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Couldn't you use the exact same argument for software? It too gets taken down all the time I never really understood how Archive.org operates. This is an hones

by geokon 5y ago

Couldn't you use the exact same argument for software? It too gets taken down all the time I never really understood how Archive.org operates. This is an honest question.. But they doesn't own this piece of writing, so what's the legal basis for them to redistribute it? Could they slap a few ads on their website and make some money as well? Can they host a copy of Harry Potter for instance? If I made my income from writing I'd prolly be pretty pissed if some chumps scrapped and re-hosted it. Do authors have any legal way to defend themselves? EDIT: https://archive.is/faq https://archive.is/faq "Will advertising appear on the archive one day ? I cannot make a promise that it will not. With the current growth rate I am able to keep the archive free of ads. Well, I can promise it will have no ads at least till the end of 2014."

kijin 5y ago
Archive.org operates on the same principle that libraries do. If you were an author, would you also be pissed that public libraries allowed anyone to read your books for free? If you don't like it, just put up a robots.txt to ban the wayback machine from your site.
- geokon 5y ago
  1) I assume b/c libraries purchase the book it's not equivalent. Do they purchase a subscription to the NYT and then lend it out to people? From what I gather on their website it doesn't seem like it 2) I'm not sure why you just made that up .. https://archive.is/faq https://archive.is/faq "Why does archive.is not obey robots.txt? Because it is not a free-walking crawler, it saves only one page acting as a direct agent of the human user. Such services don't obey robots.txt (e.g. Google Feedfetcher, screenshot- or pdf-making services, isup.me, …)"
  - kijin 5y ago
    1) There doesn't seem to be much difference in terms of "lost sales" (a common metric in copyright disputes) when a library purchases 1 copy of a book and lends it out to 100 people, versus when the Internet Archive purchases 0 copies and lets 100 people view it. Edit: Besides, the way the FAQ describes it ("acting as a direct agent of the human user"), we can't preclude the possibility that they're getting content through a paying subscriber's account. The Internet Archive used to collaborate with Alexa, which is known to have used browser plugins to collect data from users' browsers. 2) It used to work reliably a few years ago, but it seems that they changed their policies and my knowledge is outdated. Sorry about that. In any case, the New York Times is perfectly capable of putting up a paywall on any subset of visitors they want, but chose to turn a blind eye on a broad set of crawlers -- presumably because they want the Google traffic. That could be seen as tacit consent to being crawled, so I'm not sure how much legal ground they're going to have if they later decide to sue the crawlers.
  - hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
    I think part of the confusion is that they were referring to archive.org, which is a service of the Internet Archive. Archive.is is a separate site run by someone else, operating under different guidelines. There is no need to be rude over a misunderstanding.
    - geokon 5y ago
      well I didn't mean to be rude. but it was an off the cuff remark that was wrong. People say things without posting a source and that's how disinformation starts... first thing that came up in search suggests archive.org also is moving away from listening to robot.text files (granted this is an old blog post) https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-search-engines-dont-work-well-for-web-archives/ https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-sea... I couldn't find anything stating their policy clearly. but maybe I didn't search hard enough. I find it hard to believe news papers wouldn't block them if it was that easy
tshaddox 5y ago
Yes, one could use the exact same argument for software, and many do. There is widespread criticism of DRM, online license checks, etc. for software for exactly this reason.
- geokon 5y ago
  right. I think that was the parent's point. There is a bit of a double standard. You aren't allowed to link to a torrent of some software that's posted to hn. But if it's someone's writing then it's whatever. I'd personally lean more towards allowing torrents :)
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    I'd lean that way too, but I think that difference in standard is more about legality than philosophy. While archiving articles or using paywall workarounds might have some legal gray areas, it seems to be fairly well accepted. Distributing pirated commercial software, on the other hand, is pretty widely accepted to be illegal copyright infringement. There are cases even with software where it's not so clear: for example, there is some acceptance of distributing "pirated" software that is old, unsupported, and/or no longer for sale (often called "abandonware").

by geokon 5y ago

kijin 5y ago

Archive.org operates on the same principle that libraries do. If you were an author, would you also be pissed that public libraries allowed anyone to read your books for free? If you don't like it, just put up a robots.txt to ban the wayback machine from your site.

geokon 5y ago
1) I assume b/c libraries purchase the book it's not equivalent. Do they purchase a subscription to the NYT and then lend it out to people? From what I gather on their website it doesn't seem like it 2) I'm not sure why you just made that up .. https://archive.is/faq https://archive.is/faq "Why does archive.is not obey robots.txt? Because it is not a free-walking crawler, it saves only one page acting as a direct agent of the human user. Such services don't obey robots.txt (e.g. Google Feedfetcher, screenshot- or pdf-making services, isup.me, …)"
- kijin 5y ago
  1) There doesn't seem to be much difference in terms of "lost sales" (a common metric in copyright disputes) when a library purchases 1 copy of a book and lends it out to 100 people, versus when the Internet Archive purchases 0 copies and lets 100 people view it. Edit: Besides, the way the FAQ describes it ("acting as a direct agent of the human user"), we can't preclude the possibility that they're getting content through a paying subscriber's account. The Internet Archive used to collaborate with Alexa, which is known to have used browser plugins to collect data from users' browsers. 2) It used to work reliably a few years ago, but it seems that they changed their policies and my knowledge is outdated. Sorry about that. In any case, the New York Times is perfectly capable of putting up a paywall on any subset of visitors they want, but chose to turn a blind eye on a broad set of crawlers -- presumably because they want the Google traffic. That could be seen as tacit consent to being crawled, so I'm not sure how much legal ground they're going to have if they later decide to sue the crawlers.
- hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
  I think part of the confusion is that they were referring to archive.org, which is a service of the Internet Archive. Archive.is is a separate site run by someone else, operating under different guidelines. There is no need to be rude over a misunderstanding.
  - geokon 5y ago
    well I didn't mean to be rude. but it was an off the cuff remark that was wrong. People say things without posting a source and that's how disinformation starts... first thing that came up in search suggests archive.org also is moving away from listening to robot.text files (granted this is an old blog post) https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-search-engines-dont-work-well-for-web-archives/ https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-sea... I couldn't find anything stating their policy clearly. but maybe I didn't search hard enough. I find it hard to believe news papers wouldn't block them if it was that easy

tshaddox 5y ago

Yes, one could use the exact same argument for software, and many do. There is widespread criticism of DRM, online license checks, etc. for software for exactly this reason.

geokon 5y ago
right. I think that was the parent's point. There is a bit of a double standard. You aren't allowed to link to a torrent of some software that's posted to hn. But if it's someone's writing then it's whatever. I'd personally lean more towards allowing torrents :)
- tshaddox 5y ago
  I'd lean that way too, but I think that difference in standard is more about legality than philosophy. While archiving articles or using paywall workarounds might have some legal gray areas, it seems to be fairly well accepted. Distributing pirated commercial software, on the other hand, is pretty widely accepted to be illegal copyright infringement. There are cases even with software where it's not so clear: for example, there is some acceptance of distributing "pirated" software that is old, unsupported, and/or no longer for sale (often called "abandonware").