3 ms·

> Why mail physical books around when all you need is their content? Because physically mailing books is not copyright infringement. Physically mailing books

> Why mail physical books around when all you need is their content? Because physically mailing books is not copyright infringement. Physically mailing books provides a legal way of sharing the contents of books with more people.

leobg 4y ago
Sure. But they already run a piracy site, don’t they? The cost and delay of shipping are what drives many people to piracy in the first place, I would argue. If I can have a book for $5 in two days as a used physical copy from Amazon, for $20 now as ebook from the publisher, or for free right now from a piracy site, the choice is obvious.
kristopolous 4y ago
Well we need to change copyright then. I really only care about out of print and rare materials. Passing around a book through the mail that's been out of print for 80 years is rather dangerous when you care about its preservation. For some reason we legally treat these as identical to some mass market paperback trade of say diary of a wimpy kid and that's stupid. If we care about research, preservation of materials, having them available for future generations, then really, the sacred holy protection of copyright can take a hike when dealing with those texts. I frequently have to get on planes and fly off to University special collections and sit in some special room where I can't bring in a camera and have to carefully read through something that can't be digitized because we're somehow not smart enough to see a difference between that and a Dan Brown novel you get at the grocery store. Pisses me off. Holistically speaking, what the fuck are we doing? This stuff shouldn't be special and precious. We've had photography for over 180 years, this isn't some strange new phenomena here. I should be able to browse such documents from the same bed I'm lying in now writing these words, not book a plane to fly across country because librarians are justifiably paranoid about some asshole copyright lawyers.
- leobg 4y ago
  Right. This is silly. I’m wondering: If it’s 80 years out of print, is it still protected by copyright at all? The thing with copyright is, it seems to me: You cannot ask for them to change the rules. You just have to break them. Imagine Google had asked copyright lawyers if they could build their search engine. Crawling other peoples websites, keeping an index of their content, and then make people come to Google because “that’s where all the content is“. Would have never gotten off the ground. But now that Google exists, and even the copyright lawyers use it, it’s obvious that this is legal. Lawyers and politicians are followers, not leaders. And much of technology is about circumventing their yesterday-values. What did Peter Thiel say about the Internet? The world of atoms was over-regulated. So businesses fled into the world of bits. It’s a cat and mouse game. Whatever you do, better make sure you’re the cat.
  - infinityio 4y ago
    Worth noting that Google tried (and failed) to solve this specific problem https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-tragedy-of-google-books/523320/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-t...
  - 35208654 4y ago
    > The thing with copyright is, it seems to me: You cannot ask for them to change the rules. You just have to break them. Absolutely. Break them and support the people who facilitate the disobedience. Fuck the copyright lobby, fuck publishers, and fuck anyone who gets in the way of me reading what I want in whatever form I want. The people who are preventing you from reading what you want in the form you want it are not protecting some sacred system of authorship reward. They have no ethos. They are simply protecting the interest of their masters, for pay.
- hkt 4y ago
  > Well we need to change copyright then. I'd like to recommend a book to you: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780429341489/capitalism-power-innovation-cecilia-rikap https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/97804293414... Sadly it isn't the lawyers who should attract your ire. It is the legislators and the people who fund them.
  - kristopolous 4y ago
    right, we can't attack the lawyers. There will always be another disreputable sellout around the corner. we need to change the laws. absolutely.
    - hkt 4y ago
      I've no objection to invective against them, but the people making the rules are quite content for us all to be distracted from the task of working out what change would look like and then agitating for it.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Yeah, copyright laws on infinitely reproducible material (whose original author is likely already dead) is one of those laws I don’t intend on upkeeping and will torrent/download any such book if available without any moral objections.
- beej71 4y ago
  > Well we need to change copyright then. We absolutely do. I'm for much shorter terms, e.g. 14 years, the original term in the US. But I would be willing to correct for changes in life expectancy since 1790. I haven't run the math, but I suspect it would be 20-25 years, discounting infant mortality. This is a far more sensible figure than "authors death + any ridiculous number". (I do sell books I wrote with my copyright, so I'm not completely unaware of the needs of authors.) That said, I do want the same copyright protections for the wimpy kid and Dan Brown, because the alternative--differentiating copyrightable material or charging to make it--is am undesirable alternative to shorter terms. > I should be able to browse such documents from the same bed I'm lying in now writing these words, not book a plane to fly across country because librarians are justifiably paranoid about some asshole copyright lawyers. Amen to that.
Mezzie 4y ago
Also it's illegal in at least one major national jurisdiction to fuck with people's mail (US). Which means that ironically if you're going to break the law, using the mail isn't a terrible idea.

