5 ms·

> The Internet Archive removed waitlists for books in its "National Emergency Library" so that multiple readers could simultaneously download the same digital c

by pixxel 6y ago

> The Internet Archive removed waitlists for books in its "National Emergency Library" so that multiple readers could simultaneously download the same digital copy. >Four major book publishers have responded by suing the Internet Archive. If successful, they could bankrupt the nonprofit. >The publishers take issue not only with the National Emergency Library, but with the Internet Archive as a whole.

dehrmann 6y ago
I'm not sure why they thought this would be OK without getting permission from rights holders.
- themodelplumber 6y ago
  It seems more like they thought it was worth a try, for prospective reasons. From that perspective I find it hard to fault them based on the potential reward ratio for opening such knowledge, much of it no longer in stores or libraries at all, to all of society. The Internet Archive is broadly improving on the library concept by leveraging their technology to push for innovation in intersecting areas of law and culture that are far from settled. While traveling this course, they have made day-to-day life and future prospects better for ordinary people who lack a voice in this domain in the first place. For this bold approach among other things they have what meager donation money I can give.
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    This reward ratio concept that you invented to frame this only accounts for one side of the transaction. For starters, to give something away for free, you have to own it first. There no moral high ground in deciding to give away other people’s things. But if you want to only focus on the potential for public good, then where would you put the “reward ratio” for the authors who’s work was given away by the internet archive? They struggle enough as it is to make money without a global financial crisis, and without large organisations taking it upon themselves to give their content away. What’s the “reward ratio” for all the book retails going out of business at the moment, and all the staff they’re laying off? Even if you hate publishers, and for some reason think they’re not entitled to property rights, what’s the “reward ratio” for their employees, or the people who’s retirements are invested in their publicly traded companies? It’s easy to sympathise with the motivation behind the decision, but really their decision was to summarily strip people of their rights, and the payoff for their hard work. It wasn’t a noble decision, because they didn’t own what they were giving away, and an attempt to rationalize the deprivation it contributed to is really just sad. It was truly a monumentally stupid decision on their part, and they’ve jeopardized their entire mission because of it.
    - matheusmoreira 6y ago
      > There no moral high ground in deciding to give away other people’s things. Copyright does not have the moral high ground either. The fact is most books should already have entered the public domain. However, the public was cheated out of its rights due to ever increasing copyright durations. Why should authors and publishers retain monopoly rights to works for over a hundred years? It should be a few years at most and that's being exceptionally generous. There's absolutely nothing moral about copyright. When properly constrained to a reasonable duration, it could be considered a necessary evil at best. In its current form, it is equivalent to rent seeking and should be straight up abolished.
      - AmericanChopper 6y ago
        Copyright is neither moral nor immoral. It simply gives people who create content the ability to exercise certain property rights over that content for a certain period of time. There would be nothing immoral about abolishing copyright, but if you did then you could be sure that a lot less people would be willing to spend years writing the books you enjoy reading, or millions of dollars creating the TV shows and movies you enjoy watching. Whether or not you think the existing copyright laws have exceeded their purpose is a completely different discussion, and one that is not at all related to this particular topic at all. Because the Internet Archive did not only violate copyright for content benefiting from whatever your opinion of excessive copyright is, they violated it for all the content they had.
        som33 6y ago
        >Copyright is neither moral nor immoral. Except you're wrong, idea's are not rivalrous goods. Imagine if someone copyrighted the alphabet and we had to pay $5 a word. Rent seeking puts a damper on global productivity by allowing people to take information hostage. It can also be used as a tool for censorship. Right now copyright is censoring culture and I'm watching videogame history being destroyed on the PC due to bs copyright and software licensing laws. We should have gotten full property rights transfer for software. It's allowed mass invasion of privacy and theft of software on a mass scale by PC game companies. You haven't been paying attention to how monopoly rights have been used or abused. http://www.free-culture.cc/ http://www.free-culture.cc/ https://www.lessig.org/books/ https://www.lessig.org/books/

by pixxel 6y ago

dehrmann 6y ago

I'm not sure why they thought this would be OK without getting permission from rights holders.

themodelplumber 6y ago
It seems more like they thought it was worth a try, for prospective reasons. From that perspective I find it hard to fault them based on the potential reward ratio for opening such knowledge, much of it no longer in stores or libraries at all, to all of society. The Internet Archive is broadly improving on the library concept by leveraging their technology to push for innovation in intersecting areas of law and culture that are far from settled. While traveling this course, they have made day-to-day life and future prospects better for ordinary people who lack a voice in this domain in the first place. For this bold approach among other things they have what meager donation money I can give.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  This reward ratio concept that you invented to frame this only accounts for one side of the transaction. For starters, to give something away for free, you have to own it first. There no moral high ground in deciding to give away other people’s things. But if you want to only focus on the potential for public good, then where would you put the “reward ratio” for the authors who’s work was given away by the internet archive? They struggle enough as it is to make money without a global financial crisis, and without large organisations taking it upon themselves to give their content away. What’s the “reward ratio” for all the book retails going out of business at the moment, and all the staff they’re laying off? Even if you hate publishers, and for some reason think they’re not entitled to property rights, what’s the “reward ratio” for their employees, or the people who’s retirements are invested in their publicly traded companies? It’s easy to sympathise with the motivation behind the decision, but really their decision was to summarily strip people of their rights, and the payoff for their hard work. It wasn’t a noble decision, because they didn’t own what they were giving away, and an attempt to rationalize the deprivation it contributed to is really just sad. It was truly a monumentally stupid decision on their part, and they’ve jeopardized their entire mission because of it.
  - matheusmoreira 6y ago
    > There no moral high ground in deciding to give away other people’s things. Copyright does not have the moral high ground either. The fact is most books should already have entered the public domain. However, the public was cheated out of its rights due to ever increasing copyright durations. Why should authors and publishers retain monopoly rights to works for over a hundred years? It should be a few years at most and that's being exceptionally generous. There's absolutely nothing moral about copyright. When properly constrained to a reasonable duration, it could be considered a necessary evil at best. In its current form, it is equivalent to rent seeking and should be straight up abolished.
    - AmericanChopper 6y ago
      Copyright is neither moral nor immoral. It simply gives people who create content the ability to exercise certain property rights over that content for a certain period of time. There would be nothing immoral about abolishing copyright, but if you did then you could be sure that a lot less people would be willing to spend years writing the books you enjoy reading, or millions of dollars creating the TV shows and movies you enjoy watching. Whether or not you think the existing copyright laws have exceeded their purpose is a completely different discussion, and one that is not at all related to this particular topic at all. Because the Internet Archive did not only violate copyright for content benefiting from whatever your opinion of excessive copyright is, they violated it for all the content they had.
      - som33 6y ago
        >Copyright is neither moral nor immoral. Except you're wrong, idea's are not rivalrous goods. Imagine if someone copyrighted the alphabet and we had to pay $5 a word. Rent seeking puts a damper on global productivity by allowing people to take information hostage. It can also be used as a tool for censorship. Right now copyright is censoring culture and I'm watching videogame history being destroyed on the PC due to bs copyright and software licensing laws. We should have gotten full property rights transfer for software. It's allowed mass invasion of privacy and theft of software on a mass scale by PC game companies. You haven't been paying attention to how monopoly rights have been used or abused. http://www.free-culture.cc/ http://www.free-culture.cc/ https://www.lessig.org/books/ https://www.lessig.org/books/