[throwayay583739]

This is a little meta but: it's great how you predicted a possible unproductive line of discussion that might result from your question and headed it off with a clarification. Props for communications skills.

I'm also a little sad that this disclaimer is even needed. I think it says something about how the character of HN has changed in the last ten years--there's no longer an assumption that the people on the other end of the wire assume curiosity and good will. There's a lot more heat here these days.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Thanks for that. I tried, yet still there are comment responses that literally do the exact thing I think is so annoying: complain sarcastically that copyright is stupid because it obviously isn't incentivizing the original artists here. No shit, we know.

But whatever, those comments get pushed to the bottom, and I thought the top responses were really helpful (I didn't previously know about the details of the fair use tests).

[Dalewyn]

For some additional context, the copyright laws in the US make a very specific exception for archival[1].

>(a)Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy.—Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:

>(2)that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.

Note that "computer program" here is in reference to any and all forms of digital data thereof. The digital copies made from the records concerned are "computer programs".

Sony, et al. allege that Internet Archive's public redistribution of their digital copies of the records do not fall under the archival exception.

If all Internet Archive does really is just archiving, none of the rightsholders would have standing to sue or otherwise get in their way.

[1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117

Obligatory IANAL.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> Sony, et al. allege that Internet Archive's public redistribution of their digital copies of the records do not fall under the archival exception.

Seems pretty obvious to me that, just with respect to the archival exception, that Sony et al is correct here. The issue is not with IA making backup copies of these works - the issue is with making copies and making them available for free over the Internet that is the issue at hand.

[hunter2_]

What should the M.O. of an archive be, then? Paid access? That would be an even worse offense! Zero access except for the person who created the archive? That makes no sense either. The archivist needs to vet potential accessors for certain motives? Only offer access to small samples?

[Dalewyn]

>Paid access?

No, in that case you need permissions or licensing from the rightsholders to resell or otherwise profit en masse from their work.

>Zero access except for the person who created the archive?

This is, fundamentally, what archiving something means. It is legal for someone to rip a music CD that they own for archival purposes, but it is illegal to share the resulting archives.

>The archivist needs to vet potential accessors for certain motives?

One facet of fair use is whether the use is for academical, educational, or other non-profit purposes. So yes, the archivist needs to vet potential accessors for certain motives.

>Only offer access to small samples?

Another facet of fair use is that only the minimum portion required from a given work is used for a given purpose under fair use. For example, quoting certain passages and only those passages in a book to discuss them in a review or critique, etc.

[realusername]

> This is, fundamentally, what archiving something means.

I completely disagree, you can't separate archiving from the accessibility of the content, the whole point of why you are archiving something is to make sure it's not lost and future generations can still access it in the first place!

[throw10920]

I highly suggest making liberal use of the flag feature.

Boring, flamey, predictable activist/political content has absolutely no place on HN.

Your prediction was on point, but we shouldn't have to head off these extremely repetitive and unproductive tangents every time - they should be flagged and downvoted into the ground so that they stop coming up in the first place.

I want 2010 HN back.

[itsanaccount]

Maybe because the average understanding of how our society is run, with things like morals, fairness and hope for the future, and the legal understanding of how our society is run has diverged.

And maybe people are getting sick and tired (and banned and flagged) of "good natured discourse" being entirely windowed by the latter.

[johnnyanmac]

It's arguably always been like that. The Internet's audience (on average) has simply grown up to an age where they start to care about that more.

>maybe people are getting sick and tired (and banned and flagged) of "good natured discourse" being entirely windowed by the latter.

I know it feels cathartic, but "record company bad" is neither discourse, nor particularly good natured. It's more reflective of how forums have shifted by twitter's popularity into being "microblogs". You don't really talk "to" people on Twitter, you throw out your tweet among a sea of tweets.

A shame, because I hate twitter precisely because of that.

[throw10920]

dang does a pretty good job of not banning people who are avoiding breaking the HN guidelines, and most of flagged content is political stuff not appropriate for HN.

HN is not an activism platform.

[zugi]

I think I've spent too much time on reddit, because in comparison all the comments here seem quite reasoned, calm, and insightful. And then there's YouTube, and comments on news sites... I guess it's all relative.

[matheusmoreira]

I don't know. I've been here since 2016 and discussion is pretty great. No one bears ill will towards GP, people are only guilty of agreeing with him too aggressively.

I really hate copyright and have engaged in heated discussions about the matter here before but still refrained from replying to GP because I realized I too would like to know what legal arguments could be used to defend Internet Archive.

It's difficult to be curious about copyright. For many of us that matter is already settled and only strong opinions remain. This post still managed to make me curious though. It's great.

[johnnyanmac]

>I think it says something about how the character of HN has changed in the last ten years--there's no longer an assumption that the people on the other end of the wire assume curiosity and good will.

The internet as a whole has diverged from assuming good faith, between polarizing politics, the rapid increase of bots, and general shift of popular sentiment over the decade. And there's also a lot more people online, so it's much harder to moderate for that even if you wanted to.

It's an inevitability since this site's moderation hasn't scaled with its user base.

[throw10920]

Right, there's a scale problem, among other things.

I want the invite-only system of Lobsters, with the actually good moderation of HN. I think that would help with some of the issues, here and on other platforms.