limitations on author rights for works that have gained widespread public adoption similar to how trademarks can become genericised. At some point you shouldn't get to decide if and how your creation is distributed even if you can still demand royalties for a while.

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

#547

Post by account42 » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:34 AM UTC

cwillu wrote: post #232

CSMastermind wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you don't make your books readily available, then you should have no right to demand copies of your book be removed from places like IA What if an author explicitly doesn't want to distribute their works or to distribute an alternative version of their works? There was the recent case of the company that owns the rights to Dr. Suess choosing not to publish old versions of books they felt had racist depictions. An…

Authors should have that inalienable right, and it should not transferable via contract or any other means. Publishers, on the other hand, should have no such rights: they own the presses, their inalienable right should be to refrain from using them.

> Authors should have that inalienable right

Why? What do we as a society gain by allowing individuals continued control over parts of our culture include the ability to erase them.

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

#548

Post by account42 » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:36 AM UTC

hmry wrote: post #316

CSMastermind wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should I be allowed to commission a work under the understanding that I own the rights after it's created? If yes, then how do you regulate who is or is not allowed to transfer ownership of rights to or from whom?

That part is already solved. Under current international law, if you commission a work then you own the economic rights, but the original author retains the moral rights. In fact, selling your moral rights is not possible. It sounds like the suggestion is that retracting / completely discontinuing a book should only be part of the moral rights, not the economic rights. I'm not sure how feasible that is, but it's not…

> It sounds like the suggestion is that retracting / completely discontinuing a book should only be part of the moral rights, not the economic rights.

It shouldn't be part of any rights. At best the author should be able to demand to not have his name associated with the work.

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

#549

Post by account42 » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:41 AM UTC

KennyBlanken wrote: post #211

poikroequ wrote: post #158

> "I understand that publishers and authors have to make a profit, but most of the material I am trying to access is written by people who are dead and whose publishers have stopped printing the material," wrote one IA fan from Boston. This really is the crux of the problem. Copyright should be "use it or lose it." If you don't make your books readily available, then you should have no right to demand copies of your…

No, it really isn't. That person, and you, don't understand how publishing - or mass production of any kind, it seems - works. A publisher "stopping printing" of a book is completely normal - books are like any other mass-produced good, in that there are fixed and variable costs to production and a factory can't economically crank out more than a certain number of different things at once. Sp, there are "printings" -…

> Authors want

> Publishers want

> Distributors want

So? I too want a golden goose protected with force by the government at no cost to me. What does the rest of society gain from this deal?

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

#550

Post by account42 » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 8:43 AM UTC

poikroequ wrote: post #435

KennyBlanken wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it really isn't. That person, and you, don't understand how publishing - or mass production of any kind, it seems - works. A publisher "stopping printing" of a book is completely normal - books are like any other mass-produced good, in that there are fixed and variable costs to production and a factory can't economically crank out more than a certain number of different things at once. Sp, there are "printings" -…

I never said the books have to be physically printed. Digitize the book and sell it online. Make it available through a kindle unlimited subscription. It doesn't matter, as long as it's readily available . Until then, they should have no right to sue to remove the books from IA. Also keep in mind that, for many of the books, the authors are dead.

> Make it available through a kindle unlimited subscription. It doesn't matter, as long as it's readily available.

I disagree that requring the customer to have a continued business relationship to retain the work should count as it being readily available.