It looks like the internet archive is needed assistance, I just heard about this today and figured lemmy could help spread this message around

  • Europe is voting this weekend. If you care about copyright reform, you should consider voting for the European Pirate Party. IA is probably in the wrong here, legally. But many would argue it’s morally right to have free access to information. Sure, shadow libraries are popping up everywhere and we have access to more information than ever before, but if we really want access for everyone, we need different copyright laws, and for that we need politicians.

        • It does a bit, since every party will be represented in the European council based on the number of votes they have. It’s not an election where the winner takes all.

          I think the pirates had one or two representatives in the council, which is enough to start debates and make proposals. They obviously can’t push anything through by themselves.

        • Yes. In most European countries even small parties can get seats. In my country there are 8 parties in parliament, for example, and 2 of them didn’t use to be there 2 election cycles ago (they were too small/new 8 years ago but eventually grew in popularity and got enough votes for representation).

          Of course if they only have 1 or 2 members in parliament they typcily tend to form coalitions with other like-minded parties so they can get more voting power.

    • For Germean voters there is the WahloMat to help with the voting choice (a dozen of questions and in the end shows how much overlap there is with all the parties): https://www.wahl-o-mat.de/europawahl2024/app/main_app.html

      The major issue is that if you care about CopyRight: Party A. Easier to comply with regulation: Party B. Migration: Party C. Environment: Party D.

      And all of the choices (A-D) have some very removed, prominent positions that you strongly oppose and in the end, have no clue what to elect and choose the least worst option and hope for the best.

  • Everyone that wants context should read this: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-internet-archives-last-ditch

    Listen, I love the IA and everything they stand for, but they’re not winning this. They fucked up and gave away copyrighted content, for free, in unlimited amounts during covid. They then proceed to melt down in court because they know it’s impossible to win. Now they’re seeking empathy from everyone and not talking about why they got sued - which is giving away potentially millions of copies of other people’s work…

    •  lemmyvore   ( @lemmyvore@feddit.nl ) 
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      485 months ago

      And everyone that wants unbiased context should read the wikipedia page:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachette_v._Internet_Archive

      The judgment basically completely ignored IA’s arguments towards fair use. EFF filed an amicus brief that explains how baseless the judgment was. Assuming the entire US court system isn’t in the corporate pocket yet they will win this on appeal.

      It’s ridiculous to assume that an organization whose main purpose is data archival would knowingly and blatantly ignore copyright law. IA didn’t ignore it, they did they homework and saw that their use qualified as fair use. Then they met a judge who doesn’t give a shit about that. Nobody can prepare for that in advance.

    • Assuming they don’t win, is there any contingency in place to preserve all their data? I don’t know how exactly because I assume there’s an absolute fuckton of it, but it would be such a shame if all of that was lost forever.

      I’d love to see it become like the Pirate Bay, where they squish one and ten more pop up to replace it, but I don’t know if that’s even possible.

      • That worked for pirate bay because they were storing a miniscule amount of actual data. Torrents are really small. The actual data is stored in the peer to peer network. The torrents are just tracking where in the p2p stuff is.

        IA isn’t like that. They probably store exabytes of data.

    •  Moorshou   ( @Moorshou@lemmy.zip ) OP
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      5 months ago

      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

      • 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.”
          • 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.

        • 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.

  • They made a really dumb move and now have to pay for it. I understand their importance but it doesn’t seem like they do - or they are naive enough to believe corpos have good will.

    They broke law in such a dumb way, and it’s a pity they put their entire project in jeopardy. My only thought while deciding to donate is “what will prevent them from doing something this dumb again?”

    Anti Commercial-AI license

  • Why can’t anyone spot a grift anymore? The IA is hugely profitable, and is very clearly crafting PR statements designed to increase donations. Has noone had their trust abused before? If they were trying to make change around this subject they wouldnt be so dishonest in their messaging.

    IA are not Robin Hood.

            • Thats not a violation of being a nonprofit. If someone does work, they should get paid for their work.

              The point of a nonprofit is to prevent folks who don’t work from stealing the org’s cash. Really, this is the baseline for any ethical org. All for-profit companies should just straight-up be illegal to form.

            • Of course, it happens all the time with many non profit orgs. They even pest you and call people for donations. You didn’t know?

              My grandma is pestered daily from some organisations that ‚help poor kids’ or whatever. Pretty lucrative business.

              Some even get public money and are connected to politicans that sometimes launder public money through them, seemingly with no consequences.

              Legitimate ones will never whore for cash with spam emails or calls and won’t be connected to government. All the rest are just get rich schemes.

              You have to do proper, thorough research before you donate money to some kids helping org or similar. Else you will just fund someone’s Porsche.

                • Yeah well if they call/mail you specifically getting your contact from some leak database you can safely mark them as scam. As great number of them are.

                  Similarly you wouldn’t give money to beggars in the street because you know most of them aren’t in need of help but make money like this, scamming ppl while those that really need help are helped by various legit orgs you give money to instead.

                  Those scummy orgs are like these beggars manipulating you into pity. It’s very powerful manipulation mechanism and very often works. My grandma was scammed like this many times before we persuaded her to not send money to random people. Instead you should sit down, browse the list of legit orgs and choose one/few to support once a year/month with some amount.

                  Or you can just pay taxes if in a country with robust, developed social welfare system and enjoy.