It's a bit amusing that copyright law supporters always go to the 'think of the authors who need to get paid' when at present, copyright extends to 70 years AFTER the author's death IIRC, or 95 years after date of publication if it was a contract job.
In contrast, patents are only valid for 20 years after patent publication, for good reasons (a limited period encourages technological development and prevents patent squatting).
Right now, we have large corporate publishers squatting on copyright to prevent dissemination of works that should really have been in the public domain decades ago. Cutting copyright periods in half (at least) makes a lot of sense.
Books can be "discovered" quite a bit later in a way that patents generally are not. That said, cutting copyright length significantly makes sense to me whatever the details.
Apply the same logic to any kind of asset. Why should real estate, ownership of land, or any other material posession be inherited through generations? Why not let it revert to the public domain upon the death of the owner?
And the whole after death is really weird one to me. That really doesn't work with anything else we do.
I would be ready to accept something clear and simple. 50 years from publication. Should cover most of the revenue and also reasonably cover the off-spring in unfortunate cases. For digital media like games maybe 25-30 years would feel better for me, but I'm somewhat ready to trade it bit up.
> But with CDL, the IA does not loan out more digital or physical copies than the IA has purchased. The Internet Archive also argues that there’s no evidence this lending has affected the publishers’ profits, which the judge concluded was irrelevant to the underlying legal matter.
This is true. The judge is saying that the legal matter is different from the actual possibility of harm.
Has anyone considered the possibility of bringing a "suit in equity" petition against these companies to provide proof that there are profits lost and then requesting that case regarding the legal matter of copyright violation be put on hold pending the petition? Since the matter of profit loss is the center piece to the argument, why cant there be some kind of conformation of loss to make these kinds of cases lose merit?
As bad as this decision is perhaps it's been necessary. We need a showdown over copyright before the public finally wakes up and realizes that existing copyright law is unfair and inequitable.
It's only when complaints from the public arrive on mass at the feet of legislators will they finally take action. Hopefully, this decision will increase the likelihood of that happening.
Alternatively, with such decisions continuing to maintain the status quo over copyright, and with the rage of those committed to copyright reform deepening, discontent could widen to the extent where copyright law is simply ignored
altogether and that policing it becomes impossible—copyright anarchy will then reign.
We are already at the beginning of the end of the copyright wars and publishers are still acting in ways that will ultimately ensure they'll end up on the losing side.
As a result of this decision, don't be surprised to see a fork of the Internet Archive created in some favorable jurisdiction along the lines of Alexandra Elbakyan's Sci-Hub. If that were to happen then it would serve these miserable the publishers damn well right as they have been acting as greedy unreasonable shits for many decades.
Public libraries have been an unparalleled good for generations. They'd never have existed at all if publishers of old had the power and political influence that modern publishers have today.
Huge global publishers are thugs and modern copyright laws are their cudgel. Aaron Swartz could attest to that, if he were alive to do so.
Modern public libraries are mostly just public entertainment centers for the latest movies, video games, and ghostwritten novels. In many library systems, the books that were the whole foundational reason for their existence have been pulped (literally, this is a source of income for libraries.) Even very notorious classical works are frequently available only though ILL and often not even then.
I honestly don't have much sympathy for them. If the situation is that bad for classical works, the situation for works of niche technical, scientific, and local merit is even worse. The amount of works that have been irretrievably lost because they were deliberately destroyed by public librarians is enormous. They've burned through every bit of credit and faith I had for them. I do not see any value in public repositories of the latest John Grisham novels or the latest $POLITICIAN_X campaign book that will be forgotten in six months. The public should not be paying for them.
How many books would exist if authors were never paid?
I guess a few would. There are authors with trust funds. But do we want only the voices of those with trust funds to be heard?
The IA lawsuit is about the IA using the pandemic as a cudgel to try to force through the idea of unlimited royalty free digital distribution, which would if normalized end writing as a profession.
Of course with AIs able to generate convincing text on demand it all might be water under the bridge now. That’s going to flood the market with noise at the very least.
This isn't news. It's commentary on a ruling that's been discussed to death and most everyone recognizes the IA forfeit their case the moment they started the NEL.
Not exactly. The NEL likely pushed publishers to file, but that wasn't what the case was about. The IA lost when they admitted they had no controls in place with library partners - meaning they were not even doing CDL as they themselves defined. And, they had a clear profit motive, the worst of which is linking to BWB (imagine if they had linked to a publishers site for the print copy instead).
