[HN Gopher] Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 week...
___________________________________________________________________
Temporary National Emergency Library to close 2 weeks early
Author : ingve
Score : 73 points
Date : 2020-06-14 19:08 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.archive.org)
| linuxhansl wrote:
| Is it just me or are DRM controlled ebooks a complete scam?!
|
| Consider:
|
| 1. Ebooks go through great length to make the information behave
| like a physical book.
|
| 2. Libraries have to buy as many licenses as they can plan to
| lend our concurrently
|
| 3. Licenses will even expire after a bit, because that's what
| real book do, they wear of.
|
| So far so good (if your goal is to simulate real books). But now:
|
| 1. Wanna give your ebook to a friend? nada
|
| 2. Wanna lend your ebook to a friend? nada
|
| 3. Wanna use the book after companies decide to disable their
| license servers? nada
|
| 4. Imagine a few hundred years from now. We can still look at old
| books because they exist and their content is not controlled.
| That would not be possible.
|
| Of course it is always possible to remove the DRM protection, but
| that is illegal.
|
| We've been duped.
|
| Edit: Layout.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Yeah, the idea of enforcing such artificial limitations on an
| digital book are disgusting not to mention dangerous, as these
| can very easuly be missused to surpress undesired works.
| efiecho wrote:
| A big part of the books in NEL are out of print and no electronic
| versions are available elsewhere, and never will, so had it not
| been for Internet Archive, it would have been impossible to read
| these books and many of them had been lost forever.
|
| If it's impossible to buy the book, why is NEL a problem for the
| publishers? Would they rather have that no one ever read the book
| again?
| jMyles wrote:
| Figuring out how to move projects like IA to a configuration
| where they are beyond the reach of the state, but still
| universally accessible, is one of the most important open issues
| of the internet today.
| pkaye wrote:
| > The Archive has data centers in three Californian cities: San
| Francisco, Redwood City, and Richmond. To prevent losing the
| data in case of e.g. a natural disaster, the Archive attempts
| to create copies of (parts of) the collection at more distant
| locations, currently including the Bibliotheca
| Alexandrina[notes 5] in Egypt and a facility in Amsterdam.[8]
| The Archive is a member of the International Internet
| Preservation Consortium[9] and was officially designated as a
| library by the state of California in 2007.[notes 6]
|
| Maybe start with more funding to have copies in more countries.
| geofft wrote:
| Since we'd be moving from legal protection to technical
| protection, would we also figure out some technical means
| whereby this would be accessible by Internet Archive only? Or
| would all of us be given a way to publish anything we want in a
| way that makes it accessible to the whole world but no
| government can impede? Would that then include sealed court
| records, intimate photos, performance reviews, credit card
| numbers, and so forth?
| generationP wrote:
| We have such havens already, and if the choice is between the
| Internet Archive plus everyone's naked pics or none of the
| two, I'd still vote for the former.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Presumably you're not part of any group that could be
| abused, targeted or traumatized by such a system. For
| example, underage rape victims who have videos of their
| rape forever available to any pervert online. Along with
| their contact info since nothing helps with trauma like
| continual harassment about it. That, btw, was a true
| example from my social media feeds although the site in
| question was pornhub so there was some recourse.
| geofft wrote:
| And I'd vote for the latter - but since we're talking about
| moving things beyond the reach of any government, it's not
| like I'm actually able to _vote_ on it, am I?
| mellosouls wrote:
| Not necessarily - an alternative approach is that "public
| service" projects like IA are _supported_ by the state - but
| this will only happen when they are scrupulous with respect to
| the law.
|
| This happens already in the US and other countries with various
| digital preservation initiatives that have legal mandates for
| their missions.
| userbinator wrote:
| SciHub/LibGen might be a good start.
|
| (...which, if this announcement is any indication, should
| probably be mirroring the IA if they haven't already done so. I
| believe they used to avoid that, under the assumption that the
| IA would always be accessible, but maybe not now.)
| ghaff wrote:
| Which also means they would be beyond the protection of a state
| and its laws. That doesn't strike me as an obviously preferable
| situation.
|
| Nothing that needs to be accessed via a network and requires
| human interaction is really truly beyond the reach of nation
| states. Just because you're on an offshore platform in the
| North Sea [1] doesn't mean you're not exposed to having your
| network and supply lines cut off at a minimum.,
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand
| aspenmayer wrote:
| I don't follow. Sites on IPFS are still copyrightable. They
| aren't mutually exclusive concepts legally.
| 12xo wrote:
| Lawyers...
