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It is not charitable when you give away another persons property and by the end to you are equivocating. Seriously the fact that book is well read or old does n

It is not charitable when you give away another persons property and by the end to you are equivocating. Seriously the fact that book is well read or old does not matter, they do not have the rights to do what they are doing and they purposefully trying to use COVID19 by exploiting people's feelings to get away with it. Publishers have standing and as such they have to file the suit. They are only being forced into this because IA is breaking known law and did so knowing they were.

ngold 6y ago
We the people of the united states grant a monopoly to an individual for a certain amount of time. I personally believe it should have stayed with the original time period. How much time do you need a monopoly? >The Copyright Act of 1790 was the first federal copyright act to be instituted in the United States, though most of the states had passed various legislation securing copyrights in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War. The stated object of the act was the "encouragement of learning," and it achieved this by securing authors the "sole right and liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing and vending" the copies of their "maps, charts, and books" for a term of 14 years, with the right to renew for one additional 14-year term should the copyright holder still be alive.
door99 6y ago
> It is not charitable when you give away another persons property Knowledge and culture is not anyone’s property. It is the collective work of all of humanity and ought to be treated as such.
- zeroxfe 6y ago
  That may be a great philosophical argument, but in the eyes of the law (which is what we're discussing here), IA was giving away someone else's property, so it really can't be considered a charitable act. Even setting aside the law, there is a question of ethics. If I give you a license key to my software, and you give it away to 10 of your friends, would you consider your act charitable?
  - jschwartzi 6y ago
    You two are arguing at odds with each other. You're talking about how things are and they're talking about how they think things should be.
  - door99 6y ago
    > That may be a great philosophical argument, but in the eyes of the law (which is what we're discussing here), IA was giving away someone else's property, so it really can't be considered a charitable act. Internet Archive is a nonprofit with a philosophical mission. I don't agree with them all the time, but I view that their responsibility is to act primarily in accordance with their values. Unfortunately, they ended up taking on powers that they may not be able to handle, but I believe that they are in the right and the publishers are in the wrong, which is a more important conversation to me than whether their decision was strategically prudent (probably it was not). > Even setting aside the law, there is a question of ethics. If I give you a license key to my software, and you give it away to 10 of your friends, would you consider your act charitable? All software that I have worked on outside of my job is free and open source, so I would. I believe that it should be mandated by law that all non-trivial software be free and open source. To qualify this, I wouldn't do this on an individual level without your consent if, say, you were a small creator and you depended upon licenses for your livelihood. But small creators are not the plantiffs in this case, nor the people who primarily benefit from strict intellectual property laws -- massive publishing companies are.
- stubish 6y ago
  > Knowledge and culture is not anyone’s property. It is the collective work of all of humanity and ought to be treated as such. This is a specious ideology without a mechanism to reward creators. At the moment that mechanism is money, either through sales, or for a rare few patronage. Without reward, creation is limited to the otherwise idle, and the collected work of all humanity lessened. Personally I advocate the right to buy at a reasonable cost (as reasoned by society). Once a reproducible work is released to the public, you can't refuse my payment for it.
  - door99 6y ago
    Reward doesn’t have to take the form of intellectual property. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prizes_as_an_alternative_to_patents https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prizes_as_an_alternative_to_... Intellectual property benefits publishers, not creators.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  The most valuable possession people have is time and attention. Producing works of knowledge and culture involves people giving up their time and attention to produce something. If they have done so, they deserve to have ownership of it. As Abraham Lincoln said “ That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. “ Whenever, you appropriate for yourself the fruits of other people’s toil, you are sowing seeds of tyranny.
  - door99 6y ago
    > The most valuable possession people have is time and attention. Producing works of knowledge and culture involves people giving up their time and attention to produce something. If they have done so, they deserve to have ownership of it. They deserve to be paid (eg, by a University), but they do not deserve ownership in terms of exclusive rights to its use. Can you imagine how far back science would be held if any applications of Newton or Einstein’s work required royalties to their estate? Are suggesting that the fact that they aren’t is tyranny?
jjoonathan 6y ago
> [Publishers] are only being forced into this Nope. They may have standing, but they're responsible for their own actions. > Seriously the fact that book is well read or old does not matter It does, because it means the damages (lost potential sales) are low/nonexistent.
- keiferski 6y ago
  People buy old books all the time. The best-selling book of all time is thousands of years old, after all.
  - csnover 6y ago
    I assume you’re talking about the bible, which is obviously not copyrighted, so where does the idea comes from that nobody will continue to buy old content if it’s in the public domain?
    - keiferski 6y ago
      Translations of the Bible are almost always copyrighted, unless it's the King James version, which IIRC isn't really that popular anymore. For that matter, all translations are copyrighted.
      - cfmcdonald 6y ago
        The copyrighted translations are not thousands of years old, which kind of defeats the original point. I mean I understand it was a kind of exaggeration for effect, but excepting a very few 'evergreen' titles, the value of a publisher's back catalog tails off very rapidly with age.
- mixdup 6y ago
  > Nope. They may have standing, but they're responsible for their own actions. Actually, they kind of are forced into action here. Even if they were okay with the IA doing this (which I'm sure they're not) they still have to defend their copyrights, otherwise they could be declared abandoned and the works would then be in the public domain and could not be defended when someone they don't want to use their works then uses them

