[tototrains]

Remember: If OpenAI/Google does it for $$$, it's not illegal. If idealists do it for public access, full force of the law.

Information wants to be free. Oblige it. Fools with temporary power trying to extract from the work of others will be a blip in the history books if we make them.

[lateforwork]

> Information wants to be free.

Those who create information may have families to feed, house and clothe. Until those items (food/housing/clothes) are also free, information cannot be free.

[alt187]

You might be glad to learn a number of studies (mostly commissioked by the European Union) agree on the fact that piracy doesn't hurt sales.

The main consensus is that people who illegally access content wouldn't have bought it otherwise, and that they still advertise it (thus, still driving up sales).

These studies have then been systematically strong-armed into silence by the EU and constituent countries' anti-piracy organisms.

This is probably because the war on piracy, too, is a billion-dollar industry. I'd be glad to blow it all up and give it all to the starving artists and their families.

[HeinzStuckeIt]

> piracy doesn't hurt sales

Funny enough, an academic department I know has cut back on its purchase requests to the university library, on the assumption that everyone, students and staff alike, is just going to download the books from shadow libraries. Individuals were never going to purchase a 400€ book from a scholarly press anyway, but if now institutions are on the piracy bandwagon, that’s a new development.

[Loughla]

The publishers are playing shit games with faculty and providing free access for them to high quality instructional materials. To the point that the faculty doesn't really have to do anything for online classes(which is a whole other ball of shit).

The secret to why they can provide this?

The content is locked behind a code the student has to buy that provides access to the book or comes with the book.

It's absolutely disgusting. For profit bullshit is fucking the youth of America. It's disgusting.

Source; the three times I've failed to push my current instruction to open access materials instead of McGraw Hill bullshit. And it failed because the lazy ass faculty can't be bothered to develop their own lessons anymore. Fuck.

[HeinzStuckeIt]

You are talking about textbooks, I was talking about research publications: monographs, collections of articles, and reference books.

[Loughla]

That's fair. I apologize for turning left instead of following your lead.

But I still stand by my rant. It's a garbage system.

[stubish]

Piracy does not hurt sales because it has a lot of friction. There have been zero studies on piracy in a low friction environment, because there was no need. Such as in countries where pirated Video CDs where endemic and not policed, it was completely obvious and distributors didn't even bother putting product onto the market. Or back in the days where mp3 music sharing apps became mainstream and got integrated with music players. Or when Popcorn Time looked likely to replace every streaming service in existence. If something like the Internet Archive Library became low friction (click the button and you are reading on your e-reader), and declared legal (avoiding social stigma), do you honestly believe this would not become the default and normalized way of 'buying' books?

[aequitas]

GOG shows that paying for drm-free games in a country where copyright was unenforced and piracy offered a better UX can still be profitable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com#Launch_of_Good_Old_Gam..., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffngZOB1U2A

[jwrallie]

I think there is an important difference between (1) being able to buy the same (DRM free) content supporting the authors and (2) the copies on the Internet Archive or the likes of it being the only source available.

I think many will choose the former but there are so many cases where there is no option provided.

[typpilol]

Everyone forgot about limewire and the masses installing every trojan known to man.

Limewire made it easy, so people used it.

The same would be true today if assume.

[jawon]

Piracy might not hurt sales, but 1000 publishers putting out their own copies of your book/game/song/poster/miniature once it hits the market will.

That's why I can accept copyright even thought it's not perfect.

[HeinzStuckeIt]

This is already happening, and through a technique that copyright law does not really protect against. Writers of genre fiction are already reporting that e-books are being run through an LLM to completely rephrase it, and the result sold under by somebody else under a different title and author. This is easily automated.

[drdeca]

This seems like it would be a copyright violation? The result bears substantial similarity to the input, even though it doesn’t have the particular words in common, right?

Like, if you translated the Spanish version to English, you’d have different words than the official English version, but it would still be a copyright violation to sell that, right? Likewise if you first had someone do a translation from English to Spanish before you translated it back to English?

If it is based on an existing copyrighted work, bears substantial similarity to it, and competes with the original in the market, I thought copyright handled that?

[HeinzStuckeIt]

The key lies in how easily the process is automated. Once a certain amount of freshly published ebooks are getting rephrased and sold by someone else, authors would be playing whack-a-mole with copyright claims, and they might not even become aware of all the copies of their work out there.

[tqi]

If hypothetically the study had said that piracy does hurt sales, would you change your position on piracy? Because what I'm seeing in this thread is just a bunch of people pointing to studies when they support their priors, or to limitations of studies when it doesn't...

