Archive.org, Google and Piracy

[ekbell]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Does the IA have school textbooks in their collection?

If a novel was assigned reading, then the students would already have copies of it.

Would you be so kind as to point out the law that suspended copyright laws for the duration of this national emergency?

The Right to Free Assembly [SUSPENDED]
Freedom of Movement [SUSPENDED]

Copyright...[SUS...um..still functional]

It seems that the current setup is problematic, although I'm not sure I'd be too worried about a collection of PDF scans and badly OCRed ebooks which are offered with DRM making much difference in book sales. I at least don't much like reading my PDFs using the apps that can be registered with adobe DRM. The existence of easily accessible ebook 'hosting' sites which also operate on 'the author/publisher must issue a take down notice' principle are a much bigger problem.

On the other hand the fact that it has books that I could use with my elementary aged children for research projects could well be useful as my local library is not well stocked in such ebooks (and the ones I've checked are already checked out). The other options noted in this thread are not as well suited for this purpose.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by ekbell

The Right to Free Assembly [SUSPENDED]
Freedom of Movement [SUSPENDED]

Copyright...[SUS...um..still functional]

.

Copyright is needed to keep the publishing business open.
A lot of the business world is still working and still paying salaries.
Many companies are paying full salaries despite massive drops in revenue. Do tbeir employees have a right to work and be paid? Or should everybody go home and live off the dole? If nothing else, publishing is a business that can be just as effectively be done from home electronically. But for that, they need people to pay for their reads, not download them from a friendly Robbing Hoodlum.

Look at movies.
With theaters closed, movie studios have resorted to releasing movies to digital instead of theaters, just to keep *some* money coming in. What makes books so *special* that any bloke on tbe street can start giving away free copies of everything to everybody?
Why not movies?
There's lots of sites distributing movies and books for free to all comers. They are accurately described as pirates but not IA? Why? Because they say so?

Besides, there is no shortage of reading material, free or paid.
Gutenberg is running.
Feedbooks is running.
Apple, Nook, Kobo, BAEN, Google.
KDP and KU are running.
(Amazon opened up all their kids stuff for free to subscribers, even those on unpaid trials. Videos, games, audiobooks.)

If anything, there are more free and deep discount ebooks out tbere today than ever. Offered by the people who do have a right to distribute them.

And the paid is the most important because it is pretty much the only revenue stream left to publishers. So not only are they providing an unnecessary "service", they are taking salary money out of publishers hands.

This isn't about unmet needs; it is opportunism plain and simple.

As for "think of tbe children!" , here:

https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/

Just one of dozens of legally free sources.
See, there's this thing called open source textbooks.
A lot of universities and grade schools are using them.
All digital
All up and running.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

If a novel was assigned reading, then the students would already have copies of it.

In this area, if the student here did not take the novel home with them over spring break (chance of that having happened is pretty low IMNSHO), they are not going to be able to drop by the school and pick it up. The schools have been locked down until the province ends the state of emergency.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by DNSB

In this area, if the student here did not take the novel home with them over spring break (chance of that having happened is pretty low IMNSHO), they are not going to be able to drop by the school and pick it up. The schools have been locked down until the province ends the state of emergency.

Then that student is out of luck and will have to make up the assignment at a later date.

Life lesson #8: irresponsibility has consequences.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I'm totally sceptical that it runs even 1/2 on donations.

All the good things they do doesn't give them a licence or right to ignore copyright.

I wouldn't be so skeptical. InternetArchive does a lot of good things. I disagree with their Open Library and have never bothered with it myself. But that doesn't discount everything else they do that is worth donating for.

I don't agree with everything the ACLU does. But I still donate to them.

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by DNSB

In this area, if the student here did not take the novel home with them over spring break (chance of that having happened is pretty low IMNSHO), they are not going to be able to drop by the school and pick it up. The schools have been locked down until the province ends the state of emergency.

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Then that student is out of luck and will have to make up the assignment at a later date.

Life lesson #8: irresponsibility has consequences.

It might not be irresponsibility. Here the school closing happened suddenly so kids might not have taken home all their stuff ahead of time. The schools did allow parents to come by on the next weekday and pick up anything their kids had left behind, though this might not have helped if the parent had to work, or did not have easy transportation to the school.

Hopefully teachers will let students either turn the work in later or do an alternate assignment if they were not able to take all their stuff home.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by 4691mls

It might not be irresponsibility. Here the school closing happened suddenly so kids might not have taken home all their stuff ahead of time. The schools did allow parents to come by on the next weekday and pick up anything their kids had left behind, though this might not have helped if the parent had to work, or did not have easy transportation to the school.

Hopefully teachers will let students either turn the work in later or do an alternate assignment if they were not able to take all their stuff home.

If the schools closed down immediately and refused to let the students retrieve books and materials from their lockers, then it's absolutely up to the schools to provide alternatives, not the students.

Either way, IA is not an acceptable alternative.

[ekbell]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

As for "think of tbe children!" , here:

https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/

Just one of dozens of legally free sources.
See, there's this thing called open source textbooks.
A lot of universities and grade schools are using them.
All digital
All up and running.

There happens to be an understandable shortage of open source children's books appropriate for independent research projects.

