Authors, Publishers Condemn the 'National Emergency Library' As 'Piracy' (npr.org) 147
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Last week, when the Internet Archive announced its "National Emergency Library," expanding access to more than a million digitized works, the group explained the move as a goodwill gesture in the time of coronavirus. With so many brick-and-mortar libraries forced to close their doors, in other words, the group was opening up its lending program: Now, instead of its usual policy of just one digital copy per reader for a 14-day period, many frustrated readers could borrow copies of the same book during the same time -- and could do so through the end of June or the end of the global pandemic, whichever came sooner.
But there's one major issue that several media outlets, including NPR, failed to mention in covering the decision: Many writers and publishers say the website, even before the creation of this National Emergency Library, has been sharing full digital copies of their books without their permission. And over the weekend, dozens of prominent authors, from Colson Whitehead and Neil Gaiman to Alexander Chee, made clear that they were upset with the Internet Archive's model -- and doubly so now, with the expansion of lending services and its timing. "With mean writing incomes of only $20,300 a year prior to the crisis, authors, like others, are now struggling all the more â" from cancelled book tours and loss of freelance work, income supplementing jobs, and speaking engagements," the Authors Guild, a professional group that provides legal assistance to writers, said in a statement released Friday. "And now they are supposed to swallow this new pill, which robs them of their rights to introduce their books to digital formats as many hundreds of midlist authors do when their books go out of print, and which all but guarantees that author incomes and publisher revenues will decline even further."
"Acting as a piracy site -- of which there already are too many -- the Internet Archive tramples on authors' rights by giving away their books to the world," the guild added.
The Internet Archive pushed back against this characterization with a lengthy rebuttal. Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive said the group "uses the same controls limiting access to these works as the publishers themselves, with encrypted files that are meant to disappear from the user's computer after a brief period," reports NPR. "The copies the group lends, Kahle said, are owned by the Internet Archive -- either through donations, straight-up purchases or collaborations with brick-and-mortar libraries."
But there's one major issue that several media outlets, including NPR, failed to mention in covering the decision: Many writers and publishers say the website, even before the creation of this National Emergency Library, has been sharing full digital copies of their books without their permission. And over the weekend, dozens of prominent authors, from Colson Whitehead and Neil Gaiman to Alexander Chee, made clear that they were upset with the Internet Archive's model -- and doubly so now, with the expansion of lending services and its timing. "With mean writing incomes of only $20,300 a year prior to the crisis, authors, like others, are now struggling all the more â" from cancelled book tours and loss of freelance work, income supplementing jobs, and speaking engagements," the Authors Guild, a professional group that provides legal assistance to writers, said in a statement released Friday. "And now they are supposed to swallow this new pill, which robs them of their rights to introduce their books to digital formats as many hundreds of midlist authors do when their books go out of print, and which all but guarantees that author incomes and publisher revenues will decline even further."
"Acting as a piracy site -- of which there already are too many -- the Internet Archive tramples on authors' rights by giving away their books to the world," the guild added.
The Internet Archive pushed back against this characterization with a lengthy rebuttal. Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive said the group "uses the same controls limiting access to these works as the publishers themselves, with encrypted files that are meant to disappear from the user's computer after a brief period," reports NPR. "The copies the group lends, Kahle said, are owned by the Internet Archive -- either through donations, straight-up purchases or collaborations with brick-and-mortar libraries."
Maybe some Authors would be better served (Score:4, Interesting)
if the people "representing" them did it for free for a few months.
the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg, while not directly saving lives, may be keeping some people from going stir-crazy.
Re:Maybe some Authors would be better served (Score:4, Informative)
You are mixing together two different things, the fact that authors have to eat, and want to be paid for their work, and the fact that the copyright period has been revised to be absurdly long.
Writers deserve to be paid for their work. How do you propose to do that?
If the Publishers hadn't pushed for 70 years plus the life of the Author. I might feel bad,
Stop right there. It wasn't book publishers who pushed for the absurdly long copyright period. That was the Sonny Bono Copyright act, advanced by Sonny Bono (a popular musician), but sometimes known as the Mickey Mouse copyright act, since the people really pushing it was Disney, who were terrified about their (then impending) loss of the copyright on Mickey Mouse. It supported primarily by the television and film industry.
