[HN Gopher] EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet ...
___________________________________________________________________
EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against
publishers
Author : toomuchtodo
Score : 396 points
Date : 2020-06-30 15:52 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
| loughnane wrote:
| It's well established at this point that IA took a big misstep
| here and is too important and singular an entity to run afoul of
| current laws.
|
| To those who think IA is wrong not just tactically but morally on
| the basis of "violating the law", I'd like you to consider the
| following:
|
| Unjust laws exist.
|
| - Shall we be content to obey them?
|
| - Shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have
| succeeded?
|
| - Shall we transgress them at once?
| timwaagh wrote:
| the reason they are doing this is the fact they are going to
| lose. libraries are a relic of the past too in my opinion.
| aahhahahaaa wrote:
| well this is the bleakest thing I've read today
| mellosouls wrote:
| For anybody interested in the IA's claimed ethical and legal
| justifications, they summarise and link to them at the following
| page:
|
| http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/30/internet-archive-responds...
| snapetom wrote:
| Wow, that still seems rather weak and reckless.
|
| First they describe what Controlled Digital Lending is - one
| physical copy == one lend. They cite legal experts that agree.
| That's fine, no one's disagreeing there.
|
| Then they go on with this:
|
| "Additionally, fair use ultimately asks, 'whether the copyright
| law's goal of promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts
| would be better served by allowing the use than by preventing
| it.' __In this case we believe it would be. Controlled digital
| lending as we conceive it is... __"
|
| So basically they went off and created the National Emergency
| Library based on __their own interpretation __of Fair Use. You
| better be ready for a _huge_ fight if you 're going to that. I
| don't know how they couldn't have expected this.
| ogennadi wrote:
| > Yes, we've had authors opt out. We anticipated that would
| happen as well; in fact, we launched with clear instructions on
| how to opt out because we understand that authors and creators
| have been impacted by the same global pandemic that has
| shuttered libraries and left students without access to print
| books. Our takedowns are completed quickly and the submitter is
| notified via email.
| WaltPurvis wrote:
| Numerous authors have said this was not their experience.
|
| More importantly, it is not an author's job to "opt out" of
| someone illegally pirating their work.
| chadash wrote:
| It's nice that they have an easy opt-out system. But this is
| kind of like spammers who have easy opt-out... better than
| nothing, but I shouldn't be getting spammed in the first
| place.
| WaltPurvis wrote:
| It's worse than that. They're violating copyrights, i.e.,
| stealing, and then saying "if you don't want us to steal
| from you, we have an opt out form you can fill out."
|
| EDIT: People are downvoting this because I equated
| violating copyrights to stealing, which is odd because US
| law explicitly defines copyright infringement as stealing
| property. That's not debatable; it's a simple fact. (A fact
| that apparently bothers some people, but being bothered by
| reality is not a basis for disagreement.)
| bosswipe wrote:
| Copyright infringement is not stealing.
| WaltPurvis wrote:
| That's a slogan I hear a lot. Unfortunately, the law
| disagrees. Copyright infringement is defined as a stolen
| property offense:
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter
| -11...
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| Fortunately, it is not an immutable fact.
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| Violating copyright and stealing are fundamentally
| different things. If I steal your tv, you no longer have
| a TV. If I pirate a book, all existing copies of the book
| still exist.
|
| If you price a book above what I'm willing to pay for it,
| I'm never going to buy it. Ever. If my willingness to pay
| is "$0", then you can't even argue that the creator has
| lost revenue if I pirate it. I was never going to buy it
| - it's too expensive at any price.
|
| You can make the argument that capitalism should exclude
| me from ever being allowed to read it, because my
| willingness to pay is below the seller's willingness to
| sell. Fair enough.
|
| However, it's pretty tough to calculate actual economic
| damages here - I was never going to buy the book, at any
| price. And I haven't deprived anyone else of the ability
| to buy the book. You might say to me: "But you are
| clearly in the target market - you wanted the book enough
| to pirate and read it." I disagree - by definition, the
| target market must consist of people who want the product
| enough to pay for it.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| There is ain interesting flaw in: If you price a book
| above what I'm willing to pay for it, I'm never going to
| buy it.
|
| Even if this is correct, you might have bought another
| book that was cheaper.
|
| Case in point: Photoshop. It was pirated by everyone at
| home. But organizations could not pirate, so when they
| buy a photo editing package, it will be photoshop, as
| that what the employees know. If piracy at home was not
| an option, you'd see much more different photo packages
| at different price points in the market.
| WaltPurvis wrote:
| Your philosophical musings are not uninteresting, but
| they are irrelevant to the fact that violating copyright
| is defined as stealing property under US law.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter
| -11...
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| Wow, I mean, what a counterintuitive coincidence.
|
| Trafficking in copyrighted works constitutes theft, but a
| private equity firm buying a company with debt,
| transferring the debt onto the company's balance sheet,
| allowing it to go into bankruptcy because of enormous
| debt load, and paying themselves huge bonuses along the
| way is not theft.
|
| If it weren't for the fact that the U.S. federal code as
| it exists in June of 2020 is the definitive source of
| ethical and moral definitions, I would think that maybe
| something _untoward_ might be going on.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| Seems coherent to me: you are not taking ownership of
| something without a contractual basis. It would I think
| constitute 'misuse of corporate assets' though.
| enriquto wrote:
| > Your philosophical musings are not uninteresting, but
| they are irrelevant to the fact that violating copyright
| is defined as stealing property under US law.
|
| Your philosophical musings are not uninteresting, but
| they are irrelevant to the fact that freeing slaves
| legitimately bought is defined as stealing property under
| US law.
| WaltPurvis wrote:
| That's not cute. It's incredibly appalling to compare the
| institution of slavery to people who pirate books simply
| because they want the benefits of authors' work without
| compensating those authors.
| enriquto wrote:
| I'm not making that comparison. I'm not even saying that
| I disagree with your view on copyright. I'm just setting
| up this correspondence to show that the argumentation
| that you use is not valid.
| WaltPurvis wrote:
| Fine, but there is nothing at all invalid about my
| argument, because all I argued is that infringing
| copyrights is defined as stealing property under US law.
| That's not even an argument; it's simply a statement of
| fact. Unless you're talking about my statement that
| musings about how it _shouldn 't_ be considered stealing
| are irrelevant to the fact that it _is_ , which is also
| not an argument, just a statement of fact. (Those musings
| are misguided as well as irrelevant, but I didn't advance
| any argument about them being misguided.)
| enriquto wrote:
| Your rhetoric tricks are a bit tiring. The question is
| not settled by saying that something is illegal. Of
| course book sharing is illegal under the current law,
| that's the whole point. The law in question is stupid.
| People who respect the concept of law and the importance
| of laws are outraged by this, and want to use the legal
| system to change this stupid law. Repeating that "book
| sharing is illegal" as you do leads nowhere.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _the target market must consist of people who want the
| product enough to pay for it._
|
| That in fact doesn't work even in the case of actual
| stealing, otherwise we are forced to conclude that the
| target market for luxury cars includes teenage kids who
| hot-wire them and take them for joyrides.
| kazinator wrote:
| I think that the argument which you present works well
| for personal use: the book $0 monetary value _to you_ and
| you don 't intend to redistribute it.
|
| However, there are people who copy without authorization
| and make money from it. (For instance, Google: they
| collect money for YouTube Premium subscriptions, in
| exchange for which they let people watch all sorts of
| illegally reproduced material without commercial
| interruptions.)
|
| Now suppose the copyright holder wants $1000 for the
| book. Nobody is willing to pay. You make copies available
| for $15. A few people are found who pay you. Are you not
| stealing that revenue from the copyright holder? Oh, but
| that copyright holder didn't _want_ the money; or else
| they could have sold for $15 per copy themselves. You 're
| just getting money that they copyright holder left on the
| table ...
| shuntress wrote:
| By spending the time to acquire and consume a copy of the
| content you have proven that your willingness to pay is
| above "$0".
|
| Granted, perhaps not _much_ above 0. But still evidently
| above 0.
