[squidbeak]

I've limited sympathy for the publishers.

It pisses me off to reflect that they can sit on works until copyright expires, keeping them out of print. There's no real need for any of these so-called rare books to be rare while they're under copyright.

And related to this, the books that are in print are mostly only in print in the shittiest way. I often see well-made books from the 17th or 18th centuries which are still in good nick. It's ridiculous that in the 21st century, publication standards have fallen to the point where for most works a disposable format is the only type available - where no amount of money could buy a truly decent hardback copy.

If we have to have copyright laws, I'd like to see two changes to them.

When a publisher has no incentive to keep an edition in print, it should be available to any other publisher to print, without compensation to the original publisher, and with renegotiated royalties for the author.

And if the publisher keeps a book in print - but only in bestseller-grade materials, bogroll paper that furrows in any humidity and perfect binding that molts its pages a couple of dry seasons later - and if it refuses to print a durable hardback copy with signatures, good paper and decent print - something that will still be readable in several generations' time - any other publisher keen to have a crack at it should be able to, again without any compensation for the original publisher, though perhaps in this case, with matching royalties for the author.

[giancarlostoro]

A friend proposed that copyright should just die with the author and / or their spouse and I'm left agreeing. I want books and music to be less strict on copyright. Some of my favorite YouTube channels break down music and songs, and go as far as recreating beats / tracks from famous hip hop songs, but someone at a record label company dings every one of their videos, they can barely sample a few seconds, its VERY CLEARLY fair use, and even gets me to listen to the songs more, but they are stealing all revenue for a fair use video that took a lot of time and money to make to begin with, they are profiting from work they didn't even do. This is silly to me, I'm sure there's loads of other channels and videos out there screwed over by the record industry over 15 second samples from a song... Which should 100% be fair use and not be given to the record labels.

Issue is small streamers have no legal defense.

Edit, adding the channel I am referring to:

https://www.youtube.com/@diggingthegreats/videos

[monknomo]

20 years to make some money, and then we set the work free for the public benefit. If it's good enough for patents, I don't see why it isn't good enough for copyrights.

[reorder9695]

It also solves the issue of potentially not knowing when the author died, with a fixed period (the number isn't so important imo so long as it's sane), a work is out of copyright x years after the first known copy was published.

[monknomo]

reduces the ownership hunt problem, as well!

[marcosdumay]

Either that or some exponentially increasing tax so that Disney can keep their vault. (I'm perfectly fine with them keeping it if they pay some proper taxes.)

[monknomo]

the important thing is that copyright serves the public good, I do not think it currently does, at least not as well as it could

[joquarky]

The whole purpose is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts.

The implementation is no longer in alignment with that constitutional requirement.

[Ikatza]

They pay taxes every time that they make money off Mickey Mouse, regardless of copyright status.

[couchdive]

Do they? scope out their federal tax liability in 2025.

https://insidethemagic.net/2026/04/new-report-shows-that-the...

[marcosdumay]

Yes, and they should pay taxes whether they use it or not if they want to keep it out of the public domain.

[Ekaros]

I agree 20 or 25 years should be plenty of time to protect artistic work. No other industry or line of work has anything like that protection. A work published today by 10 year old could stay in protection for nearly 200 years. If that person was to live to 140, theoretically possible with medicine in future.

We do not continue to pay for most things once they are created. Unless they are continuous services. Artistic works should not be any different.

[qwytw]

For corporations sure. For individual authors that's certainly not fair. Especially since it makes it easier for corporations to exploit their work without paying them anything.

> If it's good enough for patents, I don't see why it isn't good enough for copyrights

Because there are fundamentally differ concepts and serve different purposes?

[monknomo]

I don't think they are very different in concept, other than one covers physical goods (and also procedures to make physical goods), and the other covers writings.

