Comment on The New York Times tried to block the Internet Archive: another reason to value the latter
phillaholic@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Hot take: We need a middle ground between free unfettered access to journalism and total pay wall restrictions. Physical libraries do this well. Digital content is a lot more complicated. Maybe Internet Archive should only be able to publish content that’s over X years old? Thoughts?
The “middle ground” is for publishers to back the fuck off and let libraries do their goddamn jobs.
Why is that position in the middle? Because the extreme position is that the publishers have broken the social contract – which was for Congress to grant them the privilege of a temporary monopoly in exchange for enriching the Public Domain in the long run – and no longer deserve to have copyrights at all.
Digital is a completely different paradigm. If an online library has unlimited copies of a book, why would anyone buy it? New books won’t be written is no one pays for them.
Publishers put ridiculous rules in place for digital content. Libraries typically need to pay the full cover price for an ebook and it expires after 1-2 years. So not only can libraries not receive donations of used ebooks like they can physical books, they are also restricted by the limited life span. Sure, physical books experience wear and tear, but that’s built up through use. A less popular book could sit on the shelf for a long time and not degrade substantially, but an ebook could go without being checked out once and it will still expire.
If I’m buying an ebook from a DRM enabled bookstore, there is no reason why I should not be able to sell the book or donate it to a library when I’m done.
Wrong!
Because money!
All good points. That’s the kind of middle ground I’m talking about. A first sale doctrine for digital. Expiring DRM would be like renting. But if they sell the book to individuals they should sell it to libraries.
The middle ground is for them to remove all VC and corporate entities trying to make billions off of journalism while journalists make scraps. We should have federal and state funds that go to journalists and also have a donation model for people to be able to donate easily. Journalism shouldn’t be behind any paywalls though especially in the age if misinformation, deepfakes, etc where all the propaganda and misinformation is freely available and much easier to share
That’s not a middle ground, it’s a complete upheaval of the economy. A tall order to say the least.
Yeah, that would make sense, the publish delay could even be as short as a month for things like news, as their value comes from them being relevant.
their value comes from them being relevant
The news's value should be to society, though, not shareholders?
Maybe? We’re talking about a paradigm shift in copyright at a time where it’s harder and harder for traditional journalism to survive. I fear if we take such hardline stances on whether or not this information is freely accessible, we will lose it outright. Propaganda is always free. The truth has costs.
Right, the whole original point of copyright in the US at all was "to promote the creative arts" - that they were finding that if there wasn't at least SOME time for people to try to profit off of stuff they wrote/made, there was way way less motivation for people to put in the effort. It's been twisted a good bit since, but it's not nonsense, at all.
Same with real journalism. Don't see how people expect it to be done for free. For the past several hundred years it's been normal to pay a modest fee for news.
I agree with you and was also thinking that maybe waiting X days/weeks before publishing would be the solution.
Sure, where x=0.
Hold on, so.. OK. No free beer?
grabs jacket off the stand
Have a nice day
I don’t follow
You made a statement with an undefined term “x.” I defined “x” for you. Substitute 0 for x in your statement, and think about it for a bit.
I understand the math, thanks. I’m talking about what you meant by accountability.
Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Honestly? Yeah.
I love The Internet Archive and throw a few bucks at them every couple months. So much lost media and software is ACTUALLY preserved by them* and this is increasingly important as more and more chuds attack libraries.
But… it is pretty fucked that I can grab every 3ds and ps2 game in existence without seeing a single shitty pop-up and even a decent number of newer games.
Out of print and “disney vaulted” content is a mess. And I understand why, legally, IA might not want to make the distinction. But we already have the solution for in print media that better maps to the actual library model. Buy copies/licenses and use DRM to control the number in circulation. Might have some massive wait queues but that can be solved by “outreach”.
*: As an aside, fuck abandonware sites with a rusty metal pole. Loved how the vast majority went from “It is important to preserve these games you can’t otherwise buy” to “fuck it, upload ALL the gog installers” overnight
tabular@lemmy.world 1 year ago
DRM is at best a gateway to entry. In this day and age it has never been easier for regular people to copy, and trying to fight that is an uphill battle in a war they aught to stop anyway.
DRM is a black box of software, doing god-knows-what. That gives them unjust power over users’ computing. DRM manages “rights” by denying people’s software freedoms. DRM is digital restrictions management.