61–70 of 582 posts
Oh this appeal to the public, pithy empty words about openness and shit. Here's the plain truth: IA ran a gigantic book piracy site during covid. They should've known they won't get away with it. I remember several authors begging them not to do this because it affected their income. I personally thought it monumentally stupid to put the Wayback Machine at risk. They said, there are enough physical books in closed li…
There is no greater folly of contemporary human society than the purposeful restriction of such vast and easily shareable repositories of knowledge. Perhaps these schemes made sense in the past but with the advent of the internet and independent groups willing to fund all hosting fees, we should move to models of publishing that do not require this restriction of information. Library genesis exists but necessarily mu…
[flagged]
Even as recent as about one decade ago, the best way to learn a programming language is often buying a book or checking out a book from the library, because that's the only high-quality source on the topic. Since then we have had people creating complete tutorials like the Rust book and distribute it on the Internet, for free.
In the US, some professors profit from selling textbooks that get updated every few years, forcing students around the around to pay hundreds of dollars to get the latest edition. (That's still the norm.) Yet we are seeing less of that in the computer science field, especially with books like Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces ( https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/ ) -- the professors are literally practicing communism and giving away the book for free.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best part had to be the whole moral grandstanding they had when doing it. Controlled digital lending was tolerated. It was never legal. I can't buy a bunch of DVDs and start a streaming service even if a each copy can only be watched by a single person at a time. It really sucks since they do a lot of good work aside from this.
Nitpick - I think if your DVD streaming service is free and single-person only, then you probably can - it would qualify under space or time shifting concepts. I don't think you have the right to monetize a DVD you purchase in general in the US, though.
You vessenes have an account, you can buy DVDs that I store for you, and you can view these DVDs using my service.
Even then odds are I'd get sued for copyright infringement.
Archive.org looks a bit like astalavista these days.
Oh this appeal to the public, pithy empty words about openness and shit. Here's the plain truth: IA ran a gigantic book piracy site during covid. They should've known they won't get away with it. I remember several authors begging them not to do this because it affected their income. I personally thought it monumentally stupid to put the Wayback Machine at risk. They said, there are enough physical books in closed li…
The best part had to be the whole moral grandstanding they had when doing it. Controlled digital lending was tolerated. It was never legal. I can't buy a bunch of DVDs and start a streaming service even if a each copy can only be watched by a single person at a time. It really sucks since they do a lot of good work aside from this.
"Zediva thought it could circumvent the need to be licensed by literally renting customers a DVD and a DVD player, with your computer, tablet or Google TV as the remote control. Unlike the other streaming movie services, Zediva didn't turn a movie into a file on its servers that it can serve it to as many users as care to see it at once. Instead, Zediva’s servers had DVD drives and actual DVDs. So when you rented a movie, that disc goes out of circulation until you release it back to the company, just like in one of those increasingly rare real-world video stores."
https://www.wired.com/2011/08/zediva-shuts-down/
More: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Entertainment_I....
Oh this appeal to the public, pithy empty words about openness and shit. Here's the plain truth: IA ran a gigantic book piracy site during covid. They should've known they won't get away with it. I remember several authors begging them not to do this because it affected their income. I personally thought it monumentally stupid to put the Wayback Machine at risk. They said, there are enough physical books in closed li…
There is no greater folly of contemporary human society than the purposeful restriction of such vast and easily shareable repositories of knowledge. Perhaps these schemes made sense in the past but with the advent of the internet and independent groups willing to fund all hosting fees, we should move to models of publishing that do not require this restriction of information. Library genesis exists but necessarily mu…
[flagged]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That isn't a counterpoint, it is exactly what OP is saying–there is already a way to give away a book for free if they author/copyright holder wants to without the IA deciding what should be free.
I think it’s pretty clear I am not saying “there outta be a way to give books away” which would be a very stupid thing for me to say. I’m saying we should legalize the giving away of all books, but must rearrange society to ensure authors and all people still have the support the previously got from the existing system. Engaging only with the stupid point I didn’t make is a waste of time honestly and is seriously mis…
There’s no way to implement this without taking away the freedoms of the author to choose how to distribute the fruits of his labor. Just because you think the world would be a better place if they all did that does not mean it’s an acceptable proposition.