The purposes of both are: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

Like, this is a made up regime with a specific intent. The fact that we treat copyrights and patents differently is an accident of history. I think we could quite reasonably choose a different period of time (and in fact, have done so several times over the past few hundred years) and still promote progress.

I think it's very reasonable to say that one good idea should not be enough to let you coast your whole life, you should be prodded to cough up 3 good ideas. Further, it reduces corporate power at the other end by allowing individuals to play in coroporate properties after a relatively short time. You could be futzing around with, idk, a copyright free Cars under my proposed regime.

[qwytw]

It would also make it much easier for corporations to exploit authors.

They would generally make most of their money early (in the couple of years following when the content is released). Individual authors would be much more affected, it might take years for your book to become popular. Also imagine if a studio decides to make a movie or tv show just right after your copyright expires, they wouldn't pay the author anything and just have higher profit margins.

> The fact that we treat copyrights and patents differently is an accident of history

Patented inventions and technologies have some sort of direct practical value. Society does not really benefit much if anyone is allowed to created derived works based on any copyrighted content without compensating the author.

> a copyright free Cars under my proposed regime.

I don't think cars are copyrighted unless you want to make an exact copy of it you shouldn't run into any issues.

[account42]

> Patented inventions and technologies have some sort of direct practical value. Society does not really benefit much if anyone is allowed to created derived works based on any copyrighted content without compensating the author.

Most of copyrighted works are derived fro earlier works in some form, often ones that are older than copyright. If derived works provide no value then most copyright doesn't provide any value.

[monknomo]

If it is true that society does not benefit from creating derived works, then why is open source so useful?

[dspillett]

> For individual authors that's certainly not fair.

How about lifetime of the author? Or "lifetime or 25 years whichever is longer" so those writing in their later years (or dying young) can pass on the time they didn't get chance to fully use.

> Especially since it makes it easier for corporations to exploit their work without paying them anything.

That ship has sailed. We've seems "big corp" commit mass piracy and get the lightest slap on the wrist, I doubt they'll get less brazen going forwards.

[altmanaltman]

But this must then follow for all forms of works, why just books? Every company whose original creator dies must be converted into a public company within 20 years of founder's death for the public benefit as well if that's the case.

If I wrote it, I own the copyright on it, why should I or my future family give away something I worked really hard for? Why do only authors must care about public benefits?

[tancop]

> Every company whose original creator dies must be converted into a public company within 20 years of founder's death

if public company means employee owned (instead of publicly traded or state owned) then im all for it. if the founders family are good managers they can easily convince their workers to let them keep running things.

you dont deserve a job or a fortune just because your parents did a lot of hard work before you were an adult. you got to prove yourself and be better than the rest, thats what capitalism is all about right?

[altmanaltman]

What do you mean that's what capitalism is about? It's about capital. It doesn't asks where you get that capital - if you have $100,000 that you inherited vrs $100,000 you earned, JPM will still see it as just $100,000. So yes, by capitalism, if your parents did a lot of hard work and saved the capital and gave it to you, you have it. Where does it make a moral judgement that it's wrong to have inheritance or right to earn it by the bootstraps?

And no, I mean every trade secret of the company should become public and anyone should be able to create its products and brands. Basically, do to them what you propose to do to writers and artists - why must their families benefit from their work?

[constantius]

To your second point: a company (or any kind of organisation) is continuous work. It's a very obvious retort to your analogy. It would be akin to the author writing a book in a series every year for twenty years, then giving their rights to their child who keeps writing books every year, and every book only has 20 years of copyright. Seems fair to me.

To your first point: inheritance has a concentrating effect on wealth. Concentration of wealth is not a good thing, as it breeds inequality by definition.

If your grandparents gave you a house for free, and you used that enormous advantage to pur your money elsewhere and then own 2, 3 houses, and your child then gets 10, that's 10 houses that people could own themselves, instead of paying the highest rent that your child can get away with.

If you have any experience of poverty, you should understand how viscerally unfair the existence of 'rich kids' seem, and how damaging it is to society.