Don't blame the publishing industry-- you know what? Print publishing gets very nearly zero percent of their income from books where the author is long dead; they weren't pushing to extend copyright for a hundred years, that's just not of significant interest to them. And definitely don't blame the authors. They're just trying to get paid for their work, just like you.
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Copyright was originally 15 years, so life of the author is already a huge stretch.
Besides, the only people buying are the people who are already willing to support the author. You can't stop those who want to sail the high seas. A better copyright mechanism, if you can call it that, is going to a serial model. If readers like the first book, they can crowdfund the second. Nobody can pirate a book that hasn't been written yet.
But regardless of funding source, only the most popular writers get paid enough to
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It may not have been the publishers that pushed for the absurdly long copyright period but they don't sure do seem to be enjoying it's benefit.
No, they get a tiny bit of revenue out of old material, but take a look at any publisher's catalog, and you'll see the bulk of their material is within the last ten years. Old stuff is too little a percentage is old for this to really be a big factor for them.
Print publishing gets very nearly zero percent of their income from books where the author is long dead
I'm not sure you can really make this claim. The annual sales of Shakespeare's works alone would suggest that publishers can make a fair bit of money off of dead artists
I will confidently say that zero percent of their income comes from holding the copyright to Shakespeare's work.
(Agatha Christie would be another example of a dead author that still sells well).
Yes, there are a handful of old books that are still in print and selling well. But the vast majority of a publisher's catalog is new.
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"Dollars in your pocket want to be free," he says, as he slides his hand in there.
Barbara Streisand calling... (Score:3, Interesting)
Time to publicly shame the bastards who are complaining about this. They're stupid, too, as this would bring in many new readers. I don't give a crap how good Gaiman's stuff is. I'm not buying another one of his books after this.
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Re:Barbara Streisand calling... (Score:5, Informative)
Then instead of complaining, he could take the initiative, release his books on loan for free and celebrate the occasion.
The books aren't DRM free. They are still using DRM. The only difference is that instead of limiting the number of people able to check out the books, they made it unlimited, temporarily. Once the checkout expires, you have to renew it, so you can't really "keep" the book (unless you crack it), and when this is all over, they'll reinstate the limits and everything again.
It came about because all the libraries are closed so people are without access to one of the most powerful resources out there. The OpenLibrary was the same, just for ebooks (something most libraries also did, but usually on a more limited scope) and available worldwide. The books still expire, and if too many people checked them out, you had to get on a waiting list.
It's not like OpenLibrary suddenly made the books completely available - they just stopped with the limits temporarily. It's more like someone posting a book online for free reading, but you have to use a special plugin to read it on your web browser - it's free to read, but not quite free to do anything you want with it.
If an author wants to capitalize, they can make a selection of books available completely unencumbered, especially so during these days of being shut in. Why not make the first few books of your popular series like this to hook readers onwards?
Eventually the library will revert. How you handled the crisis will be remembered. Do you want to be known as the person who insisted on every penny during the crisis (Gaiman has plenty of books out there, surely a few aren't living up to their potential), or why not do what everyone else is doing and garner some positive attention by making life just that little bit less miserable for everyone stuck inside, lost their job, or otherwise getting cabin fever?
It's not like they could go out and buy your books right now - the bookstores are closed and Amazon isn't promising 2-day delivery on non-essentials. The only other option is electronic, and if you're not already on those people's e-readers (if they have an e-reader) then you're not capitalizing on a marketing opportunity. But hey, if you're butt hurt about some guy who lost his job reading your book and not getting the couple of bucks from it, I'm sure others will love to be on that guy's Amazon wishlist for books to buy when he gets his job back or gets some of the tide over stimulus money. when this is all over.
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I'll tip them $1m at the front door and then you can break in through the back and steal their jewelery
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Time to publicly shame the bastards who are complaining about this.
Why limit the giveaway without compensation to authors?
Perhaps everyone should work without pay until the crisis is past.
