3 ms·

Wait, what I want to ask is: Why doesn't anyone perform Sci-Hub-like vigilantism to save these works, i.e. scan the books and put them on line? Without big-pock

by Jun8 8y ago

Wait, what I want to ask is: Why doesn't anyone perform Sci-Hub-like vigilantism to save these works, i.e. scan the books and put them on line? Without big-pocketed companies like Elsevier (or music labels in the days of Naspter) to fight against it, such a site would have few natural enemies. EDIT: The more I think about this the more I get riled up about the current state of affairs in orphan books. I'm willing to start a project like this or contribute it to it in any way, please ping me if you have such a project or just feel the same way.

Finnucane 8y ago
See also: Google v. aap re: orphan books.
- Jun8 8y ago
  I think a site similar to Sci-Hub to host, say, 10k orphan works is not equivalent to Google's planned scanning of very large number of books and potentially profiting from them (if not from selling them at least from using the text as input to their various ML systems). If you provide the works freely you undermine many of the arguments that AAP had.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
Doesn't LibraryGenesis cover this space?
- Jun8 8y ago
  My experience is that LibGen is somewhat weak in the literary space. For example, it doesn't have any book by Lola Ridge, the poet mentioned in the article.
mikekchar 8y ago
Indeed, this is exactly what scanslation groups did with manga. There was a time when manga was largely unheard of in North America. It's now massively popular. When publishers like Viz was getting started, they were licensing volumes of manga for as little as $1000 per volume -- with no royalties!!! (I happen to know this because the scanslation group I was involved with actually tried to license the manga we were subbing -- we just got stymied with the complications of printing and distribution). I have to caution you, though, that you could get sued at any time. In some countries it's even a crime and you could go to jail. Our scanslation group was pretty under the radar and only scanslated manga that was no longer in print (the price I quoted was not for that... it was something quite a bit more popular. I just can't remember the title -- Possibly Inu Yasha... anyway, one of the big Viz titles). I am 100% certain that the Japanese publisher knew what we were doing and politely looked the other way in our case. This will not be the case for all publishers out there. You might be trying to work in their best interest, but they won't see it that way.
icebraining 8y ago
The Internet Archive, besides their fantastic work in web archiving, also does digitalization of books: https://archive.org/scanning https://archive.org/scanning Seem more here: https://blog.archive.org/2017/10/10/books-from-1923-to-1941-now-liberated/ https://blog.archive.org/2017/10/10/books-from-1923-to-1941-...

by Jun8 8y ago

Finnucane 8y ago

See also: Google v. aap re: orphan books.

Jun8 8y ago
I think a site similar to Sci-Hub to host, say, 10k orphan works is not equivalent to Google's planned scanning of very large number of books and potentially profiting from them (if not from selling them at least from using the text as input to their various ML systems). If you provide the works freely you undermine many of the arguments that AAP had.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

Doesn't LibraryGenesis cover this space?

Jun8 8y ago
My experience is that LibGen is somewhat weak in the literary space. For example, it doesn't have any book by Lola Ridge, the poet mentioned in the article.

mikekchar 8y ago

Indeed, this is exactly what scanslation groups did with manga. There was a time when manga was largely unheard of in North America. It's now massively popular. When publishers like Viz was getting started, they were licensing volumes of manga for as little as $1000 per volume -- with no royalties!!! (I happen to know this because the scanslation group I was involved with actually tried to license the manga we were subbing -- we just got stymied with the complications of printing and distribution). I have to caution you, though, that you could get sued at any time. In some countries it's even a crime and you could go to jail. Our scanslation group was pretty under the radar and only scanslated manga that was no longer in print (the price I quoted was not for that... it was something quite a bit more popular. I just can't remember the title -- Possibly Inu Yasha... anyway, one of the big Viz titles). I am 100% certain that the Japanese publisher knew what we were doing and politely looked the other way in our case. This will not be the case for all publishers out there. You might be trying to work in their best interest, but they won't see it that way.

icebraining 8y ago

The Internet Archive, besides their fantastic work in web archiving, also does digitalization of books: https://archive.org/scanning https://archive.org/scanning Seem more here: https://blog.archive.org/2017/10/10/books-from-1923-to-1941-now-liberated/ https://blog.archive.org/2017/10/10/books-from-1923-to-1941-...