4 ms·

Jason Snell: "Apple historians only do stuff like this because Apple has no sense of its own history." https://twitter.com/jsnell/status/1588601907928436740 ht

Jason Snell: "Apple historians only do stuff like this because Apple has no sense of its own history." https://twitter.com/jsnell/status/1588601907928436740 https://twitter.com/jsnell/status/1588601907928436740

CharlesW 4y ago
Apple has historians and extensive private archives, so it sure seems like they do. I'm curious what this person expected would happen when they distributed Apple IP via a Google property.
- LocalH 4y ago
  Private archives are useless, and contrary to the public nature of copyright's actual endgame. This presumes that the company will 100% preserve their history, and many don't. It should not be illegal for individuals to preserve culture under some misguided idea of copyright as rent-seeking.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    > It should not be illegal for individuals to preserve culture… My understanding is that the illegal bit wasn't the preservation, but the re-distribution (of copyrighted material without a license or permission) and monetization.
    - slyall 4y ago
      So they have to wait till the stuff is out of copyright to distribute it? You do understand thats 100 years into the future right?
    - aaron_m04 4y ago
      What's the point of preserving something if nobody can see it?
    - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      Unauthorized copies outside the protections of fair use are still a violation. The damages are just lesser if you don't distribute and generally not worth litigating.
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
      Archival and distribution for the purposes of education and preserving the historical record can be considered fair use.
      - sneak 4y ago
        YouTube, of course, has no obligation to continue to host noninfringing fair-use content. It costs them money to have lawyers decide if they are at risk by hosting it, so they just quickly and cheaply fail closed on DMCA stuff.
        heavyset_go 4y ago
        Definitely, I've experienced that myself.
    - LocalH 4y ago
      The point is that independent preservation is necessarily at odds with the way copyright is policed in the modern day. Modern copyright is centered around the dogma of "copyright holders should have the right to absolutely control everything regarding a work". The copyright rent-seekers have, at every step, used the available technology and legal framework at the time to exert maximum control and give the individual minimum rights, and push the "final payment" date of public domain further and further away. If independent preservationists cannot legally archive material (and that includes redistributing it, otherwise the media is still at risk of loss due to the same mechanisms that cause it to be at risk of loss without independent preservation). Preservation needs to be explicitly codified in copyright law as accepted and legal. My recommendation would be to gate it behind the original length of US copyright law - after 14 years, archiving and distribution (along with incidental monetization for the purposes of maintaining and expanding the archive) should be allowed. After 14 years, infringement should require specific commercial usage of the work (selling individual copies versus merely ads across the board, especially if there is an effort to pass it off as an authentic copy). It could also require transparency in the money involved, to assure that it is entirely going towards maintaining the archive (which could include purchasing digitization equipment, acquiring copies of media, a small amount for time spent processing said media and for any hosting costs one might incur). Monetization is a red herring. YouTube is running ads on those videos whether or not the channel owner monetizes. Money is made either way. Money does not automatically erase fair use defense, either.
- ComputerGuru 4y ago
  I highly recommend you read this: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/22/technology/steve-jobs-archive.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/22/technology/steve-jobs-arc... (archive: https://archive.ph/I9HFD https://archive.ph/I9HFD) The way Apple runs their closed archives and what they task their historians with is highly "not-unbiased," to say the least. EDIT: missing an "un" in front of biased to really drive that double-negative home.
  - vasco 4y ago
    Not being biased is great!
    - ComputerGuru 4y ago
      Sorry, typo!
- phendrenad2 4y ago
  Private archives serve little purpose, by their nature they're closed, and never go public. They just sit there collecting dust until they're accidentally trashed or destroyed in a natural disaster (https://www.infodocket.com/2017/10/30/report-hewlett-packard-historical-archives-destroyed-in-santa-rosa-fires/ https://www.infodocket.com/2017/10/30/report-hewlett-packard...). Maybe someone at the company pulls one or two faded photographs from them to make some PR puff piece for the company's 50th or 100th birthday. But that's about it.
- devwastaken 4y ago
  Apple is a corp, not a family. Archives are only useful for advertising, employees aren't retained long enough to care.
chrisseaton 4y ago
'Sense of history' doesn't mean you don't not understand a copyright violation.
- criddell 4y ago
  Copyright I get, but triple negatives still take me a few seconds to unroll.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- phendrenad2 4y ago
  I think we all understand - very well - exactly what happened here. Apple has a law firm that scours the internet looking for Apple IP being used improperly. Unfortunately, they didn't think to carve out exceptions for fans and historians, so things like this get taken down as collateral damage in a war on actual IP theft. Ideally Apple would re-release all of this old footage with a permissive license, but the bureaucratic red tape at a large organization is probably immense (not to mention the fact that they'd have to scan it all to make sure they aren't using any 3rd party IP, such as music as Steve Jobs walks on stage, opening Apple up to lawsuits).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

CharlesW 4y ago

Apple has historians and extensive private archives, so it sure seems like they do. I'm curious what this person expected would happen when they distributed Apple IP via a Google property.