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> Perhaps everyone should work without pay until the crisis is past.
Don't be stupid. I'm a real person and I need my earnings in order to survive.
Authors, on the other hand, aren't people, per se, and certainly don't need to buy groceries or pay their rent. Obviously they should have their work expropriated without compensation when it would be useful for the rest of us.
--
More seriously, I imagine a lot of authors are okay with the Archive's actions. But the idea of being upset with authors being upse
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Time to publicly shame the bastards who are complaining about this. They're stupid, too, as this would bring in many new readers. I don't give a crap how good Gaiman's stuff is. I'm not buying another one of his books after this.
Why shame them? They believe their position and thus would feel no shame if shamed in public. This isn't a Streisand effect here. You may be into Gaiman's stuff and boycott it, but the reality is no one is going to Boycott a writer for pointing out an already reduced income stream has reduced further.
I'm happy you chosen "a side". Unfortunately as it usually is the truth is usually somewhere in the middle of both. No the Internet Archive is not piracy. But also the Internet Archive has just announced a chan
peope die of exposure [Re:Barbara Streisand ca...] (Score:4, Insightful)
Time to publicly shame the bastards who are complaining about this. They're stupid, too, as this would bring in many new readers.
So, you're saying writers should give their work away for free, because it's "exposure",
You know what? People die of exposure.
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/exposure
I don't give a crap how good Gaiman's stuff is. I'm not buying another one of his books after this.
You know what, asshole? Since you apparently want to get his work for free, you weren't buying his books before this.
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Shut the fuck up. "Oh, people will watch more movies if piracy is allowed". "People will play more games!" "People will..". It's all bullshit. These authors don't need you to be smart for them, you haven't figured out some genius marketing hack for them.
You just want free shit. Authors who write for a living don't give a fuck how many readers they have, they care how many people pay for their work. The library itself is fine, the problem is "Oh, well, we feel like we should just give out 50000 copies of a b
Go back to 14 years. (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, if it's been around for 14 years then you've made all the money you're going to make off a book. This eternal copyright bullshit is too much. When publishers blatantly disrespected the public domain then the public is going to disrespect publishers.
It's that's simple and they know it. At this point in the game, they need to shut the fuck up because this is the bed they have made.
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Because IP exists as a legal property right, it can be traded.
The answer to your question is the same for many other questions:
Follow the money
In this case, Disney and its lobbying to extend copyright protections again and again - because the mouse and its companions continue to be a colossal revenue stream.
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Just make it renewable, at a fee. That way, Disney can keep its precious Mickey Mouse forever while other material will go to the public for reuse.
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Well, your proposal of a 14+14 year term could also last after the death of the author, it's just not pegged to the death of the author.
There's nothing wrong with copyright lasting after the author's death; it lends stability. But for the same reason, it's best to have a fixed term of years, with the copyright holder having a right to renew the term up to a maximum. Then everyone can know exactly how long the copyright will last, and can plan around it.
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That might be partial true for most books, but things such as film rights might happen even for older books.
And ebook sales do have quite an interesting long tail, so some authors may sell even after 14 years.
But even more important. With only 14 years of copyright, we would have almost infinite amount of Harry potter, and "Calvin and Hobbes" merchandise.
Copyright for books is not just about "free books for me" but also about how the work can be used by others which is important.
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There's still trademark law to cover merchandise and such. Trademarks last as long as they're being used.
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I suspect their interest is more about burying old content than trying to make money off of it. Sure, they love the idea of milking old properties when an opportunity arises (E.g. a new movie/series releases to drive demand in a 20 year old book), but overwhelmingly they know it's over.
They know very well those old books aren't going to pull in money, but they don't want the market inundated with free/cheap material that feels sufficiently modern to compete with their new releases.
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On the Internet Archive site you can filter by publication date, and it has exact counts of books per year. They have around 240,000 books on their site published in the last 14 years, which seems to indicate they're stepping on still-profitable toes. If you want to give them the 28 years offered by the founding fathers (14 + an extension of 14), there are 760,000 books on the site--about half of all books they're offering--published since 1992.
