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It's really not. The copyright system essentially has two serious issues: the extraordinary length, and DMCA takedown notices that are too easy to abuse. But w

It's really not. The copyright system essentially has two serious issues: the extraordinary length, and DMCA takedown notices that are too easy to abuse. But what IA did infringes even on a hypothetically repaired copyright system where the maximum age of copyright was something like 10-20 years, and where DMCA take-downs were hard to abuse. There's just no reason to allow any random entity to distribute books that it doesn't own. We have already seen in the software industry that there is no way for any but the biggest companies to survive in a world without copyright [which open source is similar to] (I am referring to how Mongo, Elastic, Grafana and others have all had to give up on up-selling open source software and move closer to a closed license; while only Microsoft, Amazon, Google, IBM etc. are thriving by giving away free software).

ncallaway 4y ago
> But what IA did infringes even on a hypothetically repaired copyright system where the maximum age of copyright was something like 10-20 years, and where DMCA take-downs were hard to abuse. In that world, IA would be able to make available any 20+ year book via their program. In that world, I think it’s _much_ less likely that they feel any pressure to lend out copyright covered books, and if they did I would be outraged. I think it’s a little unfair to invent a hypothetical world, and then project their actions into that world as part of your judgement of their entity.
- simiones 4y ago
  If they had extended this program only to 20+ year old books (or whatever they deem fair), I would agree with you, but the sharing program included any book they had archived whatsoever, as far as I have read about this.
  - ncallaway 4y ago
    Right, but I'm saying their choices and actions might have been _different_ in a world where the state of copyright law has been entirely upended. It seems crazy to me to make up a hypothetical world that is almost totally different in the key facts, then apply their choices from *this* world, and judge them for that. Their choices seem, at least to me, to be a pretty direct *response to the existing* broken copyright system. I think "it would've been a more fair choice, if they had only put books into their collection that were 20+ years old" is an entirely fair criticism. "I think the current action they took, if taken in a repaired copyright system, would be unethical, therefore this action was unethical" is a mostly irrelevant statement. It's like saying "movie ticket stand-in" anti-segregation protests were unreasonable, because in a hypothetical world where there wasn't segregation it would just prevent a fair theater from operating. It might be true, but it's not relevant because that's not the world that the protests were taking place in!

ncallaway 4y ago

> But what IA did infringes even on a hypothetically repaired copyright system where the maximum age of copyright was something like 10-20 years, and where DMCA take-downs were hard to abuse. In that world, IA would be able to make available any 20+ year book via their program. In that world, I think it’s _much_ less likely that they feel any pressure to lend out copyright covered books, and if they did I would be outraged. I think it’s a little unfair to invent a hypothetical world, and then project their actions into that world as part of your judgement of their entity.

simiones 4y ago
If they had extended this program only to 20+ year old books (or whatever they deem fair), I would agree with you, but the sharing program included any book they had archived whatsoever, as far as I have read about this.
- ncallaway 4y ago
  Right, but I'm saying their choices and actions might have been _different_ in a world where the state of copyright law has been entirely upended. It seems crazy to me to make up a hypothetical world that is almost totally different in the key facts, then apply their choices from *this* world, and judge them for that. Their choices seem, at least to me, to be a pretty direct *response to the existing* broken copyright system. I think "it would've been a more fair choice, if they had only put books into their collection that were 20+ years old" is an entirely fair criticism. "I think the current action they took, if taken in a repaired copyright system, would be unethical, therefore this action was unethical" is a mostly irrelevant statement. It's like saying "movie ticket stand-in" anti-segregation protests were unreasonable, because in a hypothetical world where there wasn't segregation it would just prevent a fair theater from operating. It might be true, but it's not relevant because that's not the world that the protests were taking place in!