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Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library Harms Authors
- zhdc1 7y agoDistasteful, and not something I agree with at all, but I appreciate that someone is making an alternative argument (even if that's what they're paid to do).
- clarry 7y agoExcept that there's no argument, just the same old copying = theft meme and a false dichotomy between buying and copying, plus a bunch of whining.
- moron4hire 7y agoThey also conveniently avoid accurately describing the scope of what IA is offering, plus misrepresent how IA acquired the books. http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-emergency-library-to-provide-digitized-books-to-students-and-the-public/ http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-eme... "This library brings together all the books from Phillips Academy Andover and Marygrove College, and much of Trent University’s collections, along with over a million other books donated from other libraries to readers worldwide that are locked out of their libraries. ... We understand that we’re not going to be able to meet everyone’s needs; our collection, at 1.4 million modern books, is a fraction of the size of a large metropolitan library system or a great academic library. The books that we’ve digitized have been acquired with a focus on materials published during the 20th century, the vast majority of which do not have a commercially available ebook. This means that while readers and students are able to access latest best sellers and popular titles through services like OverDrive and Hoopla, they don’t have access to the books that only exist in paper, sitting inaccessible on their library shelves. That’s where our collection fits in—we offer digital access to books, many of which are otherwise unavailable to the public while our schools and libraries are closed. In addition to the National Emergency Library, the Internet Archive also offers free public access to 2.5 million fully downloadable public domain books, which do not require waitlists to view."
- Apocryphon 7y agoFor context, up until the IA made the lending unlimited, they were adhering to the practice of Controlled Digital Lending: https://controlleddigitallending.org https://controlleddigitallending.org
- arpa 7y agoWell, thank you authors guild, for pointing me to the great library. 'Tis a shame you are people who would see the great library of alexandria burn in the sake of profit.
- voiper1 7y agoaka Streisand effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect - The Streisand effect is a social phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information has the unintended consequence of further publicizing that information, often via the Internet.
- catalogia 7y agoTo show my gratitude to the author's guild, I'd like to point out that Library Genesis exists and is pretty great. Unlike the Internet Archive, they don't bother paying lip service to cretinous publishing industry lawyers; 'lending' is fully unrestricted year round. Up-to-date URLs to mirrors can be found on their wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis
- coldpie 7y agoAlso a good reminder to donate to the Internet Archive if you can. They do amazing work and it is not cheap: https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1204428347444547584 https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1204428347444547584
- incompatible 7y agoCopyright just introduces artificial and undesirable scarcity, and I doubt that it really supports many authors. This piece says that mean writing incomes are only $20,300 a year, and I wouldn't be surprised if a large proportion goes to a few of the most popular authors and many get little or nothing. Scrap copyright and find other ways to support creators. I'd suggest funding from government for a decent number of writing scholarships with input from various sources (including the general public if feasible) on which writers to support. This could be started without scrapping copyright initially, simply require that all output from the scholarships be released under Creative Commons Zero.
- incompatible 7y agoThis isn't particularly radical, arts and science already receive quite a bit of government funding in many countries. I suggest doing more of it and expanding it to new areas, and adding the CC0 requirement. I doubt that it would cost much compared to the amounts governments are throwing around these days to support people, and at least some creative output would come from it.
- smichel17 7y agoCC-BY and CC-BY-SA are also both fine licenses for this type of work.
- dash2 7y agoThe idea that artists should be first forbidden from selling the work they create, and then supported by the state, is totalitarian. Analogy: would you make all code compulsorily open-source? (I know some people will answer yes: in my view, they're nuts.)
- gvjddbnvdrbv 7y agoI think OP was suggesting that authors should have a choice. Either take a government grant in which case output is open source or don't.
- cproctor 7y agoFunny typo in their statement: "AI is pretending to fix a nonexistent problem."
