8 ms·

You can't defend public libraries and oppose file-sharing

40 points by moviuro 11y ago

jeffreyrogers 11y ago
This isn't really a fair comparison. File-sharing has marginal costs close to zero, so wide distribution becomes essentially free. Public libraries must hold an inventory that can only be increased by paying for another copy of the book, movie, etc. If public libraries had their own printing presses and loaned out copies they printed from some master edition this would be a fairer analogy, but in this case libraries would effectively be stealing from the publishers and authors, as file sharing sites are currently.
- talmand 11y ago
  Even with ebooks that some libraries offer, which have the same costs close to zero as you say, there are often arbitrary limitations as to how many they'll lend out at a time.
- belorn 11y ago
  The article main point is that Public libraries are more expensive that File-sharing, and that a zero-marginal cost hyper parallel public library would be indistinguishable to File-sharing. The argument against file sharing then becomes the argument to keep tax paid public libraries sufficient inefficient that the copyright industry can create a living by supplying a better product.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  Well to be fair the costs are irrelevant, you can claim the big issue is that Libraries actually getting their copies for free and in many countries actually charge (even if minute) fees for people to be able to borrow books making them more akin to Netflix than to TorrentFreak. But the setup cost is really not the issue especially considering that you can setup a new digital library at little to no costs these days and as a very large portion of the books (I would say probably 99%>) that you would be able to get a hold on in a public library got digital copies than setting up the same exact collection isn't that hard. Another argument to be made is actually the "value" of the information shared in libraries vs file sharing sites, while you can argue that even the poorest made film or the buggiest game has some educational value you would be hard pressed to claim that file sharing sites help propagate knowledge on a level that is even in the same order of magnitude as public libraries used too. Yes some people might download a book, even a school book or some documentary (which today they are pretty worthless sadly) but majority of downloads are TV shows, Movies, Porn and Games which sorry claiming that they are akin to a public library is just blasphemous.
  - ajuc 11y ago
    > TV shows, Movies, Porn and Games which sorry claiming that they are akin to a public library is just blasphemous How is it blasphemous to claim a book, a movie, and a game are just different forms of art, and should be treated the same - as art? I can understand some people have objections to porn, but then, Safo books are in libraries.
  - belorn 11y ago
    Movies, TV shows, games and music is all part of our common culture. The question is then if children who partakes in culture do better than those who are deprived, and what impact it has on their life. One thing I am sure of is that there is no single artist in the world that isn't also a consumer of art. You don't become a great musician if you don't have access and listen to other peoples music, and you don't become a great movie director without watching other peoples movies. Same should be true for games, painting, and writing. If we removed all non-educational book from public libraries we should see a direct decrease in the number of writers that exist.
    - dogma1138 11y ago
      Yes, but that's not the original argument for the support of libraries. If you want to claim that people benefit from downloading the latest game of thrones episode or the latest call of duty in the same way their great grand parents and great great grand parents did when libraries when public libraries were being established during the mid 19th century you'll find it to be quite an uphill battle. Also since none of your examples actually stated a clear violation of copyright law on what ground do you even attempt to make an argument? Spielberg went to the movies last time I've checked.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  More modern libraries also offer ebooks, so the comparison becomes closer as libraries modernize.
  - matt_morgan 11y ago
    It's not a modernization question, it's a political battle. See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/opinion/e-books-libraries-and-democracy.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/opinion/e-books-libraries-... for example. Some points from there: 1. It's only been in the last couple years that all of the big publishers would actually sell eBooks to libraries. 2. It's not selling, it's licensing, with severe restrictions. 3. They charge higher rates for the eBooks to Libraries than they do to the general public. 4. Some publishers only offer eBooks to libraries when the books have been out for six months. Not in the article, but also important: publishers claim that libraries cannot simply digitize and loan out e-versions of their existing book catalogs--they claim that the eBooks are a different product, and that libraries have no license to do that. That would probably not stand up in court, but libraries aren't eager to antagonize the publishers, from whom they are still trying to get regular eBooks at regular prices. The article is kind of ill-informed on this, too, I'm afraid. The difference between filesharing and public libraries is that public libraries operate within de facto and legal restrictions that don't apply to filesharing. A much better comparison, that fits the author's claim that the only difference is efficiency, is home taping and CD-copying.
  - drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    Except ebooks come with licensing terms. You can't just buy one copy of a book and give it out infinite times. They have limits on use. Its modeled very closely on the physical book system.
    - dublinben 11y ago
