- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
It looks like the internet archive is needed assistance, I just heard about this today and figured lemmy could help spread this message around
It looks like the internet archive is needed assistance, I just heard about this today and figured lemmy could help spread this message around
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.
Battleforlibraries
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.
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.
C’mon it’s at least worth a shot. To me at least.
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).
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.
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.
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.
So do I, so this is very bad.