|
| edit: Even if your "consumption" is merely acquiring and
| storing (or even acquiring and immediately discarding)
| nikisweeting wrote:
| In addition to thinking about ways to back up IA, we can also
| start backing up our own content and things we visit locally, so
| we don't become so reliant on centralized datasets:
|
| https://archivebox.io
|
| https://conifer.rhizome.org/
| [deleted]
| bergstromm466 wrote:
| "1. The current political economy is based on a false idea of
| material abundance. We call it pseudo-abundance. It is based on a
| commitment to permanent growth, the infinite accumulation of
| capital and debt-driven dynamics through compound interest. This
| is unsustainable, of course, because infinite growth is logically
| and physically impossible in any physically constrained, finite
| system.
|
| 2. The current political economy is based on a false idea of
| "immaterial scarcity." It believes that an exaggerated set of
| intellectual property monopolies--for copyrights, trademarks and
| patents--should restrain the sharing of scientific, social and
| economic innovations. Hence the system discourages human
| cooperation, excludes many people from benefiting from innovation
| and slows the collective learning of humanity. In an age of grave
| global challenges, the political economy keeps many practical
| alternatives sequestered behind private firewalls or unfunded if
| they cannot generate adequate profits. 14
|
| These structural contradictions have always made for reduced
| efficiency and irrationality. But in recent decades they have
| resulted in increasingly chronic crisis tendencies, which amount
| to a terminal crisis of capitalism as a system."
|
| - Kevin Carson, Exodus: General Idea of the Revolution in the XXI
| Century
| [deleted]
| TheHeretic12 wrote:
| I recognize some of the names here. This will be a case to watch,
| which ever way it goes the constructions allowed here will
| percolate through the law for years to come. This case hinges on
| the exact wording of the law that authorizes the National
| Emergency Library. IIRC, it basically gives copyright impunity
| during a declared national emergency. As far as I am aware, the
| coronavirus declared national emergency is still in effect. IA
| loses by attrition, is my guess. Many rounds of "Preliminary"
| injunctions and orders will stop thier income streams, then they
| die.
| WaltPurvis wrote:
| > _This case hinges on the exact wording of the law that
| authorizes the National Emergency Library. IIRC, it basically
| gives copyright impunity during a declared national emergency._
|
| There is no such law. What on earth are you talking about?
| Vespasian wrote:
| What law does explicitly allow the NEL?
|
| If I recall correctly, the Internet Archive decided
| unilaterally that they would do this due to many libraries
| being closed.
|
| I (not in the US) do not remember any changes to the copyright
| act being passed to allow this.
|
| Edit to add: They offered this globally and therefore
| disregarded any laws in countries which have already settled
| this issue. (Hint: to my knowledge not in a way that favors
| their interpretation)
| jjcon wrote:
| There is no law permitting this - IA main legal argument it:
|
| > Our principal legal argument for controlled digital lending
| is that fair use-- an "equitable rule of reason"--permits
| libraries to do online what they have always done with
| physical collections under the first sale doctrine: lend
| books
|
| http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/30/internet-archive-
| responds...
|
| They are saying digital is equivalent to physical which is
| the same exact argument vidangel tried and lost a year or two
| ago
| nordsieck wrote:
| > What law does explicitly allow the NEL?
|
| > If I recall correctly, the Internet Archive decided
| unilaterally that they would do this due to many libraries
| being closed.
|
| Exactly.
|
| It's not even clear that "controlled digital lending" is in
| compliance with copyright law[1].
|
| The NEL or "uncontrolled digital lending" is almost certainly
| not in compliance with the copyright statutes.
|
| ___
|
| 1. It's not specifically allowed, and there hasn't been any
| case law on it. To see arguments for controlled digital
| lending, go here:
| https://controlleddigitallending.org/whitepaper
| MattGaiser wrote:
| They should settle before even controlled digital lending is
| determined to not be legally compliant.
| jjcon wrote:
| EFF is on the wrong side of both the law and common sense here
| and they will lose no matter how much they pay their legal team.
| Internet archive didn't just steal from 'publishers' they are
| also stealing from authors big and small. You don't get to give
| out free digital copies of books to people without permission and
| expect to get away with it.
|
| This exact digital/physical equivalence idea has already been
| through the courts (for movies/television) and it failed
| miserably:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VidAngel
|
| > In June 2019, a jury ordered VidAngel to pay over $62 million
| in damages for copyright violations.
| sp332 wrote:
| The lawsuit is only asking for damages for 127 books, for a
| theoretical maximum of $19 million according to
| https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/6/23/21293875/internet...
| And with books from the last 5 years excluded, and the opt-out,
| and the fact they were partnering with multiple other libraries
| and could probably include their copies, the damages the
| authors could show will probably be relatively small.
| gpm wrote:
| Even if you broke the law you don't just role over and give the
| other side whatever they want. They're inevitable going to ask
| for more compensation than they are entitled to (why wouldn't
| they), and you need to push back to make the penalty fair.
| That's just how our legal system is set up to work.
|
| The EFF is on the right side of the law the same way a lawyer
| for a criminal is. The lawyer (eff) is fulfilling a necessary
| function of the judicial system even when the party they are
| representing is in the wrong.
|
| The EFF has a keen interest in this case because the publishers
| will be doubt use this case to push for copyright maximalist
| interpretations of the law, and letting those interpretations
| become case law unchallenged is bad for society.
|
| Edit: At a glance the vid angel lawsuit you quote is about
| circumventing DRM, something that is not relevant to this case
| since the physical books they scan have no DRM.
| izacus wrote:
| Please stop equating owners of IA and EFF with criminals -
| copyright infringmenent is nowhere near equivalent to actual
| crimes that cause harm. It's a disgusting rhetoric that was
| paid for by rent seeking publishers.
| gpm wrote:
| I am merely making the analogy to such lawyers, not
| attempting to call them criminals. Sorry if I came off as
| doing otherwise.
|
| That said, while not in this case (I think), copyright
| infringement is in many for profit contexts criminal under
| the laws of the United States.
| jjcon wrote:
| > The EFF is on the right side of the law the same way a
| lawyer for a criminal is.
|
| By this definition, no lawyer can be on the wrong side - you
| know what is meant by the phrase 'wrong side of the law' stop
| it with the mental gymnastics.
| wanderr wrote:
| By that definition no lawyer operating in good faith is.
|
| You're not arguing about whether the defendant is on the
| wrong side of the law.
| gpm wrote:
| No, the criminal in the above is absolutely on the wrong
| side of the law. That's the assumption after all.
|
| Lawyers are on the wrong side of the law when they break it
| themselves (see, e.g., Avenatti), but not when they
| represent people on the wrong side of the law. The latter
| is necessary for the common law court system to work at
| all.
| aka1234 wrote:
| > "No, the criminal in the above is absolutely on the
| wrong side of the law. That's the assumption after all."
|
| In America at least, the defendant is presumed innocent
| until proven guilty. So the assumption should be that the
| defendant is on the right side of the law. It's the
| prosecutor or complainant's job to prove the defendant is
| in fact on the wrong side of the law.
|
| To call a defendant 'the criminal' (and saying the
| defendant is in the wrong) is putting the cart before the
| horse.
| chadash wrote:
| > In America at least, the defendant is presumed innocent
| until proven guilty.
|
| Is this true for civil cases? I presume no one is being
| charged with a crime here...
| aka1234 wrote:
| > Is this true for civil cases? I presume no one is being
| charged with a crime here...
|
| Yes. The publishers are saying 'the Internet Archive
| violated my rights and has caused monetary damages. They
| owe us for those damages.' It's up to the publishers to
| provide that the Internet Archive violated those rights.
|
| Now civil trials and criminal trials have different
| standards for evidence and determining guilt. In criminal
| trials, the prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable
| doubt that someone committed a criminal offense.
|
| In civil cases, the complainant (plaintiff) just has to
| prove via a 'preponderance of the evidence' that their
| rights were violated. Meaning, it's more likely than not
| their rights were violated.
| gpm wrote:
| You're nitpicking the language in a hypothetical here. Of
| course the court can't assume the defendant is guilty,
| but the purpose of the word criminal here is to say that
| in the hypothetical the defendant did actually commit the
| crime they are accused of.
