Internet Archive is in danger
Internet Archive is in danger
It looks like the internet archive is needed assistance, I just heard about this today and figured lemmy could help spread this message around
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Would you care the elaborate more?
The nonprofit Internet Archive is appealing a judgment that threatens the future of all libraries. Big publishers are suing to cut off libraries’ ownership and control of digital books, opening new paths for digital book bans and dangerous surveillance.
Join 28,000+ signers on the petition below to show your support for the Internet Archive, libraries’ digital rights, and an open internet with safe, uncensored access to knowledge.
Lol, a petition won't stop this unless it's a petition to bribe the judge. The US is owned by corporations.
Sure, but it is still better than doing nothing.
It feels better than doing nothing.
If you can convince yourself you're not doing nothing.
I've never been that good a liar.Large petitions also serve as a way of getting the word out.
Yep. Petition gets large enough for media attention, word is spread, MAYBE people get active.
But Then police beat on them, Trump supporters defend the corporate interests of their supreme lord, it all goes down the shitter anyway.
I don't know.
I still think there's at least some value, even if the only thing it accomplishes is getting people to talk about it. Many people have never even heard of The Internet Archive.
Either way, there isn't really a reason not to.
Only things that are effective are better than doing nothing. Doing ineffective things only gives a false sense of accomplishment and thus reduces the incentive to try harder to be effective, which means they're actually worse than doing nothing.
Online petitions, "free speech zones," and other easily-ignorable things are like honeypots for activism, designed to neuter it.
Sure, but "effectiveness" is usually not a binary and is often difficult to measure. Small, but persistent changes should still add up. Eventually.
So long as people recognize that these things are in fact quite toothless, I'm not sure they are entirely detrimental. There's no reason this couldn't be used as a starting point for more effective action, now that signatories are in greater contact with the campaign.
It's not even a question of being "owned by corporations". Judges don't care about petitions. They're not politicians, their job is to adjudicate the law.
In theory. In the US, at least (I don't know about other countries), some judge positions are voted in, In that sense, they most certainly are politicians.
On top of that, HAVE YOU SEEN OUR SUPREME COURT. THAT SHIT'S THE HALLMARK CHANNEL OF "OWNED BY OTHER ENTITIES", be it actual politicians (Trump) or CEOs (also Trump), many of whom ARE both executives and politicans (again, not only Trump, but also a number of other reps & senators).
C'mon it's at least worth a shot. To me at least.
With the current judges we could probably buy one fairly cheap. Crowd source lobbying I guess
Except it's not a threat to the future of all libraries, it's a threat to the future of "libraries" that decide to completely ignore copyright and give out an unlimited number of copies of ebooks. Basically turning themselves into book-focused piracy sites.
I'm incredibly frustrated with Internet Archive for bringing this on themselves. It is not their mandate to fight copyright, that's something better left in the hands of activist organizations like the EFF. The Internet Archive's mandate is to archive the Internet, to store and preserve knowledge. Distributing it is secondary to that goal. And picking unnecessary fights with big publishing houses like this is directly contrary to that goal, since now the Internet Archive is in danger.
It's like they're carrying around a precious baby and they decided it was a good idea to start whacking a bear with a stick. Now the bear is eating their leg and they're screaming "oh my god help me, the bear is threatening this baby!" Well yeah, but you shouldn't have brought a baby with you when you went on a bear-whacking expedition. You should have known exactly what that bear was going to do.
Exactly. I hate fucking everything about this. I love the internet archive and nearly all they do.
In principal I love their "covid-19 emergency library" or whatever they called it. In practice? They absolutely know better than to pull stunts and I'm terrified that this will spell the end for one of the greatest knowledge and media resources of the modern age. For shit that was effectively already available to the public through ebook piracy sites.
They already operated on shaky ground, hosting downloads for a metric ton of shit that is unquestionably still under copyright (despite their claims to only be archival of things that are not), skating by on technicalities and by not drawing too much attention to themselves.
Plus, there were so fucking many better ways to do the "free digital library" thing without jeapordizing themselves.
- Have some volunteers "misuse resources": load an SSD up with the book files, "borrow" some compute power to decrypt/remove drm, pass batches off to existing ebook "dumping" groups to stagger releases and obsfucate the true source. This would ensure that any material they had which was not already available on the high seas would get there.
- Make a big red banner on the site to a blog post with the generic "While we would never condone piracy or copyright infringement, we understand that times are extremely hard right now [blah blah] here are some links to community guides on how to access learning literature (pirate ebooks) during these trying times [blah blah] Please abide by your local laws."
You summed it up exactly. As one politician put it, the Internet Archive does not decide copyright. They have became to big for there own shoes.
The thing that drives me nuts is that I really do value that baby they're carrying around. It is precious. But I don't want to give the Internet Archive money just to funnel into the pockets of their lawyers and settlement payments to big publishers due to these unrelated quixotic battles.
I was hoping that the IA would have learned a lesson from losing this court case, they should have settled as soon as they could. I'm sure the publishers don't want the bad publicity of "destroying" the Internet Archive, they just want them to stop blatantly violating their copyrights. But this appeal suggests that they haven't learned that lesson yet.
