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The National Emergency Library is a gift to readers everywhere
- themodelplumber 7y agoI love that the library is using its "copyright superpowers" here. I know not everyone approves, but keep in mind that this is just one more way in which this organization has improved the lives of many thousands of people. I was looking through my favorites the other day and it's just incredible how much value is being delivered at archive.org even prior to this move. Big thanks to IA, I will be donating again this year as usual, and I hope others will also.
- dang 7y agoRecent and related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22731472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22731472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22716923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22716923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22731637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22731637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22715009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22715009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22681132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22681132
- comex 7y agoIt's a gift, yes. But was it their gift to give?
- Causality1 7y agoArtificial scarcity is a disease infecting our culture.
- saagarjha 7y agoIt is, but there’s a chance that the move might cause more “artificial scarcity“, not less.
- newswasboring 7y agoWould you care to elaborate? I am not familiar with this line of thought.
- Mindwipe 7y agoI suspect this move will ultimately bankrupt the Internet Archive and lead to the wholesale destruction of the (useful) existing service. There's astonishing hubris involved in launching this product.
- ForHackernews 7y agoI don't think they'd have done this without a plan. It looks to me like they're trying to force a court battle, and they've cleverly chosen to do it at a time when public opinion will be overwhelmingly on their side.
- Mindwipe 7y agoPublic opinion is pretty irrelevant to a court battle. If they are trying to force one they are stupid, it's a huge legal risk and no credible lawyer would advise it.
- newswasboring 7y agoAre you a lawyer? How familiar are you about the law in this case? I am actually not that familiar but I believe a service which as gone on for 24 years knows what it is doing.
- bluntfang 7y ago>I believe a service which as gone on for 24 years knows what it is doing. Huh. What's your opinion on the current financial crises where companies that are over decades old don't have more than a week in emergency funds before they have to go bankrupt, lay off most of their employees, can't afford mortgage payments, etc? Did they all know what they were doing?
- falcolas 7y agoDid they buy it? As in, was there a “buy now” or “add to shopping cart” or some other similar “Purchase this ebook” link in the transaction? If so, yes. No matter what the fine print says. The inability to apply first sale doctrine to digital book purchases (not to mention cars, refrigerators, et.al.) is a loophole the publishers are exploiting, not how copyright was supposed to work.
- fjeifisjf 7y agoThis is off topic. The OP is not about transferring a copy. It is about making multiple copies and distributing them simultaneously, a flagrant violation of copyright by any possible interpretation.
- kethinov 7y agoThe fact that this set off an angry debate about where to draw the line with copyright just shows how off the rails that debate has been for decades. Of course the National Emergency Library is a good thing. We created copyright law to stop people from selling the work of others as their own, not to force people to pay a toll every time they read a book. We created free public libraries so that people could consume as much culture as they want for free. File sharing sites on the Internet serve exactly the same purpose to society as free public libraries. They allow people to consume as much culture as they want for free. It's long overdue to bring copyright law into the 21st century with one small tweak: legalize noncommercial copyright infringement. Commercial copyright infringement should remain illegal. Nobody should have the right to profit from your work but you. But demanding a toll be paid every time a file is copied is an unrealistic fantasy that is widely ignored in the real world by public and private file sharing venues. I understand why authors find arguments like mine upsetting. Their "pay a toll per copy" business model is obsolete. It's been obsolete for years. But instead of cheering on the Author's Guild's dinosaur argument and going down with the sinking ship right along with them, authors should be thinking hard about new business models that can adapt to the reality where consumer payments are—in the real world—optional. I don't have an answer to the business models question. I have a few ideas I think are worth experimenting with, mostly involving freemium. All I know for sure is the artificial scarcity model is not the answer and the longer authors try to cling to it, the longer it will prolong their pain.
- miki123211 7y agoWhen I see comments like this, I just wish HN had the exact opposite of "flag". Something like upvote, but carrying much more power, perhaps at the cost of a few Karma points.
- danielrpa 7y agoThis - and on top of that, the question of copyright duration. It's not only "pay a toll", but "pay a toll for the next 75, 90 years" - the arbitrary period is another element that hasn't evolved for the 21st century. We could at least consider a compromise where slightly older works, let's say 10+ years, or even 25+ years (same duration as patents) would be the ones included in the noncommercial infringement proposal.
- empressplay 7y agoI <3 IA and I <3 everyone involved at IA but fiction books should not be part of the NEL unless they have distinctive cultural importance (and by extension have already made their authors a pile of money.) Anything non-fiction should totally be free to access during this time of crisis.