[wobfan]

Affirmation bias leads to people usually using stuff that prove their point, so probably the commenter would not have changed his position from one study - which is fine. This is how a discussion works. But your comment leads to a dangerous path of just disregarding people defending their positions with studies, and make it seem like these studies don't hold any value beyond elaborating what the people are saying, which isn't true.

Studies, if done correctly, hold massive scientific value and (at least a bit) of "the truth". Especially in the current climate we should never go down the path of disregarding studies.

[alt187]

No.

[fngjdflmdflg]

Why do companies attempt to prevent piracy if it doesn't hurt sales?

[gloosx]

Because companies are reactionary structures of power, they often act out of fear of losing control, not out of data or reason. It's easier to lobby governments for harsher copyright laws instead of modernising business model.

There are many counter-examples.

Gabe Newell (Valve co-founder) famously said:

"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem."

Jeff Bewkes (CEO of Time Warner) famous quote about piracy:

"Game of Thrones being the most pirated show in the world? That's better than an Emmy."

Radiohead released their In Rainbows album as "pay what you want", directly online. It generated more revenue than their previous label-backed album.

[Yeul]

Hell I have a premium Netflix and premium Spotify account that I don't even use very often.

Gabe Newell was right. I subscribed to those on my phone without having to go out of the house. It was just a few touches.

[fngjdflmdflg]

I don't think this is true. Many video game companies pay for DRM protection only for the first few months to a year, then remove it after most of the sales are generated. And before the current mostly uncrackable DRMs came out (denuvo) they would still use DRM that they knew would be cracked eventually as long as it wouldn't be cracked in the first few months. They are not simply blindly acting out of fear, they are estimating the actual cost of piracy. In fact someone recently did an analysis of this and came that conclusion.[0] The companies likely have much better data than this external researcher.

>"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem."

It is true that how good the service is is an important factor and can be more important than lets say a $10 difference in price. I think that is what is meant by this quote. However if piracy was easy and legal much fewer people pay for it. Assuming that "piracy is a service problem not a pricing problem" if anything would prove that there are a significant number of people who pay for something if it is easier than pirating. Usually people that claim that anti-piracy measures have no effect say something like "people that can afford to pay for a given media will always pay for it, and people that cannot will always not" or "people who are going to pirate something will never pay for it even if it becomes impossible to pirate." But if pricing is not actually the main issue at hand here then this not correct.

>"Game of Thrones being the most pirated show in the world? That's better than an Emmy."

This doesn't say anything about income generated. He's basically remarking about how successful the show was.

>Radiohead

This is a special case where consumers have a special attachment to the producers of their entertainment and buy their products specifically to support them. You can see a similar idea with YouTubers that sell everyday items (eg. coffee) with their name on it and people buy it mainly to support them, and this is even how the sales pitch is phrased. So if you are (at least partially) selling the ability to support the creator, then it is impossible to pirate that, as piracy (obviously) does not support the creator.

>act out of fear of losing control

Even after now 20 years of digital media existing?

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S18759...

[machomaster]

It's hard to convince people of X, if their earnings depend on them not agreeing.

Management and lawyers are paid to be busy and "defend rights", not on sitting still and saying that nothing should be done. Even if it true, they still need look busy and "earn their check", otherwise their numbers/salaries can be reduced.

[wcarss]

The opinions of their principals may not align with published findings, for many reasons.

[fragmede]

Because those studies aren't actual proof, and companies selling things are biased to believe that people won't pay for shit if they don't have to. (Which they won't.)

[whynotmakealt]

As someone actually living in the third world country, I agree to this message so much.

Yes I advertise the games and actually want to buy the games once I feel like the money would start mattering less than it does right now to me.

Its also about sending a message though.

As an example, I have never bought any online subscription or any online game and yet I wanted to buy silksong purely because of the sheer dedication and respect for him

The only reason I didn't were that partially it may be that silksong isn't my usual gaming although I rarely do that nowadays and secondly, that, I wanted to buy but my brother said that he would have to buy it seperately on his PS5 and I wanted to split the money for the first time

You might call me a hypocrite for having a brother with PS5 and not buying games but its his money and he has given me enough and I am not taking any money from him out of pure respect. He earned it. I have also earned some money online from coding related stuff and I was actually going to buy it from my own money but I didn't feel like it after he stopped me.

I really recommended hollow knight to everybody I could for days lol.

Also, there are some other pressing concerns as well.