      >You can't just buy one copy of a book and give it out infinite times. You very much can though, that's the beautiful power of digital media. Publishing companies with outdated business models are relying on archaic laws to prevent you from doing this. But it can be done!
- Quanticles 11y ago
  Agreed. You could say that public libraries have a natural limit to their degree of sharing, whereas online filesharing does not. For instance, when a popular book comes out the library might have a couple copies. If hundreds want to read those copies then they'll have to wait. Many of those people will be unwilling to wait and buy the book instead, which supports the author.
superdude 11y ago
What an absurd title and statement. Of course you can defend public libraries and oppose file sharing! It costs almost nothing to share digital files, while libraries have very real physical location costs and costs to maintain physical books (and maybe even to purchase digital books?). Not to mention the local community benefits a physical library offers.
- jbob2000 11y ago
  You didn't read the article. His point is that the purpose of a library is knowledge-sharing (and to your point, the expense of a library is for the greater good of knowledge-sharing). Since the purpose of file-sharing is knowledge-sharing, then they are similar in nature.
  - nwatson 11y ago
    A "real-world" library's goal of knowledge-sharing is balanced with the need of the content-provider to make some money to support distribution and authoring of books. The public pays taxes to fund libraries so that people who can't afford to buy (or choose to not buy) particular books can still access them. There's a natural brake on distribution in that each copy can be checked out to at most one library patron at a time. The most direct analogy carried over to the electronic space is e-book lending systems with built-in DRM. These systems usually keep the N-number-of-copies-available-for-loan restriction in place. Unlimited file-sharing does not at all resemble the balance between the-good-of-public-knowledge vs the-right-and-need-for-publishers-and-authors-to-make-money that a physical library model provides.
    - jbob2000 11y ago
      I would argue that the "need for publishers and authors to make money" is where the issue lies, not in the means of knowledge transfer (libraries vs. file sharing). Just like how governments subsidize libraries, so too should they subsidize file sharing.
  - librvf 11y ago
    Well, I read the article, and the author's point about a library being for knowledge-sharing is misleading and possibly even dishonest. It's over-emphasized and ignores other important realities about how and why a library works the way it does.
theoapps 11y ago
I agree, making information as widely available and accessible as possible can only be a net positive for a society in the long run. It would be interesting if business models shifted more towards crowdfunding.
joe5150 11y ago
Any useful comparison of libraries to file sharing ends at believing both are just places where Stuff Is and you can go and get it for free. It's to our collective benefit that libraries are much more than that.
mikeash 11y ago
The article assumes that if you defend public libraries, you must defend them for the same reason the author defends them, and that particular reason happens to fit well with file sharing. But there are other reasons to defend public libraries than simply the fact that they disseminate knowledge and this is worth carving out an exception in copyright. I think most people would defend public libraries on the basis of the doctrine of first sale: after an author sells a copy of a work, they can't control how you use it. As long as you're not making unauthorized copies of it, you can lend it out or do whatever else you like with it.
- moviuro 11y ago
  How is reading a book different of watching a movie? When I'm done, I can return the book/delete the movie. The only difference is outlined in the article: the movie can be watched simultaneously by different people who got it, whilst I'm the only one with the book in my hands.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Yes, and that's the doctrine of first sale: you can do what you like with a copy you own, besides make additional unauthorized copies. As such, libraries operate within the law and within the spirit of copyright, while file sharing doesn't. You can certainly object to the spirit of copyright as expressed here, but there's nothing inconsistent about supporting it, and supporting public libraries.
  - lumisota 11y ago
    You say "only" as if this isn't an important distinction in terms of creating value for a copyrighted work.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Confused: you can 'return' the movie AND keep a copy, which you distribute widely thus ruining any chance of the creator profiting by their work. Can't do that with the physical book. Not for free anyway.
librvf 11y ago
Yes, it is different. It differs in efficiency. Not an irrelevant difference. A public library is funded and maintained by the same community that uses it. The manual processes required to consume the material are a natural check in the process and the result is a mild shift in equilibrium. Communities benefit and libraries are legitimate customers, so publishers are at least still getting paid. File sharing's equilibrium is nowhere near as balanced as the library. And equilibrium matters. It's the difference between a healthy and stable ecosystem and a rodent plague (https://youtu.be/zWVw-j8eYSk https://youtu.be/zWVw-j8eYSk).
- dublinben 11y ago
  Do you think that peer to peer filesharing communities are not also funded and maintained by the community that uses it? I contend that this is exactly the case. There must also be an original legitimate customer of the work being shared, so the publisher is still getting paid. The difference does only lie in efficiency. In a world of ever-increasing efficiency, why do we shackle libraries to 20th Century levels of service?
  - krapp 11y ago
    Libraries legitimately own every copy they distribute. If they lend 10 copies of a book, 10 copies were paid for. They don't pay for one then Xerox 9 more. File sharing exists explicitly to deny publishers payment for anything they distribute. 10,000 copies results in no compensation beyond the original.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - librvf 11y ago