[monknomo]

So what? Why should the state grant you a monopoly at all?

The reason is to encourage people to create useful writings and make useful discoveries. But we need to balance this encouragement with the benefit we get by making these writings and discoveries available to everyone. By granting a time-bound monopoly the state rewards creators, and by ensuring this time period is not excessive, spreads the benefit among the populace.

Plus, with a time bound benefit, you have to keep on creating, which is good for everyone under this regime.

These aren't, like, inherent rights, they are contingent

[altmanaltman]

The point isn't why the state should grant me (or writers) a monopoly. But rather, why should the principle not be applied to all property and ownership and not just copyright for creative works? Why should one lose ownership over their said work if they are a writer but they shouldn't lose ownership of their trade secrets because they are a high-frequency trader? Or more so, why should only the creative field worry about the public better good when it comes to ownership and property? The conversation for public domain must extend to everything and not just works or art if one really believes in it.

[lsaferite]

Funny that you are comparing Copyrights and Trade Secrets. The monopoly granted on Copyright is predicated on it being published. Trade Secrets, by definition, are not published. Copyright is granted based on the value to the public provided by the author publishing their works. Trade Secrets have no such protection as they are not meant for the public good. They have other protection from theft, but once they are published, there is no protection of the information.

[thdr]

> copyright should just die with the author

That would have a few undesirable consequences... for example, you wouldn't hire a 70 year old writer for your commercial project no matter how brilliant they are.

The complexity of our legal system is in many cases justified. The problems are often the numbers (duration of copyright protection etc.)

[fn-mote]

> copyright should just die with the author

This makes sense when you’re thinking of a painting or a book.

Who owns the copyright to Windows or MacOS? A corporation. How do you deal with that?

> you wouldn't hire a 70 year old writer for your commercial project no matter how brilliant they are

Commercial projects are works-for-hire and the copyright is not owned by the person who does the work.

The proposal for the limit of copyright needs to be refined.

In the US, the current rule is:

> For … a work made for hire, the copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation

[wiether]

  > for example, you wouldn't hire a 70 year old writer for your commercial project no matter how brilliant they are

If you hire them, then you own the work you paid them to do, no?

[graeme]

Not in every country, and secondly if you're basing it on life of the author then that does't solve corporate copyright unless you tie it to the live of a particular employee.

You could do "life of author or X years, whichever is longer". Or include a period after death.

But you see how the complexities come in.

[clort]

The complexities are the problem. I've always thought a fixed term is best. Then, you can purchase a work - it says Copyright <dddd> on it. Then, you know that after dddd+term the copyright is lapsed. You don't need to hunt down the author to see if they died. No guessing, just written on the work that you purchased. No, don't have optional extensions - that just means you have to look it up. It should say it right there on the work you purchased when the copyright expires.

It is said that the vast vast majority of works don't earn anything significant after a few years in any case, meaning the only possible reason to have long copyrights is so that a very few people can get stinking rich. But those people already got rich, in the first few years.. society does not benefit from them getting richer.

20 years fixed term is my proposal.

[TeMPOraL]

Either that or if it didn't work, insurance industry would've created a product that makes it work for commissioned works. Nothing happens in isolation here.

[this_was_posted]

Then just make it the rule that the copyright expires after 30 years or when the author dies, whichever comes last.

[delecti]

Why not just 30 years? Patents get a flat 20.

Not that I'm arguing for 30 per se, just that I don't see what goals of copyright would be advanced more by adding an "or until death" complication.

[qwytw]

Well imagine you write a book in your 20s or 30s and it only becomes popular after a couple of decades. The publisher gets to pocket all the money.

Somebody decides to make a movie based on your book? You get nothing at all from it... The movie bit would be problematic even for books that were reasonably popular at the time. e.g the Witcher adaption came out almost exactly 20 years after the last book, for GOT it wasn't that far from being the case as well (at least for the initial volumes). Studios would be incentivized just to wait a couple of years to avoid paying anything.