Re: Go back to 14 years. (Score:5, Insightful)
To give you an idea just how ridiculous the whole thing is, if Paul McCartny and Ringo Starr croak today, we might see "Love me do" go into the public domain before the century is out, and about 130 years after the song was written.
This isn't just your heirs living off your estate, this is people who have no idea who you even were still living off your estate. 130 years ago was 1890. I didn't even meet anyone from my family that was born in this year, let alone was old enough to create anything.
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Do the original Beatles even own Love Me Do any more? I seem to recall the rights to a lot of their work were sold off, Michael Jackson buying some but then selling years later.
There should probably be some rule that copyright can only be sold in a very limited fashion, otherwise it can only be licenced for that 14+14 years.
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Honestly, if it's been around for 14 years then you've made all the money you're going to make off a book. This eternal copyright bullshit is too much. When publishers blatantly disrespected the public domain then the public is going to disrespect publishers.
Again: It wasn't book publishers who pushed for the very long copyright extension.
The discussion here is about paying living authors.
To give you an idea just how ridiculous the whole thing is, if Paul McCartny and Ringo Starr croak today, we might see "Love me do" go into the public domain before the century is out, and about 130 years after the song was written.
That's music.
The discussion is about books.
There should probably be some rule that copyright can only be sold in a very limited fashion, otherwise it can only be licenced for that 14+14 years.
Yes, fixing the copyright law would be nice. The current term is way too long. But blame Disney for that (they didn't want to lose copyright on the mouse), not the print publishers, and definitely not the authors.
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Your heirs can make their own money.
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But my heirs need to live off my estate long after I'm dead.
OR...
Maybe it's that authors can agree to transfer the rights, FOR MONEY, while they are alive.
Copyright laws may be crazy, but they are what they are and that authors (or their assigned agents) are entitled to enforce them in civil court.
IF you don't like this arrangement, the solution isn't to malign the copyright holders for enforcing their rights or flagrantly infringing their rights, you need to get the laws changed.
$20,300. Really? Nagh, it's triple that. (Score:2)
I'm sure George RR Martin (Game of Thrones / A Song of Fire and Ice) didn't make that much. No wait. He did. That's the MEAN income? I guess everyone who has Word/Libreoffice/Gedit is now an author so that brings the mean/mode down.
Oh I'm sorry, it's $61K.
https://work.chron.com/much-no... [chron.com]
Still the value of the Internet to allow people to read isn't reflected in your losing 1/2 poverty line wages.
It's reflected in lots of ways.
But hey, it's a pandemic. Nobody should be able to read your books without gi
Re:$20,300. Really? Nagh, it's triple that. (Score:4, Insightful)
I know several professors who are published (usually by university presses) and they joke about the $5 royalty checks they get in the mail. They write for a niche audience and they don't write books because the royalties will earn them any money. They write books because it's an important item on their CVs and it earns them tenure.
According to their website:
Regular Membership: Traditionally published authors with at least 1 published book in the U.S.; self-published authors who have made at least $5,000 in the past 18 months from their writing; and freelance writers who have published 3+ pieces or made $5,000 in the past 18 months.
Associate Membership: Writers who have received a contract offer from a traditional U.S. publisher or an offer of representation from a U.S. literary agent; self-published authors or freelance writers who have made at least $500 in the past 18 months from their writing.
So you can become an "associate member" as long as you have something published and have made a minor amount of money writing. You can also join as an "emerging writer" or a "student writer" if you have published nothing and have made zero dollars from writing (of course, you still have to pay dues for the membership).
Basically, who knows how they landed on that figure. If they're just going by their own members, it's likely that they're counting a ton of writers who do not actually write as their profession.
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Dodge in Hell is the Book That May Not Be Spoken Of.
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Yes, every now and then a writer hits the jackpot and gets a TV series made from their work and makes millions, but most writers are not George R.R. Martin, and don't make millions.
...AUTHORS: MONETIZE your creativity. Lots of people do it everyday.
