[squigz]

I'm not against piracy, and I love Anna's Archive... but publicly linking directly to a pirate source for something like this seems wrong. Could've just linked the Wikipedia page and let people acquire however they prefer.

Anyway, sounds interesting, gunna add that to my list

[sho_hn]

It's 45 years old and the author is deceased. I assume you would be untroubled by a link to a copy of Macbeth. Where do you draw the line?

[squigz]

Well I don't really have a line, but that doesn't mean I'm going to go linking directly to such sources in public - not everyone agrees with my stance on copyright. Those who do can easily go find it themselves.

Also Macbeth was written 400 years ago. Let's not pretend this is a fair comparison. This author has been dead only 20 years - it might be that their partner is still alive and needs that money, or their children.

[me-vs-cat]

Why won't anyone think of the publishers and the book stores!

Amazon is hanging on by a thread, and piracy is stealing their cut.

[MrSkelter]

That’s newer than Star Wars and isn’t a huge piece of IP. To the estate a few book sales makes a difference.

[antonvs]

An obvious line would be when copyright expires. In fact, drawing that line is exactly what copyright expiry is intended to do.

[lazide]

Copyright has far exceeded sane limits a long time ago.

[antonvs]

What's a "sane" point at which you become entitled to other people's work?

[squigz]

What a strange way to phrase it, considering in your last comment you were talking about how copyright expiry is exactly for this purpose.

Anyway, what is copyright expiration in America these days? 100 years?

Also, is it simply a matter of X years after creation? I somehow doubt it's that simple anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if "copyright is extended indefinitely if the work is being actively commercially used" or some such

[lazide]

Patents are for 15-20 years.

Which is saner eh! That way people living at the time who are protecting it (copyright and patents are both protections for things otherwise being distributed and which could be copied easily) can benefit from it eventually.

100 years is just rent extraction.

[me-vs-cat]

My initial reaction was the same, then I thought: "no, we need more of this".

We need more discussion about copyright in our society, and we need it most in front of those who are unaware, inattentive, or would otherwise shirk that discussion. Posting a relevant link in a relevant discussion appears as good an avenue as any to get people talking.

[dotancohen]

Promoting copyright infringement in order to initiate a conversation about copyright is about as moral as murdering civilians to initiate a conversation about human rights.

[me-vs-cat]

Is that really the equivalence you want to make?

That's a rather severe escalation to me.

[squigz]

This... isn't a discussion about copyright though?

[me-vs-cat]

It wasn't, until https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45477785

[squigz]

That is about piracy, not copyright.

[me-vs-cat]

I cannot make sense of that statement. Other than in relation to copyright, I don't see any relevant discussion here about piracy.