Judge decides against Internet Archive • Hacker News Board

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#821

Post by account42 » Mon, Mar 27, 2023, 2:00 PM UTC

dgacmu wrote: post #501

jodrellblank wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " Why should the state be mandating this? Isn't it better to use state power to prevent employers from being able to coerce employees into working " Remember when Arkansas rolled back some child labour laws? Hopefully you do, it was last week[1]. The reason why not "just do something good for workers instead" is because companies want cheaper employees with fewer options to leave, not better protections for workers…

The post I was replying to specifically indicated "Sunday". I didn't say religion bad. I said that Sunday was chosen because of it's alignment with many Christian religions, and this is true: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_law There are many other religions that do _not_ have Sunday as a day of rest; other abrahamic religions choose Friday (Islam) or Saturday (Judaism, 7th day Adventist). Non-abrahamic religion…

I'm not really a fan of stores being closed on Sundays here but there is an argument for not just having a consistent day of rest but also a common day of rest between family members/friends. Really though, we should all have at least three days of rest per week - then not having enough overlap would be unlikely.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#822

Post by HDThoreaun » Mon, Mar 27, 2023, 3:11 PM UTC

sparky_z wrote: post #178

drdaeman wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if I purchase the paper book, there is - thankfully - no shrink-wrap licensing anywhere that tells me that I can or cannot lend it to anyone, yet I sure hope I can. Why IA can't?

They can lend the book, they just can't make a copy of it and lend the copy instead.

Can they just buy an ebook instead of a physical copy?

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#823

Post by HDThoreaun » Mon, Mar 27, 2023, 3:20 PM UTC

unopened wrote: post #51

bawolff wrote: post #9

Wow, reading the article this seems like a clear cut case. Did IA really think they could win this? Edit: reading other sources, it seems like the crux of the idea is they would only lend out books where they had the same number of physical copies. I can see the reasoning for that, but it seems hard for fair use to get you there.

If anything, their "first sale doctrine" route seems like a stronger argument than fair use here. When you purchase a copy of a work, you have the right to lend, sell, or share that copy without any additional payment or permission required to the creator. This is how libraries have operated for centuries. I think what IA was doing, making sure they only lend out as many copies as they physically own, was clearly wit…

The thing is IA wasn't lending the copy they purchased, they were lending a reproduction of the copy. The question here is if it was legal for them to make that copy which is where the fair use argument comes in. I wonder if they could buy ebooks and lend those instead of starting with a physical copy.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#824

Post by HDThoreaun » Mon, Mar 27, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

gaganyaan wrote: post #759

misnome wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, authors should be glad to be paid $7.99 - once - every time they write a book, and be happy about it. Anything further is just proof of their obsolesence.

I would like to watch a Star Trek episode featuring you as the misguided extremist trying to destroy replicators because they put cooks out of jobs. Give it a few years and I'll be able to prompt GPT-9 for exactly that. At any rate, the future is here. You're free to stick your head in the sand if you wish, but most of us think it's a lot of work to do all that digging, and frankly a little silly.

You know most authors are poor right? Less people buying books makes them even more poor.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#825

Post by gaganyaan » Mon, Mar 27, 2023, 3:51 PM UTC

HDThoreaun wrote: post #824

gaganyaan wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to watch a Star Trek episode featuring you as the misguided extremist trying to destroy replicators because they put cooks out of jobs. Give it a few years and I'll be able to prompt GPT-9 for exactly that. At any rate, the future is here. You're free to stick your head in the sand if you wish, but most of us think it's a lot of work to do all that digging, and frankly a little silly.

You know most authors are poor right? Less people buying books makes them even more poor.

There's too much to discuss in these comments, but here's a couple of bullet point responses:

- That's kind of the natural state of things for most artistic endeavors. Many artists have a day job that pays the bills.

- Fortunately, we've got some practical alternative funding models now that anybody who wants to quit their day job can use. Patreon and Kickstarter both provide a superior funding model for a post-digital-scarcity world. Either money up front before the art is created, or an ongoing subscription for art creation.

- Humans are short-sighted, and we don't, as a species, generally like change. We're not really prepared to make changes like implementing UBI because of weird emotional investments in the status quo. However, we will eventually adapt, even if it requires some people kicking and screaming until they're dragged into the present and realize how nice it is.

- Also, post-digital-scarcity doesn't mean you can't exchange money for bits. I spend a lot of money at Bandcamp in return for DRM-free bits that I could totally have torrented, but don't because Bandcamp is easy to use and I can support the artist

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#826

Post by giantrobot » Mon, Mar 27, 2023, 4:23 PM UTC

MrVandemar wrote: post #765

giantrobot wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn't the plumber deserve a payment every time you shit then? Effective sewage systems prevent devastating diseases like cholera and typhus. Surely that's a higher social utility than a trashy Harlequin novel or any of the works of Kevin Federline? Also, fuck you for assuming I've never made any art. I'd be fine if anything I've drawn, painted, or written became public domain after twenty years. If I wanted to…

> Why doesn't the plumber deserve a payment every time you shit then? Pretty sure the plumber is getting (very) decently paid for their work. Pretty sure the people who planned and installed the sewage system were well remunerated. Pretty sure the person who wrote the trashy Harlequin novel in your example has to grind pretty hard to earn enough to buy their, let's say, diabetic medication. > Also, fuck you for assum…

> Pretty sure the person who wrote the trashy Harlequin novel in your example has to grind pretty hard to earn enough to buy their, let's say, diabetic medication.

So does the plumber. Why are they not being paid per flush of your toilet? The advance on a trashy romance novel is likely more than a plumber charges.

