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You are directing your ire at the wrong party. Hachette has nothing to gain from continuing to pursue this lawsuit, the only possible outcome (as you correctly state) is the world becomes a worse place. The behavior they object to has already stopped, and they've got a judgment to prevent it happening again. Hachette could drop enforcement of the judgment, both parties can dismiss the appeal, and no one loses anything.

Hachette's owners see an opportunity here to destroy a public good, and they are taking it. Hachette are the bad actors trying to destroy what you find valuable, not the IA.




> You are directing your ire at the wrong party. Hachette has nothing to gain from continuing to pursue this lawsuit, the only possible outcome (as you correctly state) is the world becomes a worse place.

Hachette obviously benefits from teaching would-be unlimited "lenders" a lesson. Even anti-DRM, "buy my books only if you can afford" authors were against this hare-brained lending scheme because the IA didn't even bother to buy a single copy of the books they were "lending".

The blame squarely falls at the IA's feet; being an idealist doesn't give you the rights to delve into illegal behavior, regardless of the righteousness of your cause or the depth of your conviction. If the world is better with an org in it, and it jeopardizes it's own ability to remain a going concern, it's clear to me who is culpable. "Too good to die" doesn't exist.


> The blame squarely falls at the IA's feet; being an idealist doesn't give you the rights to delve into illegal behavior

This way of thinking is the reason why we are losing so many great things. Laws are created by people to support a society we want to live in. When laws no longer sever the society, then the society must rise up and change them. Like with any bug, fixing it early is cheaper than fixing it later.

> it's clear to me who is culpable

"Look what you made me do. If you hadn't acted up I wouldn't have had to destroy you."


>> The blame squarely falls at the IA's feet; being an idealist doesn't give you the rights to delve into illegal behavior

> This way of thinking is the reason why we are losing so many great things. Laws are created by people to support a society we want to live in. When laws no longer sever the society, then the society must rise up and change them. Like with any bug, fixing it early is cheaper than fixing it later.

Let me put it bluntly: the IA went about pursuing that change in stupid and impulsive way, and their actions may very well accomplish nothing while causing us to lose more "great things."

"I'm going to pretend the laws I don't like don't exist in order to try to change them," is an activity for people with little other responsibility and little to lose.

In hindsight, if the IA wanted to try something like the "National Emergency Library," they should have set up an independent entity to take the fall and contain the damage if it didn't work out. And since they didn't do that, they should probably have tried really hard to settle and fight another day than go down in a blaze of glory.


I don't want to live in a society where authors don't get paid, so the laws are just fine.


You already live in one. Publishing house shareholders get most of the money, even for online books. If you pirated the book and donated to the author, they'd actually get more money.


> You already live in one. Publishing house shareholders get most of the money, even for online books.

Doesn't this apply to every mass-market creative endeavor - software engineering included? There a whole lot of machinery sitting between {code|book} author and the paying consumers, leveraging efficiency of scale and demanding a pound of flesh in return. Agents, editors, lawyers, proof readers, marketers, book cover artists, sales people, type-setters, and requisite admin support staff all of them necessary to publish and distribute books at scale. If you think authors don't need an entire industry behind them, try sifting through the self-published dreck on Amazon.


And it is pretty clear who would be first to exploit system where authors don't have copy rights. That is Amazon to start with followed by all other big companies who can effectively distribute the works.


The vast, VAST majority of money that an author makes is from their advance. It is exceedingly rare for a book to sell even enough to cover that advance, and even rarer for it to have sales strong enough that the author sees meaningful, life changing residuals.


>> I don't want to live in a society where authors don't get paid, so the laws are just fine.

> The vast, VAST majority of money that an author makes is from their advance. It is exceedingly rare for a book to sell even enough to cover that advance, and even rarer for it to have sales strong enough that the author sees meaningful, life changing residuals.

This is how author advances would work in a world without copyright: authors would self-publish their books, and there would be no advances. If the book proved to be popular and successful, all the major distribution platforms would "pirate" it and pay them nothing. No conceivable DRM would save the author's income, because the platforms can afford to pay people to manually key in the work.


And why should I even offer you an advance if I’m not going to make any money off your book. Heck, why should I invest any money in editing your book for that matter.

I’m not sure it’s exceedingly rare for an author to not make some beer money on top of single dollar advances but it’s not a full-time job for many authors. It mostly works to support the day job or as a hobby.