| jjcon wrote:
| > You're nitpicking the language in a hypothetical here.
|
| That is exactly what you are doing by picking a bone with
| the phrase wrong side of the law
| gpm wrote:
| No, it isn't. By saying the EFF is on the wrong side of
| the law you are implying that they are acting badly, this
| is simply not the case and needs correcting.
|
| There is a reason why falsley accusing someone of a crime
| is libel in and of itself and is actionable under the law
| regardless of damages, I don't think this quite reaches
| that standard, but it is damn close.
| jjcon wrote:
| EFF IS on the wrong side of the law. Yes everyone
| deserves a defense but you yourself admitted IA was in
| the wrong and EFF is choosing to go to bat for them.
| gpm wrote:
| No. As explained above acting as legal council for
| someone who has broken the law does not make you yourself
| be "on the wrong side of the law".
| jjcon wrote:
| And as I said - EFF isn't acting as blind legal council -
| they are tying themselves to IA even saying they are
| proud to stand with them and pledging financial support
| for them. This is totally different from a public
| defender being elected for a citizen. I didn't say it was
| illegal for EFF to do this or that they were breaking the
| law, I said they were on the wrong side of the law.
| gpm wrote:
| I'm beginning to think you actually just don't know what
| "the wrong side of the law" means. Here is the definition
|
| https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/on%20the%20wrong%...
|
| Exercising their first amendment rights to support an
| organization that broke the law is unequivocally legal, a
| healthy part of society, and not on the wrong side of the
| law.
| __s wrote:
| Read their argument in the context of legal proceedings
| after the defendant pleads guilty
|
| The lawyer is still on the right side of the law after
| the plea
| jjcon wrote:
| A defense attorney defending a guilty criminal doesn't
| typically pledge financial and moral support and state
| publically that they are proud to stand with them (not
| for, with). EFF is tying themselves to IA far beyond just
| acting purely as a legal representative.
| gpm wrote:
| Taking a political stance that the existing law is bad is
| not only not illegal, but it is one of the few things
| that is very explicitly legal. Doing so does not put you
| on the wrong side of the law. This includes when your
| political actions involve making statements in support
| of, defending and funding the legal defense of those who
| have broken the law.
| [deleted]
| elliekelly wrote:
| It isn't always about winning. Most of the time it's more about
| not losing too much money. EFF's legal team will help IA
| mitigate the damage wherever possible so that IA will have a
| shot at continuing to exist.
| kstenerud wrote:
| "EFF is on the wrong side of both the law and common sense
| here"
|
| Are they? We can armchair critique all we want, but I find it
| doubtful that an organization with so much litigation and
| advocacy experience under their belt would naively throw away a
| ton of money on a losing battle.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Even with losing cases, there is value in having a competent
| legal team. With luck, the entire Internal Archive will not
| be at stake.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I find it doubtful that an organization with so much
| litigation and advocacy experience under their belt would
| naively throw away a ton of money on a losing battle.
|
| I can come up with all sorts of reasons why the EFF might
| step in.
|
| 1. The IA is valuable enough that even a small increase in
| its chances of survival is worth spending a lot of money on
|
| 2. They don't think they can win, but they think they can
| mitigate the IA's losses
|
| 3. They think they can win in the media
|
| 4. They want to steer the legal arguments of IA in such a way
| that "controlled digital lending" has the best chance of
| surviving the lawsuit
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > EFF is on the wrong side of both the law and common sense
| here and they will lose no matter how much they pay their legal
| team.
|
| I don't understand how people have such certainty about this.
|
| You have a situation where there are libraries who have bought
| millions of books from authors/publishers. The authors have
| been paid. Then, there is a pandemic and the libraries are
| closed, so the public has lost access to all the books they've
| paid for.
|
| Giving them back access to the books they've paid for is
| obviously wrong? They're definitely going to lose?
|
| It would be one thing if they had lent out more books than
| existed in all of the closed libraries, but is there any
| evidence that this is the case? That seems quite implausible,
| considering the massive number of books that have been paid for
| in all of those libraries.
| dingaling wrote:
| > Giving them back access to the books they've paid for is
| obviously wrong?
|
| That's a weak argument. Buses were parked but I couldn't just
| go and take one from the yard for a journey despite having
| 'paid' for it from public funds.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Fair use applies to copyright and not buses.
| myself248 wrote:
| It would've been interesting if they'd tried to compile a
| list of all the books that existed at all the closed
| libraries, and then only lent up to the limits of that list
| (which would continue to expand as more data were added), but
| I don't think anyone would argue that was practical to do at
| the time. The whole country can be shuttered at a moment's
| notice, compiling data like that takes tremendous effort.
|
| However, in retrospect, I suspect the case might hinge on
| someone actually compiling that data. Did they, at any point,
| lend more copies of any particular title than existed at the
| time within all the shuttered libraries combined?
| tluyben2 wrote:
| > compiling data like that takes tremendous effort.
|
| It is a lifetime ago, but when I still went to the library
| in my country, about 27 years ago for the last time, there
| was already a system which had all books of all libaries at
| every library, where you could look up which copy of what
| book was in which library, how many of those author's books
| all libraries had together etc. This was 27 years (and
| longer) ago; you are saying that, in 2020, I cannot press
| one button and get this info in all, at least, western
| countries?
|
| That is pretty depressing if so.
|
| Edit; come to think of it, it must be longer ago as I tried
| to copy (the UI and functionality without networking of)
| that system for my own books at home on my MSX; I stopped
| using that system when I got an Amiga more than 30 years
| ago.
| agustif wrote:
| I won a civil law case against the MAFIAA being the owner of a
| site where links to download movies and tv shows as user-
| generated content.
|
| I won, but I was in Spain, not the US.
| webmaven wrote:
| This sounds interesting. Can you provide more details?
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I won a civil law case against the MAFIAA being the owner
| of a site where links to download movies and tv shows as
| user-generated content.
|
| Sure.
|
| But this is totally different. IA is the one doing both the
| copying and the distribution.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Indeed. IA's defense is mostly about controlled digital
| lending, while the National Emergency Library was definitely
| uncontrolled digital lending, and really has no good precedent
| to base upon. I think it's unfortunate that this case is likely
| to blowback on CDL as a concept, even though the issue was
| uncontrolled lending.
| maxlybbert wrote:
| I don't remember the outcome of the particular case mentioned
| in https://www.theregister.com/2005/12/06/eff_needs_to_die/ ,
| but I know their track record isn't as good as this article's
| headline implies.
| wolco wrote:
| Fair use is a term and redefining is a big hill to climb but a
| worthly one.
|
| All copyrights expire and all works have fair use clauses. It's
| just a matter of when and what country is issuing the
| copyright.
|
| You can give away free digital books. Project Gutenburg has
| been doing it for years. Even if the author's family doesn't
| like it. It's not stealing either. It's simply waiting for the
| copyright to expire.
|
| In this case they are using borrowing like a libruary as a
| defensive with covid hardship thrown in to justify removing a
| limit on the amount of books they can lend.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Agreed. However, I would expect the EFF to (possibly) be good
| negotiators. They might be able to make a settlement that keeps
| the IA's website open while satisfying the publishers - or at
| least making the lawsuit complicated enough that the publishers
| won't keep going.
|
| Without this representation, the publishers could almost
| certainly bankrupt the IA, even if they are given the minimum
| infringement fine of $200/ea.
| evgen wrote:
| It is possible that this is one outcome that the EFF is
| hoping for by joining this particular bit of litigation, but
| I just do not see it working out that well. No one, outside
| of a small group of techies, knows about or cares about the
| EFF; having the EFF formally on the IA side is not going to
| move the needle much in terms of PR. On the other hand,
| having the EFF on the opposition may galvanize the publishers
| to not negotiate at all and go for a big win in court just
| for the sake of chalking up a win against the EFF (who is
| often supportive of causes and groups that are opposed to the
| publishers.)
|
| Make no mistake here, the IA _will_ lose this case and the
| publishers _will_ bankrupt the IA. There are few things that
| I can say are almost certainly a foregone conclusion, and the
| IA losing this case is one of them.