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Clients...
| OJFord wrote:
| You realise that 'lawyers' aren't a vigilante group wondering
| around duelling in court those they see fit?
| [deleted]
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| Are there any technologies today that would enable a distributed
| backup of IA? Something like BitTorrent, but where I can specify
| I want to host XXX GB of data, and all the nodes in the swarm
| would provide a redundant, distributed backup in aggregate?
|
| I realize things like IPFS exist, but as far as I'm aware those
| require manual file pinning. I want to just donate storage and
| bandwidth to back the files up, not have to specify _which_ ones
| to back up.
| jmeyer2k wrote:
| IPFS works based on files visited. I wonder if you could write
| a script that crawls randomly until it hits a certain threshold
| stored...
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| Just a cursory look at the CLI, it looks like you have the
| ability to get stats on each block (including size,
| https://docs.ipfs.io/reference/cli/#ipfs-block-stat), and pin
| them (https://docs.ipfs.io/how-to/pin-files/#three-kinds-of-
| pins).
|
| I'm betting someone could create an open source project to
| traverse the Merkel tree, choose random blocks, and pin
| them... It could be made smarter by also checking the number
| of peers per block and prioritize the least pinned blocks.
|
| Edit: And a related discussion I found: https://www.reddit.co
| m/r/ipfs/comments/b4he2m/idea_partialse...
| nope96 wrote:
| "Let's Say You Wanted to Back Up The Internet Archive" post by
| Jason Scott
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/h02jl4/lets_sa...
| gpm wrote:
| If you're donating storage and bandwidth to backup "files" up
| without specifying which ones, you're going to be backing up
| random peoples personal encrypted backups which are useless to
| anyone who doesn't have the key.
|
| In the end you need a decision layer to decide _what_ to back
| up that decides what based on some standard of what 's good for
| society.
|
| But maybe you don't need to centralize the storage, I could
| imagine a distributed IA which mostly piggybacks on other
| people's storage.
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| Specifically, I'm referring to files that are supposed to be
| public to begin with like the Internet Archive. The goal
| there is to replicate the data and make it publicly
| accessible.
|
| There'd probably have to be some index (can IPNS be used for
| this?) to specify the root, and then you could specify you
| want to store XXX GB of random data from this root node.
| rblatz wrote:
| The internet archive was an interesting experiment, too bad they
| made such a reckless move. Hopefully they don't get shutdown, but
| they risked their very existence on this silly move.
| pawelk wrote:
| I don't think it was silly, but it was probably too rushed. As
| I said when it was announced, there is a valid, IMO, line of
| reasoning: as a digital library you can lend one digital copy
| per one physical book you have in your inventory. Before the
| lock down people could choose if they want to go get a physical
| copy or a digital one, but now they don't have a choice: their
| local library is closed and there are only so many options to
| borrow digital. This is where IA steps in and says: we will act
| as a proxy between you, and the physical copy of the book that
| is locked in the library you lost access to. When I say it was
| rushed I mean they could have implemented a system where any
| closed library would be able to submit their physical book
| inventory asking IA to act as a proxy, extending the number of
| digital copies backed 1:1 by physical ones. But instead of that
| Interned Archive decided that the locked down supply is
| effectively limitless, so let's just lend as many as people
| demand.
| rblatz wrote:
| Massive public copyright infringement was silly, and it put
| their whole very important operation at risk. If they at
| least went through the motions, and signed up the libraries
| like in your example that's at least defensible in court.
| shervinafshar wrote:
| Also discussed here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23485182
| awtawtwat3aw wrote:
| i love the archive for what the have done, but they seem to think
| laws don't apply to them because they are a non-profit and
| helping spread information, etc. that's fine and dandy, but they
| still have to play by the rules.
|
| you can see people like "hopfscotch6" and "differentguy" in this
| thread saying people should basically be giving things away,
| because that's the right thing to do. not sure how anyone can
| support that. commies who think life will be unicorns and candy
| if everyone gets everything they want for free. lmao. can't wait
| til we purge these radicals.
| DecoPerson wrote:
| The Internet Archive is so incredibly important.
|
| There's a lot of different views about the purpose of life or
| lack thereof, but for all except a few beliefs, having access to
| past writings is very important.
|
| Humanity is only at the very beginning of its existence. The
| success or failure of projects like the Internet Archive will
| drastically change our future.
|
| If you think the loss of the Internet Archive won't significantly
| current day activities, you're wrong. Besides the fact that the
| IA holds the only easily accessible copies of many websites from
| the 90s and early 2000s, there is the "my legacy" factor.
|
| Do you think people would have commissioned statues of themselves
| if they knew they were going to be vandalized and torn down in a
| protest 100 years later?