I think it could be reasonably to have a fixed limit if the rights are held by corporations, though.

[constantius]

This is an edge case. The vast majority of intellectual output loses value extremely fast. If a new Kafka comes along and their writing becomes popular 30 years after publication, they will have 0 issues getting a fat contract for a new book.

Justifications for copyright are always built on edge cases, seemingly moral justifications of an empirically immoral practice. Yes, it'd be nice if a single handicapped mother of 2 coild see her children rise out of poverty thanks to her writing talent after 50 years. In practice, this person doesn't exist and building society around that scenario is not a good thing.

These 'what ifs' have the same value and do the same damage as 'who will think of the children' do for human rights.

[account42]

So? Imagine you build a house and it only increases in value after you sold it?

Imagine you invent a new kind of computer memory and it only becomes wildly profitable after the patent expires.

The purpose of copyright is NOT to let the original author capture all value of their creations.

And even independently of copyright "with the blessing of the original author" IS a selling point that will give authors ability to market their past works without restricting everyone else's speech. And any new works they create will automatically gain much more attention after their past works become popular - encouraging them to keep creating, just as copyright should.

[DrScientist]

For inventions if you don't make money off it in the first 20 years you are unlikely to ever make any money off it - as the invention space moves on.

That's not the same for a work of fiction or a piece of music. Case in point apparently books sales for the Odyssey are massively up - when it was originally written in 7-8 BC :-)

Also most books etc don't make much, if any money - an publisher/author might rely on a the cummulative effect of a number of revenue streams built over time.

Also the effect of exclusivity is different - for patents you are potentially blocking the area of innovation you have patented by your exclusivity.

That's not the same societal effect as somebody not being able to copy mickey mouse.

So they aren't exactly the same - however I'm not proposing a 3000 year copyright :-)

[delecti]

My personal preference is actually a flat 50 years. I think that if an author writes something at 25 and it doesn't blow up until they're 75, I think that's given them more than a fair chance to capitalize on it.

My real point though is that IMO, whatever duration we pick shouldn't depend on the creator. It would tend to undervalue their later creations, treats corporations differently from people in a way that doesn't seem relevant to copyright, and oddly might lead to the untimely demise of creators.

I find your Odyssey example to be relevant. Homer's death means people today can release their own translations or adaptations. I can find a public domain version from 100+ years ago, or a modern translator can profit from their work so that I can see their take. I can watch the Italian 1911 silent film version for free on youtube [0], or pay for Nolan's modern take. The expiry of copyright gives me options.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbR97hqfG2o

[account42]

> That's not the same for a work of fiction or a piece of music. Case in point apparently books sales for the Odyssey are massively up - when it was originally written in 7-8 BC :-)

And it was written without copyright. So why should the rest of us give up part of our free speech rights for longer than 20 years in order to enrich authors, when its proven that we can get great works without doing that?

The question is not whether longer copyright ever lets authors profit more, it's whether society benefits as a whole.

[Ekaros]

I am fine that estate gets to keep rights for whatever period is left. If estate is dissolved ofc rights would also end. So they can't be orphaned. Either someone has them or they are public domain.

[account42]

Orphaning is less of a problem than copyright nondeterminism where someone owns the copyright but no one knows. A good way to solve this would be to also move move works into the public domain if they are no longer sold in some form. With digital distribution costs are now so low that there is not excuse to not at least keep selling something unless you care so little about it that you have no argument why you should retain a monopoly. Perhaps with a short enough term this is less of a problem though.

[allarm]

> you wouldn't hire a 70 year old writer for your commercial project no matter how brilliant they are.

And yet, practically all over the world, 70- to 80-year-old men are being hired for leadership positions to run the world. Regardless of how brilliant they are.

[Always42]

This would create incentive to kill people

[ktm5j]

So does life insurance.. but we still have that.