    We're not using the same definition of community. A community that shares a public library is a community that shares a very broad range of common customs, traditions, values, and interests. They are literal neighbors. They have a shared interest in the success of the community along multiple economic, social, and cultural dimensions. "Knowledge for the common good" is a value, but pursuit of that value conflicts with other things the community also values. Resolution of all those conflicts provides natural checks and balances. The only common interest of the "file sharing community" is sharing files, and any political or technical issues that happen to be directly related to sharing files. The virtual community can grow and expand infinitely based on only that one dimension. There are no natural checks and balances the way there would be for a real community. Instead of resolving conflicts, anyone who doesn't share that one primary value is not part of the community.
dingaling 11y ago
The author states: "You would frequently hear that authors are paid royalties when their books are borrowed from a library. This claim is not true. " I'm not sure what he's trying to say. In the UK, public libraries are part of the PLR scheme in which 1,000 annually-rotated libraries provide their lending details which are then scaled-up in a linear fashion and the royalties calculated on that basis. It does mean that low-volume authors might not receive royalties one year if their loans were not sampled, but the concept is that they'd receive out-of-proportion royalties the next year when the sample set rotated. The only reason a sample was used instead of direct measurement was due to the volume of data; automation could nowadays calculate per-author royalties on an all-branches basis. Source: I summer-jobbed in a library back in the mid-90s and compiled the PLR statistics for the branch. https://www.plr.uk.com/libraryInformation/sampleLibLists.htm https://www.plr.uk.com/libraryInformation/sampleLibLists.htm
- commentereleven 11y ago
  He claims that these are not copyright royalties, but rather a cultural grant.
  - dingaling 11y ago
    Aha that helps, thank you. He's also wrong there, unfortunately. https://www.plrinternational.com/faqs/faqs.htm#legal https://www.plrinternational.com/faqs/faqs.htm#legal
    - scintill76 11y ago
      "There are no working PLR systems yet in the United States, South America, Africa or Asia." So the existence of this system in some places doesn't itself invalidate the argument in places without that system.
- rbehrends 11y ago
  It's the same in Germany, §27 UrhG [1]. [1] http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_urhg/englisch_urhg.html#p0131 http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_urhg/englisch_urh...
gayprogrammer 11y ago
Many comments here compare the cost of a physical library to near-zero cost of the internet, but that's not a fair comparison itself. The cost of a physical library is physical, not informational. The article describes a situation where information sharing was challenged by the industry that has a physical monopoly on media (books). They were not granted informational monopoly, they only have monopoly on physical manufacturing. Thus the absence of physical cost (or difference in efficiency) of sharing information does not change the concept of a library.
- librvf 11y ago
  It's a one-dimensional argument that relies heavily on rhetoric. It's hard to draw any practical conclusions from such an argument. The point is mostly just to persuade you that file-sharing is good and anyone who opposes file-sharing is dumb.
  - gayprogrammer 11y ago
    The only practical conclusion I can draw about file-sharing is that it does not look like it will stop. Information sharing is only going to increase--that's what the internet was designed for. Publishers will probably need to focus on physical means of revenue that the internet can not inherently provide.
moultano 11y ago
Of course you can, but it requires accepting that copyright is an imperfect practical compromise between opposing goals, and not some platonic ideal.
Tomte 11y ago
Efficiency isn't everything, by the way. Effectiveness is another important metric. Can filesharing give me access to all those millions of books that have never been digitized? No? So I guess libraries can do something that filesharing can't. I won't go so far to claim that filesharing could never give me a perfect replica of Bembo's "De Aetna". But it doesn't today. See? I can defend libraries on another criterion than efficiency.
- saint_fiasco 11y ago
  But that criterion can also be used to defend file sharing. Many people are worried that copyrights last so long that some old movies that are good but not longer profitable are not being preserved anywhere except by pirates.
smacktoward 11y ago
Falkvinge's argument boils down to this: So we can observe that public libraries and file-sharing differ in scale and efficiency – and only in scale and efficiency... That has to be a first in the public debate: Are those people actually standing up and demanding that public services, such as public libraries, be made less efficient, to have less output for the tax money spent on it? I have to assume he's playing naïve here to make his point, because otherwise this argument is pretty silly. First, "differs only in scale" is a ridiculous way to try and erase the distinctions between any two things. A snowflake and an avalanche also differ only in scale; that doesn't mean that if you like a white Christmas you'd love being buried alive on K2. Scale is the difference between a refreshing drink and drowning. Second, no public service operates under a mandate of "maximum efficiency at any cost"; they operate under legal and regulatory frameworks designed to balance various different public interests. Highways have speed limits and traffic laws and restrictions on driving while intoxicated, along with uniformed officers to enforce these. They all reduce the