|
| Even though we may try to stop our egos affecting our decisions,
| they still play a huge role. Mathematicians don't just write
| papers to further the field, they also do it to gain notoriety
| and leave a legacy.
|
| I know that if I write a blog post, it will be unavailable from
| its original source within 20 years. But that's OK! The Internet
| Archive will store a copy and someone many generations from now
| will be able to read my humble writings. Oh... but the IA was
| shut down because its leadership decided to be philanthropic
| during a period of human history that lacked freedom of
| information. I'm going for a walk instead.
|
| Perhaps the "my legacy" effect has only a marginal influence on
| how many authors decide to put pen to paper, but it's still
| something. It's hard to measure, so if it's plausible that it
| could be significant, we should act appropriately.
| jawns wrote:
| > the IA was shut down because its leadership decided to be
| philanthropic during a period of human history that lacked
| freedom of information
|
| Philanthropic by massively infringing on copyright. Giving away
| something you own and have a right to give away is one thing.
| But critics of the emergency library allege that because the IA
| doesn't own the copyright to these books, they don't get to
| make and lend unlimited copies. Under the first sale doctrine,
| they can only lend out as many copies as they own.
| obiye wrote:
| Many people, myself among them, believe copyright is an
| unjust legal construct. In the vein of Gandhi, it is our
| moral imperative to violate unjust laws. So I stand with IA
| in their supposed violation of copyright.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Under the first sale doctrine, they can only lend out as
| many copies as they own.
|
| TBH, even that is not established as a point of law (if the
| lending is digital copies of physical books) but it seems a
| reasonable position and publishers/authors weren't pushing on
| it.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I don't think they actually make more copies? They just allow
| multiple people to look at the same copy at the same time?
| geofft wrote:
| > _We moved up our schedule because, last Monday, four commercial
| publishers chose to sue Internet Archive during a global
| pandemic._
|
| Did this come as a surprise? Did Internet Archive not expect
| publishers to sue?
|
| The Archive launched the emergency library during a global
| pandemic. Lots of people, myself included, said that this was a
| risky move because they would obviously get sued and it would put
| not only the Archive but the _existing_ idea of Controlled
| Digital Lending - which hasn 't been clearly established as legal
| in caselaw - at risk.
|
| They're trying to imply that the publishers are somehow bad
| people for suing in a pandemic, and sure, the publishers may very
| well be bad people _in general_ , but IA launched this effort on
| the grounds that, more or less, the law doesn't matter any more
| in a pandemic.
|
| > _However, this lawsuit is not just about the temporary National
| Emergency Library. The complaint attacks the concept of any
| library owning and lending digital books, challenging the very
| idea of what a library is in the digital world._
|
| That's precisely why we said they shouldn't have done this.
|
| Controlled Digital Lending matches the existing operations of a
| physical library - there is one paid physical copy per loaned
| title. Publishers and authors alike like physical libraries
| because when more people check out books from libraries, more
| copies get purchased. It stands to reason that they shouldn't
| mind digital libraries that follow the same principle.
|
| Internet Archive said, the same legal analysis that makes
| Controlled Digital Lending permissible also makes uncontrolled
| lending permissible when we decide the world needs it. We can
| give people unlimited electronic copies of books for one physical
| copy. The more people who read our books, the fewer purchases
| happen.
|
| _That_ challenges the very idea of what a library is in the
| digital world - it breaks the balance that has historically
| governed how physical libraries work. If I go to my local library
| and the librarian says "Actually don't bother checking this out,
| I'll just photocopy the whole book for you and you can keep it,"
| I'm not sure I'd call that a library. It's a useful service for
| me, of course, at least provided I figure out some way to make
| sure that the people who write the books I want to read keep
| getting paid, but it's now something entirely different from a
| library.
| jawns wrote:
| I'm an author, and from my perspective, CDL seems like a
| reasonable way (if not the most reasonable way) to apply the
| first sale doctrine in the digital age.
|
| Publishers would prefer to instead license ebooks and pretend
| first sale doesn't apply at all for digital books. I understand
| why that irritates a lot of people.
|
| The Internet Archive, on the flip side, is pretending that
| copyright infringement doesn't apply during a pandemic and that
| the first sale doctrine is much more expansive than it actually
| is.
|
| My hope is that both sides will come to accept CDL as a
| compromise system. It hurts publishers and authors no more than
| print lending does, and it's on much more solid legal ground
| than the IA's uncontrolled lending.
| lostmyoldone wrote:
| I can agree that uncontrolled digital lending for all future
| wouldn't be in the best interest of society under the current
| economic system, but while the letter of the law might not
| change during a chrisis, how it is interpreted very well
| might. After all, the law is but a contract between us and
| ourselves throught a governing body, nothing is fixed, and
| nothing is entirely objective.