| bosswipe wrote:
| In a just world the destruction of the Wayback machine
| should be a much bigger crime than some copyright
| violation. Sadly our world is not just, content
| conglomerates have bought themselves the most draconian
| laws possible to protect their profits above all other
| benefits to humanity. They must be stopped!
| gknoy wrote:
| What prevents them from selling/giving the data of the
| wayback machine to another curator?
| evgen wrote:
| The wayback machine is an asset of the IA. The courts
| tend to take a dim view of obvious attempts to hide
| assets from judgements.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| In this case, I don't think the "asset" has any monetary
| value though.
| evgen wrote:
| In a just world, the management team that decided to risk
| the future of the Wayback machine so that they could take
| advantage of a global pandemic to strike a blow against
| copyright would go to jail. They must be stopped and
| prevented from doing more damage to IA!
| nitrogen wrote:
| No good deed goes unpunished.
| _jal wrote:
| > the publishers could almost certainly bankrupt the IA
|
| They do that and they will find themselves with a
| Napster/sci-hub problem.
|
| If it weren't so destructive, the chronic inability of legacy
| industries to learn would be funny.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| To note, bankrupting IA doesn't make digital copies of these
| books go away. It'll just accelerate Library Genesis [1]
| while burning down a cultural archive.
|
| The Internet Archive needs to be reasonable, as they operate
| within US jurisdiction. Other projects need not (LibGen,
| SciHub, etc). If operating outside of the US (and other
| countries that are a party to the Berne Convention) is
| required due to publishers continuing to embrace overly
| restrictive copyright law, that is what will be done by those
| interested in this sort of work.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis ("As of 28
| July 2019, Library Genesis claims to have more than 2.4
| million non-fiction books, 80 million science magazine
| articles, 2 million comics files, 2.2 million fiction books,
| and 0.4 million magazine issues.")
|
| contrast with IA's OpenLibrary corpus (with Controlled
| Lending):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Library ("In total, the
| Open Library offers over 1.4 million books for digital
| lending.")
| tzs wrote:
| I may be misunderstanding this case, but the impression I get
| is that they are not defending the unlimited lending that IA
| did as part of their "National Emergency Library" (NEL). They
| are just defending the earlier "Controlled Digital Lending"
| (CDL) program where the number of copies lent out at any one
| time was limited to the number of physical copies in the
| physical libraries [1].
|
| The lawsuit is going after both NEL and CDL. The defense is
| trying to save CDL.
|
| I don't think VidAngel is necessarily relevant here because
| VidAngel was making derivative works.
|
| [1] If someone checked out a physical copy, did they reduce the
| number of digital copies that could be out until the physical
| copy was returned?
| gpm wrote:
| > I don't think VidAngel is necessarily relevant here because
| VidAngel was making derivative works.
|
| And also because they were circumventing DRM, which is what
| the Wikipedia article would have you believe the case was
| about (I haven't looked closer than that).
| jjcon wrote:
| > If someone checked out a physical copy, did they reduce the
| number of digital copies that could be out until the physical
| copy was returned?
|
| In the case of VidAngel yes - you would buy a copy from
| VidAngel, stream it, then return it for the same amount sans
| a dollar fee. Vidangel would often run out of copies of
| popular shows to stream and they would alert you when that
| was the case and not let you stream it.
| WaltPurvis wrote:
| That's the way I understand it as well. It may be worthwhile
| defending CDL (I don't know enough to have an informed
| opinion), but the NEL is indefensible, and it doesn't appear
| the EFF intends to defend it.
| devit wrote:
| If the books were not being sold as digital copies, maybe they
| could invoke fair use due to the pandemic making other ways to
| access the books impossible.
|
| That said, the best avenue would seem to be a PR campaign with
| a call for a boycott and public shaming of the publishers
| (Hachette, Penguin Random House, John Wiley & Sons, and
| HarperCollins) that are putting their profit ahead of public
| access to the books.
|
| In fact, it seems pretty surprising that the publishers would
| risk such an hit to their reputation given that the Internet
| Archive probably doesn't have much money to give them as
| compensation anyway.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Publishers (for books, movies, and music) do not really have
| much shame when it comes to copyright enforcement. For one,
| they're natural monopolies, where a given content is solely
| owned by them, and you can't get it through any of their
| competitors. And especially in the case of books, very few
| people think about a book in terms of the publisher who
| published it, and very few people buy their books based on
| which publisher has the rights to it. So the value of public
| reputation for a book publisher is very low.
|
| They do not care about the compensation. They are aware that
| they will probably see effectively no dollar bills here.
| However, the publishers are interested in shutting down a
| distribution method they see as unlawful/theft, and most
| importantly, they want to publicly destroy any company who
| engages in it to deter future offenders.
| MereInterest wrote:
| I agree completely on most items, except that copyright is
| not a natural monopoly. There isn't a high barrier of entry
| to printing a different book, nor is there a very limited
| supply of printing presses. Copyright is entirely a
| government-granted monopoly, intended to serve the public
| good by promoting good writing. In cases where it doesn't
| serve the public good, it is reasonable to reduce the
| strength of copyright.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Exactly. Anti-copyright people love to claim the book
| author has a "monopoly." But it's only on their own book.
| Nothing stops someone else from writing a competing book.
| It's kind of like saying a car owner buys a "monopoly" by
| purchasing a car. Yeah, only the owner can drive a
| particular car, but that's not what the word means. Yet
| people persist with this phony gambit.
| MereInterest wrote:
| _tilts head_ You start off by saying "exactly", but then
| go assuming that I said the opposite of what I said. To
| state it clearly, copyright is a monopoly. Patents are a
| monopoly. That these are government-granted monopolies
| enforced by law, rather than a natural monopoly caused by
| scarce resources, does not make them any less of a
| monopoly.
|
| The car analogy does not apply, primarily because cars
| are fungible. Books are not fungible, unless they are
| printings of the same book. Cultural ideas are not
| fungible.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| That's fair. It'd be more correct to call it a
| government-granted monopoly, indeed. My point was mostly
| that for any given book, the publisher has no
| competition, so the reputation of the publisher doesn't
| matter too much to someone who needs to buy that book.
| devit wrote:
| That seems quite a risky strategy as well, because it could
| backfire: if the court declares even just that controlled
| digital lending is legal, more companies and bigger
| companies may start offering it (e.g. Google that already
| has the scanned books), making things worse for the
| publishers.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I don't think Google is actually warehousing the physical
| books. They worked with a lot of libraries to scan their
| collections, but arguably couldn't legally offer CDL.
| devit wrote:
| I think they have the capital to buy enough copies of all
| books in existence to allow effectively unlimited lending
| of not recently released books.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Remind me not to donate to EFF. This money and time would be
| better spent on fighting EARN IT.
|
| The Internet Archive's best bet is to settle and apologize very
| publicly.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > The Internet Archive's best bet is to settle and apologize
| very publicly.
|
| One should never apologize for civil disobedience against
| unjust laws.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Most people view copyright overall as a just law even if
| the details are argued about.
| bosswipe wrote:
| You don't know that about "most people". Most people will
| deliberately pirate content given the chance.
| antonzabirko wrote:
| I personally would say it's the bad side of justice -
| there is no downside to giving away that which is
| unlimited. It's mostly greed, but greed has utilitarian
| roots also, because encouraging piracy will discourage
| innovation.
|
| It's a sad situation really: that the best solution we
| must adhere to is denying free resources to the masses.
| Not really human.
| jjcon wrote:
| Quit trolling/baiting this thread - this isn't some big
| corporatist conspiracy - this is protecting creator
| livelihoods big and small.
|
| The vast majority of the civilized world agrees it is good
| to protect 'art' (from code to books) to keep it
| sustainable. Just because it can be infinitely duplicated
| and shared 'freely' does not mean it is sustainable to do
| so. If there is no money in art, less art will be made and
| most agree that this is not desirable.
| catawbasam wrote:
| The "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" moved the goalposts so
| egregiously as to damage the legitimacy of the legal
| protections. Those who manipulate the laws must
| understand they are weakening the rule of law by their
| actions.