theoretical efficiency of the highway as a conveyor of traffic, but they're there because there are other interests the highway needs to serve as well, like getting as few of the people who use it as possible killed. Different jurisdictions have different sets of laws that balance these interests in different ways, but they all try to balance them somehow. Libraries are the same way. Knowledge-sharing is an important public interest that they serve, but the public has other interests as well. It has an interest in authors continuing to want to write books, for instance, and publishers continuing to want to publish them. So libraries strike a balance; they pay for their books, they lend them for a limited time, and so forth. These restrictions allow for wide public access without unduly cramping the market demand for books. E-books make the old balance libraries set more complicated, since it's harder to lend them. Without some kind of DRM, you're not really lending them at all, you're giving free copies away, which is something very different than what libraries do with physical books. DRM can address that, but it makes using the library's resources more difficult and annoying. So the old balance needs to be recalibrated to find a way to meet all the interests the old one did. But replacing the world's libraries with the Pirate Bay would be blowing up that balance completely, not recalibrating it.
dikaiosune 11y ago
I'm curious to what extent this comparison holds true for the content these two systems share. My (under informed) understanding is that piracy mostly traffics in movies, TV shows, video games, anime, adult content ahem, etc. While libraries loan some of those things, they mostly loan books. If PirateBay was mostly promoting the sharing of fiction and nonfiction, I might be inclined to buy this argument for an educated populace. But I don't think that HBO's Game of Thrones or The Seventh Son really provide the same level of education as many (if not most) books a library would lend.
- jack-r-abbit 11y ago
  Books are also widely copied and shared... as audio files or eBook files.
kethinov 11y ago
A related sentiment: http://freepubliclibrary.org http://freepubliclibrary.org
virmundi 11y ago
There is a false equivalence. They both "share" a piece of content. The difference is that a) the library is bereft of an item while checked out and b) the library, or some benefactor, paid for the item. This means that the content creator got paid for their content When a person shares a file, they are not bereft anything besides some bandwidth for the transfer. They can consume the media as another copies or streams from them. The same is not true for a library or by extension private media. Only one person can consume. If they wanted a true equivalence, you can do it. Putting aside the fact that the DMCA says that private parties cannot backup DRMed material, I can do what ever I want with my material (right of first sale). I can read a book. I can throw it at the dog. I can burn it. I can lend it to a friend. The same is true if I converted the physical medium into a lockable digital resource. In this scenario, I have file copied into a server. The server is my only means of accessing the content. The server is instructed to create a global lock on the media when consumed. So within my house, only one party can consume the material at a time. If I made this server public, I would be effectively allowing anyone to "borrow" my content. Once the content was watched, the consumer would lose access to the content and the global lock would be freed. If I wanted to listen to Abba's Dancing Queen while some other person did, I would be blocked. "Sorry, that content is locked". Now I, as a content owner, am bereft of my material. The only way to get access to it is to forcibly take the global lock from the person, thus ending their streaming. So we can take this simple server concept and apply a Popcorn Time veneer across it. People make their LEGALLY purchased content available. The nodes in this distributed system file lock. It's searchable. It's free. It's perfectly legal (except for the DRM bit, but that's another issue).
joesmo 11y ago
People who value money over educating the public will support copyright, while people who value public education and free access to culture and media do not. It's really that simple. No argument's going to convince one side to hop on to the other. Unfortunately (for this matter), it's not 1850 anymore and the amount of people in power that value public education and culture (in the US at least) is virtually asymptotical to zero, thus the current laws we see demonizing copying. Ironically, a lot of the people behind those laws, especially big tech companies, benefit greatly from a technically educated and skilled public that would not exist, or at least be much smaller, without piracy. Is it wrong for me to pirate a few thousand dollars worth of software, educate myself, and be able to contribute many million dollars worth of work to society? Copyright supporters certainly think so, but I'd argue that the benefits to the public far outweigh what the copyright owners wrongfully claim as "losses" but is really nothing more than wishful imagination of profits they would not have made anyway. Of course, arguments for public benefits these days are unfashionable. The zeitgeist is to fight for the copyright holders to the end, despite the fact that most of the copyright holders are not actually the creators, not actually the people who would or would not benefit from copyright law. The fact that, for example, most artists on Spotify make about the same amount whether they're on the service or not is a whole other discussion and reason to end or modify copyright itself, but it certainly kills the argument that there would be no creative works if artists didn't get paid. That's actually the case currently and it's quite ironic to see the handful of extremely rich artists pretend to fight for the guy who made two dollars all last year while his record label and music service raked in millions. Copyright law mostly benefits scumbags who've never created anything worth perusing in their lives.

