The Internet Archive just lost its appeal over ebook lending

fossilesque@mander.xyz to Technology@lemmy.world – 7 points –
The Internet Archive just lost its appeal over ebook lending
theverge.com
19

So when’s the ruling against OpenAI and the like using the same copyrighted material to train their models

But OpenAI not being allowed to use the content for free means they are being prevented from making a profit, whereas the Internet Archive is giving away the stuff for free and taking away the right of the authors to profit. /s

Disclaimer: this is the argument that OpenAI is using currently, not my opinion.

Fuck Copyright.

A system for distributing information and rewarding it's creators should not be one based on scarcity, given that it costs nothing to copy and distribute information.

It was fine when the limited duration was a reasonable number of years. Anything over 30 years max before being in the public domain is too long.

That was fine then, but it makes zero sense today.

If a book is on sale widely to the public, and it costs nothing to copy and distribute that book to everyone, why shouldn't we?

The fundamental problem with copyright is it is a system that rewards creators by imposing artificial scarcity where there is no need for one. Capitalism is a system designed around things having value when they're scarce, but information in a world of computers and the internet is inherently unscarce the instant it's digitized. Copyright just means that we build all these giant DRM systems to impose scarcity on something that doesn't need it so that we can still get creators paid a living.

But a better system would for paying creators would be one of attribution and reward, where everyone can read whatever they want or stream whatever they want, and artists would be paid based on their number of views.

But a better system would for paying creators would be one of attribution and reward, where everyone can read whatever they want or stream whatever they want, and artists would be paid based on their number of views.

Which would be enforced through copyright...

My understanding is that the IA had implemented a digital library, where they had (whether paid or not) some number of licenses for a selection of books. This implementation had DRM of some variety that meant you could only read the book while it was checked out. In theory, this means if the IA has 10 licenses of a book, only 10 people have a usable copy they borrowed from the IA at a time.

And then the IA disabled the DRM system, somehow, and started limitlessly lending the books they had copies of to anyone that asked.

I definitely don't like the obnoxious copyright system in the USA, but what the IA did seems obviously wrong against the agreement they entered into. Like if your local library got a copy of Book X and then when someone wanted to borrow it they just copied it right there and let you keep the copy.

ETA: updated my wording. I don't believe what the IA did was morally wrong, per se, but rather against the agreement I presume they entered into with the owners of the books they lent.

If OpenAI can get away with going through copy-righted material, then the answer to piracy is simple: round up a bunch of talented Devs from the internet who are writing and training AI models, and let's make a fantastic model trained on what the internet archive has. Tell you what, let Mistral's engineers lead that charge, and put an AGPL license on the project so that companies can't fuck us over.

I refuse to believe that nobody has thought of this yet

An AI trained on old Internet material would be like a synthetic Grandpa Simpson:

"In my day we said 'all your base' and laughed all day long, because it took all day to download the video."

sharing is theft^(TM)^

(Old meme directly quotes the courts and govt ministers. Gen-z too young to remember napster and kazaa)

Hoo, boy. You're not gonna have a good time on Lemmy if you really believe that.

It's ok. They don't.

I wasn't gonna go digging on a less than a day old account.

No really. I mean it. sharing is actually theft. dispersing resources evenly is wasteful. it's inefficient. and sharing only with your ingroup creates cliques and class divides. ultimately it is sharing in all its forms which robs society of progress and long term prosperity. on the other hand, self interest drives innovation while trade leads to prosperity. self interest is the true driver of human progress.

buy only paper books from the publisher. and only new books. not used. as the good book says; "Neither a borrower, nor a lender be."

Really unfortunate. I wonder why nobody foresaw this when they started the stupid NEL thing.

Edit: NEL is the thing where the Archive removed all borrowing restrictions except 10 books per account and some sort of basic verification that you were in the US