Now to clarify I was not suggesting that copyright be suspended or even that the dubious survice provided is strictly necessary (much information can be found via legitmate websites as long as the child knows how to vet a website for reliablity and public domain books can be used for English classes) just that there is a space that isn't filled by existing free services.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Then that student is out of luck and will have to make up the assignment at a later date.

Life lesson #8: irresponsibility has consequences.

Why in the world would you say it's irresponsible to not bring textbooks on vacation? The students had no idea that they were not going to be returning to school. Many schools made the decisions to close while students were on Spring break. I guess in your world, all school books should be brought home every single day whether they are needed at home or not, or the student is just an irresponsible slacker, right?

Shari

[fjtorres]

I keep hearing about so and so supporting them.
Big deal.

Lots of comparable people supported the AG against Google or Google against Oracle. Or remember the crowd intervening on behalf of the conspirators in tbe Agency antitrust suit?

Citing authority does nothing to validate a legal *theory*.
All it does is reveal the bias of the supporters.
The only way to validate it is in court. If they're so sure, they can ask the court for a preemptive legal opinion. They won't though, because their real defense is that a lawsuit in Federal court on setting precedent runs in the hundreds of thousands to millions.

What Author can afford that? For damages of even a year's earnings, given how little most make?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by ekbell

There happens to be an understandable shortage of open source children's books appropriate for independent research projects.

Now to clarify I was not suggesting that copyright be suspended or even that the dubious survice provided is strictly necessary (much information can be found via legitmate websites as long as the child knows how to vet a website for reliablity and public domain books can be used for English classes) just that there is a space that isn't filled by existing free services.

A lot of school districts are holding classes online and providing hardware to kids that don't have it.

https://timesofsandiego.com/educatio...ring-pandemic/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/geekgir.../#518de3fc7e45

https://www.zdnet.com/article/online...n-will-change/

Much like with the adult books they are claiming a need that doesn't exist.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by shalym

Why in the world would you say it's irresponsible to not bring textbooks on vacation? The students had no idea that they were not going to be returning to school. Many schools made the decisions to close while students were on Spring break. I guess in your world, all school books should be brought home every single day whether they are needed at home or not, or the student is just an irresponsible slacker, right?

Shari

Then I thought differently than most students because I always took my books home over vacations.

Regardless, IA is still conducting piracy and what they have in their system is irrelevant to what students need.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Does the IA have school textbooks in their collection?

Yes. It may be an older edition.

Originally Posted by murraypaul

. . . why hasn't a single real library done so?

Because Open Library is doing it for them. Many U.S. libraries put a link to it on their web site:

https://hchlibrary.org/services/e-books/

https://libraries.blogs.delaware.gov...brary-e-books/

https://www.maine.gov/msl/libs/tech/ereads/intarc.htm

Other U.S. libraries do not, perhaps reflecting differing opinions among people of good-will.

From Library Journal:

Funded in part by a grant from the California State Library and the Kahle/Austin Foundation, the non-profit Open Libraries' reformatting program accepts donated books and other materials from libraries, digitizes this content in its scanning centers, makes those materials available to the public via controlled lending at openlibrary.org, and provides a set of the digitized files to the donor library, explained Chris Freeland, director of Open Libraries.

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Why are they paying through the nose for eBook editions, and having some titles restricted from being available at all, if they could simply bypass all the limits whenever they wanted?

OpenLibrary lacks new titles. Uncorrected scans abound with errors. And takedown requests are often honored.

Originally Posted by Quoth

I'm totally sceptical that it runs even 1/2 on donations.

Googling, I found this non-donation revenue source, and was confused by it: revenue from its Web crawling services. Does anyone know what that means?

Originally Posted by fjtorres

They aren't sued because it costs money to fight a suit and there is no way to recover it.

Wikipedia says 2017 revenue was $17.8 million. And they have a known U.S. address. Sounds suable to me.

In the absence of an emergency, I might not endorse every one of their practices. But I think their motives are good and that home educational support, during this emergency, is urgent.

[MarjaE]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Googling, I found this non-donation revenue source, and was confused by it: revenue from its Web crawling services. Does anyone know what that means?

I don't know. Possibly search engine providers paying for results. Possibly others paying for a backup service.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

If the schools closed down immediately and refused to let the students retrieve books and materials from their lockers, then it's absolutely up to the schools to provide alternatives, not the students.

Sheesh. Please try to stay somewhat in touch with reality. Where exactly are those schools going to get the books from? They were distributed to the students prior to spring break so the schools no longer have custody of them. So you would suggest that the schools should, in the middle of this crisis, be taking the time to order books for those students who buried their heads in the sand?

Originally Posted by shalym

Why in the world would you say it's irresponsible to not bring textbooks on vacation? The students had no idea that they were not going to be returning to school. Many schools made the decisions to close while students were on Spring break. I guess in your world, all school books should be brought home every single day whether they are needed at home or not, or the student is just an irresponsible slacker, right?i

The students had the chance to take the books and belongings with them when they left for spring break prior to the school closures though we all knew those closures were coming save for those benighted fools in a corner of lalaland where they ship daylight in by muletrain. Ghod knows, the announcements from the provincial health officer, premier, leader of the opposition, etc. were getting enough play in the media that missing them was very hard to do. Even such news items—prior to spring break—such as Justin Trudeau who is the prime minister of Canada going into self-isolation when his wife tested positive for covid19 might have given a subtle hint that this is a very serious situation.