7 ms·
If libraries weren't an ancient concept that preceeded copyright law they'd be illegal today.
by BitwiseFool 6y ago
If libraries weren't an ancient concept that preceeded copyright law they'd be illegal today.
- leetrout 6y agoI am certain you are right. And with that knowledge would be locked away to those who could afford access (be it with money or some form of social capital to ensure inequality).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vmchale 6y ago> And with that knowledge would be locked away to those who could afford access (be it with money or some github stars.
- user5994461 6y agoLibraries would be only illegal in the US though, because all these copyright issues are US specific. Archive.org might as well rebase itself somewhere else.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago[My personal opinion, unrelated to any employment:] FWIW I've studied copyright informally in UK, USA, and to a lesser extent other countries. In UK our "Fair Dealing" is highly restrictive compared to USA's Fair Use. Our (UK) archiving rights extend only to a couple of institutions and then only to people attending the library in person. We don't have rights to make backups; we don't have rights to format shift (except to help the disabled). Yes, copyright specifics apply but wrt archiving USA is far from the most restrictive regime.
- unicornporn 6y agoIn Sweden we have the super restricted "right to quote"[1]. Fair use seems like a dream compared to this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_quote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_quote
- RunningDroid 6y ago>Archive.org might as well rebase itself somewhere else. That would probably be extremely expensive given the fastest way to mirror the IA is with a truck full of hard drives.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoIt's actually relatively inexpensive to move gear via cargo container. I'd hazard you could move all 10PB of the Internet Archive for less than $25k-50k in shipping costs (~$2k per 40FT container), with labor extra for loading and unloading. (Disclaimer: I have coordinated data center migrations in a previous life) Although, it's probably more financially efficient for other nations to offer cultural grants for local IA non-profit entities to spin up infra in country and begin mirroring the South SF location.
- skissane 6y agoHow many backups do they have? I'd hate for the shipping container to fall off the side of the ship, bye bye all that precious data. (Just last week some shipping containers washed ashore on a beach in my local area – they had fallen off a ship [1].) [1] https://coastcommunitynews.com.au/central-coast/news/2020/05/the-driftwood-is-getting-bigger/ https://coastcommunitynews.com.au/central-coast/news/2020/05...
- Mindwipe 6y agoMany countries pay copyright owners for library lending (the UK for example through the public lending right).
- mcguire 6y agoIn the US, libraries buy the books, etc., they lend, or pay for license agreements for digital media.
- Mindwipe 6y agoUK libraries buy the books and pay additionally for every lend, as it should be.
- mcguire 6y ago"...as it should be." Hey, don't try to convince me. I spend most of the hundreds of dollars I pay for books every year at used book stores and things like estate sales. I am literally Satan.
- Nemo_bis 6y agoSame here. What publishers give to authors is practically zero, so if you want the author to get any money you're better off sending them a donation directly.
- sudosysgen 6y agoAnd the US through it's massive influence and bullying would undoubtedly force it upon other countries, as they have done countless times including in the context of copyright.
- dredmorbius 6y agoIn the case of copyright, at least nominally, it's the more-restrictive (and European) Berne Convention (1886) terms which have been adopted elsewhere. To what extent this reflects European rather than US interests I'm uncertain, though the latter certainly exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention
- sudosysgen 6y agoI was in Morocco when we signed copyright restrictions, and I can assure you 95% of the pressure is from United States, and it is in the interests mainly of the US and it's allies. As far as it reflecting European interests, the Berne convention is against European interests as it pertains to US copyrighted work as it offers them less protection than US works and forces a higher standard for US copyright than domestic copyright in many cases.
- dredmorbius 6y agoUnderstood and accurate so far as I'm aware. As my other response notes, the tradition of copyright maximalisation began in Europe in the 19th century before being adopted by US interests in the 20th. Nationalistic attribution of traits answers far less than monopolistic power expansion.
- sudosysgen 6y agoI agree wholeheartedly, the tradition of copyright maximization has its origins in capitalism and value extraction, as such it follows the siege of global capitalism as that is where the interests in the commodification and extraction of value from intellectual property originates from. So it naturally began in Europe, then in the US, and maybe shortly in China? We will see.
- tzs 6y agoWhat they are being accused of would be highly questionable under the copyright laws of over 190 countries, including almost all that are likely to be reasonable places to host a major internet site.