|
| But, more importantly, the characterization of libraries as
| something that actually hurts publishers and writers, as
| implied by writing that CDL would hurt publishers "no more"
| than ordinary lending, is something I feel compelled to
| oppose.
|
| Libraries, and lending of some form has been part of society
| since likely even before anything we would call a book were
| first written.
|
| While it is true that some of the first libraries were not
| exactly public, and that you probably wouldn't be allowed to
| carry the book home from most, but this doesn't take away
| from the fact that libraries as part of society owes nothing
| to publishers. If anything, it's the other way around.
|
| If the absurd idea that seems prevalent in digital publishing
| that one book would only be allowed one reader had been
| around when the first books were written, it's fairly likely
| almost no books would have been written.
|
| While publishers might feel lending is inconvenient, if they
| continue trying to get rid of lending, they are no wiser than
| a runner in a headwind wishing for the air to go away.
|
| I'm not saying authors shouldn't get paid, but I am saying
| that pinning any loss of income on libraries is devaluing
| libraries and lendings role in history - and society -
| immensely.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > After all, the law is but a contract between us and
| ourselves throught a governing body, nothing is fixed, and
| nothing is entirely objective.
|
| Sure.
|
| But the basic idea of law is that the contract between us
| now and us in the future is relatively fixed. Otherwise,
| there is no difference between a system of written law and
| judges deciding cases at their whims.
|
| > But, more importantly, the characterization of libraries
| as something that actually hurts publishers and writers, as
| implied by writing that CDL would hurt publishers "no more"
| than ordinary lending, is something I feel compelled to
| oppose.
|
| > ... [bunch of text that does not actually oppose the
| previous statement]
|
| I think most reasonable people can recognize that:
|
| 1. Libraries are a good and useful component of modern
| society
|
| 2. Their lending may economically hurt authors and
| publishers
| geofft wrote:
| Yeah - I think CDL is great. But it worries me that CDL
| doesn't sit on established caselaw (let alone established
| legal code... really we should pass an amendment to the
| Copyright Act saying that CDL is fine) _and_ that the
| Internet Archive is relying on the same legal arguments for
| CDL to support their uncontrolled model, because it means
| there 's genuine validity in a judge ever saying "if we allow
| CDL it's a slippery slope." The Internet Archive has
| demonstrated that they are very interested in sliding to the
| bottom of the slope as fast as possible
| jcranmer wrote:
| One issue I have with borrowing ebooks is that, while
| typically there's ~1 copy per branch of physical books,
| there's ~1 copy per library system of ebooks, which makes
| trying to borrow ebooks unnecessarily frustrating. I'm not
| entirely certain who's to blame for this disparity, but it
| does exist, and I would love to see it rectified.
| toast0 wrote:
| There's been some hubub recently about publishers limiting
| the number of new books for eLending, but for books older
| than about 6 months? the number of eLending copies is
| determined by your library system to balance use and cost,
| although some of the eLending pricing is pretty sketchy
| though, I think I saw some books are priced at $x for 1
| year or N borrows, whichever comes first.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > Publishers and authors alike like physical libraries because
| when more people check out books from libraries, more copies
| get purchased.
|
| I don't think they like libraries per se, they've just made
| peace with the first sale doctrine.
|
| On the upside, libraries are a stable source of demand for new
| books.
|
| On the downside, libraries' collection are generally used more
| intensely than private collections - each book in a library
| displaces more than one private sale.
|
| > It stands to reason that they shouldn't mind digital
| libraries that follow the same principle.
|
| Maybe. I don't think the first sale doctrine really covers
| Controlled Digital Lending, so I guess we'll see how things pan
| out in court.
| [deleted]
| hopfscotch6 wrote:
| The publishers do not have a legitimate business and deserve to
| go out of existence. Copyright is nonsense.
| jawns wrote:
| How do you propose that the authors of creative works be paid
| for their efforts, outside of copyright?
| different-guy wrote:
| I propose that they do it out of love, and not for money.
| There will be less trash on the market and more high
| quality work.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _There will be less trash on the market and more high
| quality work_
|
| Actually, only those with lots of disposable time, or who
| can purchase others' time, will produce content.
| geofft wrote:
| Incidentally, this is the reason why you should always
| pay your politicians a salary and why you shouldn't find
| "this politician refused their salary" to be meritorious
| - you don't want to artificially restrict your pool of
| politicians to the independently wealthy.
| hopfscotch7 wrote:
| They aren't?