| jjcon wrote:
| If IA was making a principled stand against some aspect
| of copyright (like making only works >50 years old free
| to the public) I could follow and would even be on board
| but as far as I understand it what they are doing/did
| wasn't principled it was just piracy.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| This is not trolling or baiting (nor even intended to
| be). This is advocating for efforts, very public and
| visible, against broken public policy. Authors can still
| make a living without draconian copyright policy (life of
| the author + 70 years?) and suing libraries (!!!) for
| making content available during a pandemic.
|
| > Just because it can be infinitely duplicated and shared
| 'freely' does not mean it is sustainable to do so. If
| there is no money in art, less art will be made and most
| agree that this is not desirable.
|
| I don't believe the evidence shows this (but is a topic
| for another thread, "why do people create?"). People who
| create to create will still do so (IMHO, based on the
| history of humans), even if it is what it is for many
| people: a hobby funded by other work, the state, or
| private patrons through means other than controlled
| access to content.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| It is not _authors_ doing the suing here. It is the big
| four publishers. All the demonising of authors over this
| has gotten out of hand and should just stop.
|
| That said, please explain[ _] just_ how* an author "can
| still make a living" without some form of copy-
| protection. And _please_ refrain from the "signing
| tours", "selling merch", "live readings" nonsense.
| Writers in particular (but the visual arts, too) simply
| don't, on the whole, have the skills, inclination or
| desire to engage in much of that. The entire reason for
| engaging with the conventional publishing industry is to
| relieve an author of the tedious burden of sourcing
| artwork, arranging print and distribution, marketing and
| sales, leaving them free to write more stories -- what
| they do best. Self-pub can work for some writers, but
| they're the ones willing to sacrifice precious writing-
| time time on all those peripheral activities.
|
| Bear in mind that the overwhelming majority of writers
| are writing in snatched hours in the early
| mornings/evening, over and above a "day job" to pay the
| rent and put food on the table. There's not a lot of time
| left over in a day to also become an
| editor/marketer/project manager.
|
| eta [*]: and I genuinely mean: Just HOW should public
| policy look in order to provide some form of artistic
| protection for creators? It's easy to sit around and say
| "copyright is broken" (and I'd largely agree!) It's less
| easy to say what it might/ought become.
| kick wrote:
| _That said, please explain[] just how an author "can
| still make a living" without some form of copy-
| protection._
|
| See: the entire history of books before computers.
|
| See: Doctorow's Little Brother, which was distributed
| freely _and still sold so well it went on the NYT 's best
| seller list._
|
| _eta []: and I genuinely mean: Just HOW should public
| policy look in order to provide some form of artistic
| protection for creators? It 's easy to sit around and say
| "copyright is broken" (and I'd largely agree!) It's less
| easy to say what it might/ought become._
|
| The law shouldn't guarantee you a business model under
| actual capitalism or better systems. "We're going to
| enforce with a military your right to a business model"
| is an inherently silly proposal. It makes more sense to
| guarantee everyone has enough to live off of, which is
| something the state is already capable of, and something
| the best capitalist _and_ socialist economists are
| advocates of.
|
| Beyond that, if you're looking for a less-radical
| proposal: shorten the copyright period. The NEL didn't
| have anything that was five years old or younger on it.
| Current copyright terms are insane and against the common
| good in every sense of the word.
| adrianN wrote:
| There are many artists that make some money off of
| donations e.g. via Patreon, without enforcing any kind of
| copyright on their work. Authors don't really make all
| that much money unless they're very successful. I doubt
| that most of them do it for the money alone.
| mtgx wrote:
| > You don't get to give out free digital copies of books to
| people without permission and expect to get away with it.
|
| As hard as big content producers try to make copyright synonym
| to "property", it's not and it never was. Why? Because ideas
| can't be copyrighted and all ideas are remixed. Nothing is 100%
| original. NOTHING.
|
| Not to mention copyright used to apply for only 14 years. But
| corporations, which have bought just about everything else in
| the government, have also bought copyright laws that now last
| life + 70 years. And they keep trying to extend it all the
| time.
|
| Relevant: https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series
| garmaine wrote:
| Well EFF won't be getting any more donations from me, just like I
| cut off IA when they started this.
|
| Don't ask for money to fight a legal battle where you are so
| obviously in the (legal) wrong.
| myself248 wrote:
| How do you go about challenging a corrupt and unjust law, then?
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| There's a bit of disagreement on that. I'm an author.
| Copyright allows me to make a living writing. The law may
| have issues, but my copyrights do not stop anyone else from
| writing their own books or creating whatever they want.
|
| Unfortunately, the standard model for paying for book writing
| by selling copies to all readers is at odds with your
| conception of what a just world might be.
|
| I've seen communism. I've seen wacko central power systems.
| To me, copyright is not corrupt and more just than the other
| systems.
|
| But you're free to weigh in and explain out you would do it
| in a more just way.
| hyko wrote:
| How do we back up the Internet Archive? If they lose this case
| then it will be like losing The Great Library of Alexandria.
|
| This is our culture. This is our heritage!
|
| Edited to add: when I say "back up", I mean preserve the data and
| the archival mission (minus the legal quagmires).
|
| The technical challenges can be solved, and we should do this
| before it's too late. It seems there was a previous effort, but
| it has lost momentum:
| https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=INTERNETARCHIVE....
| mantap wrote:
| It's possible that over the long term it could be backed up via
| torrents. However, in the short term the only way to save the
| archive is for IA to sell it. I hope they swallow their pride
| and do so.
| sp332 wrote:
| Torrents are a distribution mechanism, not storage. Many IA
| items already have torrent links available (with a fallback
| to a "web seed" since they are mostly not seeded).
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Roughly 44 million items are available via torrent (I
| maintain a catalog of IA items independent of IA, with each
| item's torrent file). Wayback data is not (to my
| knowledge). This is important, as IA then can act as a
| global metadata catalog for the items, with the underlying
| content being served up through an uncoordinated fleet of
| seeders. I think many might agree that the time has arrived
| for this data to live on globally distributed storage
| nodes.
|
| It would be helpful if IA published Wayback data files over
| torrents, alongside cryptographic signatures of the files
| (for attestation and provenance purposes, as Wayback data
| has been used in legal proceedings and you would want that
| trust in the data maintained regardless of where the bits
| were retrieved from for hydrating the WARC client side).
| aahhahahaaa wrote:
| I kind of hate to think that someone would want to buy it and
| attempt to turn a profit.
| _sbrk wrote:
| This is abuse of copyright.
|
| IA did bad, and should not be rewarded for this behavior.
| obiye27 wrote:
| Only authoritarians would take the side of for profit
| publishers over librarians. Copyright is evil and must be
| abolished at any cost.
| brnt wrote:
| And (modern) copyright is abuse of a legal system.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I don't like copyright either; I think that it is bad and
| it (and patents, too) should be abolished. However, there
| are some other opinions (for example, I have seen the
| suggestion that you have copyright limited to only a few
| years, that after the first year you have to pay a fee, and
| other changes to improve it), but I would be OK to just
| abolish copyright entirely. I don't want to copyright my
| own writings either, and would rather be public domain, so
| that is what I do.
| _sbrk wrote:
| Please elaborate on why people should be allowed to steal
| the work of others.
| [deleted]
| mellosouls wrote:
| There are many other digital archives, and that is how the
| "single point of failure" problem you envisage is solved.
|
| The Internet Archive is AFAIK the biggest, and the first - the
| important thing is for others to continue its good work (many
| have done this for years) - and not for us to rely too much on
| it or any other _single_ archiving initiative.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| Might find an answer in:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/
| sp332 wrote:
| A conversation about this is the stickied thread, in fact.
| rakoo wrote:
| This is how you backup the Internet Archive:
| https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=INTERNETARCHIVE....
| edraferi wrote:
| "IA.BAK has been broken and unmaintained since about December
| 2016. The above status page is not accurate as of December
| 2019."