leobg 4y ago

Sure. But they already run a piracy site, don’t they? The cost and delay of shipping are what drives many people to piracy in the first place, I would argue. If I can have a book for $5 in two days as a used physical copy from Amazon, for $20 now as ebook from the publisher, or for free right now from a piracy site, the choice is obvious.

kristopolous 4y ago

Well we need to change copyright then. I really only care about out of print and rare materials. Passing around a book through the mail that's been out of print for 80 years is rather dangerous when you care about its preservation. For some reason we legally treat these as identical to some mass market paperback trade of say diary of a wimpy kid and that's stupid. If we care about research, preservation of materials, having them available for future generations, then really, the sacred holy protection of copyright can take a hike when dealing with those texts. I frequently have to get on planes and fly off to University special collections and sit in some special room where I can't bring in a camera and have to carefully read through something that can't be digitized because we're somehow not smart enough to see a difference between that and a Dan Brown novel you get at the grocery store. Pisses me off. Holistically speaking, what the fuck are we doing? This stuff shouldn't be special and precious. We've had photography for over 180 years, this isn't some strange new phenomena here. I should be able to browse such documents from the same bed I'm lying in now writing these words, not book a plane to fly across country because librarians are justifiably paranoid about some asshole copyright lawyers.

leobg 4y ago
Right. This is silly. I’m wondering: If it’s 80 years out of print, is it still protected by copyright at all? The thing with copyright is, it seems to me: You cannot ask for them to change the rules. You just have to break them. Imagine Google had asked copyright lawyers if they could build their search engine. Crawling other peoples websites, keeping an index of their content, and then make people come to Google because “that’s where all the content is“. Would have never gotten off the ground. But now that Google exists, and even the copyright lawyers use it, it’s obvious that this is legal. Lawyers and politicians are followers, not leaders. And much of technology is about circumventing their yesterday-values. What did Peter Thiel say about the Internet? The world of atoms was over-regulated. So businesses fled into the world of bits. It’s a cat and mouse game. Whatever you do, better make sure you’re the cat.
- infinityio 4y ago
  Worth noting that Google tried (and failed) to solve this specific problem https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-tragedy-of-google-books/523320/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-t...
- 35208654 4y ago
  > The thing with copyright is, it seems to me: You cannot ask for them to change the rules. You just have to break them. Absolutely. Break them and support the people who facilitate the disobedience. Fuck the copyright lobby, fuck publishers, and fuck anyone who gets in the way of me reading what I want in whatever form I want. The people who are preventing you from reading what you want in the form you want it are not protecting some sacred system of authorship reward. They have no ethos. They are simply protecting the interest of their masters, for pay.
hkt 4y ago
> Well we need to change copyright then. I'd like to recommend a book to you: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780429341489/capitalism-power-innovation-cecilia-rikap https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/97804293414... Sadly it isn't the lawyers who should attract your ire. It is the legislators and the people who fund them.
- kristopolous 4y ago
  right, we can't attack the lawyers. There will always be another disreputable sellout around the corner. we need to change the laws. absolutely.
  - hkt 4y ago
    I've no objection to invective against them, but the people making the rules are quite content for us all to be distracted from the task of working out what change would look like and then agitating for it.
kaba0 4y ago
Yeah, copyright laws on infinitely reproducible material (whose original author is likely already dead) is one of those laws I don’t intend on upkeeping and will torrent/download any such book if available without any moral objections.
beej71 4y ago
> Well we need to change copyright then. We absolutely do. I'm for much shorter terms, e.g. 14 years, the original term in the US. But I would be willing to correct for changes in life expectancy since 1790. I haven't run the math, but I suspect it would be 20-25 years, discounting infant mortality. This is a far more sensible figure than "authors death + any ridiculous number". (I do sell books I wrote with my copyright, so I'm not completely unaware of the needs of authors.) That said, I do want the same copyright protections for the wimpy kid and Dan Brown, because the alternative--differentiating copyrightable material or charging to make it--is am undesirable alternative to shorter terms. > I should be able to browse such documents from the same bed I'm lying in now writing these words, not book a plane to fly across country because librarians are justifiably paranoid about some asshole copyright lawyers. Amen to that.

Mezzie 4y ago

Also it's illegal in at least one major national jurisdiction to fuck with people's mail (US). Which means that ironically if you're going to break the law, using the mail isn't a terrible idea.