In an ideal world there'd either be some kind of leadership shakeup at the IA to get rid of whoever was behind this stunt, or some kind of alternative IA-like organization appears to pick up the archive before the IA goes broke and its collection ends up being sold off to the highest bidder. Or simply destroyed.
I’m sure the publishers don’t want the bad publicity of “destroying” the Internet Archive
LOL. LMAO, even.
I have little doubt that publishers detest the Internet Archive and the deepest desire of their shriveled, blackened heart is to (figuratively) mount its stuffed corpse as a trophy over their fireplace mantel.
Cynicism like this is completely unfalsifiable not to mention unproductive.
True, but that doesn't make him wrong. While generalizing is inherently wrong, the chances of ANY corporation giving a fuck about their image for destroying something that could spell them not earning a couple of bucks is low to null.
Look around. The amount of complains about privacy breaches from all the tech giants, and some midgets, is at its highest ever, and do you see any of them pedaling back?
I am part of an executive suite myself, and while I'm trying to make a difference, you should see the ridiculous amount of pushback I get on ANYTHING that could spell improving user and staff experience, sometimes even when it has absolutely no negative financial impact. It's like they're programmed to destroy.
You will find a few good men and women in the Corp world, but this few can't do much against the majority, which happens to be full of bloodsucking pricks.
Sure. I personally find cynicism intensely irritating. It's infectious so it inevitably ends up poisoning everything. Nobody ever solved any problem with cynicism. In fact I'd go further: all the world's backward societies (i.e. most of them) are characterized by all-pervasive cynicism ("they're in it for themselves", "they're all crooks", "nothing will ever change"), whereas the successful countries (few in number) are the ones where people have a more optimistic view of others' motives. Cynicism is so obviously a self-fulfilling prophesy that I struggle to understand why so many choose to indulge it. I've heard a theory that it makes people feel better about their own helplessness. Perhaps I'm too logical but I wish people would choose not to wallow in pessimism - after all, nobody can prove anything one way or the other when it comes to the motivations of others. And oddly, most humans tend to trust others that they know personally. Personally don't see why strangers would somehow be a different variety of human. Rant over.
I've heard a theory that it makes people feel better about their own helplessness.
That certainly sounds like an accurate theory, and I have been known to be cynical about stuff every so often, and am still trying to remove that from my personality. It may have been a defense mechanism developed to block all the helplessness, as that theory describes, but that does not justify my demeanor in those instances.
Like you, I believe having an optimistic stand in front of all the adversity, if nothing else, makes things a bit more manageable. And I agree that if more people dropped cynicism, the world would be all the better for it. Having said that, once that's embedded in a person's character, removing it is an entire re-learning process which requires one to forcibly unlearn it, because it does turn into a subconscious reaction.
It is not a great situation. I wish they would break into smaller organizations
They did not ignore copyright. The judge brazenly and incorrectly dismissed all their arguments for fair use. They had no way to foresee they would meet a judge that would go that far.
I love the internet archive but yeah, there was just no way this wasn’t going to backfire. And by handling things the way they did they damaged the reasonable defense of archivist (not only for themselves) because publishers and others often cite that archival and backups are just
“pseudonyms”“synonymous” for piracy.They aren’t but the way this was handled made it impossible for them to argue otherwise and it also creates a legal precedent for lawsuits and judgments by publishers against others who are doing such work.
it’s a threat to the future of “libraries” that decide to completely ignore copyright and give out an unlimited number of copies of ebooks
So do I, so this is very bad.
Another excerpt under why from the FAQ section
**The Internet Archive has been scanning millions of print books that they own, and loaning them out to anyone around the world, for free. Other libraries like the Boston Public Library are using the same process to make digital books too.
This is happening because major publishers offer no option for libraries to permanently purchase digital books and carry out their traditional role of preservation.
Instead, libraries are forced to pay high licensing fees to “rent” books from big tech vendors that regard patron privacy as a premium feature and are vulnerable to censorship from book banners. Under this regime, publishers act as malicious gatekeepers, preventing the free flow of information and undermining libraries’ ability to serve their patrons.
But it looks bad if publishers sue the Boston Public Library. So instead, they’ve launched an attack on a groundbreaking nonprofit, including a lawsuit with clear repercussions for every library in the US. On March 24, 2023, a lower court judge issued a ruling that stated the profits of big media companies are more important than the right of libraries to preserve our history and ensure it’s available to the world. Then, in a copyright troll move for the ages, the same attorney representing Big Publishing filed a second absurd lawsuit against the Internet Archive for it’s research library of old music recordings.
Nevertheless, the Internet Archive are appealing to a higher court and will keep fighting for the digital rights of libraries.**
This buries the lede so deep it's popping out the other side of the globe.
The entire core of this case is that (in abscence of more lenient agreements with publishers) traditional libraries are allowed to digitize physical books in their posession, as long as they do not lend out more copies than they physically own. The Internet Archive decided that they would lend out infinite copies, because "covid lol".
Boston Public Library isn't being sued because they don't lend out more than they own! It has precisely zero to do with fucking optics.
Edit: Don't get me wrong, I hope they win this case, but them continuing to play stupid helps nobody. Unfortunately, as discussed thoroughly online when they opened the covid19 emergency digital library, they fucked around. Now it seems they may have to find out.