| mindslight wrote:
| I'd love for the Internet Archive to prevail here, but honestly
| it was quite boneheaded to do this legal experiment under the
| same corporate umbrella as their archival work. At this point
| they should proceed with a damage mitigation strategy of selling
| off their servers and storage to a second entity at fair market
| value (maybe "Archive Cloud"), and renting continued access. This
| way even if the IA organization is bankrupted, the archive itself
| will still remain intact - the archived data isn't under IA
| copyright and thus wouldn't be part of the bankruptcy estate.
| Vespasian wrote:
| I still wonder what their plan was in anticipation of this
| confrontation.
|
| Worst Case: _Chirping_ (Not seeing this coming at all)
|
| Naive Case: "Surely they will come to recognize our 'superior'
| 'moral' arguments and cease their evil ways"
|
| Historically ignorant case: "The people will stand up and join
| us. We are invincible" (aka every rebel ever...most fail)
| mindslight wrote:
| I don't know. There was that point right after society became
| aware of COVID that everyone was imagining pulling together
| for the common good, before the political machine grabbed the
| crisis and performed the all-too-American response of
| corporate bailouts coupled with tough luck for everyone else.
| I can only imagine they got caught up in that feeling, and
| thought everyone being stuck at home would be a good time to
| demonstrate the regressiveness of copyright. Unfortunately
| copyright infringement doesn't have equitable punishments
| like actual property crime but rather is playing with fire.
| If they had thought ahead, they could have pulled a similar
| stunt but with definite inventories of books sitting on the
| shelves of closed libraries. Alas.
| Vespasian wrote:
| Seems plausible and I can certainly see their good
| intentions coupled with a general dislike for monetary
| cultural gatekeeping
|
| One trait of good leadership is the ability to weigh the
| consequences of actions of their organisation. They failed
| in that regard.
| enriquto wrote:
| > it was quite boneheaded to do this legal experiment under the
| same corporate umbrella as their archival work.
|
| I disagree. This is a wickedly good idea, and a very good hill
| to fight on. It is not a "legal experiment" but a major battle
| against evil people. Everybody loves the Internet Archive, it
| is our sacred castle. If a decisive battle is to be won against
| the publishing parasites, it may be likely this one, and we
| have to be all on the same side! After Aaron Swartz, the book
| parasites have never been so potentially hated by everybody. We
| must go all-in.
|
| The error is on the side of the book parasites for having
| decided to fight against an institution that is so loved by
| mankind. They cannot but lose the battle (socially), regardless
| of what the short-time legal outcome is.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Dude: I'm an author. The books I write pay for the food that
| feeds my family. Are you saying I'm evil for asking to be
| paid for my work?
|
| I can tell you that if the IA/EFF prevail, professional
| authors will disappear and the only people who will get to be
| artists will be those with trust funds and rich spouses. Is
| that what you want the world to become?
|
| Do you really think artists are evil for wanting to be paid?
| enriquto wrote:
| > Are you saying I'm evil for asking to be paid for my
| work?
|
| No. I love and appreciate the work of authors, and I spend
| more than 1000 EUR per year in books. I systematically buy
| technical books that the author offers for free on their
| website. For the authors of the free software that I depend
| on, I try to donate if it is possible.
|
| To answer your question very clearly: you are not evil by
| asking to be paid for your work. That is a very reasonable
| thing to do! Can you please point me to your books? I will
| likely buy them (if they are tangentially interesting to
| me).
|
| All of that will not change the fact that sharing books is
| not stealing, and that using the verb "stealing" for the
| act of sharing is a callous manipulation of the language,
| even if it is sanctioned by law.
| [deleted]
| Gaelan wrote:
| [I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been
| flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting
| it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual
| property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and
| can't really be "stolen" per se.
|
| If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I
| "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and
| you're no worse off. In an "ideal" society, the free sharing of
| knowledge would be not just allowed, but encouraged.
|
| I imagine there's been measurable harm to our society's cultural
| and scientific advancement because copyright forces us to
| recreate others' work instead of building off of it.
|
| But what does that world look like? Quite frankly, I'm not sure.
| Of course, we can't just abolish copyright with no replacement;
| it's certainly necessary to reward the creation of this work
| somehow.
|
| One thing I've thought about is a sort of "crowdfunded patronage"
| model, where the creator of a work declares upfront how much
| money they want to make off of it, and releases it into the
| public domain once they've received that much money.
|
| Another possibility is drastically reducing the term of copyright
| to 20 years or so. That'd still give 20 years to exploit the work
| --and I imagine most copyrighted works make most of their money
| in the first 20 years--while allowing others to reuse the work
| much more quickly.
| ksdale wrote:
| While I agree in principle that intellectual property is
| somehow fundamentally different from physical property, in the
| case of the "stolen" book, the creator is not worse off _only
| if_ the "thief" wouldn't have purchased the book otherwise.
|
| It's certainly true that the creator isn't out of pocket per
| person who reads the book, but that's not necessarily the same
| as "no worse off."
| markvdb wrote:
| There's a real cost to government and society enforcing the
| copyright monopoly for the copyright owner. So why not have the
| copyright holder pay for upholding copyright?
|
| Imagine differential pricing for enforcing copyright on a work
| depending on parameters:
|
| - grow with every passing year - change with the level of
| protection required - zero for public domain
| and free (BSD/GPL/permissive CC style licensing) -
| symbolical amounts for CC no derivatives or non-commercial
| licensing - fixed amount plus percentage of revenue
| for other, more traditional licensing
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The copyright owner pays the costs of enforcing copyright
| already...
| jonny_eh wrote:
| But that doesn't allow someone to violate the copyright,
| due to the potential risk, like a troll jumping out from
| below a bridge. It'd be better if there was a way to easily
| check if a copyright was being actively paid and
| maintained.
| markvdb wrote:
| Everybody obviously pays for copyright enforcement already
| through general taxation. Look at orphan works for a prime
| example of how this is less than ideal.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| >If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off,
| and you're no worse off.
|
| That's only true if 0% of copyright infringers would've paid
| for the book (either directly or via checking it out from a
| library that pays publishers per-borrow). That may be true for
| some individuals, but there's no way that it's true in the
| aggregate. There are some cases where copyright infringement
| _might_ help with the bottom line (like if someone torrents a
| band 's CD which inspires them to attend expensive concerts),
| but I for books I think that effect is drastically overpowered
| by the # of people that just don't want to pay.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I am made worse off if you steal a copy of my book though.
| Suppose I sell the book for X dollars and the probability that
| any person without my book will buy it is Y. People who don't
| have my book have a value to me, specifically, YX dollars.
|
| When you steal my book, you directly cost me YX dollars, which
| is probably an infinitesimal amount, but if everyone was
| allowed to freely copy the book, then it would be approximately
| 100% of the money to be made by writing a book.
|
| Of course there are complications, like, you might buy it after
| pirating it, or, you weren't going to buy it anyway, or maybe
| you'll recommend it to a friend, but I think those
| considerations should be evaluated by the people with skin in
| the game - i.e the people who will make or lose money if they
| get it wrong.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| You're assuming that Y is evenly distributed amongst all
| people, which is absolutely not the case. For example, I did
| most of my game pirating back in high school, when I didn't
| have a job (nor a car to get to a job and I lived out in the
| sticks) and had nothing but an allowance from my parents of
| ~$20 every month.
|
| So the maximum amount I could theoretically spend on games
| per year? $120. The retail value of all of the different
| games I pirated annually? Well over $1,000, probably several
| thousand. So the probability of me paying for any significant
| portion of the games I pirated was effectively 0
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I'm not assuming that at all. My model is extremely
| simplified so it would fit into a comment, but it doesn't
| need to be that simple for the general idea to hold.
|
| Suppose you pirated a thousand games and would've
| legitimately purchased one. Your piracy then represents a
| theft of one game. Since there's no way to tell which one
| game you would've bought, we could simplify it to say that
| stole one one thousandth of a game from each publisher
| (assuming they were all unique publishers).
|
| In reality, I think it's really hard to know what you
| would've done without access to piracy. It's almost
| certainly not "buy all the games" but it's also probably
| not "buy zero games".
|
| I also pirated a lot of things when I was in college -
| partly because it was cheaper, and I was very cheap, and
| partly because it was easier than actually getting some
| things. One thing I try to do is separate my own personal
| bias (it can't be bad because I did it) from what seems
| like the clear harm and moral reasoning I laid out above.