But many authors might as well self-publish today. I mostly have.


> The vast, VAST majority of money that an author makes is from their advance

Think about it. If there is no copyright, why would anyone pay an advance?


> being an idealist doesn't give you the rights to delve into illegal behavior

Just to be clear, it is your position that the IA's Wayback Machine and abandonware archives should also not exist, right?


It’s a fair point. Most of what the IA does is probably technically copyright violation but I’d argue there’s a qualitative difference between making copies of public websites, software that publishers have abandoned, and other things in that vein—especially given they historically bent over backwards to stop sharing copyrighted material if someone got upset— and sharing digitized copyrighted books Willy-nilly given there was already precedent that you just can’t do that.


As I understand it, they're pretty good about taking your site out if you ask them to. That's not quite the letter of the law on copyright, and potentially leaves them open to lawsuits, but few web site publishers are really going to pursue them once they've taken the material down.

If they'd applied that same level to the books, they might have avoided this mess.


> Just to be clear, it is your position that the IA's Wayback Machine and abandonware archives should also not exist, right?

No, I fully support these missions. Both have defensible fair use protections and do not try to break new legal ground with flimsy justifications. I wish the IA were little more aggressive about not retroactively applying robots.txt rules on archived content.

It's hard to reconcile how overly careful they are with the Wayback Machine compared to the carelessness of unlimited lending. I am livid they risked their priceless archives for book piracy - that's not a great hill to die on.


Book piracy or not, IA seems to be the only source for many programming books from the 2000s. (Everyone’s go-to pirate library has a much less comprehensive collection of those.)


> It's hard to reconcile how overly careful they are with the Wayback Machine compared to the carelessness of unlimited lending

Indeed. It's maybe worth reflecting on the apparent conflict there. What info are you missing, that could explain the conflict? The IA folks aren't crazy, but they are opinionated and willing to take action where others might not, and the world was in a very crazy state at the time the decision was made. Consider some sympathy for the people leading the project you feel so passionately about.


But they could issue a mea culpa, and move on. Admit defeat, pay a token fine or settlement, and keep their donations to preserve the rest of their archive. Why don't they cut out the rot, to preserve the rest of the archives. I know they had a mission, or some goal, or whatever, but it failed - it failed a long time ago.

It can be right or wrong, i don't know. I want organizations to fight the battles that gain us new rights and freedoms. I know that they have a lot to lose here though, and they shouldn't risk it.

Concretely, I was a big individual donor to the IA until this lawsuit. I support their mission, I love their work, I help (technically and financially) other organizations like local museums and non-profits handle their archival work. This is something important to me, and I really want their archives to persist.

I stopped donating to the IA - and won't resume - until this lawsuit is resolved. I don't want to donate to the book publishers, and it looks that's going to be the outcome of their entire funds.


> I wish the IA were little more aggressive about not retroactively applying robots.txt rules on archived content.

They've stopped doing that. They now ignore robots.txt completely and you have to email them to stop them.


>It's hard to reconcile how overly careful they are with the Wayback Machine compared to the carelessness of unlimited lending.

Is it really? The cynical side of me wonders if it just might be intentional. What if this is a nonprofit analogue to VC monetization? Do you dislike an existing law? Create a similar but legal service you know other people will appreciate, use donations to undercut competitors and become the defacto monopoly, ride the network effect to a large crowd that basically relies on you, then rugpull by tying their narrow, legal use to your crusade for a different legal system by infecting their data with illegal material and declaring the whole thing must sink or swim together. Now your users have to pay you to fight your policy crusade or they lose their already legal resource they value much more, and you can use your legal half as a moral shield to get approval from anyone who only had the time to read the headline when the prosecution inevitably shows up at your door. All you need yo hold the almost-grift together is to lie by omission about who instigated it all.


Stupid laws that hurt society shouldn't be defended, and those that defend such laws simply because "it's the law" are not worthy of being taken seriously.


If the law were stupid, I'd expect a more robust argument about how it's stupid in the IA's appeal. They are not arguing that.