- sokoloff 6y agoIt seems to me that the First Sale Doctrine makes library lending (among any other use of an individual instance of copyrighted material) legal. Unless you're arguing that the First Sale Doctrine was only created because libraries are older than modern copyright, I don't think I agree.
- cornishpixels 6y agoThat's pretty clearly exactly what they're arguing.
- sokoloff 6y agoFor every application of FSD that applies to a lending library, it seems like there are 99 or more that apply to everyday lending, modification, repair, or resale concerns. Even if libraries didn't exist, I think we'd have something like first sale doctrine.
- mcguire 6y agoExperiment: try applying the First Sale Doctrine to digital music, video, and software downloads.
- api 6y agoYou're probably right, but this doesn't solve the fundamental problem. People who do intellectual labor, such as writing books, must be paid because everyone must be paid. Nothing is free. There are two options: (1) Copyright law, which allows them to erect toll booths and charge readers and users for their work. (2) A socialist type of system where writers and other intellectual laborers are supported publicly. The cyber-libertarian crowd is unhappy with both these options. They want everything to be free in all ways. Since intellectual labor is not free, Jeff Goldblum's Law (from Jurassic Park) comes into play: life finds a way. The way to support oneself in the cyber-libertarian everything-is-free world is by either overt advertising or whoring oneself out as a propagandist (covert advertising). A third variation also exists that combines aspects of both: surveillance capitalism. In surveillance capitalism all the free stuff is placed on a platform that spies on its users and the data is used to drive both overt and covert advertising. This is why a simple news web site is 20+ megabytes of trackers, ads, and surveillance crap, and why every platform seems user-hostile. It's also why an increasing amount of intellectual product whether it be books, news, podcasts, etc. is actually political or other forms of propaganda. You can make money by shilling for political parties or political agendas. You can't make money by being balanced and honest and level headed. The work will be much higher quality but nobody will pay for it.
- syshum 6y agono it is not the default that " intellectual labor" must be paid for in currency (which is the assumption of your post) my comment here for example is " intellectual labor" but i am not paid for it There are all kinds of labor that people do with out being paid in currency for it, they derive other value from that labor. You then present a false dilemma in that it is either copyright law or socialism (public funding), there are a whole host of funding models that have been proven to work over and over again that require neither. Open Source is a ripe with examples, YouTube also provides for some, but there are many others (including complete creative Commons books that are funding voluntarily, and voluntary "Pay what you want" systems)
- api 6y agoYou are really comparing a Hacker News comment that took 1-2 minutes to write with the content of libraries? It's hard for me to write a civil rebuttal to this. It takes years to write a good book. Years. It's not something you just whip out. The same applies to any non-trivial piece of music, art, software, engineering, design, or any other form of intellectual labor. People spend years and years on that stuff but only after they spend years and years getting good enough at their craft to actually produce it. I guess there's another option beyond the two I cited above: (3) Everything is low effort shit. Open Source is almost entirely funded by large companies. Pick a popular FOSS project and look at who's committing to it. They're people being paid by large companies to do the work because the company has some vested interest in supporting it. The counter-examples are either SaaS driven (meaning they're not really open) or dual licensed (meaning they're using copyright law). This sort of philanthropy has limits. In particular it doesn't work for consumer items, only for stuff that companies use directly. I really don't think you want to bring up YouTube as it actually proves my point. YouTube is a cesspool of propaganda and divisive trolling. That's the kind of content you get when it's "free" and creators must find roundabout ways to get paid for it, such as by stoking society's divisions for attention to monetize ad views.
- coronadisaster 6y agoA bit like mix tapes... Although many sites implemented the idea on the web. I need to mirror libgen while I still can.
- SomewhatLikely 6y agoThe first sale doctrine protects similar activities such as video rentals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
- koolba 6y agoAh but you didn't buy that book. You merely accepted the EULA for a license to read the content of the pages, as written, in the order presented.
- brlewis 6y agoYou're joking, but this is the kind of thing that becomes true when enough people think it's true. What does a reasonable person think they're getting when they buy a book? That's the implied contract.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ZenOfTheArt 6y agoThank you, this is a brilliant comment.
- izacus 6y ago> If libraries weren't an ancient concept that preceeded copyright law they'd be illegal today. You can easily see this if you look at more modern medium: Gaming. nVidia created a service where we could play games we bought on their machines. The publishers immediately sued and demanded that we be prevented from playing our own games on those machines without paying extra. Copyright law now has become cancer - just like real cancer, the original base might be something that provided important value, but has now started feeding on the creativity of society and killing progress and freedom.