4 ms·

That is obscene. Screw copyright.

pessimizer 7y ago
I wouldn't call it obscene; having a physical copy is a good backup. Maybe we could say we're allowing digital lending libraries to violate copyrights enough to distribute copies over the internet as long as they contribute to physical conservation as well.
- marvindanig 7y ago
  yikes, those dead trees mean zero backup or conservation as opposed to distributed storage off of the web. this is a lame miscarriage of a copyright law that is outdated.
- jfengel 7y ago
  In this case, it's not about backups. It's about extending the notion of a "library" to Internet. The publisher still gets all of the usual money that they'd get from selling a book, and the library gets to lend it out subject to the same constraints they'd have on lending out a physical book. They "lend" one digital copy per physical copy. That's still not entirely in keeping with the limited domain that libraries used to have, where lending out a book came with a physical cost of getting it to the patron. But it's close enough for reasonable opinions to differ. So it's about preserving the structure by which book people (not just authors, but editors, publicists, publishers, layout, cover artists, etc) get paid.
geofft 7y ago
I agree that it's ridiculous. I'm not sure how to get from there to "screw copyright." Yes, it's weird that the law requires (at least under normal circumstances, and if the Internet Archive is wrong, also today) physical copies of books as essentially "reserves" for scanned versions of books. I don't think that it follows that it's weird that the law requires that you have to pay per copy. In the pre-digital world, if a library wanted to lend out ten copies of a book, they'd have to pay for ten copies, and that wasn't weird. And this isn't an argument about zero-marginal-cost products, because a good chunk of the money the library spent would not go to the physical cost of book printing. (In fact most people's intuitions would say it's fairer that there's a profit beyond the marginal cost, because that way the author and editor get compensated more for more successful books.) Yes, it'd be significantly better if the Internet Archive needed to have one physical copy (or even zero). I don't think it's weird that if they or any other library wants to lend out ten copies, they have to buy ten copies. (I'm sympathetic to arguments of the form "information wants to be free," but, well, people want to eat, too. If injustice A is mitigated by injustice B, snapping your fingers and getting rid of B without having a plan to deal for A isn't a just action. Whether or not authors should depend on copyright for their livelihood, many of them do. And yes, several don't - so in particular, I'm much more sympathetic to the Internet Archive's action when it comes to textbooks, journals, etc. written by people who have a primary livelihood other than book-writing, such as college faculty, and much less sympathetic when it comes to books written by people who's job title is "author.")
- ddevault 7y ago
  Copying a digital book incurs no material cost. You could charge for the bandwidth to download it from you, or you could charge for paper books, but it's ridiculous to me that you should be able to charge someone else for copying data from their hard drive to my hard drive. People have to eat, but having to sell books just to put food on the table is also obscene. Food is a basic human right and should never be staked on whether or not you can successfully sue your audience. Alternatively, you could simply ask your audience to support you financially, which is how I make a substantial amount of my own income. Digital books are not paper books. They are fundamentally different things. Paper books are scarce, digital books are not. Information is not scarce.
  - geofft 7y ago
    Again - if that argument holds up, why is it reasonable to sell paper books for significantly more than the cost of reproduction? What's magical about the $0 price point? If it costs $5 to print a physical copy and you're okay with stores selling copies for $25, why is it a problem for stores to sell e-books for $20? In the pre-e-book world, libraries could always copy books on their own. They could say, we're buying one copy of this book at $25, and then we'll print another thousand copies ourselves at $5 each and sell them to other libraries. Quality might have been lower, but it would have gotten books into the hands of more people, right? Why didn't they? > People have to eat, but having to sell books just to put food on the table is also obscene. Food is a basic human right and should never be staked on whether or not you can successfully sue your audience. I don't disagree. But that's not the world we live in. Food shouldn't be staked on that, but it is. Let's solve that first, and then we can start taking people's livelihoods away. This is kind of like saying "Tipping is an unjust and evil and stupid system, so I'm not going to tip." Yes, it is an unjust and evil and stupid system - but the practical effect of not tipping is nothing more than underpaying people who, for better or worse, rely on that unjust and evil and stupid system. Fix the system first (e.g., petition your favorite restaurant to raise prices and have a no-tipping policy, and patronize those that have already done that), then you can stop tipping without hurting people
    - 7y ago
sneak 7y ago
I agree; but think of it this way: if lending libraries hadn't been a thing for a long time when ebooks came along, they wouldn't even be allowed to do CDL. They'd have said "no transfer of ownership whatsoever", just like iTunes does. The fact that CDL is allowed at all is a victory against these greedy copyright types.
axguscbklp 7y ago
"screw copyright" = "screw a large fraction of content creators"