I don't even know what that means. What writers are good at doing is writing. You're saying, what? OK, you're good at writing, but since people should have the right to have your work for free you should "monetize" your creativity some other way? How, by charging for tickets to your concer
Workaround (Score:4, Funny)
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Yeah but some idiot sorted the book alphabetically so the words are all out of order.
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They forgot the original purpose (Score:2)
Books preserve human knowledge, not something that you create for profit.
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So you're saying we should move to purely writings by authors who nobody pays for it? Wait, we already have that, check out the social media.
Read their rebuttal (Score:5, Informative)
I read the response from the Archive and it seems to make sense.
https://blog.archive.org/2020/... [archive.org]
The Authors Guild claims that they are pirates not having acquired copies nor having a right. But according to their letter, they have actually acquired copies, they encrypt and disable them after 2 weeks (not that I like DRM on my books), and they are a nonprofit with some thoughtful answers based on the right of libraries to dispense of their holdings to the public without regard to what authors want. That said they also have an opt-out page. The key point being made now is that even if they have perhaps only one acquired copy of a book, they are dispensing an unlimited number, the reason being that all of the public libraries have been closed. That makes sense to me considering that all the copies in the libraries that are closed are surely sufficient. Though imagine if libraries could actually collaborate together to make sure there are enough purchased books to dispense digitally and cover all simultaneous readers. Maybe they would only buy 1000 books instead of 10,000. I guess this is the crux of the Guild's anger. Also it appears according to the Archive that the standard "you cannot photocopy or reproduce" notice at the beginning of most books these days is trumped by the rights of libraries. Since Google also scans books I imagine that is likely the case, but perhaps many people would not agree.. if it were not a national crisis with all the libraries closed. So good timing.
Now I have to say that the authors of books I get on my Kindle are increasingly putting notices at the front of their books which tell people you must buy a copy for every person who reads a book. I don't think that is what books used to be. DRM just makes it really hard to hand somebody a book. My guess is the profits being delivered to publishers and distributors like Amazon and Apple drive them to write this. Certainly I am not sure how authors survive on what I pay Kindle Unlimited, but it is true that I read quite a lot these days.
I'm sympathetic to the Archive and don't think it is "kicking authors when they are down" or even disrespectful to them. It might be a good way to get new readers. I'd like to hear what some authors think, after reading the Archive's rebuttal. My impression over the long time they have been around is that the Internet Archive is a serious enterprise and they feel they have a social compact. I don't think they can be marginalized as amoral pirates, though my understanding is based on older experience and not recent so much.
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p.s. I would like to see something like Kindle Premium or similar that covers not just Kindle versions but PDF too, where you can pay a fixed amount per month and read any book - or consume any media - in all the libraries. Put a price tag on it that helps authors make money and promotes professional editing and book covers, but lower margins for the distributor. (Yes that would not be as popular to an investment bank.) Perhaps one tier just for printed materials, since if you include audio and video the pr
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If the argument of "libraries are closed, so there exist enough copies out there to allow us to make temporary copies to lend out" stands up to legal challenges, this will be disastrous to copyrights. I could apply this argument to "I can rent out many copies of movies which were lost, destroyed, or simply locked up in some storage when Blockbuster went bankrupt", or go a step further and say "I will allow people to stream movies for free from my site, as long as I don't exceed the number of copies ever sol
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That's an interesting point - you've bought at least three licences to watch that movie. "Home use" on the packaging doesn't specify how many at one time, or whose home, or what you might do with the physical media after you've watched the content. Selling it or giving it away is covered by the first sale doctrine, I believe.
Don't charge for entry, and don't exceed safety levels, you can invite as many people as you like to watch that movie - I'm sure the big studios/distributors wouldn't like that.
As I sai
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No, no, no.
When you buy copies -- actual physical copies -- there is no license. Licensing isn't even common to end users except when computers are involved, and shouldn't be even then for the most part.
Remember, a license can only exist where there is an enforceable right of the licensor that the licensee is being given permission to intrude on. So when you download a song, you need a license because you are making a new copy, and one of the rights of copyright (see 17 USC 106(1)) is making new copies.
Bu
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Yes! Except that this is probably fair use. There was some litigation about this when portable MP3 players first came out. Anyone remember the Diamond Rio?