As to speaking for artists, I'm speaking as a member of society. The expectation you create some piece of "art" and make money for the rest of your natural life is ridiculous. Copyrights lasting as long as patents gives an artist plenty of time to monetize their work. It then becomes public domain to serve the public that gave them that monopoly in the first place.

Billions of dollars changed hands every year due to patent licensing. If two decades wasn't enough time to monetize something that wouldn't happen.

The length of copyright protections in the US are ludicrous. It's especially egregious as the company that's done the most to extend copyrights, Disney, made their fortune absolutely pillaging public domain fairy tales. Thousands of pop songs have been riffing Johann Pachelbel for nearly a century.

There's a lot of drawing from the public domain and not nearly enough replenishment.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#827

Post by dahart » Mon, Mar 27, 2023, 4:34 PM UTC

jwestbury wrote: post #803

dahart wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The current law is broken I think many agree that copyright needs to be shortened, but what does “broken” mean, exactly? I have good feelings for the Internet Archive, but in this case it’s about a handful of books that are being copied and distributed a mere 5 years after initial publication, which I think a lot of people who want copyright shortened would still agree is quite a bit too short. Books frequently get…

What differentiates libraries from the IA in this context, though?

Good question. I would guess four things that make a meaningful difference are 1) libraries are attempting to adhere to first sale doctrine, and attempting to have the ebook “returned” before lending it out again; 2) libraries aren’t trying to use Fair Use as their justification for ebook lending; 3) libraries aren’t scanning books, they’re only offering existing ebooks; and 4) libraries are publicly funded and not a private, for-profit company. Combined, I would guess these things put library lending on a stronger legal foundation.

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#828

Post by freejazz » Mon, Mar 27, 2023, 6:31 PM UTC

agalunar wrote: post #320

encomiast wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and also I am bigger and stronger than you. Therefore I take your physical object and you can't stop me. That's natural in the sense that it follows from natural law (physics). Natural laws are brutish and don't support the kind of society that most of us want to live in.

I'm not entirely sure what point you're making. That's not physical law in the same sense – nothing compels you to take something from me (or prevents you from taking something from me if you're sneaky or strong enough, as you said). On the other hand, you and I can't both have the same object even if we wanted; it has nothing to do with ability or circumstance. edit: I should clarify that you and I can share somethi…

> nothing compels you

No more than nothing compels you to take exclusive ownership of something that comes from the land!

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#829

Post by xuto3 » Mon, Mar 27, 2023, 8:05 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #656

dahart wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that’s not why they lost. The reason is because they effectively lend it to many people simultaneously, and implement no controls on getting it “returned” (deleted) by the people they lent it to, while even being aware that some of them don’t “return” it. The technicality that they keep a copy of the book while it’s being lent isn’t really at issue here at all. It’s not because there are two copies, it’s because…

Even if they did what you described they would still lose. There would be no way to implement a control to prevent an additional simultaneous copy. It's not a technical issue, it's simple impossible inherently. I don't know why companies keep trying this. MP3.com, Aereo, etc. The precedent is clear.

Again, speaking about the wider CDL initiative (one digital copy lent for each physical copy) and not their National Emergency Library, the Internet Archive do implement a DRM on that digital copy, so for the reader to make additional copies of it is not trivial. Regardless, from where do you get a requirement to prevent (with 100% certainty) the reader from making additional copies? When a person borrows a physical book from a library, they could photocopy the entire thing, then return the book they borrowed to the library and still have an additional copy that they made. Does that make library lending illegal? How is that something that can be blamed on the library in the first place?

Re: Judge decides against Internet Archive

#830

Post by MrVandemar » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 4:55 AM UTC

giantrobot wrote: post #826

MrVandemar wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why doesn't the plumber deserve a payment every time you shit then? Pretty sure the plumber is getting (very) decently paid for their work. Pretty sure the people who planned and installed the sewage system were well remunerated. Pretty sure the person who wrote the trashy Harlequin novel in your example has to grind pretty hard to earn enough to buy their, let's say, diabetic medication. > Also, fuck you for assum…

> Pretty sure the person who wrote the trashy Harlequin novel in your example has to grind pretty hard to earn enough to buy their, let's say, diabetic medication. So does the plumber. Why are they not being paid per flush of your toilet? The advance on a trashy romance novel is likely more than a plumber charges. As to speaking for artists, I'm speaking as a member of society. The expectation you create some piece o…

> So does the plumber. Why are they not being paid per flush of your toilet? The advance on a trashy romance novel is likely more than a plumber charges.

1. Why should the plumber be paid-per-flush? A toilet is infrastructure, a permenant part of a house. You may as well argue that we should pay a carpenter, a landlord, or a bank to use our front doors.

2. I actually don't have a flushing toilet. The compost toilet I have was not installed by a plumber.

> As to speaking for artists, I'm speaking as a member of society. The expectation you create some piece of "art" and make money for the rest of your natural life is ridiculous.

When a plumber installs a toilet, they get paid. When a musician releases a song they might hope to get enough money for a beer, if they're lucky. Nobody requires art. Try and get a house plan through planning without a toilet. So plumbers and other trades have a certain expectation of being able to make a living. Artists do not, and the very, very, very that are lucky enough to just make a minnimum wage are doing better that 99% of their peers.

I do art too. Yeah, I'm never going to get money for it, and I do it for my own entertainment and my friends. If society values my art, and wants me to release it out to people, you better believe you'll be paying for it. Plumbers don't install toilets as recreation. They do so to get paid.

Artists have the option, at any time, of releasing their works to the public domain. If they felt strongly that they should profit from their works for only 20 years, they have the absolute power to make that happen.

> There's a lot of drawing from the public domain and not nearly enough replenishment.

Here, at least we agree.