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Source: nytimes.com ·
The nonprofit has said its National Emergency Library was a public service to people unable to access libraries during the pandemic, but publishers and authors accused it of theft.
Andrea O'Sullivan - @anjiecast
7 months ago
RT @nytimesbooks: Internet Archive is ending its program of offering free, unrestricted copies of e-books because of a lawsuit from publishers, which said lending out books without compensation for authors or publishing houses was “willful mass copyright infringement” https://t.co/qktuEqRea2
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Neeraj K. Agrawal - @NeerajKA
7 months ago
The internet archive is ending its free library program to appease publishers https://t.co/EBjIDySQG8
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mr_bigmouth_502
7 months ago
I hope someone writes a script to grab all the books from archive.org before they get pulled. I'd even settle for the lower quality PDF versions.
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catchascatchcancan
7 months ago
Constitution of the United States:
"8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
As I read that, the point of copyright is to maximize progress, not to maximize profits. Complete lack of copyright obviously causes authors to not write, but I can't say that current copyright law is anything but profit maximization.
After a couple of hundred years of lawyers getting their mitts on the matter, it's almost like you need to simply start over now and again.
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mekarpeles
7 months ago
Hi all, mek here. I help run OpenLibrary.org at the Internet Archive.
I've seen a few comments suggesting folks may have questions about what's going on and wanted to be helpful in offering what little context I can.
For those curious, it seems like the NYTimes article is mentioning the Internet Archive's announcement (http://blog.archive.org/2020/06/10/temporary-national-emergency-library-to-close-2-weeks-early-returning-to-traditional-controlled-digital-lending) about ending the National Emergency Library program two weeks earlier than planned (it was always meant to be a temporary program). You might wish to read more about why it was started, here: http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/30/internet-archive-responds-why-we-released-the-national-emergency-library/.
Many who may be newer to the non-profit may not realize the Internet Archive has been serving communities as a non-profit library, with the help of partners, for around 10 years through Controlled Digital Lending (https://controlleddigitallending.org).
For those (like @rhinocerosmonkey) wondering, Internet Archive (which also runs the Wayback Machine and Open Library, an open source book catalog) will be continuing to serve our community and the spirit of our public good mission best we're able. Thank you to our community, which includes many supporters and hundreds of open source contributors, for making OpenLibrary.org a safe place to discover books. If you're interested in helping build the world's open library catalog together, you may learn more here: https://openlibrary.org/volunteer. For those interested, one may also help diversify the Internet Archive's selection and make it a more welcoming, useful, and inclusive place for everyone, by sponsoring the purchase of books & representing voices which are currently missing https://openlibrary.org/sponsorship.
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allthewrongwalls
7 months ago
It's fine. Just remember to get literally all your media from the free distributed archive at thepiratebay.org
Fuck giving these assholes a penny.
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JesterDavid
7 months ago
Not a surprise but unfortunate. Even Neil Gaiman, who was alright with people to reading his books online and share the videos was hard on this.
But as a librarian in an elementary school I directed a couple teachers to it for students doing book reports. Because there wasn't many alternatives: we didn't have the material they needed and the local library wasn't available for anyone who didn't already have an account.
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PrudentPlant
7 months ago
FYI, they will have MILLIONS of things like public domain books staying and available.
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BenningtonSophia
7 months ago
And this is why I love reddit
Thank you for telling me about something I didn't even know existed, allthough I'm sad to learn also that its very existence in the future is now in question.
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Ambrose_bierce89
7 months ago
This is all ridiculous. My wife writes Korean e-books. It turns out in that industry authors will routinely publish their entire book episodically on free websites in order to get reader feed back and offers from publishers. Once the novel is finished they will then publish them on pay platforms. The reason this system exists is because there is minimal overlap between audiences which seek free content and those who pay for content.
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humor4fun
474 TB raw 7 months ago
I’m on my phone so searching is a bit hard atm... r/datahoarder (s) have already archived copies of this offline for re-sharing after the NEL goes down. Right?
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SwarmPlayer
7 months ago
De-DRMing the PDF files gives files with a reduced quality anyway, because of the shitty filtering that works kinda ok for text but absolutely destroys images & photos.
The "proper" way would be to get the JPEGs directly from the browser's cache... it's doable, albeit even slower.
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ChartreuseCorvette
7 months ago
I've noticed that some of the art books I download are lower-quality than what they looked like in the reader. Is this the reason? Mind explaining how getting the JPEGs would work?