40 points by moviuro 11y ago

This isn't really a fair comparison. File-sharing has marginal costs close to zero, so wide distribution becomes essentially free. Public libraries must hold an inventory that can only be increased by paying for another copy of the book, movie, etc. If public libraries had their own printing presses and loaned out copies they printed from some master edition this would be a fairer analogy, but in this case libraries would effectively be stealing from the publishers and authors, as file sharing sites are currently.

talmand 11y ago
Even with ebooks that some libraries offer, which have the same costs close to zero as you say, there are often arbitrary limitations as to how many they'll lend out at a time.
belorn 11y ago
The article main point is that Public libraries are more expensive that File-sharing, and that a zero-marginal cost hyper parallel public library would be indistinguishable to File-sharing. The argument against file sharing then becomes the argument to keep tax paid public libraries sufficient inefficient that the copyright industry can create a living by supplying a better product.
dogma1138 11y ago
Well to be fair the costs are irrelevant, you can claim the big issue is that Libraries actually getting their copies for free and in many countries actually charge (even if minute) fees for people to be able to borrow books making them more akin to Netflix than to TorrentFreak. But the setup cost is really not the issue especially considering that you can setup a new digital library at little to no costs these days and as a very large portion of the books (I would say probably 99%>) that you would be able to get a hold on in a public library got digital copies than setting up the same exact collection isn't that hard. Another argument to be made is actually the "value" of the information shared in libraries vs file sharing sites, while you can argue that even the poorest made film or the buggiest game has some educational value you would be hard pressed to claim that file sharing sites help propagate knowledge on a level that is even in the same order of magnitude as public libraries used too. Yes some people might download a book, even a school book or some documentary (which today they are pretty worthless sadly) but majority of downloads are TV shows, Movies, Porn and Games which sorry claiming that they are akin to a public library is just blasphemous.
- ajuc 11y ago
  > TV shows, Movies, Porn and Games which sorry claiming that they are akin to a public library is just blasphemous How is it blasphemous to claim a book, a movie, and a game are just different forms of art, and should be treated the same - as art? I can understand some people have objections to porn, but then, Safo books are in libraries.
- belorn 11y ago
  Movies, TV shows, games and music is all part of our common culture. The question is then if children who partakes in culture do better than those who are deprived, and what impact it has on their life. One thing I am sure of is that there is no single artist in the world that isn't also a consumer of art. You don't become a great musician if you don't have access and listen to other peoples music, and you don't become a great movie director without watching other peoples movies. Same should be true for games, painting, and writing. If we removed all non-educational book from public libraries we should see a direct decrease in the number of writers that exist.
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    Yes, but that's not the original argument for the support of libraries. If you want to claim that people benefit from downloading the latest game of thrones episode or the latest call of duty in the same way their great grand parents and great great grand parents did when libraries when public libraries were being established during the mid 19th century you'll find it to be quite an uphill battle. Also since none of your examples actually stated a clear violation of copyright law on what ground do you even attempt to make an argument? Spielberg went to the movies last time I've checked.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
More modern libraries also offer ebooks, so the comparison becomes closer as libraries modernize.
- matt_morgan 11y ago
  It's not a modernization question, it's a political battle. See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/opinion/e-books-libraries-and-democracy.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/opinion/e-books-libraries-... for example. Some points from there: 1. It's only been in the last couple years that all of the big publishers would actually sell eBooks to libraries. 2. It's not selling, it's licensing, with severe restrictions. 3. They charge higher rates for the eBooks to Libraries than they do to the general public. 4. Some publishers only offer eBooks to libraries when the books have been out for six months. Not in the article, but also important: publishers claim that libraries cannot simply digitize and loan out e-versions of their existing book catalogs--they claim that the eBooks are a different product, and that libraries have no license to do that. That would probably not stand up in court, but libraries aren't eager to antagonize the publishers, from whom they are still trying to get regular eBooks at regular prices. The article is kind of ill-informed on this, too, I'm afraid. The difference between filesharing and public libraries is that public libraries operate within de facto and legal restrictions that don't apply to filesharing. A much better comparison, that fits the author's claim that the only difference is efficiency, is home taping and CD-copying.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  Except ebooks come with licensing terms. You can't just buy one copy of a book and give it out infinite times. They have limits on use. Its modeled very closely on the physical book system.
  - dublinben 11y ago
    >You can't just buy one copy of a book and give it out infinite times. You very much can though, that's the beautiful power of digital media. Publishing companies with outdated business models are relying on archaic laws to prevent you from doing this. But it can be done!
Quanticles 11y ago
Agreed. You could say that public libraries have a natural limit to their degree of sharing, whereas online filesharing does not. For instance, when a popular book comes out the library might have a couple copies. If hundreds want to read those copies then they'll have to wait. Many of those people will be unwilling to wait and buy the book instead, which supports the author.