I have plenty of issues with copyright law as it's currently written and wholeheartedly support copyright reform. That's very different from any one party unilaterally suspending copyright "because of COVID"


Of course the laws are stupid. I dont care what IA said to defend themselves. They could have ineffective counsel. The entire concept of copyright in this historical moment is antithetical to a productive society. It is rent seeking, parasitic behavior. It is unsustainable and completely unenforcable in the digital age. The only mistake IA made is they were upfront about what they were doing. People pirate books all the time. It is trivially easy and there's virtually nothing publishers can do to stop it. And when it comes to law enforcement, the effort it would require to enforce the laws as they are written is obviously not worth it. If the laws are only enforced on good faith actors, what do you suppose that incentivizes? Reform is not possible; corporations control the legal system. The entire paradigm needs to be done away with.


> hare-brained

Thank you for spelling this correctly!


> doesn't give you the rights to delve into illegal behavior

... Illegal as defined by the highly paid lobbyists of the trillion dollar copyright monopolies? It boggles my mind that such "laws" are even considered legitimate.

> "Too good to die" doesn't exist.

Tell that to Wikipedia and several other organizations which put a stop to stuff like SOPA/PIPA with a single day of blackout. I want to see them try to destroy Wikipedia over copyright nonsense.


[flagged]


> You don't consider it to be a right to revolt against tyranny?

Do you think not being able to download all the free stuff you want is tyranny?

"Tyranny" is defined as a "cruel and oppressive government or rule."

How are you being oppressed and/or treated cruelly?

You can think copyright terms are too long without the hyperbole.


Might want to read the comment I'm responding to: "being an idealist doesn't give you the rights to delve into illegal behavior"

I find it obvious that there are situations when illegal behaviour is justified, perhaps even virtous or obligatory. I'd like to know why "being an idealist" is considered the only relevant factor.

As for copyright, I'm of the opinion that there exists no spirit world, and hence no spiritual labour, which means that immaterial rights lack foundation.


I mean 'The Right to Read' sets up a story environment where Copyright/IP is a form of tyranny. I view any form of overly broad copyright as a form of government enforced tyranny itself. This can be anywhere from terms that last lifetimes. The lack of counter enforcement against actors bring false claims. And allowing very generic/simple systems to be copyrighted thereby enacting massive rent seeking behavior across most of the population.


This is not a case of misuse of copyright. Books are copyrighted so authors can exist.


Authors have no trouble existing without copyright at all, let alone some weaker version of copyright.

Meanwhile, vanishingly few authors make a living at it, and not a lot more make beer money. It’s a pursuit that barely pays as it is, yet many books are written.


It will pay less without copyright.


Kinda weird to be arguing for monopolies. Ultimately, do you prefer them to be in the state or a privatised oligarchy?


I'm not arguing for monopolies.


Patents and copyright are a government granted right to a limited term monopoly, which is unique in that it is a right that had to be explicitly granted, because it was not assumed to be an unenumerated right, and the authors of the US constitution were generally opposed to government granted monopolies.

It is also unique in that mere legislation could reduce the term of this right to an arbitrarily short duration. That's not how any other right works. Also unique is that other rights can't expire in your lifetime, and that the right is assignable.


Ownership of a work and monopoly are not the same thing. Monopoly implies control of an industry or a class of goods. Owning the rights to one book doesn't mean I own all books (which would be a monopoly on books), any more than owning a house gives me a monopoly on housing.


Copyright empowers Congress to make a law giving you a limited term monopoly on your words or other creations. Patents do a similar for an invention. Both expire. Until they expire you can buy and sell or rent (license) these rights, and you can bring a civil case to enforce them.

Neither are like, say, a monopoly on a commodity like milk, which can be illegal or against regulations. Search for "patent" and "monopoly" and you will find innumerable actual lawyers explaining the monopoly nature of patents better than I can.


Could you find a good example, as I don't know what I'm looking for. On "copyright" and "monopoly", presumably, not "patent". Patents could legitimately create a monopoly on a good, if there's no other way to make that good.


'Legal monopoly'.


OK, sorry, I thought you were arguing for copyright.


It's pretty tiring to pretend two different things are the same without explaining yourself.


I'm not the one pretending though.

Copyright is a monopoly on material expressions of ideas, based on the firm belief that there is a spirit world and spiritual labour and the owning of spirit stuff. That's a lot of pretending.


So what if "The Right to Read" communicates such a message? If the Internet Archive gets a notice to shut down, I doubt anyone involved will suddenly start reading Stallman, then walk away as if they no longer had a company to shutter. The only people who matter in relation to the future of the Internet Archive are the ones who will be enforcing the law and I doubt most of them have read or will ever care to read "The Right to Read".


