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Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

arstechnica.com

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Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#91

Post by Loughla »

HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #78
alt187 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be glad to learn a number of studies (mostly commissioked by the European Union) agree on the fact that piracy doesn't hurt sales. The main consensus is that people who illegally access content wouldn't have bought it otherwise, and that they still advertise it (thus, still driving up sales). These studies have then been systematically strong-armed into silence by the EU and constituent countries' anti-pira…

> piracy doesn't hurt sales Funny enough, an academic department I know has cut back on its purchase requests to the university library, on the assumption that everyone, students and staff alike, is just going to download the books from shadow libraries. Individuals were never going to purchase a 400€ book from a scholarly press anyway, but if now institutions are on the piracy bandwagon, that’s a new development.

The publishers are playing shit games with faculty and providing free access for them to high quality instructional materials. To the point that the faculty doesn't really have to do anything for online classes(which is a whole other ball of shit).

The secret to why they can provide this?

The content is locked behind a code the student has to buy that provides access to the book or comes with the book.

It's absolutely disgusting. For profit bullshit is fucking the youth of America. It's disgusting.

Source; the three times I've failed to push my current instruction to open access materials instead of McGraw Hill bullshit. And it failed because the lazy ass faculty can't be bothered to develop their own lessons anymore. Fuck.

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#92

Post by tmtvl »

conception wrote: post #73
raincole wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes...? Which is the whole point. That main difference is why IA was sued, not the fact they're idealists.

So it’s OK to make an illegal copy of all copyrighted works as long as you don’t put it on the Internet?

In some places you can copy anything you like and as long as you don't distribute it you're not breaking copyright.

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#94

Post by LennyHenrysNuts »

lateforwork wrote: post #55
tototrains wrote: post #14

Remember: If OpenAI/Google does it for $$$, it's not illegal. If idealists do it for public access, full force of the law. Information wants to be free. Oblige it. Fools with temporary power trying to extract from the work of others will be a blip in the history books if we make them.

> Information wants to be free. Those who create information may have families to feed, house and clothe. Until those items (food/housing/clothes) are also free, information cannot be free.

It's been proven that people who pirate also buy more media than those who don't.

Besides, if I was never going to buy it in the first place because you're charging too much, you've lost nothing if I pirate your product.

A victimless crime.

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#95

Post by randerson »

The Internet Archive is to be protected at all costs. Its maybe the most important site on the Internet because of all the history that exists nowhere else. As the web is increasingly filled with AI slop, the Internet Archive has got perhaps the last pre-slop snapshot of the Internet.

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#96

Post by HeinzStuckeIt »

Loughla wrote: post #91
HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> piracy doesn't hurt sales Funny enough, an academic department I know has cut back on its purchase requests to the university library, on the assumption that everyone, students and staff alike, is just going to download the books from shadow libraries. Individuals were never going to purchase a 400€ book from a scholarly press anyway, but if now institutions are on the piracy bandwagon, that’s a new development.

The publishers are playing shit games with faculty and providing free access for them to high quality instructional materials. To the point that the faculty doesn't really have to do anything for online classes(which is a whole other ball of shit). The secret to why they can provide this? The content is locked behind a code the student has to buy that provides access to the book or comes with the book. It's absolutel…

You are talking about textbooks, I was talking about research publications: monographs, collections of articles, and reference books.

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#97

Post by wongarsu »

Worksheet wrote: post #22
nekusar wrote: post #16

What capitalism continues to show us: proof that public libraries, if created in the last 10 years, would be deemed illegal and sued out of existence. It's only because the late 1800's billionaires wanted to leave legacies and made pay-to-enter and free libraries, and migrated them to free, or public libraries. Thats why so many of them are (John) Carnegie Libraries. Only legal when billionaires do it.

Would there be anything worth putting into the libraries if intellectual property rights are not respected?

There is a lot of writing on the internet that's done for free with no profit motive. Both fiction and nonfiction.

Paying the editors is the bigger issue than paying the authors

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#98

Post by jwrallie »

stubish wrote: post #87
alt187 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be glad to learn a number of studies (mostly commissioked by the European Union) agree on the fact that piracy doesn't hurt sales. The main consensus is that people who illegally access content wouldn't have bought it otherwise, and that they still advertise it (thus, still driving up sales). These studies have then been systematically strong-armed into silence by the EU and constituent countries' anti-pira…

Piracy does not hurt sales because it has a lot of friction. There have been zero studies on piracy in a low friction environment, because there was no need. Such as in countries where pirated Video CDs where endemic and not policed, it was completely obvious and distributors didn't even bother putting product onto the market. Or back in the days where mp3 music sharing apps became mainstream and got integrated with…

I think there is an important difference between (1) being able to buy the same (DRM free) content supporting the authors and (2) the copies on the Internet Archive or the likes of it being the only source available.

I think many will choose the former but there are so many cases where there is no option provided.

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#99

Post by margalabargala »

raincole wrote: post #49
margalabargala wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since when OpenAI made a digital library? What do you think is step 1 of training an LLM? OpenAI just kept their library private and only distribute the digested summaries of the library, are the main differences.

Yes...? Which is the whole point. That main difference is why IA was sued, not the fact they're idealists.

What OpenAI did is equally not legal under the same statutes that were used to sue IA.

Re: Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

#100

Post by fn-mote »

tmtvl wrote: post #92
conception wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it’s OK to make an illegal copy of all copyrighted works as long as you don’t put it on the Internet?

In some places you can copy anything you like and as long as you don't distribute it you're not breaking copyright.

Not in the US, though.

You making the copy is the violation.

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