ngold 6y ago

We the people of the united states grant a monopoly to an individual for a certain amount of time. I personally believe it should have stayed with the original time period. How much time do you need a monopoly? >The Copyright Act of 1790 was the first federal copyright act to be instituted in the United States, though most of the states had passed various legislation securing copyrights in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War. The stated object of the act was the "encouragement of learning," and it achieved this by securing authors the "sole right and liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing and vending" the copies of their "maps, charts, and books" for a term of 14 years, with the right to renew for one additional 14-year term should the copyright holder still be alive.

door99 6y ago

> It is not charitable when you give away another persons property Knowledge and culture is not anyone’s property. It is the collective work of all of humanity and ought to be treated as such.

zeroxfe 6y ago
That may be a great philosophical argument, but in the eyes of the law (which is what we're discussing here), IA was giving away someone else's property, so it really can't be considered a charitable act. Even setting aside the law, there is a question of ethics. If I give you a license key to my software, and you give it away to 10 of your friends, would you consider your act charitable?
- jschwartzi 6y ago
  You two are arguing at odds with each other. You're talking about how things are and they're talking about how they think things should be.
- door99 6y ago
  > That may be a great philosophical argument, but in the eyes of the law (which is what we're discussing here), IA was giving away someone else's property, so it really can't be considered a charitable act. Internet Archive is a nonprofit with a philosophical mission. I don't agree with them all the time, but I view that their responsibility is to act primarily in accordance with their values. Unfortunately, they ended up taking on powers that they may not be able to handle, but I believe that they are in the right and the publishers are in the wrong, which is a more important conversation to me than whether their decision was strategically prudent (probably it was not). > Even setting aside the law, there is a question of ethics. If I give you a license key to my software, and you give it away to 10 of your friends, would you consider your act charitable? All software that I have worked on outside of my job is free and open source, so I would. I believe that it should be mandated by law that all non-trivial software be free and open source. To qualify this, I wouldn't do this on an individual level without your consent if, say, you were a small creator and you depended upon licenses for your livelihood. But small creators are not the plantiffs in this case, nor the people who primarily benefit from strict intellectual property laws -- massive publishing companies are.
stubish 6y ago
> Knowledge and culture is not anyone’s property. It is the collective work of all of humanity and ought to be treated as such. This is a specious ideology without a mechanism to reward creators. At the moment that mechanism is money, either through sales, or for a rare few patronage. Without reward, creation is limited to the otherwise idle, and the collected work of all humanity lessened. Personally I advocate the right to buy at a reasonable cost (as reasoned by society). Once a reproducible work is released to the public, you can't refuse my payment for it.
- door99 6y ago
  Reward doesn’t have to take the form of intellectual property. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prizes_as_an_alternative_to_patents https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prizes_as_an_alternative_to_... Intellectual property benefits publishers, not creators.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
The most valuable possession people have is time and attention. Producing works of knowledge and culture involves people giving up their time and attention to produce something. If they have done so, they deserve to have ownership of it. As Abraham Lincoln said “ That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. “ Whenever, you appropriate for yourself the fruits of other people’s toil, you are sowing seeds of tyranny.
- door99 6y ago
  > The most valuable possession people have is time and attention. Producing works of knowledge and culture involves people giving up their time and attention to produce something. If they have done so, they deserve to have ownership of it. They deserve to be paid (eg, by a University), but they do not deserve ownership in terms of exclusive rights to its use. Can you imagine how far back science would be held if any applications of Newton or Einstein’s work required royalties to their estate? Are suggesting that the fact that they aren’t is tyranny?

jjoonathan 6y ago

> [Publishers] are only being forced into this Nope. They may have standing, but they're responsible for their own actions. > Seriously the fact that book is well read or old does not matter It does, because it means the damages (lost potential sales) are low/nonexistent.

keiferski 6y ago
People buy old books all the time. The best-selling book of all time is thousands of years old, after all.
- csnover 6y ago
  I assume you’re talking about the bible, which is obviously not copyrighted, so where does the idea comes from that nobody will continue to buy old content if it’s in the public domain?
  - keiferski 6y ago
    Translations of the Bible are almost always copyrighted, unless it's the King James version, which IIRC isn't really that popular anymore. For that matter, all translations are copyrighted.
    - cfmcdonald 6y ago
      The copyrighted translations are not thousands of years old, which kind of defeats the original point. I mean I understand it was a kind of exaggeration for effect, but excepting a very few 'evergreen' titles, the value of a publisher's back catalog tails off very rapidly with age.
mixdup 6y ago
> Nope. They may have standing, but they're responsible for their own actions. Actually, they kind of are forced into action here. Even if they were okay with the IA doing this (which I'm sure they're not) they still have to defend their copyrights, otherwise they could be declared abandoned and the works would then be in the public domain and could not be defended when someone they don't want to use their works then uses them