You know what to do boys, let's make it happen.
Judge decides against Internet Archive
721–730 of 835 posts
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#722Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Judges are there to enforce the law, not to make it. That's not the right characterization of the argument. Judges are there to tell legislators that they can't make certain laws. The abortion dispute is not about judges making abortion legal, it's about judges telling politicians that they cannot make abortion illegal. Without that, politicians would literally have the ability to do anything they want.
I find it both shocking and terrifying that people lack the most fundamental understanding of how a properly separated government system would work, let alone why it should function that way. It should concern everyone that these types of top down authoritarian mentalities are more prevalent as people without a tradition or culture based in western philosophy that has led to what used to be a clear separation of powe…
> authoritarian mentalities are more prevalent as people without a tradition or culture based in western philosophy
I think you are wrong here. We, the people with “lived experience” in authoritarian countries, look with astonishment at how the American people dismantle the basics of their own political system “based in western philosophy”.
You know, Stalin’s constitution of 1936 was one of the most liberal and progressive at the time. Then 1937 came. So the suggestion that judges should stop looking at the code of law and just eagerly follow the Party line - produce cries of “danger” from my very own carbon-based neural network.
So my estimate is quite opposite - the “native” Americans took the benefits of the political system based on western philosophy so much for granted, that they’ve stopped thinking where these benefits were coming from.
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#723Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, were you not alive when Steam started being a thing and piracy sharply reduced? Turns out people like to buy things from people who make things they like.
I was alive, yes, it sounds like you weren't because Steam was universally hated for the DRM inconvenience it put around HL2.
Hahaha no, but I did forget that it affected HL2. It was interesting how the more egregious DRM actually made the product worse, people downloading the cracked version were legitimately just choosing the superior version.
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#724Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point of copyright is “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”, not to be fair or to guarantee a lifetime of income to popular authors and their children. To that end, the exclusive copyright is supposed to be of limited time . Having no-effort century-long copyright might narrowly benefit a tiny number of small-time creators, but it robs the public of our collective culture.
It’s definitely worth including the full quote and discussing what it means. “Congress shall have Power . . . 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.” Part of the intent behind the law is to promote the sciences and the arts through these exclusive rights. The idea is that creators will…
It’s not intended to be “fair” to authors, is my point. It is intended to encourage them to create new works. And I don’t think anyone has ever even tried to argue that a century-long copyright incentivizes authors to produce works they otherwise would not (if the term were only, say, 10, 20, or 50 years).
The original (US) copyright term was 14 years with registration + another 14 years with renewal. That seems to me, in broad strokes, like a good balance between promoting new works vs. giving public access to previous works.
The century-long term only benefits a vanishingly small proportion of creators (which is to say, a vanishingly small proportion of creators' inheritors). The primary beneficiary is a small number of very large monopolistic media/publishing firms, who have e.g. bought up the rights (for peanuts) to the past century of back issues of thousands of scientific journals, and now keep them behind a paywall.
But the harm to the public is incalculably large.
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#725A lot of people in these comments still seem confused about what has happened here. This ruling is not about the emergency library at all. It's a ruling that controlled digital lending (one physical copy backing each digital copy lent out) is illegal.
> This ruling is not about the emergency library at all. It's a ruling that [...] one physical copy backing each digital copy lent out) is illegal.
That's not what I read in the linked article, specifically:
Regarding "IA’s promise not to lend simultaneously": "IA has not kept its promise. Although the Open Library’s print copies of the Works in Suit are non-circulating, IA concedes that it has no way of verifying whether Partner Libraries remove their physical copies from circulation after partnering with IA…. To the contrary, IA knows that some Partner Libraries do not remove the physical books from their shelves"
As I understand it, this case exists because the IA was not keeping its promise anymore and made an error of judgement by breaking the 1:1 ratio without any legal argumentation or even a logical reason for it. It was said at the time already, but the obviousness, whether something as important as the wayback machine's owner should compete with the pirate bay for market share on illegal ebooks, and the use of (my/our) donated money on the ensuing legal nonsense, is a different discussion...
If these underlying facts and circumstances were different, such as if someone tries this concept again but keeps their promise and implements it correctly, the same ruling cannot be passed because it's not the same situation. It would have to be tried again and it might (or might not) swing the other way, at least that is my general understanding of legal systems around the world.
Perhaps it would also be different in another country whence ExampleBooks Ltd could operate legally, that will depend in part on whether the copyright alliance pact (I forgot the name) has provisions letting signatories (afaik that's every nation you might want to live in) make exceptions for things like this.
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#726Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no idea what Roe v Wade is about (I'm not American or in the US), but I like GP read the parent comment to theirs as meaning 'these jokers overturned it, that is bad, we cannot rely on them'. Re-reading after seeing your own comment, it is ambiguous really, you could read it either way, but you're probably right (having the context of what it's about) and GP just mistook the meaning as I did. > If anything has…
It all boils down to people fighting for the right to do whatever they want to an unborn soul including shutting down its life processes at will. They all have different justifications and excuses. It boils down to the local morality hence why judges kicked it back to the local governments.