- fjfaase 7y agoAs with almost all creative arts, a very small portion of the artist are taking the majority of the profits, while 99% of the artist can barely make a living, often only do it as a side job. I guess that most people do not realize that only a small portion of the sales of a publication goes to the author. When looking at copyrights, it is easy to look at the few artists that are making millions and forgetting about the majority that can barely cover their costs. Copyright laws also have been getting a bad reputation because they have extended to benefit people and institutions far beyond the original artist/authors and are viewed as unfair. But lets not forget that they also allow many authors to make a living. Also publishers will perish when copyrights are broken down and as a result they no longer will be able to support authors while they are still working on their books.
- moron4hire 7y agoPublishers gave up supporting authors while working on their books years ago. They pretty much only throw their money behind established authors.
- henearkr 7y agoI discover many books I love on the wild web, and then decide to get the paper version when I'm hooked by the style / want to read it while doing digital detox / want to be able to leaf through efficiently if it is a technical book, etc. If anything, wild ebooks have increased a lot my paper books purchases, and even if not everybody is like that, even for the percent that is alike it would mean that more free ebooks means more purchases.
- waqf 7y agoExcellent justification for a business model right here: "And students are already accustomed to [being screwed over]."
- ipython 7y agoOh my god this attitude absolutely infuriates me. I just assisted my kids’ piano teacher in organizing an online virtual piano festival. The technical piece was easy- set up a google form where students could submit their information and a video of their performance. The hard part? In an in person festival, the student hands their sheet music to the judge sitting in the room before performing, so the judge can track and note any deviation between the music and the performance. We wanted a similar experience online, so our local festival organizers reached out to the wonderful music publishers licensing lawyers. Their response was wholly unhelpful. They wanted to make SO certain that in this pandemic their precious sheet music for elementary school age kids was NOT stolen. They wanted measures such as pasting a “used with permission” watermark on any picture of the music, purchasing a separate copy for the judges, and ensuring secure erase of any files after the festival! It was absolutely insane. This sort of inflexible attitude in a time of crisis makes me irrationally angry. If we had any way to avoid purchasing music from these .... people ... I would do it in a heartbeat.
- logicallee 7y agoDid they want money too? How much?
- ipython 7y agoI don't know, we ended up just eliminating the sheet music from the judging of the festival because it was just too much to figure out in a compressed timeframe.
- derefr 7y agoI guess the implication is that the exact approach you were originally taking in the in-person version of the festival, wouldn’t have been allowed by the IP authors if you’d have asked them. Which is a great reason to just boycott their works, get every piano school to stop using them, and thus starve them of all royalties.
- ipython 7y agoI agree but these clubs of piano teachers are very conservative (in the meaning that they don't want to rock the boat) and it's hard to get the sort of collective action required to effectively economically boycott these publishers....
- ddevault 7y agoHow much of your annual $100-$500 membership dues are you waiving in the light of the difficulties you explain your membership as facing in these dire times? Screw copyright and screw this rent-seeking noise. Self-publishing is rapidly becoming the norm, and who knew - authors are seeing way higher returns on it. Copying e-books incurs no material cost and therefore charging for it is not justifiable.
- dash2 7y ago-- Self-publishing is rapidly becoming the norm, and who knew - authors are seeing way higher returns on it. Have you got evidence for either of these claims? Are you an author?
- ddevault 7y agoYes, I am. The math is obvious, though: if you distribute $X to Y people, then distributing $X to Y-1 people will result in everyone (or at least someone) making more money. With the wide availability of publishing-as-a-service, Amazon listings and personal website sales, and so on, it makes little sense for most new or small-to-mid-time authors to go through a middleman. Then the bigger authors (1) have more to gain from going through a publisher, (2) can negotiate a better deal, and (3) have enough income as to make the issues raised in this article trite.
- ghaff 7y agoIt's somewhat more complicated than that. There are other factors. 1.) Publishers do provide editing, etc. services that authors would otherwise have to pay for out of their own pockets. That may or may not be a worthwhile tradeoff. But, between forgoing and advance and paying for services, authors are probably at least a few $K out of pocket if they go their own way. To the degree that things like book tours/promotion/etc. are relevant--they often aren't--that can add to the difference. 2.) For, especially non-fiction, authors for whom books are more about boosting their profile than bringing in money directly, traditional publishers (rightly or wrongly) have considerably more cachet than independent publishing. 3.) This becomes less and less important, but independently published books probably won't be in book stores.