| You're taking from the publishers, even if only small
| values, and if everyone did what you did, publishing
| couldn't exist as a business.
|
| I think it makes sense that poor people would steal more
| frequently. They need to. It also makes sense that younger
| people would steal more frequently - they are less mature,
| think less about others, and less about the consequences.
| Given that, it doesn't surprise me that you and I both
| pirated more while younger. That said, even though it makes
| sense, that doesn't mean it's right.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| > So the probability of me paying for any significant
| portion of the games I pirated was effectively 0
|
| It was literally 1 in 10.
|
| Which is a very long way from 0%.
| uluyol wrote:
| No, because potential sales are not sales. You never had the
| XY dollars to begin with.
|
| This is what separates IP theft from physical property theft.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I never said they were sales. I explicitly differentiated
| them from sales. They are potential sales, valued at YX and
| potential sales are what you lose. A sale has a value of X
| dollars.
| basch wrote:
| That's what makes it not theft. Theft deprives the person
| of the original. If I have two books and you take one I
| have one book. If you buy one of my books and give it
| out, I did not have any of the books I had stolen from
| me.
| swayvil wrote:
| The only relevant question here is, "which benefits society
| more?"
|
| The ip serves the author by paying his rent
|
| The ip serves society by informing and empowering its members.
| thrownaway954 wrote:
| "If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If
| I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and
| you're no worse off. In an "ideal" society, the free sharing of
| knowledge would be not just allowed, but encouraged."
|
| you are so wrong in this mentality. the bottom line is, that
| someone took the time and energy to write and publish that book
| to make money, so that person should be paid. with your
| mentality, it can be argued the same as downloading a movie or
| a song or an application. now... aren't all those things
| illegal and a form of stealing??? so why is downloading a book
| any different?
|
| i really think that alot of people just don't think things
| though before they open their mouth and this is one time where
| you should have thought through your answer instead of jumping
| on the "knowledge should be free" bandwagon.
| kick wrote:
| Illegal does not equal immoral; copying does not equal
| stealing.
|
| Piracy of songs, movies, and applications actually improves
| sales, according to a study that the European Union funded
| and then tried to keep from getting published:
|
| https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-
| that-...
|
| The law shouldn't guarantee you a successful business model.
| If you believe in capitalism, this should be self-evident. If
| you believe in socialism, this should also be self-evident.
| "We're going to enforce with a military your right to a
| successful business model" is _absolutely_ silly and
| bizarrely harmful.
| arkades wrote:
| > Piracy of songs, movies, and applications actually
| improves sales, according to a study that the European
| Union funded and then tried to keep from getting published:
|
| I never understand this argument at all.
|
| Piracy of X improves sales of X is only relevant if you're
| keeping the business model of _selling X_.
|
| It's an argument for small amounts of piracy not
| substituting for market demand in a meaningful amount, and
| possibly spurring increased market demand.
|
| It's _not_ an argument for it not being stealing, or
| against having an IP legal framework at all. If you remove
| the ability to sell things, there will be no sales for it
| to spur.
|
| Also, only the most extreme liberterian capitalists believe
| in capitalism without any commercial regulations
| whatsoever. Literally the bare minimum is property rights.
| thrownaway954 wrote:
| "Piracy of songs, movies, and applications actually
| improves sales, according to a study that the European
| Union funded and then tried to keep from getting published"
|
| doesn't mean anything. it's still illegal.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| If something is beneficial for everyone involved, why
| should it be illegal?
| pdonis wrote:
| _> someone took the time and energy to write and publish that
| book to make money, so that person should be paid_
|
| How much of what you pay for a book actually goes to the
| person who wrote it? How much of what you pay for music goes
| to the person who wrote it? How much of what you pay for a
| movie goes to the people who actually made the movie?
|
| The answer in all of those cases is "not very much". And the
| reason that's the answer has nothing at all to do with
| people's unwillingness to pay creators for creating, and
| everything to do with a huge amount of money being skimmed
| off the top by companies who do not want to update their
| business models to the 21st century, and who are using
| copyright and patent law as an excuse to protect their
| outdated business structures.
| Gaelan wrote:
| > the bottom line is, that someone took the time and energy
| to write and publish that book to make money, so that person
| should be paid
|
| I agree with you! As I said lower down in my comment:
|
| > Of course, we can't just abolish copyright with no
| replacement; it's certainly necessary to reward the creation
| of this work somehow.
|
| I absolutely believe that we need to pay the creators of
| [what we would currently call] copyrighted works somehow. I'm
| just not convinced that the best way to do that is with a
| "per-consumer" cost. I go on to discuss some alternatives
| that still reward creators, but reduce some of the harmful
| impacts of copyright. I'll readily admit that I haven't
| thought those ideas through that much, but that's a far cry
| from completely failing to consider that creators need to be
| paid, as you seem to be implying I did.
| izacus wrote:
| > But what does that world look like? Quite frankly, I'm not
| sure. Of course, we can't just abolish copyright with no
| replacement; it's certainly necessary to reward the creation of
| this work somehow.
|
| Why can't we? Wouldn't even that state be better than the
| current one, where publishers outright steal (in true meaning
| of the world) revenue from YouTube content creators because
| there might be a sound that's similar to some song written 30+
| years ago?
|
| The current state is so one-sided and abusive that it's not
| obvious that no-copyright world is worse. Heck, down this same
| thread we have people calling people who put books on the
| internet for everyone to read "criminals". How messed up is
| that?
| jjcon wrote:
| > where publishers outright steal (in true meaning of the
| world) revenue from YouTube content creators because there
| might be a sound that's similar to some song written 30+
| years ago?
|
| Conversely for every one of these there are easily 1000
| YouTube videos that shamelessly steal IP outside the bounds
| of fair use and nobody does anything. If pewdiepie posts a 30
| second meme clip from the latest avengers people think it's
| funny but if Disney used 30 seconds of pewdiepie in a movie
| without permission the internet would go nuts and lawyers
| would be lining up. Should copyright treat them so
| differently?
| jjcon wrote:
| > I'm better off, and you're no worse off. In an "ideal"
| society, the free sharing of knowledge would be not just
| allowed, but encouraged.
|
| I agree that theft of digital goods is not equivalent to
| physical goods but abolition of copyright does not follow from
| that fact nor does it follow that theft of intellectual
| property is not possible.
|
| I also agree this is an important conversation to have. The
| whole idea around copyright is to encourage the creation of
| intellectual property. If there is a fundamentally better way
| to do it that idea should flourish but I have yet to hear a
| realistic alternative.
|
| > I imagine there's been measurable harm to our society's
| cultural and scientific advancement because copyright forces us
| to recreate others' work instead of building off of it.
|
| I would argue that the damage from having no copyright
| protections would be unquestionably worse than the trade offs
| they bring. People would of course still create, but so many
| works would simply not exist if there was no way to protect
| intellectual property.
|
| Certainly there are minutiae of copyright that have gone too
| far in protections but that doesn't mean the system itself
| should be done away with. The modern world created this system
| knowing full well there were trade offs.
| adamsea wrote:
| I think if you talked to most authors they would have strong
| feelings that there need to be some legal means to ensure
| they are compensated for their work, and that someone else
| doesn't straight-up copy their novel, and then publish it and
| make a bundle.
|
| I do totally agree that copyright is messed up, big-time.
|
| To be honest I'm not sure that "free" sharing of knowledge
| really exists. Even in scientific communities I imagine
| certain knowledge is held back until, say, it's ready to be
| published so the scientists can get first credit. And so on.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Isn't that only getting halfway there? No one could "make a
| bundle" from copying my work if everything could be copied
| freely (including me, without some other way to get paid).
| I agree that authors (and musicians, and artists, etc.)
| would like to be paid for their work, though currently it
| seems like publishing companies manage to channel most of
| that money into their own pockets instead (and the costs of
| 'publishing' and 'distributing' a digital work are
| certainly a lot lower than a physical copy, yet somehow
| their prices are often the same).