So recently, I was backing up my linux whole night and literally the next day I borked it via gnome-disk accidentally format partition, I don't drink coffee so that might explain it after an all nighter-ish saving linux

Then, everybody on discord etc. said its over. I then tried testdisk utility for so goddamn long trying out literally everything in it untill it finally worked (I may have had some skill issues in the process but I learned a lot)

In that moment, I felt like I can do anything thanks to linux/open source. I immediately opened up my mail to thank the creator of the tool and making it actually free instead of people on discord saying me to pay either 15-20$ or pay thousands of $ for recovery.

I asked [e-mail] regarding the whole situation expressing gratitude and I wanted to donate to him but I felt like what if he had some donation site he wanted to give to like red cross or something. I wanted to donate 10$ of my own savings lol to him or any donation list he recommended or wanted to send money to.

Mainly, it was a way to say thanks though but I will honor his wishes if he ever does read the mail and I wouldn't touch that money or I would donate that money later if he doesn't respond to something like food security either way (I personally feel like although open source is really great, I just can't live if someone is sleeping hungry, that shouldn't be there in this world)

And now you or these companies expect me to pay 70$ to play either retro games or to play unoptimized games etc.

hell no.

I will tell you the games I really love as a means to promote them, if someone's interested in hearing out my suggestions on games.

I really loved baba is you, inscryption a lot. They are both indie games which I really liked

The portal series was also a really nice game that I enjoyed a lot as well.

I have played a lot of binding of isaac even though I feel like I am a noob but I can secondly recommend that as well

I also played some other games but that company is notorious for lawsuits and I am even scared that they might sue me for just mentioning the game's name lol

I even once made a friend after first being an enemy (he said he knew karate so he did it on me and I just hold his leg mid air and he was barely balancing and I think my cousin sister had to stop me) of some person and then helping them pirate a game and walking them through it and talking about it lol.

Good times.

What isn't good is when people try to mention how its extremely unethical and how I am the bad guy and I try to explain it and they think its extremely black and white.

I feel like I would give money to companies if I feel like they deserve it and I can earn it. I will genuinely buy every single one of these games that I had mentioned just to support the devs. I wish there was a better way to support them even more directly since steam takes a 30% cut when I don't want it to.

Should any corporation be able to gate-keep me out of the ability to make me enjoy my time of what I have during my childhood simply because we can't afford it and then when I actually get the money, I would be losing out on time (which is what is happening to my brother as I had mentioned, he said that he barely uses ps5 because of his work)

Everything is connected and I think a big issue people do is try to approach things in isolated manner and to form black or white opinions but I don't really blame it either.

[alt187]

This is pretty much how I feel about the whole ordeal too. Vote with your wallet, and all of that.

Thanks for sharing.

[hamdingers]

How many artists will be fed, clothed, and housed by the 500,000 digital files IA is no longer hosting?

Unrelated: I wonder how much the publishing industry spent on lawyers.

[reedciccio]

Same as today? Empirically demonstrated: The only ones getting richer and richer after the Napster wars are the publishers, like Apple Music, Spotify and the other mega corporations. :)

[LennyHenrysNuts]

It's been proven that people who pirate also buy more media than those who don't.

Besides, if I was never going to buy it in the first place because you're charging too much, you've lost nothing if I pirate your product.

A victimless crime.

[RobotToaster]

Don't most authors make literal pennies out of royalties?

[wmf]

There was also a lawsuit over Google Books.

[fooqux]

Sure, which Google won. Which was basically the point of the person you replied to I think.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Google wins on summary judgment

https://storage.courtlistener.com/harvard_pdf/8726429.pdf

"For the reasons set forth above, plaintiffs motion for partial summary judgment is denied and Googles motion for summary judgment is granted. Judgment will be entered in favor of Google dismissing the Complaint. Google shall submit a proposed judgment, on notice, within five business days hereof."

Affirmed on appeal

https://storage.courtlistener.com/harvard_pdf/3124896.pdf

"In sum, we conclude that: (1) Googles unauthorized digitizing of copyright-protected works, creation of a search functionality, and display of snippets from those works are non-infringing fair uses. The purpose of the copying is highly transfor-mative, the public display of text is limited, and the revelations do not provide a significant market substitute for the protected aspects of the originals. Googles commercial nature and profit motivation do not justify denial of fair use. (2) Googles provision of digitized copies to the libraries that supplied the books, on the understanding that the libraries will use the copies in a manner consistent with the copyright law, also does not constitute infringement. Nor, on this record, is Google a contributory infringer."