- scoot_718 7y agoNo it doesn't. It's long passed time Copyright was struck down. Now might be the time to do it. Publishers are fat enough already from their rent seeking of poor authors. They should've died long ago, so the world can benefit.
- decasteve 7y ago"Unlike a real library..." The online equivalent can stay open in these times. Physical libraries cannot. The ability to make books accessible while people are isolated is a good reason for the Internet Archive to open up in cases of emergency.
- erikerikson 7y agoSee also Hoopla [1]. It works as you describe. Our local library offers it and yours might too. [1] https://www.hoopladigital.com/ https://www.hoopladigital.com/
- mjd 7y agoThese are the same assholes that sued Google in federal court, claiming that even if Google provided only snippet results in searches, the very act of Google holding an archive of copyrighted books, and allowing it to be searched, was itself infringement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,.... Fuck them.
- coldpie 7y agoThere's a Contact Us link at the bottom of their website. Let them know how you feel about their hoarding of human culture.
- pontifier 7y agoI have to say I agree with the authors guild on this. There must be rules concerning intellectual property. Laws are the rules our society lives by, and when a prominent public organization decides to willfully break copyright law in this manner it harms everyone. Copyright law is messy and there are many unintuitive parts. Educating people about the details is difficult and this change they have made is essentially teaching people that it's ok to steal IP. It's not ok.
- Hokusai 7y ago> many unintuitive parts I think a more concrete term for unintuitive is outdated. The use cases for Copyright law were defined a century ago when society and technology was different. It is difficult for current citizens to understand copyright law because has nothing to do with their own day to day experiences and needs. Great video about Copyright by Tom Scott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU Too long didn't see: Copyright is broken needs to be fixed in a way that fits the current situation and needs, but, it is going to be damn hard to do.
- krapp 7y ago>There must be rules concerning intellectual property. Why? Human societies created plenty of art and innovation just fine for thousands of years without the concept of intellectual property being a thing. We tend not to believe that being the first person to write some specific code gives the author the right to restrict any party from editing or redistributing it under any circumstances, or that the author deserves any compensation at all for their work. Why should that freedom be considered fundamental and inalienable only when applied to software, but not all creative works? Particularly since most such works are now distributed as software. I can understand paying for the physical manufacture of a book or other distribution medium, or maybe paying to cover server costs and hosting, but I can't see a strong argument for the premise that expression itself can or should be owned, if for no other reason than, in modernity, the ownership of media is also the ownership of culture, and corporate ownership of media is also corporate ownership of cultural expression. Like as not, Disney's versions of old fairy tales are the canonical representation in most of the world. Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, the DCU, etc, are no less components of modern culture than Shakespeare, Byron, Dickens, Homer, etc. Yet while anyone can tell a story using Romeo and Juliet, or ancient gods, no one can or will ever be allowed to legally tell stories in the Star Wars, Disney or Harry Potter universes without permission from the IP owners. Those copyrights will be extended and enforced indefinitely. Regardless of your beliefs about whether and how an artist should be compensated for their art, this commoditization of free expression to a form which is only legitimate if it generates revenue (often for a corporation and not the creator,) is damaging to society as a whole. At best, maybe, the term for copyrights should be extremely limited, and there should be laws preventing the extension of copyright beyond a certain time. But not forever. >Laws are the rules our society lives by, and when a prominent public organization decides to willfully break copyright law in this manner it harms everyone. The obvious rebuttal to this is that it is not only our right but our obligation to break unjust laws, and many people consider copyright and IP laws to be unjust. Of course, the obvious counter-rebuttal to that is that most people who claim the moral high ground for piracy really just want free stuff.
- WarOnPrivacy 7y agoI'm so proud of everyone here.