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SwarmPlayer
7 months ago
I had posted the whole shebang some time ago on Reddit... here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/fp56dn/comment/fln7bd6
The short version: the filter only kicks in when downloading the PDF, while the player embedded in the web page displays the original images.
Clear browser cache, open book, flip through all the pages, access the cache, select & export all the JPEGs, combine into a PDFs and you're set.
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SwarmPlayer
7 months ago
I'm not sure... I use Mozillacacheview under Windows, because it's very convenient.
Edit: you can start by looking under about:cache in the browser itself.
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Josey9
VHS.pink 7 months ago
It's not at all easy to download. It's possible, but has to be done one book at a time manually (unless there's a way I don't know about).
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beef-o-lipso
7 months ago
Accuses the site that gates content for, checks notes, "oh, yeah, money."
Also, those books weren't in the public domain and they had no permission from the copyright holders to give them away.
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IlIlwwwvO0O0inoctiuu
7 months ago
Their heart was in the right place, but the Emergency Library was a mistake. The publishers have been itching to sue them and now they got their opportunity.
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xenago
2??TB 7 months ago
Yeah you'd have to be completely oblivious to not think you'd be sued for this, which makes me think that the management of IA are incompetent to a shocking degree
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jonathanrdt
7 months ago
Because they can because copyright is broken.
There's a need for an obvious exception: if a work is not available for sale at a reasonable market price (other similarly aged and valued works), the protection should expire.
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Ironicalogical
:redstar:3 7 months ago
Unbelievable how so many book lovers seem to be anti-copyright protection. I guess there are no authors here.
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dolphins3
7 months ago
The attitude on this subreddit is generally that writing should be a hobby you don't profit from, and should be limited to the independently wealthy. It's pretty disgusting.
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RightioThen
7 months ago
Attitude also appears to be creating some spurious moral justification for stealing, as though Harper Collins is some evil entity that must be punished.
I used to pirate albums when I was in university. One of my friends was a musician, and pointed out that it was extremely hypocritical to say that I loved a certain band yet stole from them. I tried to justify it somehow, but then just realised all I was doing was stealing. Haven't pirated anything since.
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GroinShotz
7 months ago
Ahh good... Back to the good ole days when nobles and the rich are the only ones that could afford books... /s
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BussyBlastBismallah
"you did no growth" 7 months ago
Capitalists ruin fucking everything. Remember how these centrist shitbags always talk about how public libraries are the best thing since sliced bread (which, they are), but then turn around do shit like this. We can't even have fucking books or information be open. Noooooo even fucking ideas need to be ruthlessly monetized.
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kamila_m
7 months ago
Wait, if I understood correctly, it means that all this time there were free ebooks on the internet. If so, could someone please tell me how to access it? Thank you!
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Pitbul_YaYa
7 months ago
Every Russian website has free books and not only books. I'm from Russia.
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duxup -
@duxup
7 months ago
The decision to do what they did is mind boggling.
I can only assume they were caught up in the atmosphere of unknown that was COVID... and somehow decided that their actions made sense.
It was poor judgment executed on a huge scale that potentially puts the whole Internet Archive at risk.
I would love to have been able to hear what the discussions were surrounding that decision and if / how they dealt with the obvious objection of "hey guys this is illegal".
cloudc0de -
@cloudc0de
7 months ago
Interesting to see the HN community at large suddenly supporting copyright law status-quo...
boomboomsubban -
@boomboomsubban
7 months ago
The free books program that they had already planned on ending on June 30th.
tehjoker -
@tehjoker
7 months ago
This is very unfortunate. I agree they probably infringed on copyright, but I also think they were in the right. If we respected the law in this emergency when none of our social systems could cope with unprecedented crisis, the human costs would mount even higher.
The publishers will continue to do what's in their interest (immorally imo), but what they could have done instead was jump onboard and say yes these books will be offered for the duration of the crisis.
Of course, I feel that publishing should be at least partially publicly funded so that copyright wouldn't be a concern and we could read everything for free above production cost and authors would get paid. However, the private system should have at least tried to legitimize itself by providing necessary services for the public instead of continuing to deprive people of what they need out of concern for their own profits.
aurizon -
@aurizon
7 months ago
I wonder if something like this could assist the archive. As legal costs mounts, they could scatter their library and make it all free forever - not even those lending limits with Controlled Digital Lending will remain.
Might make the publishers come to a truce, since they must fund the lawsuit as there is no pot of gold in the archives to give a contingency law firm to take it on. Get China on board for the good it's billions of citizens!!
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