[harrall]

Google didn’t “win.”

Google Books is currently a shell of its former self.

[doctorpangloss]

you're right - really, it's in the opinion of all copyright / IP lawyers & thinkers in this country that Google lost, because it didn't get to do what it wanted to do, even if it "won", it is Pyrrhic.

the balance of comments in Hacker News about a topic like this: it tips towards the wrong understanding of that case. There's Gell Mann Amnesia in every comment section.

[fooqux]

Well I learned something at least, thanks!

[stonogo]

A summary judgement in favor of Google with an explicit sentence in the ruling that Google was not "violating intellectual property law" is an unmitigated victory.

[Analemma_]

“Won” in a purely symbolic sense with no practical significance. How do I access the Google Books library?

[throwuxiytayq]

Ask Gemini to write you a story

[Levitating]

https://books.google.com/

[wahern]

Google removed a ridiculous amount of material during the dispute with the Author's Guild. I know because a bunch of my legal history research citation links collected between 2007-2011 are long since dead, with the material completely gone, AFAICT, and either not discoverable or only available in excerpt. And this was stuff from the 19th and early 20th centuries, which definitely was out of copyright in the US, though some of it may have potentially been a headache in Europe regarding copyright-adjacent author rights that Google didn't want to deal with.

[PeaceTed]

The last few years have really put to test copyrights limits and uses. As someone that falls more in line with Copyleft ideals (do whatever you want with my stuff!), it is very funny.

I just grab the popcorn and watch from the side lines, see where it all lands.

[nine_k]

I'm used to think that "copyleft" is "do whatever you want with my stuff, but you must agree that others must be able to do whatever you want with your stuff you made out of mine".

[AlexAplin]

Google had a tailored fair use argument because they never made more than snippets public and searchable. It was also prior to Hachette that controlled lending with one-to-one digital copies for every physical copy was a status quo that publishers largely accepted, which IA deliberately tried to upset with the National "Emergency" Library.

I think it's worth fighting back on copyright as a broken institution, and it should be part of the IA's mission, but you have to be responsible on your approach if you're also going to posture as an archival library with stability of information and access. I understand Kahle might lament losing some of the hacker ethos, but the IA is too important to run up against extremes like this without an existential threat.

[noir_lord]

internetarchive.ai

It's a training set not an archive.

[ranger_danger]

For my friends... everything.

For my enemies... the law.

[wkat4242]

It's not just that though. They pulled a stupid stunt during covid.

If you're campaigning for fair use, don't give your enemy ammunition to shoot you with by stretching said fair use too far. That was just really dumb.

Besides, for those willing to look outside official channels there's plenty of book library services available already. Just let them do what they do well and don't contaminate an above-board service with that.

[charcircuit]

You are being intentionally misleading. Public access AI models are not being taken down either. There is a big, transformative, difference with freely giving out books to read compared with using them to train an ML model.

[fsckboy]

> There is a big, transformative, difference with freely giving out books to read on a small, measured in human reading pace, scale compared with using them at a massive scale at internet and computer memory speeds to train an ML model even if the intellectual property used to train the ML was from unlicensed copies, and which the model regularly and with some frequency regurgitates verbatim.

not wanting you to be intentially misleading, FTFY.

[Permit]

> some frequency

This is a weasel word you've inserted to be intentionally misleading.

[wtfwhateven]

Saying "some frequency" instead of "often" doesn't mean their overall point is wrong. You know that, you're just being intentionally deceitful.

[paulddraper]

Neither OpenAI or Google did what Internet Archive did.

To say otherwise is disingenuous.

[fragmede]

Google Books scanned paper books in, and then made those scans available online, with some limitations.

[raincole]

Since when OpenAI made a digital library?

The 'goodwill' counterparts of ChatGPT, a.k.a. open weight models, are still well alive online.

[margalabargala]

> Since when OpenAI made a digital library?

What do you think is step 1 of training an LLM?

OpenAI just kept their library private and only distribute the digested summaries of the library, are the main differences.

[raincole]

Yes...? Which is the whole point. That main difference is why IA was sued, not the fact they're idealists.

[conception]

So it’s OK to make an illegal copy of all copyrighted works as long as you don’t put it on the Internet?

[tmtvl]

In some places you can copy anything you like and as long as you don't distribute it you're not breaking copyright.

[fn-mote]

Not in the US, though.

You making the copy is the violation.

[margalabargala]

What OpenAI did is equally not legal under the same statutes that were used to sue IA.