| thr0waw4y5555 wrote:
| We are, very poorly. With rampant piracy of books (e.g.,
| ruslib), royalties have become quite reduced that would
| traditionally compensate for low up front payment from
| publishers. I'd blame publishers for paying so poorly,
| but the bulk of my irritation goes to entitled consumers
| who have decided that regardless of the time and effort
| required to create something, they deserve it for free.
| Aeolun wrote:
| What I think I deserve for free is the ability to decide
| whether a book is worth the price or not. This is simple
| in a bookstore, but when I'm online the default seems to
| be that I have to shell out to even take a look.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Your position is unusual enough that I don't really
| understand it. If you laid out an argument, I'd be happy
| to read it and have my mind changed. Terse responses are
| not persuasive, though.
| hopfscotch7 wrote:
| I hold that you cannot own information. I can have a copy
| of some information which you have, without depriving you
| of it. Property rights don't apply. One needs only look
| at the way Disney has gotten copyright terms extended to
| see that it exists purely to serve entrenched publishing
| interests, and nothing more.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| Better yet, nobody should be paid for any work
| whatsoever. We should all love what we do, and if we
| won't do what we do for free, we clearly don't love it
| enough. We should all put our lack of money where our
| mouths are.
| mlyle wrote:
| If we could only find enough people who love cleaning
| toilets...
| hopfscotch7 wrote:
| If you just dropped the sarcastic tone, that's exactly
| right.
| SirYandi wrote:
| What if an author self publishes their book, does he/she
| deserve copyright?
| hopfscotch7 wrote:
| No
| geofft wrote:
| I don't disagree with you in principle, but it's the system
| we have. So,
|
| 1) What's a good way to ensure that authors continue to
| author books while not dying of exposure (or, more
| practically, that authors continue to author books instead of
| deciding to go work at a tech company or something)?
|
| 2) How do we implement that system?
| jancsika wrote:
| > (or, more practically, that authors continue to author
| books instead of deciding to go work at a tech company or
| something)
|
| Have you done or read research to suggest this is something
| to worry about?
|
| There are other concerns certainly. But I have trouble
| understanding how someone who has ever visited Wikipedia or
| visited github could even ask this question. It sure sounds
| like a conceptual anachronism to me. (Though not nearly as
| bad as the person who wanted to shift from discussing
| copying data to holding up a bank the last time this topic
| came up.)
| geofft wrote:
| > _Have you done or read research to suggest this is
| something to worry about?_
|
| Yes, I've heard many authors saying that they're unhappy
| with the emergency library in particular because they are
| concerned they won't be able to get paid to write books
| if this happens. And, based on my training and
| experience, if someone isn't paid to do their job
| anymore, they'll look for another job.
|
| I'm aware of GitHub. I've published things to GitHub
| myself. Many of them I was paid to publish. There's a lot
| more I _would_ publish to GitHub if I weren 't writing
| proprietary code all day. You can go see all the pull
| requests I haven't responded to. I think it's absolutely
| true that if you gave people a way to put a roof over
| their heads and food on the table, they'd do work they
| love anyway, and I myself point to GitHub as an example
| of that. I think it's also true that if you _don 't_ give
| people a way to put a roof over their heads and food on
| the table, they'll find something else to do with their
| life that does.
|
| I've also visited Wikipedia. Here's a quote from the
| first person to make one million edits: "Being suddenly
| and involuntarily unemployed will do that to you." I
| think that demonstrates that if he could do something
| else and get paid for it, he would have.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > But I have trouble understanding how someone who has
| ever visited Wikipedia or visited github could even ask
| this question.
|
| I can't decide whether that statement is autistic or
| pedantic, or both.
|
| - neither are 200 page literary works, so your comparison
| is very strange. I don't know anybody who goes to github
| for entertainment.
|
| - a lot of Wikipedia "editors" are PR firms (ie. paid)
|
| - the entire reason for copyright law was to allow
| authors and musicians to monetize their work, authorized
| by Congress. So there was an obvious need for that
| legislation.
|
| - Amazon's first product was books, so obviously somebody
| appreciates them enough to pay for them.
|
| Do github and Wikipedia replace movies in your world too?
| jefftk wrote:
| I think if you talked to most authors and asked "would
| you still do this if it were unpaid" you'd get almost
| entirely "no"s. Do you expect otherwise?
| indigochill wrote:
| If you asked most software engineers if they'd code if it
| were unpaid, you'd also get mostly "no"s. And yet FOSS
| carries on. There are some people who simply need to
| create.
|
| And yes, some FOSS is subsidized by companies who pay
| their engineers to contribute, but there are also people
| who contribute on their own time.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-06-14 23:00 UTC)