I wouldn't call it obscene; having a physical copy is a good backup. Maybe we could say we're allowing digital lending libraries to violate copyrights enough to distribute copies over the internet as long as they contribute to physical conservation as well.

marvindanig 7y ago
yikes, those dead trees mean zero backup or conservation as opposed to distributed storage off of the web. this is a lame miscarriage of a copyright law that is outdated.
jfengel 7y ago
In this case, it's not about backups. It's about extending the notion of a "library" to Internet. The publisher still gets all of the usual money that they'd get from selling a book, and the library gets to lend it out subject to the same constraints they'd have on lending out a physical book. They "lend" one digital copy per physical copy. That's still not entirely in keeping with the limited domain that libraries used to have, where lending out a book came with a physical cost of getting it to the patron. But it's close enough for reasonable opinions to differ. So it's about preserving the structure by which book people (not just authors, but editors, publicists, publishers, layout, cover artists, etc) get paid.

geofft 7y ago

I agree that it's ridiculous. I'm not sure how to get from there to "screw copyright." Yes, it's weird that the law requires (at least under normal circumstances, and if the Internet Archive is wrong, also today) physical copies of books as essentially "reserves" for scanned versions of books. I don't think that it follows that it's weird that the law requires that you have to pay per copy. In the pre-digital world, if a library wanted to lend out ten copies of a book, they'd have to pay for ten copies, and that wasn't weird. And this isn't an argument about zero-marginal-cost products, because a good chunk of the money the library spent would not go to the physical cost of book printing. (In fact most people's intuitions would say it's fairer that there's a profit beyond the marginal cost, because that way the author and editor get compensated more for more successful books.) Yes, it'd be significantly better if the Internet Archive needed to have one physical copy (or even zero). I don't think it's weird that if they or any other library wants to lend out ten copies, they have to buy ten copies. (I'm sympathetic to arguments of the form "information wants to be free," but, well, people want to eat, too. If injustice A is mitigated by injustice B, snapping your fingers and getting rid of B without having a plan to deal for A isn't a just action. Whether or not authors should depend on copyright for their livelihood, many of them do. And yes, several don't - so in particular, I'm much more sympathetic to the Internet Archive's action when it comes to textbooks, journals, etc. written by people who have a primary livelihood other than book-writing, such as college faculty, and much less sympathetic when it comes to books written by people who's job title is "author.")

ddevault 7y ago
Copying a digital book incurs no material cost. You could charge for the bandwidth to download it from you, or you could charge for paper books, but it's ridiculous to me that you should be able to charge someone else for copying data from their hard drive to my hard drive. People have to eat, but having to sell books just to put food on the table is also obscene. Food is a basic human right and should never be staked on whether or not you can successfully sue your audience. Alternatively, you could simply ask your audience to support you financially, which is how I make a substantial amount of my own income. Digital books are not paper books. They are fundamentally different things. Paper books are scarce, digital books are not. Information is not scarce.
- geofft 7y ago
  Again - if that argument holds up, why is it reasonable to sell paper books for significantly more than the cost of reproduction? What's magical about the $0 price point? If it costs $5 to print a physical copy and you're okay with stores selling copies for $25, why is it a problem for stores to sell e-books for $20? In the pre-e-book world, libraries could always copy books on their own. They could say, we're buying one copy of this book at $25, and then we'll print another thousand copies ourselves at $5 each and sell them to other libraries. Quality might have been lower, but it would have gotten books into the hands of more people, right? Why didn't they? > People have to eat, but having to sell books just to put food on the table is also obscene. Food is a basic human right and should never be staked on whether or not you can successfully sue your audience. I don't disagree. But that's not the world we live in. Food shouldn't be staked on that, but it is. Let's solve that first, and then we can start taking people's livelihoods away. This is kind of like saying "Tipping is an unjust and evil and stupid system, so I'm not going to tip." Yes, it is an unjust and evil and stupid system - but the practical effect of not tipping is nothing more than underpaying people who, for better or worse, rely on that unjust and evil and stupid system. Fix the system first (e.g., petition your favorite restaurant to raise prices and have a no-tipping policy, and patronize those that have already done that), then you can stop tipping without hurting people
  - 7y ago

sneak 7y ago

I agree; but think of it this way: if lending libraries hadn't been a thing for a long time when ebooks came along, they wouldn't even be allowed to do CDL. They'd have said "no transfer of ownership whatsoever", just like iTunes does. The fact that CDL is allowed at all is a victory against these greedy copyright types.

axguscbklp 7y ago

"screw copyright" = "screw a large fraction of content creators"