superdude 11y ago

What an absurd title and statement. Of course you can defend public libraries and oppose file sharing! It costs almost nothing to share digital files, while libraries have very real physical location costs and costs to maintain physical books (and maybe even to purchase digital books?). Not to mention the local community benefits a physical library offers.

jbob2000 11y ago
You didn't read the article. His point is that the purpose of a library is knowledge-sharing (and to your point, the expense of a library is for the greater good of knowledge-sharing). Since the purpose of file-sharing is knowledge-sharing, then they are similar in nature.
- nwatson 11y ago
  A "real-world" library's goal of knowledge-sharing is balanced with the need of the content-provider to make some money to support distribution and authoring of books. The public pays taxes to fund libraries so that people who can't afford to buy (or choose to not buy) particular books can still access them. There's a natural brake on distribution in that each copy can be checked out to at most one library patron at a time. The most direct analogy carried over to the electronic space is e-book lending systems with built-in DRM. These systems usually keep the N-number-of-copies-available-for-loan restriction in place. Unlimited file-sharing does not at all resemble the balance between the-good-of-public-knowledge vs the-right-and-need-for-publishers-and-authors-to-make-money that a physical library model provides.
  - jbob2000 11y ago
    I would argue that the "need for publishers and authors to make money" is where the issue lies, not in the means of knowledge transfer (libraries vs. file sharing). Just like how governments subsidize libraries, so too should they subsidize file sharing.
- librvf 11y ago
  Well, I read the article, and the author's point about a library being for knowledge-sharing is misleading and possibly even dishonest. It's over-emphasized and ignores other important realities about how and why a library works the way it does.

theoapps 11y ago

I agree, making information as widely available and accessible as possible can only be a net positive for a society in the long run. It would be interesting if business models shifted more towards crowdfunding.

joe5150 11y ago

Any useful comparison of libraries to file sharing ends at believing both are just places where Stuff Is and you can go and get it for free. It's to our collective benefit that libraries are much more than that.

mikeash 11y ago

The article assumes that if you defend public libraries, you must defend them for the same reason the author defends them, and that particular reason happens to fit well with file sharing. But there are other reasons to defend public libraries than simply the fact that they disseminate knowledge and this is worth carving out an exception in copyright. I think most people would defend public libraries on the basis of the doctrine of first sale: after an author sells a copy of a work, they can't control how you use it. As long as you're not making unauthorized copies of it, you can lend it out or do whatever else you like with it.

moviuro 11y ago
How is reading a book different of watching a movie? When I'm done, I can return the book/delete the movie. The only difference is outlined in the article: the movie can be watched simultaneously by different people who got it, whilst I'm the only one with the book in my hands.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Yes, and that's the doctrine of first sale: you can do what you like with a copy you own, besides make additional unauthorized copies. As such, libraries operate within the law and within the spirit of copyright, while file sharing doesn't. You can certainly object to the spirit of copyright as expressed here, but there's nothing inconsistent about supporting it, and supporting public libraries.
- lumisota 11y ago
  You say "only" as if this isn't an important distinction in terms of creating value for a copyrighted work.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Confused: you can 'return' the movie AND keep a copy, which you distribute widely thus ruining any chance of the creator profiting by their work. Can't do that with the physical book. Not for free anyway.

librvf 11y ago

Yes, it is different. It differs in efficiency. Not an irrelevant difference. A public library is funded and maintained by the same community that uses it. The manual processes required to consume the material are a natural check in the process and the result is a mild shift in equilibrium. Communities benefit and libraries are legitimate customers, so publishers are at least still getting paid. File sharing's equilibrium is nowhere near as balanced as the library. And equilibrium matters. It's the difference between a healthy and stable ecosystem and a rodent plague (https://youtu.be/zWVw-j8eYSk https://youtu.be/zWVw-j8eYSk).