Everything you allege here is misinformed as to the current state of the lawsuit and stakes.

You demonize Hachette et al (4 major publishers) as seeking to destroy a public good. In fact, they've already settled with the IA, as of last August 2023, in a manner that caps costs to IA at a survivable level and sets clear mutually-acceptable rules for future activity.

You imply IA would dismiss the appeal if the plaintiffs "could drop enforcement of the judgement". In fact, there were never any assessed damages, the parties have already reached a mutually-acceptable settlement per above, and despite that – in fact, as part of the settlement! – the IA has retained the right to appeal regarding the fair-use principles that are important to them.

Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachette_v._Internet_Archive#F...

>On August 11, 2023, the parties reached a negotiated judgment. The agreement prescribes a permanent injunction against the Internet Archive preventing it from distributing the plaintiffs' books, except those for which no e-book is currently available,[3] as well as an undisclosed payment to the plaintiffs.[25][26] The agreement also preserves the right for the Internet Archive to appeal the previous ruling.[25][26]

IA's August 2023 statement on how much will continue despite the injunction & settlement limits: https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/17/what-the-hachette-v-inte...

>Because this case was limited to our book lending program, the injunction does not significantly impact our other library services. The Internet Archive may still digitize books for preservation purposes, and may still provide access to our digital collections in a number of ways, including through interlibrary loan and by making accessible formats available to people with qualified print disabilities. We may continue to display “short portions” of books as is consistent with fair use—for example, Wikipedia references (as shown in the image above). The injunction does not affect lending of out-of-print books. And of course, the Internet Archive will still make millions of public domain texts available to the public without restriction.


Hhhhuh. Thanks a lot for this info, this isn't anywhere near as bad as all the commentary around the lawsuit I've seen lead me to believe. I'm now confused by the apocalyptic tone of the article, I read it as being an existential threat to the IA ("last-ditch effort to save itself," "things aren't looking good for the Internet's archivist," "A extremely noble, and valuable, endeavor. Which makes the likelihood of this legal defeat all the more unfortunate."). I still don't think Hachette has much to gain here, but you're absolutely right that I was way off the mark.


> I'm now confused by the apocalyptic tone of the article

Be not confused. Lunduke's blog is a sensationalist tech tabloid. Every article is like that -- elevating mundane disagreements in open source projects to huge proportions, without doing nearly enough research to be called journalism.


> in a manner that caps costs to IA at a survivable level

How do you know that? The last I saw, the penalty was still undisclosed.


This ruling is, in fact, fairly unprecedented in how it allows the IA to appeal even after a settlement. It's also very permissive in allowing uploads of books with no e-book on sale.


This informative take deserves to be higher up the comment chain!


> Hachette has nothing to gain from continuing to pursue this lawsuit ...

They're probably just making sure that the next place that wants to pull something funny, doesn't.

Ye old "lets make an example out of them" thing.


It's perfectly possible to think Hachette is being cruel and doing harm and also think IA has acted stupidly and/or recklessly.


Yeah, this is largely my position, with an added dose of understanding (2020 was a weird year; many mistakes were made by many people). But Hachette & Co. are the ones acting with intent to harm now so I think they deserve the ire now.


We reasoned. We begged. We screamed at IA not to do what they did, that this would be the inevitable outcome. This is like someone left a bear trap on my front lawn and because I should have the right to do whatever I want on my property I refuse to listen to the crowd of people telling me not to stick my dick in the bear trap. The controlled digital lending was already completely illegal but the IA was making headway on making it a culturally accepted practice. Then they burned it to the ground. The loss of the IA would be one of if not the greatest Internet-tragedy in history, but the fools in charge of it don't deserve anyone's sympathy.


>Hachette has nothing to gain from continuing to pursue this lawsuit

They do: Legal precedent.

IA made themselves into an easy, prominent target by doing something everyone else agreed to not do via Gentlemens' Agreements(tm) and precedents set by lesser transgressions, so now they're reaping what they sowed.

The book publishers stand to gain legal precedent that doing what IA did can and will result in legal consequences severe enough to ruin you.


> Hachette's owners see an opportunity here to destroy a public good ...

Quite possibly on behalf of some other entities in their same bed that don't like information to be free and preserved.




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