- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.smeargle.fans
- technology@lemmy.ml


It would be a shame if another website pop up and uploaded these removed book to it and call it, idk, Internet Alexandria or something.
I dunno. I think there are enough things named after men.
Maybe a nice neutral woman’s name… Like, Anna?
And it’s more about preservation and archival, so I think it should be called an Archive, not a library.
Yeah, Anna’s Archive. Great name. Let’s go with that one.
It’s great that these projects already exist
but it hurts accessibility that you need to be “in the know” to find out about it.
every media outlet has to mention WayBackMachine; it’s such a great outreach and legitimizing
You can’t delete what was already destroyed!
wait until you hear about libgen
This only makes me favor copyright reform more. Should really cut that down to 25 years or less; anything from before the 21st century should be public domain by now.
How about ‘artist’s death’, full stop?
How about ‘artists natural death’, full stop?
We wouldn’t want to get any funny ideas, would we?
Much better, very good detail 😅
At least it didn’t get shut down
They’re appealing the decision so there’s still opportunity for IA to throw good money after bad on this.
Well, that’s shit news
A sad day, but nothing that can’t be fixed by reuploading the files.
Before the internet you would have to go to a library to read a book you didn’t want to purchase. Libraries are still a thing. You can still go there to borrow a book, read it, and return it, so that others can read it.
The only difference here is the magnitude of access, where publishers weren’t very concerned with at the local library level for token public good, but are very much now alarmed with, in that the internet can distribute content to everyone all the time, content they were very much hoping to continue to monetize.
It’s information gatekeeping, but no one is going to tell the publishing industry they might as well fold up shop and stop publishing because they can’t make any money at it any longer.
I don’t follow. The Internet Archive only allows 1 copy of each physical book to be loaned at a time. If someone has the book you want already, then you need to wait until their loan expires. It’s not like shadow libraries that allow unrestricted DRM-free downloading.
And publishers’ profits are rising and don’t seem to be at all correlated to library access, so of course nobody is suggesting they should close.
What am I not understanding?
During the pandemic, Internet Archive very publicly announced they were relaxing their one physical copy per digitally loaned copy.
I think of they had maintained their 1:1 CDL method, the publishers would still be uncomfortable to be the one to sue first, especially since there was a decent argument and IA would have been pretty sympathetic.
Their pandemic policy was effectively not substantially different from a shadow library., and just set up a slam dunk case for the publishers.
Libraries are still a thing. You can still go there to borrow a book, read it, and return it, so that others can read it.
Public libraries are under assault from every direction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/03/us/book-bans-librarians.html (apologies for nyt link)
https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/5/5/23711417/republicans-want-to-defund-public-libraries-book-bans
Pretty soon you either won’t find the books, or even the libraries themselves. Piracy is the only way they are leaving to us.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/03/us/book-bans-librarians.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1k0.2DLu.z4XyKBb-92s6 Here’s the gift link without the paywall. I got the sub for free because my university has one for students.
Modern version of barbarians burning the library of Alexandria.
Modern day book burning. Done by the writers this time.
Don’t blame the writers, some of whom are long dead, and some titles are long out of print.
Writers give publishers legitimacy. Publishers will regularly pull the writers out to trot out some “copyright is important” line.
Printers*
So fucking convenient that the AAP does not name the publishers in the law suit. Cowards the lot of them.
Definitely won’t find these books on Anna’s Archive /s
kaboom?
Sign the petition! Not sure if it is going to make any difference, but it just takes a couple of minutes. https://www.change.org/p/let-readers-read-an-open-letter-to-the-publishers-in-hachette-v-internet-archive
change.org doesn’t like my mail address for some reason, and they tried trick me into subscribing to their newsletter :/
Yeah I know, change.org isn’t great but what other options do we have?
Maybe filing a charge.org petition to raise an alternative service to charge.org. Maybe something in the Fediverse, even!
has change.org ever changed anything?
Well it’s made a lot of people feel satisfied that they’ve done their bit and had their say.