LocalH 4y ago
Private archives are useless, and contrary to the public nature of copyright's actual endgame. This presumes that the company will 100% preserve their history, and many don't. It should not be illegal for individuals to preserve culture under some misguided idea of copyright as rent-seeking.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- CharlesW 4y ago
  > It should not be illegal for individuals to preserve culture… My understanding is that the illegal bit wasn't the preservation, but the re-distribution (of copyrighted material without a license or permission) and monetization.
  - slyall 4y ago
    So they have to wait till the stuff is out of copyright to distribute it? You do understand thats 100 years into the future right?
  - aaron_m04 4y ago
    What's the point of preserving something if nobody can see it?
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    Unauthorized copies outside the protections of fair use are still a violation. The damages are just lesser if you don't distribute and generally not worth litigating.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    Archival and distribution for the purposes of education and preserving the historical record can be considered fair use.
    - sneak 4y ago
      YouTube, of course, has no obligation to continue to host noninfringing fair-use content. It costs them money to have lawyers decide if they are at risk by hosting it, so they just quickly and cheaply fail closed on DMCA stuff.
      - heavyset_go 4y ago
        Definitely, I've experienced that myself.
  - LocalH 4y ago
    The point is that independent preservation is necessarily at odds with the way copyright is policed in the modern day. Modern copyright is centered around the dogma of "copyright holders should have the right to absolutely control everything regarding a work". The copyright rent-seekers have, at every step, used the available technology and legal framework at the time to exert maximum control and give the individual minimum rights, and push the "final payment" date of public domain further and further away. If independent preservationists cannot legally archive material (and that includes redistributing it, otherwise the media is still at risk of loss due to the same mechanisms that cause it to be at risk of loss without independent preservation). Preservation needs to be explicitly codified in copyright law as accepted and legal. My recommendation would be to gate it behind the original length of US copyright law - after 14 years, archiving and distribution (along with incidental monetization for the purposes of maintaining and expanding the archive) should be allowed. After 14 years, infringement should require specific commercial usage of the work (selling individual copies versus merely ads across the board, especially if there is an effort to pass it off as an authentic copy). It could also require transparency in the money involved, to assure that it is entirely going towards maintaining the archive (which could include purchasing digitization equipment, acquiring copies of media, a small amount for time spent processing said media and for any hosting costs one might incur). Monetization is a red herring. YouTube is running ads on those videos whether or not the channel owner monetizes. Money is made either way. Money does not automatically erase fair use defense, either.
ComputerGuru 4y ago
I highly recommend you read this: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/22/technology/steve-jobs-archive.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/22/technology/steve-jobs-arc... (archive: https://archive.ph/I9HFD https://archive.ph/I9HFD) The way Apple runs their closed archives and what they task their historians with is highly "not-unbiased," to say the least. EDIT: missing an "un" in front of biased to really drive that double-negative home.
- vasco 4y ago
  Not being biased is great!
  - ComputerGuru 4y ago
    Sorry, typo!
phendrenad2 4y ago
Private archives serve little purpose, by their nature they're closed, and never go public. They just sit there collecting dust until they're accidentally trashed or destroyed in a natural disaster (https://www.infodocket.com/2017/10/30/report-hewlett-packard-historical-archives-destroyed-in-santa-rosa-fires/ https://www.infodocket.com/2017/10/30/report-hewlett-packard...). Maybe someone at the company pulls one or two faded photographs from them to make some PR puff piece for the company's 50th or 100th birthday. But that's about it.
devwastaken 4y ago
Apple is a corp, not a family. Archives are only useful for advertising, employees aren't retained long enough to care.

chrisseaton 4y ago

'Sense of history' doesn't mean you don't not understand a copyright violation.

criddell 4y ago
Copyright I get, but triple negatives still take me a few seconds to unroll.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
phendrenad2 4y ago
I think we all understand - very well - exactly what happened here. Apple has a law firm that scours the internet looking for Apple IP being used improperly. Unfortunately, they didn't think to carve out exceptions for fans and historians, so things like this get taken down as collateral damage in a war on actual IP theft. Ideally Apple would re-release all of this old footage with a permissive license, but the bureaucratic red tape at a large organization is probably immense (not to mention the fact that they'd have to scan it all to make sure they aren't using any 3rd party IP, such as music as Steve Jobs walks on stage, opening Apple up to lawsuits).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]