The case is Recording Indus. Assâ(TM)n of Am. v. Diamond Multimedia Sys., Inc., 180 F.3d 1072 (9th Cir. 1999). [google.com]
The RIAA was trying to gain control over MP3 players by arguing that they needed to comply with the Audio Home Recording Act (which is how they had killed DAT and MiniDisc earlier in the 90s). It would render existing devices illegal and w
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So if you've purchased all those copies, can I just start streaming those videos for free, since I'm sure you're not using all of them at the same time, right?
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Libraries have not closed or even reduced their online ebook checkout services. Only their physical print books are out of the reach of the public at the moment, and those are not the same product.
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In the past couple of days, I needed to take a look at Bekefe's Electromagnetic vibrations, waves, and radiation. Normally, I would have stopped at the engineering library at the college I work at and gotten one of the two physical copies there. Sadly, they're closed due to COVID 19, and they don't have an electronic copy.
Instead, I borrowed the Internet Archive's copy for a short time, determined that it was what I needed and bought a physical copy that should be here in a couple of days (I usually prefer
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Disclaimer: I am one of those people that believes we should go back to a 14+14 copyright system, and I have cheerfully read books that came in digital form from sources of dubious legality, so I am not claiming an moral high ground when I say this:
The archive is full of shit, here. Their CDL (controlled digital lending) concept does make sense (though it really has no basis in law), but the important distinction here is that the normal state of affairs can be summed up as: "We have one physical copy. We
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Yeah, and they won't address this. Their reply is laughable tapdancing around the issue. I asked them why they answer the question "Why is this legal normally" but not "why is this legal now". They are going to get sued, and sued hard, and it's going to cost them a lot of money in legal defense and even more when they lose.
You know, I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist but one might almost be tempted to think they know they will lose, and get a lot of publicity from this whole thing so they will be able
Mens Rea, intent. (Score:5, Insightful)
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"If humanity is literally in crisis, then worrying about digital **lending** time constraints should not rank high"
That hit the nail on the head. We've all got more important things to worry about.
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"If humanity is literally in crisis, then worrying about digital **lending** time constraints should not rank high"
That hit the nail on the head. We've all got more important things to worry about.
Humanity is NOT in crisis... There is zero chance that even a 5% death rate will undo our society and culture. It may have an impact, but it's not going to end humanity or civilization as we know it. We are not heading to anarchy.
Yes, we have worrying things to take care of, but THIS WILL PASS as egregious as the death toll may turn out to be. Appealing to stop anarchy is NOT a reason to violate the law (and advance anarchy).
Re: Mens Rea, intent. (Score:2)
While advertising companies, like Google, serve Profit, Archive.org serves Humanity.
So I'd just like to say, consider that stolen! Oh, wait...
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You are an idiot. People work for Archive.org. Those people get paid, in many cases very high salaries. Those salaries come from donations and grants. Those donations and grants will spike when useful idiots like you see how badly they (archive.org) are going to get legally fucked in the ass. This means higher salaries and more pay for the people making these decisions.
Follow the money, this is pretty simple stuff here. And I like how "Oh, enforcing copyright isn't important now!" but "OMG I must read for f
Has to be pointed out (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, just like any other library.
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This is not like "any other library." They are making unlimited copies of books and lending those out. There are good arguments to be made on both sides of this issue, but "what do you mean? We're just doing what any other library does!" is disingenuous.
Ignoring a larger issue. (Score:2)
Why would anyone go to the Internet Archive for pirated books when there are many websites around which are expressly dedicated to pirated books without any pretense of legality? The real problem that ebook pirates have isn't getting hold of material - it's that there are enough books in even a modest archive site to keep someone reading for many lifetimes. Book piracy is rampant on the internet, just like with movies, and TV, and music, and software, and games - even if the IA is disregarding copyright, it
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To play devil's advocate, because archive.org is a legitimate source, and from an outside observer, it's not going to be possible to tell if the visitor borrowed and returned a book, or if they downloaded and kept it. Sure it is illegal twice over for the visitor to do that copy (illegal to copy it, and illegal to break the DRM to be able to copy it), but there's no way to know.
lofty individuals (Score:2)
Well (Score:3)
Reduce Copyright back to a straight 7 years, no extensions, and then we'll talk about your petty concerns...