Souls aren't a real thing.
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#727Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speaking as to my own opinion now: I'm skeptical that "encouraging creators by offering protections" is much more than a rationalization. (And I'm not sure whether it's historically accurate, although that's beside the point.) It doesn't seem like the concept of intellectual property and its protection under the law have been effective at encouraging people to create things; they seem to be more effective at encourag…
“Incentives don’t matter” is usually a bad take. The idea that patronage isn’t dominant because… it can’t compete with copyright? is a not-even-wrong take. And there’s an astounding burst of human creativity in the last 300 years. There are several factors you can attribute that to but the correlation with ip laws means you’re not going to have evidence that they inhibit rather than incentivize progress in the useful…
> "Incentives don’t matter" is usually a bad take.
I didn't say that I thought incentives don't matter. (I was trying to say that I thought IP law isn't an especially good way to incentivize creativity, and that there might be better ways.) So I might be misunderstanding what you mean by this.
> The idea that patronage isn't dominant because... it can't compete with copyright? is a not-even-wrong take.
Could you explain why it's not-even-wrong? I can definitely accept that I'm wrong, but I don't see why it's so misguided that it can't even be discussed, affirmed, or denied.
Today, I can (usually) make more money as a software developer writing proprietary software than I can writing libre software. If software couldn't be copyrighted, it doesn't follow as a matter of course that demand for software would plummet. If the demand remains, in this alternate world I ought to still be able to make a living writing (libre) software.
In this alternate world, I would necessarily be paid for the labor I perform (writing code) rather than making money by selling licenses or copies. So, if the only difference between our world today and this alternate world is the existence of software copyright, and in our world today I'm incentivized to sell licenses or copies but in the alternate world I'd be paid for my labor per se, it seems fair to say that the reason I'm incentivized to sell licenses or copies – and the reason why e.g. patronage isn't more dominant – must be "because we recognize and protect copyright the way we do".
That was my line of reasoning.
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#728Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and then we expect the judge to "save" us from the broken law instead of holding the legislators accountable Why can't it be both? All this does is keep us busy looking where the 'root cause' is and never actually solve anything because the mechanisms to fix those things don't exist... all the while others reap its benefits.
Judges are there to enforce the law, not to make it. You can't hope that the judge takes your side because then the judge could just as easily take the other side. There is of course an element of interpretation which the judges can use to decide in different directions over the same thing, but that again is an example of a broken law.
To get pedantic, the executive is there to enforce (and decide how to enforce) the law.
The judicial is there to decide if a given law should be enforced (and if a given enforcement method is valid)
This is why I’m not a big fan of originalism: that is almost always a subjective decision.
Otherwise we would just have a legislative and an executive.
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#729Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s definitely worth including the full quote and discussing what it means. “Congress shall have Power . . . 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.” Part of the intent behind the law is to promote the sciences and the arts through these exclusive rights. The idea is that creators will…
It’s not intended to be “fair” to authors, is my point. It is intended to encourage them to create new works. And I don’t think anyone has ever even tried to argue that a century-long copyright incentivizes authors to produce works they otherwise would not (if the term were only, say, 10, 20, or 50 years). The original (US) copyright term was 14 years with registration + another 14 years with renewal. That seems to m…
The original terms do sound pretty good relative to today. 28 years, with some action required to renew. What does the Berne Convention say? “the general rule is that protection must be granted until the expiration of the 50th year after the author's death.” Since this is fairly globally adopted and not very US-specific, does that influence your opinion on terms? What is the reason that the Berne Convention allows for terms this long, and if we want them to be shorter, what needs to happen, in order to get lawmakers globally to agree?
I certainly might have misunderstood your comment about being “fair” to authors. I guess you were saying that the US copyright law isn’t doing anything to distinguish between independent authors, small businesses, or large corporations? It certainly does allow for big business to have an easier time of things, and is not at all fair to individuals and small businesses, that’s true.
Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive
#730Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not intended to be “fair” to authors, is my point. It is intended to encourage them to create new works. And I don’t think anyone has ever even tried to argue that a century-long copyright incentivizes authors to produce works they otherwise would not (if the term were only, say, 10, 20, or 50 years). The original (US) copyright term was 14 years with registration + another 14 years with renewal. That seems to m…
The original terms do sound pretty good relative to today. 28 years, with some action required to renew. What does the Berne Convention say? “the general rule is that protection must be granted until the expiration of the 50th year after the author's death.” Since this is fairly globally adopted and not very US-specific, does that influence your opinion on terms? What is the reason that the Berne Convention allows fo…
My point is that fairness or guarantee of author’s natural rights or whatever is not in my understanding the fundamental premise for copyright (in the USA). US copyright, at least as established by the US Constitution, is based on practical/utilitarian considerations, and is primarily concerned with benefit to the public.
In my opinion the Berne convention (which is instead premised on authors’ supposed natural rights, without much concern for the public) is a incredibly harmful and anti-social system which should not have been ratified by the USA. It has become even more harmful in the digital age.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert on copyright history, law, or philosophy.