dublinben 11y ago
Do you think that peer to peer filesharing communities are not also funded and maintained by the community that uses it? I contend that this is exactly the case. There must also be an original legitimate customer of the work being shared, so the publisher is still getting paid. The difference does only lie in efficiency. In a world of ever-increasing efficiency, why do we shackle libraries to 20th Century levels of service?
- krapp 11y ago
  Libraries legitimately own every copy they distribute. If they lend 10 copies of a book, 10 copies were paid for. They don't pay for one then Xerox 9 more. File sharing exists explicitly to deny publishers payment for anything they distribute. 10,000 copies results in no compensation beyond the original.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- librvf 11y ago
  We're not using the same definition of community. A community that shares a public library is a community that shares a very broad range of common customs, traditions, values, and interests. They are literal neighbors. They have a shared interest in the success of the community along multiple economic, social, and cultural dimensions. "Knowledge for the common good" is a value, but pursuit of that value conflicts with other things the community also values. Resolution of all those conflicts provides natural checks and balances. The only common interest of the "file sharing community" is sharing files, and any political or technical issues that happen to be directly related to sharing files. The virtual community can grow and expand infinitely based on only that one dimension. There are no natural checks and balances the way there would be for a real community. Instead of resolving conflicts, anyone who doesn't share that one primary value is not part of the community.

dingaling 11y ago

The author states: "You would frequently hear that authors are paid royalties when their books are borrowed from a library. This claim is not true. " I'm not sure what he's trying to say. In the UK, public libraries are part of the PLR scheme in which 1,000 annually-rotated libraries provide their lending details which are then scaled-up in a linear fashion and the royalties calculated on that basis. It does mean that low-volume authors might not receive royalties one year if their loans were not sampled, but the concept is that they'd receive out-of-proportion royalties the next year when the sample set rotated. The only reason a sample was used instead of direct measurement was due to the volume of data; automation could nowadays calculate per-author royalties on an all-branches basis. Source: I summer-jobbed in a library back in the mid-90s and compiled the PLR statistics for the branch. https://www.plr.uk.com/libraryInformation/sampleLibLists.htm https://www.plr.uk.com/libraryInformation/sampleLibLists.htm

commentereleven 11y ago
He claims that these are not copyright royalties, but rather a cultural grant.
- dingaling 11y ago
  Aha that helps, thank you. He's also wrong there, unfortunately. https://www.plrinternational.com/faqs/faqs.htm#legal https://www.plrinternational.com/faqs/faqs.htm#legal
  - scintill76 11y ago
    "There are no working PLR systems yet in the United States, South America, Africa or Asia." So the existence of this system in some places doesn't itself invalidate the argument in places without that system.
rbehrends 11y ago
It's the same in Germany, §27 UrhG [1]. [1] http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_urhg/englisch_urhg.html#p0131 http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_urhg/englisch_urh...

gayprogrammer 11y ago

Many comments here compare the cost of a physical library to near-zero cost of the internet, but that's not a fair comparison itself. The cost of a physical library is physical, not informational. The article describes a situation where information sharing was challenged by the industry that has a physical monopoly on media (books). They were not granted informational monopoly, they only have monopoly on physical manufacturing. Thus the absence of physical cost (or difference in efficiency) of sharing information does not change the concept of a library.

librvf 11y ago
It's a one-dimensional argument that relies heavily on rhetoric. It's hard to draw any practical conclusions from such an argument. The point is mostly just to persuade you that file-sharing is good and anyone who opposes file-sharing is dumb.
- gayprogrammer 11y ago
  The only practical conclusion I can draw about file-sharing is that it does not look like it will stop. Information sharing is only going to increase--that's what the internet was designed for. Publishers will probably need to focus on physical means of revenue that the internet can not inherently provide.

moultano 11y ago

Of course you can, but it requires accepting that copyright is an imperfect practical compromise between opposing goals, and not some platonic ideal.

Tomte 11y ago

Efficiency isn't everything, by the way. Effectiveness is another important metric. Can filesharing give me access to all those millions of books that have never been digitized? No? So I guess libraries can do something that filesharing can't. I won't go so far to claim that filesharing could never give me a perfect replica of Bembo's "De Aetna". But it doesn't today. See? I can defend libraries on another criterion than efficiency.

saint_fiasco 11y ago
But that criterion can also be used to defend file sharing. Many people are worried that copyrights last so long that some old movies that are good but not longer profitable are not being preserved anywhere except by pirates.