Vast Majority of Authors (Score:2)
The vast majority of authors, and several I know personally, all live precarious lives, hand-to-mouth existences—and all of them are aware that their work is chronically being stolen. If you all can't acknowledge the connection between those two facts, you're not being honest with yourselves. It's fun to dunk on Gaiman and Wendig, but any author you can think of has come out against what IA is doing right now. Every last one of them.
The work of authoring books, engaging and entertaining books that peo
I am suspicious (Score:2)
Everyone's posting in favor of the Internet Archive here, but I'm suspicious. If it was actually legal for the Internet Archive to do this, why wouldn't they be doing it all the time? Since they're trying to serve as a library, they would want as many people as possible to read the books even when there's no pandemic. It's not as if copyright law has changed during the pandemic--any justification that makes it legal to do this should also make it legal to do this in better times.
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Thank you. This is a great argument and one I hadn't heard before!
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Useless sarcasm. Nobody cares.
Instead why don't you address it? Because you can't he's right. Internet Archive is going to get their asses sued, and lose badly. This will bring in bucks from dipshits like you who think they are being wronged, and the people running it will soak up those dollars.
Wait, I can almost hear you shrilly claiming that nonprofits make money! Sure, tell that to the executive officers making enormous salaries off of suckers like you buying this bullshit.
It's a good scam, I'll give the
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This entire article is about how they've been doing something they haven't been doing before. They announced they were expanding the ability to check out books because of the emergency. They didn't announce that the ability to check out books was exactly the same as before.
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This DRM will lose its DMCA protection (Score:2)
Anyone know what kind of DRM that Internet Archive uses? Because the DRM vendor has just made a critical mistake. Read 1201(a)(3)(B) [cornell.edu] carefully.
You should never, ever allow your DRM system to be applied by a third party. If a work has DRM which wasn't authorized by the copyright holder, then that DRM does not "effectively control access to the work" and all the prohibitions in DMCA become irrelevant since they don't apply to your situation.
If Internet Archive gets away with this, it will be legal to defeat w
Re: I'm really puzzled by some aspects of archive. (Score:2)
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Pretty sure they have good lawyers.
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These publishers wonâ(TM)t do anything to help anyone.
No wonder book reading has come down.
CAUTION:
Rant with obscenities to follow.
(begin_rant)
You think that the tree murder paper pushing morons in the publishing industry are bad. TRY THE FUCKING MUSIC PUBLISHING INDUSTRY. Schott, Recordi, and the vast majority of Classical Guitar music is now only available as non loan reference in libraries. Or worse the publishers have either sold off the distribution rights to other tree murder assholes like Mel Bay, Hal Leonard and the like.
WAKE THE FUCK UP. Musicians are using digital technology to put
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Did anyone understand any of that?
It's not tl;dr, if anything, it's the opposite, you omitted the part where you explained what the hell is going on.
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Oh stewardess? I speak jive.
He's upset that music publishers (the people who publish sheet music) haven't embraced ebooks, and instead still print music on paper that musicians need to buy copies of so that they can learn and play particular songs or other works. Further, that they let the sheet music fall out of print so that it's very difficult to learn and play some music.
I have no idea whether that's true or not - it's a little outside the range of my knowledge - but it wouldn't surprise me.
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Lol. Thank you for the jive translation. I wasn't sure what the rant was about either and I read it twice in case I was extra stupid today.
--
Sometimes I'm confused by what I think is really obvious. But what I think is really obvious obviously isn't obvious? - Michael Stipe
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Fucking absurd. You liar. The people complaining here are living, their work is still under reasonable copyright (reasonable according to anyone even worth bothering to discuss it with).
What kind of asinine Chewbacca theory bullshit are you trying to pull here?
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I suggested this in the previous thread. If the archive would limit this offering to books published more than ten years ago, it would reduce the number of in print books to about 1%. If you are copying out of print books, then you are not damaging the authors any.