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| If you steal my book, I don't get paid as much for the work I
| put into the book. So I am very clearly and obviously worse
| off.
|
| I find it really, really strange that some people find this
| hard to understand.
|
| And your "crowdfunded patronage" model is still copyright, it's
| just copyright with a different revenue model.
| Gaelan wrote:
| > And your "crowdfunded patronage" model is still copyright,
| it's just copyright with a different revenue model.
|
| I was thinking it would go something like this:
|
| I write a book. I decide that I want to make $100,000 from
| the book, so I put up a Kickstarter for that much. Once it
| hits the goal, I release the book into the public domain.
| Before then, I don't publish the book at all.
|
| Unless your definition of "copyright" is much broader than
| mine, I don't think it's involved in that process.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I think it is incorrect to assume every free download would
| otherwise be converted to a sale.
|
| I'd guess it's probably closer to every 100 free downloads, 1
| sale is lost.
| Jasper_ wrote:
| > If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car.
| If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off,
| and you're no worse off. In an "ideal" society, the free
| sharing of knowledge would be not just allowed, but encouraged.
|
| Up until now, the value of a book has been set by the author,
| and reinforced by scarcity. Entire large economic models and
| systems have been built by tying the two together. What is
| supply and demand, when supply is _infinite_?
|
| Basically, the author puts in some amount of thought and labor
| writing a book, and they get rewarded by a purchase. Capitalism
| is heavily based on this: "Labor results in production,
| production is rewarded by consumers, because they need to part
| with some money to benefit for the end result". The last item
| is no longer true, which has ripple effects all the way up the
| chain.
|
| No wonder people want to bring back the economic models and
| systems of capitalism they're familiar with, by enforcing
| scarcity -- thousands of years of societal and economic
| development might be upended by new technology.
|
| Libraries have always been a thorn in the side of capitalism,
| but they've usually been constrained and limited enough that
| they aren't a real threat. With the ease of digital copying,
| the seams are starting to tear much faster now.
|
| Some want to dismantle copyright but keep the rest of the
| capitalist system in place, untouched, which I don't really see
| as realistic. I think the two are much more closely linked than
| you might imagine. If we're going to be overhauling the whole
| thing, we need to have systems in place for the huge societal
| impact it will have.
|
| You fill in the rest of the dots for what new systems one might
| prefer over capitalism, and charting the course for what comes
| next, that can support people. At the very least, capitalism
| might just be on its way out.
| pitaj wrote:
| > I imagine there's been measurable harm to our society's
| cultural and scientific advancement because copyright forces us
| to recreate others' work instead of building off of it.
|
| Part of that harm is in creating monopolistic entities like
| Youtube because only big players can take on big media. If
| Youtube didn't have contentID they'd be sued into the ground by
| the publishers.
|
| > But what does that world look like? Quite frankly, I'm not
| sure. Of course, we can't just abolish copyright with no
| replacement; it's certainly necessary to reward the creation of
| this work somehow.
|
| This is, in many ways, a world in which we already live due to
| the proliferation of piracy. There's still plenty of
| monetization opportunities:
|
| - Art commissions
|
| - Patreon
|
| - Ad-sponsored serial content
|
| - Subscription models
|
| - Live shows
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Those monetization options pay less than you think they do
| for the vast majority of creators.
|
| The US copyright regime has been responsible for an _amazing_
| exponential growth in IP creation because creators are
| financially incentivized to create.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Those monetization options pay less than you think they
| do for the vast majority of creators.
|
| Traditional publishing has the same issue to a far greater
| extent, due to the inherent barriers to entry in that
| model. Something like Kickstarter or Patreon is actually
| far more equitable. (Bearing in mind that this sort of
| content provision is very much a superstar sector, with a
| handful of unicorns and lots and lots of also-rans, so
| "more equitable" is still quite relative!)
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| What if I just borrow your car when you're sleeping? You lose
| nothing.
|
| What if I break into your house and use your TV while you're at
| work? You lose nothing.
|
| What if I set up a tent on your lawn and take it down whenever
| you want to play frisbee? You lose nothing.
|
| What if I grab some girl's butt at a dance club? She loses
| nothing.
|
| As you can see, requiring an act to explicitly deprive someone
| of property is a slippery slope. There are dozens of examples
| of "borrowing" that just aren't done in polite society because
| the owner doesn't want them to be done.
|
| The same is even more true here. Piracy hurts the author's
| ability to sell books. Free copies just have that effect. Every
| normal human understands it. Only a few computer people like to
| pretend that their "borrowing" is somehow magic.
|
| Piracy destroys artists.
| dctoedt wrote:
| You're channeling Thomas Jefferson, who himself channeled a
| Zoroastrian idea. Jefferson said: "... no one possesses the
| less because everyone possesses the whole of it. He who
| receives an idea from me receives [it] without lessening [me],
| as he who lights his [candle] at mine receives light without
| darkening me." [0]
|
| The flaw in this concept is the free-rider problem:
|
| 1. Not all new IP can be created as a side project without
| funding.
|
| Suppose that I have to come up with an investment of $X million
| to pay for the goods and services needed to develop something.
|
| (Even assigning existing employees to do the work is an
| investment, because the money used to pay _them_ presumably
| could be used for something else -- i.e., investing in the new
| thing represents opportunity cost.)
|
| Suppose also that the resulting IP is easily copied once the
| new product or service is out in the open.
|
| Without some kind of legal monopoly under IP law, copiers --
| who aren't burdened by my development costs -- can quickly run
| the market price down to marginal cost.
|
| 2. A marginal-cost market price means that I can't charge
| enough to be able to recoup my investment while still staying
| competitive.
|
| That, in turn, means that I'm unlikely to be willing (or even
| able) to fund the investment needed to develop the IP.
|
| 3. That's why the U.S. Constitution, article I, section 8,
| clause 8, allows Congress to create IP rights _for limited
| times_.
|
| [0] https://uh.edu/engines/epi792.htm
| waterhouse wrote:
| There are free-rider problems everywhere. From a "rights"
| perspective, the fact that you can see a free-rider problem
| and have an idea for some kind of law that you think would
| improve incentives doesn't _justify_ using legal force to
| impose these changes on everyone else. But I 'm not sure how
| many people there are these days for whom a "rights" argument
| carries weight.
|
| For a more empirical approach, I think it's worth looking at
| "Against Intellectual Monopoly" [1], from 2008. "Chapter 8:
| Does Intellectual Monopoly Increase Innovation?" [2] may be
| of particular interest.
|
| [1] http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal
| .ht...
|
| [2] http://www.dklevine.com/papers/imbookfinal08.pdf
| basch wrote:
| The initial conclusion your parent presents is the exact
| ruling in Dowling v. United States.
|
| >Interference with copyright does not easily equate with
| theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright
| does not assume physical control over the copyright nor
| wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates
| a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-
| the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_(1985.
| ..
|
| .....
|
| I do think grouping all IP into a bucket muddies the
| conversation. Trademark infringement, where one assumes the
| name of another product, possibly selling a counterfeit is
| closer to theft. It involves defrauding the consumer, and
| displaces a legitimate sale with a copy.
|
| Copying a product, and selling it or giving it away free is
| one type of problem, but assuming someone elses trademark to
| mislead is a different magnitude of problem.
| lend000 wrote:
| The fundamental issue with our copyright and patents laws are
| the length of validity. This in turn breeds more issues (with
| patents in particular) encouraging frivolous patents because
| there is such a long potential return on investment period.
|
| I recommend we decrease patent durations of all varieties by
| about 50% (patents should never last longer than 10 years as
| they do now [0]). For copyrights, there is some merit to not
| allowing others to take over your work during the life of the
| author. But for anonymous works, works that have transferred
| ownership from the author, and for copyright terms after the
| death of the author, I would agree to a similar limit of 10
| years of copyright.
|
| [0] https://www.justia.com/intellectual-
| property/patents/duratio....
| bluesign wrote:
| I think another analogy can be better.
|
| Imagine I want to fly somewhere, plane is half empty, I am
| going there and sitting. Don't have ticket. (Imagining no
| enforcement)
|
| Should I? Eventually this plane will fly there, my effect on
| cost is ignorable, I will be better, airline will not be worse.
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