The IA playing fast and loose is where the fault lies. CDL implemented as defined could have been an interesting case, but that's not what this was.
> This isn't news // discussed to death // most everyone recognizes
We are not restricted to "«news»" in that sense, and the submitted "«commentary»" also provides information that was not explicit in past sources. // And part of a matter very much alive. // The case has hit the concept of digital lending on the base of physical possession.
[+] [-] photochemsyn|3 years ago|reply
In contrast, patents are only valid for 20 years after patent publication, for good reasons (a limited period encourages technological development and prevents patent squatting).
Right now, we have large corporate publishers squatting on copyright to prevent dissemination of works that should really have been in the public domain decades ago. Cutting copyright periods in half (at least) makes a lot of sense.
[+] [-] mdp2021|3 years ago|reply
A good occasion to note the parallel context of books not being reprinted.
Last time I wanted to buy copies of works of a prominent author to gift them around, and was told "Impossible - out of print": weeks ago.
Texts which are not protected by "pre-emptive" availability (esp. electronic) somehow disappear - Michael S. Hart (Project Gutenberg) was right.
[+] [-] ghaff|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bazoom42|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ekaros|3 years ago|reply
I would be ready to accept something clear and simple. 50 years from publication. Should cover most of the revenue and also reasonably cover the off-spring in unfortunate cases. For digital media like games maybe 25-30 years would feel better for me, but I'm somewhat ready to trade it bit up.
[+] [-] boomboomsubban|3 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35468753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35297117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35272708
Remember, this ruling is about controlled digital lending as a whole. The pandemic National Emergency Library was barely mentioned by the judge.
[+] [-] trinsic2|3 years ago|reply
This is true. The judge is saying that the legal matter is different from the actual possibility of harm.
Has anyone considered the possibility of bringing a "suit in equity" petition against these companies to provide proof that there are profits lost and then requesting that case regarding the legal matter of copyright violation be put on hold pending the petition? Since the matter of profit loss is the center piece to the argument, why cant there be some kind of conformation of loss to make these kinds of cases lose merit?
[+] [-] hilbert42|3 years ago|reply
It's only when complaints from the public arrive on mass at the feet of legislators will they finally take action. Hopefully, this decision will increase the likelihood of that happening.
Alternatively, with such decisions continuing to maintain the status quo over copyright, and with the rage of those committed to copyright reform deepening, discontent could widen to the extent where copyright law is simply ignored altogether and that policing it becomes impossible—copyright anarchy will then reign.
We are already at the beginning of the end of the copyright wars and publishers are still acting in ways that will ultimately ensure they'll end up on the losing side.
As a result of this decision, don't be surprised to see a fork of the Internet Archive created in some favorable jurisdiction along the lines of Alexandra Elbakyan's Sci-Hub. If that were to happen then it would serve these miserable the publishers damn well right as they have been acting as greedy unreasonable shits for many decades.
[+] [-] shagie|3 years ago|reply
The countries that are not party to the TRIPS agreement, Berne convention, or the Universal Copyright Convention:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_internation...[+] [-] codecutter|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WarOnPrivacy|3 years ago|reply
Huge global publishers are thugs and modern copyright laws are their cudgel. Aaron Swartz could attest to that, if he were alive to do so.
[+] [-] Amezarak|3 years ago|reply
I honestly don't have much sympathy for them. If the situation is that bad for classical works, the situation for works of niche technical, scientific, and local merit is even worse. The amount of works that have been irretrievably lost because they were deliberately destroyed by public librarians is enormous. They've burned through every bit of credit and faith I had for them. I do not see any value in public repositories of the latest John Grisham novels or the latest $POLITICIAN_X campaign book that will be forgotten in six months. The public should not be paying for them.
[+] [-] api|3 years ago|reply
I guess a few would. There are authors with trust funds. But do we want only the voices of those with trust funds to be heard?
The IA lawsuit is about the IA using the pandemic as a cudgel to try to force through the idea of unlimited royalty free digital distribution, which would if normalized end writing as a profession.
Of course with AIs able to generate convincing text on demand it all might be water under the bridge now. That’s going to flood the market with noise at the very least.
[+] [-] webmaven|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matwood|3 years ago|reply
The IA playing fast and loose is where the fault lies. CDL implemented as defined could have been an interesting case, but that's not what this was.
[+] [-] mdp2021|3 years ago|reply
We are not restricted to "«news»" in that sense, and the submitted "«commentary»" also provides information that was not explicit in past sources. // And part of a matter very much alive. // The case has hit the concept of digital lending on the base of physical possession.