We lost a lot when live-leak went away too to be honest.. 99% of it is things I would never want to watch again, but the one that sticks out in my mind is the video footage from the phones of the korean highschool students who waited to drown to death on the instructions of the captain of the Sinking Sewol ferry.
If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
551–560 of 614 posts
Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#552This essay in copyright by RMS is relevant and was eye-opening to me. It introduced me to the concept of "the copyright bargain":
> the government spends the public's natural rights, on the public's behalf, as part of a deal to bring the public more published works.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.htm...
Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#553Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fully agree. Copyright was originally conceived as a scalpel, but has been turned into a bludgeon. Its current scope and power is far too great.
You can blame brain-dead case law and precedent for that, no doubt bought and paid for by corporations who can afford great lawyers to keep stretching the definition until it's completely unrecognizable.
> You can blame brain-dead case law and precedent for that, no doubt bought and paid for by corporations who can afford great lawyers to keep stretching the definition until it's completely unrecognizable.
How important is precedent..? Roe v Wade was overturned despite decades of precedent. Law right now seems to be as dynamic as tech.
Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#554I know the government has viewed certain companies as "too big to fail," because of the negative financial impact we would experience if they were to do so. I wonder if there needs to be a cultural equivalent, where a repository of digital or physical artifacts is "too big to fail" because of the negative cultural impact their failure would have. In the absence of that, anyone who sees high cultural value to the pres…
> we should be looking at ways to preserve those artifacts redundantly, so that even if the IA fails, it's not a calamity Its 212 petabytes as of december 2021[1], that alone would be a bit less than 12 thousand 18 TB HDDs or LTO-9's. We've made virtually zero significant progress in long-term storage technology. Its like if they are getting burned like the library of alexandria because of some copyright vampires, I…
Destroying things over copyright will eventually be seen as absurd as ancient religious beliefs.
The future will laugh at us as some primitive ignorant culture with our heads shoved up our asses dismantling society because of some imaginary oh so sacred legal fiction called copyright.
Why do some hoarding rent seekers hold every key here and get to indiscriminately burn down our global village on a whim like a feudal lord and all we can say is "please sire, spare the library, can you burn it more slowly than the rest?"
We overthrew monarchies 200 years ago so we wouldn't have to deal with this anymore. Having these assholes sneak back in through some courtier backdoor via an institution where people still wear wigs and robes to make us all renters from (intellectual) property lords, it needs to go.
Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#555Earlier 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 natural right for people to free copy whatever
Practical as it may be, that's not a natural right but merely a physical possibility. More generally, the concept of natural rights - except for a very narrow niche of special subjects closely centered on the individual's own life and bodily autonomy - is a shortcut to total subjectivity at best. And even for that very narrow niche, the "rights" part is a normative civilizational convention/construct, whereas nature conspicuously ignores such "rights" (as do humans for the most part when it comes to other species)
Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#556Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think I agree with this. Novels can take years to write, and to have their copyright expire after only a few years may not be enough for the author to write another book. What would be the motivation to write a series if the series isn't worth printing after only a few books? It goes doubly if the novel might be up for a movie or a TV adaptation: the game of thrones tv adaptation didn't happen until much late…
really good cultural artifacts are not created by people trying to make money. when cultural creations are prompted by a profit motive, we get "masterpieces" like the rings of power.
Oh please, lots of great cultural creations had a profit motive. You think "Blade Runner" was made without any desire for profit? Or "2001: A Space Odyssey"? Or Peter Jackson's LotR movies? Those were enormously profitable.
And Rings of Power was not that bad. It's not as great as the LotR movies, sure, but it's better than the Hobbit movies. (But not as good as some of the Hobbit fan edits.) And it's a LOT better than the new Netflix show "The Ark". What a turd, and a huge disappointment coming from some of the people behind Stargate.
Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#557Earlier quoted context omitted.
The USA's biggest export is our culture...like it or not. Think of movies, music, etc. Some of it is intangible.
>> You can wonder all you like, and call me a cynic, but the US runs on money not culture. The American identity is built on money and wealth and excess, not on anything you might describe as "culture". > The USA's biggest export is our culture...like it or not. Think of movies, music, etc. Some of it is intangible. Yeah, but that's not high culture. It's mass-market culture that makes a lot of money. I think what th…
High culture, like theatre, classical music, architecture - sure,thats one line of thought here. There are isolated examples that exist, supported by patronage, but that's not entirely what I meant.
If we look to the mainstream,the movies,music etc are all commercial. There's a reason a studio would rather make another Marvel movie than something more meaningful. That's not to say that -only- Marvel movies are made, and they are very entertaining, but the -reason- they are made at all us economic.
For software we celebrate money-raised, MRR, user numbers and engagement. We dont celebrate programs for their life-impact. We don't celebrate the software used yo design the James Webb telescope. Or the software in an MRI machine. We don't throw VC levels of funding at prosthetics, things that have value beyond just ygr monetary, even more so when the monetary value is near-nil, just like the IA.
I say all this not to change it, at a fundamental level it can't be changed, bug rather to understand it.
Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can blame brain-dead case law and precedent for that, no doubt bought and paid for by corporations who can afford great lawyers to keep stretching the definition until it's completely unrecognizable.
> You can blame brain-dead case law and precedent for that, no doubt bought and paid for by corporations who can afford great lawyers to keep stretching the definition until it's completely unrecognizable. How important is precedent..? Roe v Wade was overturned despite decades of precedent. Law right now seems to be as dynamic as tech.
Make me a judge and I will fix it.
Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#559Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 borro…
Your points are made from a very idealistic place, but not rooted in reality. If I steal your car and tell you that I'm just "building on your work" to better my life, are you going to feel the same?
Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed
#560Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
It gets better/worse: much of dentistry is itself not evidence-based [0].
[0] an informative article and the American College of Dentists response:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/the-tro...
https://www.acd.org/position-papers/the-college-responds-to-...