smacktoward 11y ago

Falkvinge's argument boils down to this: So we can observe that public libraries and file-sharing differ in scale and efficiency – and only in scale and efficiency... That has to be a first in the public debate: Are those people actually standing up and demanding that public services, such as public libraries, be made less efficient, to have less output for the tax money spent on it? I have to assume he's playing naïve here to make his point, because otherwise this argument is pretty silly. First, "differs only in scale" is a ridiculous way to try and erase the distinctions between any two things. A snowflake and an avalanche also differ only in scale; that doesn't mean that if you like a white Christmas you'd love being buried alive on K2. Scale is the difference between a refreshing drink and drowning. Second, no public service operates under a mandate of "maximum efficiency at any cost"; they operate under legal and regulatory frameworks designed to balance various different public interests. Highways have speed limits and traffic laws and restrictions on driving while intoxicated, along with uniformed officers to enforce these. They all reduce the theoretical efficiency of the highway as a conveyor of traffic, but they're there because there are other interests the highway needs to serve as well, like getting as few of the people who use it as possible killed. Different jurisdictions have different sets of laws that balance these interests in different ways, but they all try to balance them somehow. Libraries are the same way. Knowledge-sharing is an important public interest that they serve, but the public has other interests as well. It has an interest in authors continuing to want to write books, for instance, and publishers continuing to want to publish them. So libraries strike a balance; they pay for their books, they lend them for a limited time, and so forth. These restrictions allow for wide public access without unduly cramping the market demand for books. E-books make the old balance libraries set more complicated, since it's harder to lend them. Without some kind of DRM, you're not really lending them at all, you're giving free copies away, which is something very different than what libraries do with physical books. DRM can address that, but it makes using the library's resources more difficult and annoying. So the old balance needs to be recalibrated to find a way to meet all the interests the old one did. But replacing the world's libraries with the Pirate Bay would be blowing up that balance completely, not recalibrating it.

dikaiosune 11y ago

I'm curious to what extent this comparison holds true for the content these two systems share. My (under informed) understanding is that piracy mostly traffics in movies, TV shows, video games, anime, adult content ahem, etc. While libraries loan some of those things, they mostly loan books. If PirateBay was mostly promoting the sharing of fiction and nonfiction, I might be inclined to buy this argument for an educated populace. But I don't think that HBO's Game of Thrones or The Seventh Son really provide the same level of education as many (if not most) books a library would lend.

jack-r-abbit 11y ago
Books are also widely copied and shared... as audio files or eBook files.

kethinov 11y ago

A related sentiment: http://freepubliclibrary.org http://freepubliclibrary.org

virmundi 11y ago

There is a false equivalence. They both "share" a piece of content. The difference is that a) the library is bereft of an item while checked out and b) the library, or some benefactor, paid for the item. This means that the content creator got paid for their content When a person shares a file, they are not bereft anything besides some bandwidth for the transfer. They can consume the media as another copies or streams from them. The same is not true for a library or by extension private media. Only one person can consume. If they wanted a true equivalence, you can do it. Putting aside the fact that the DMCA says that private parties cannot backup DRMed material, I can do what ever I want with my material (right of first sale). I can read a book. I can throw it at the dog. I can burn it. I can lend it to a friend. The same is true if I converted the physical medium into a lockable digital resource. In this scenario, I have file copied into a server. The server is my only means of accessing the content. The server is instructed to create a global lock on the media when consumed. So within my house, only one party can consume the material at a time. If I made this server public, I would be effectively allowing anyone to "borrow" my content. Once the content was watched, the consumer would lose access to the content and the global lock would be freed. If I wanted to listen to Abba's Dancing Queen while some other person did, I would be blocked. "Sorry, that content is locked". Now I, as a content owner, am bereft of my material. The only way to get access to it is to forcibly take the global lock from the person, thus ending their streaming. So we can take this simple server concept and apply a Popcorn Time veneer across it. People make their LEGALLY purchased content available. The nodes in this distributed system file lock. It's searchable. It's free. It's perfectly legal (except for the DRM bit, but that's another issue).

joesmo 11y ago

People who value money over educating the public will support copyright, while people who value public education and free access to culture and media do not. It's really that simple. No argument's going to convince one side to hop on to the other. Unfortunately (for this matter), it's not 1850 anymore and the amount of people in power that value public education and culture (in the US at least) is virtually asymptotical to zero, thus the current laws we see demonizing copying. Ironically, a lot of the people behind those laws, especially big tech companies, benefit greatly from a technically educated and skilled public that would not exist, or at least be much smaller, without piracy. Is it wrong for me to pirate a few thousand dollars worth of software, educate myself, and be able to contribute many million dollars worth of work to society? Copyright supporters certainly think so, but I'd argue that the benefits to the public far outweigh what the copyright owners wrongfully claim as "losses" but is really nothing more than wishful imagination of profits they would not have made anyway. Of course, arguments for public benefits these days are unfashionable. The zeitgeist is to fight for the copyright holders to the end, despite the fact that most of the copyright holders are not actually the creators, not actually the people who would or would not benefit from copyright law. The fact that, for example, most artists on Spotify make about the same amount whether they're on the service or not is a whole other discussion and reason to end or modify copyright itself, but it certainly kills the argument that there would be no creative works if artists didn't get paid. That's actually the case currently and it's quite ironic to see the handful of extremely rich artists pretend to fight for the guy who made two dollars all last year while his record label and music service raked in millions. Copyright law mostly benefits scumbags who've never created anything worth perusing in their lives.