Well, if you are going to go back 10 years, why not just limit yourself to works which have passed into the public domain?
And don't full yourself.. There is a lifetime of excellent reading already in the public domain.
IMHO - Those who knowingly violate copyrights of printed materials are ethically in the wrong and there is no justification for this.. "Folks are bored sitting on their hands at home!" doesn't wash because there are LOTS of options for readers which don't violate copyrights.
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IMHO - Those who knowingly violate copyrights of printed materials are ethically in the wrong and there is no justification for this."
No they aren't. Copyrights don't have an ethical component; they're utilitarian.
Infringing on copyrights may be bad for society if copyright laws are in good shape and the infringement messes with the delicate balance of incentives and the satisfaction of the public interest. But it's no more unethical than it is to jaywalk in the absence of traffic or to build a building with a setback that doesn't comply with the local building codes.
Given how copyright laws are in the US these days at least pirates hav
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No they aren't. Copyrights don't have an ethical component; they're utilitarian.
Some believe that "people should be paid for their work" is an ethical position.
Apparently you're not one of them.
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Some believe that "people should be paid for their work" is an ethical position.
Well, let's try that out. My bill for this post is $10. Please reply with your payment information so that I can bill you for the work I put in, responding to you.
Or alternatively, you might view copyright as being a mechanism to serve the public interest. Copyrights are granted where they advance that interest, and should not be granted where they do not. Authors have no inherent right to a copyright; they have to deserve them according to criteria that serve the public interest. (For example, at one t
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Some believe that "people should be paid for their work" is an ethical position.
Well, let's try that out. My bill for this post is $10. Please reply with your payment information so that I can bill you for the work I put in, responding to you.
Quick question, are you stupid, or just pretending to be stupid?
I'll guess pretending to be stupid, but on the internet it's really hard to tell.
If it's just pretending to be stupid, I suggest you figure out the flaws in your "let's pretend to be stupid, here's what a stupid person would say" argument yourself.
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I would say that copyright term being about the same as patent term would make sense.
It is bonkers that works now are kept out of public domain longer than the children of creators would live.
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Copyright exists to spread knowledge, first title of a modern copyright act was,
And was enshrined in the American Constitution as to advance the arts and sciences, which at the time pretty well covered advanced learning.
The trade was a limited monopoly in trade for works going into the public domain with copies deposited in famous libraries upon reg
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How about we go with the Author's death +25 years max, but the copyright must be held by the author's heirs named in their will and cannot be transferred, sold or assigned and should the heirs die, the work passes into the public domain. Works produced by companies may only be copyrighted for 15 years and these rights may be assigned, or sold, but not renewed. Revising a work does NOT extend the copyright of company owned works.
This means that copyrights must be held by individuals, not companies. A wo
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No, there's a lot of problems with that.
A copyright term tied to the author's life is too unpredictable and likely too long. It's easier for everyone to plan around when the term is for a set number of years, optionally renewable by the copyright holder for a set number of additional terms.
Further, the term you've proposed is too arbitrary. The idea of copyright is to maximize the satisfaction of the public interest in having the most new original and derivative works created and published, and having the
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I don't think the author's death needs to be part of it. It makes things more complicated and harder to track.
Also doesn't need to last the author's entire life. I know work I did even 10 years ago does not sustain me in any way today.
Of course, I wouldn't want predatory practices where a publisher sits on an authors work for 14 years and then publishes it new without compensation. One nice thing about modern times is that author direct publishing should be feasible and that predatory package should be r
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But what more work would that be, if they are not paid for their work, creating more work would not really help.
And you seems to not understand what a publisher do. Publishing/Distribution have not been a major time consumer for publishers in the last 40 year. That is just a small part of their job
The main job of a publisher is really editorial work, cover design, proof reading, graphics design, book layout and so on. In general anything required in the process from a raw word file, and to finished and poli
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Want more money? Then DO MORE WORK! Like the rest of us!
Right! Because if your work is being given away for free, then if you simply do twice as much work, your zero payment will be twice as much!
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