[fragmede]

What we don't have anymore though because of that, is tontines.

[ralferoo]

Never heard of it, so just googled, but it's not obvious why these would be more preferable to annuities. As you get older above about 75, people tend to spend a lot less in general (assuming they don't need care support), so getting more money when you're unlikely to spend it anyway seems pointless.

I'd speculate that the regular payments on annuities would therefore be higher than tontines because insurance companies would be able to factor in average life expectancy to the pricing more easily, rather than having to budget for possibly all the money continuing to be paid out to just one remaining person who happened to beat the odds and live well beyond 100 instead of the average around mid-80s.

[dspillett]

They are still around.

[account42]

And common if you count retirement funds.

[weberer]

I would change it to "the expected natural life of the author" which is their birthday + 85 years. Regardless of whether they actually are still alive past that date.

[AussieWog93]

So if an 86 year old writes a book they can't copyright it?

[duzer65657]

This can't work: life expectancy (of humans) can differ more than 30 years around the world, plus there are significant differences between men and women, and corporations - which often own copyright on work for hire - can live in perpetuity.

[ButlerianJihad]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes

[giancarlostoro]

I would accept that as well, but crank it down to like 62 years since their date of birth, presumably by the time they would retire.

[fn-mote]

What?

Think this through some more.

Authors and artists are still creating after that age.

[inferniac]

not really, when copyright disappears, so does the profit motive

sure, you don't have to pay royalties, but any other publisher can now publish too

[account42]

I'd rather not involve the author's life in the copyright duration at all - it should be a limited time just enough for the author/heirs/whoever to recover costs plus make a modest profit and not a special kind of retirement fund or other kind of welfare scheme.

[Gee101]

I thought about this and what they are doing is writing the music industry out of the minds of the next generation who mostly uses Youtube etc. for entertainment.

Most Youtube videos do not contain any copyrighted music as it takes too much revenue as you state.

Again, its short term profit at the cost of long-term gain.

[Ikatza]

What if the copyright is owned by a corporation?

[kasey_junk]

Books in the 17th and 18th century often didnt get bound by the publisher. They were done by independent binders for _custom_ orders. You’d see whole libraries with the owners binding/cover standards rather than per book.

Books in that time were _luxury_ goods. Most people could not afford them. One of the ways that was changed was to introduce cheap, mass produced bindings that were lower quality than the bespoke artisianal bindings done by specialist craftsmen.

You can still get custom bindings done. There exists whole niches on the internet of crafters that will take a production run book and strip its binding and make you extremely high quality and custom bindings and covers.

[ryanmcbride]

Learning this fact is what got me interested into binding my own books!

With how the quality of things seems to have been degrading over the years (either real or just me getting older and experiencing the impermanence of all things) I've been trying to adopt an attitude of "if this practice existed before the industrial revolution, I can _probably_ do it" and it's been really great to learn how things were made before they had to be mass produced as cheaply as possible.

[DrewADesign]

I worked in an academic library that rebound pretty much every book they acquired. One of the biggest in the world, too.

[kasey_junk]

My wife worked for a company that specialized in rebinding paperbacks for schools and libraries. It makes more economic sense to do that for niche use cases rather than make all print runs more expensive.

[DrewADesign]

Yeah it depends on the library and collection. If it’s a general-purpose library, probably a pretty limited portion of the collection. If it’s a grad school library with a low-turnover collection, like the one I worked in, that’s totally different. The college I worked for had dozens of libraries and their use cases were all pretty different.

[pfdietz]

Nowadays, academic libraries are moving their books to archival storage. New publications are electronic only. You need to be a formal member of the university community to access it, unlike in times past when any member of the public could stroll the aisles of physical books and journals.

[DrewADesign]

Most academic libraries have large archival collections anyway, and the extent to which they de-emphasize their patron-facing stacks varies dramatically between institutions. Same with who can access them. You just can’t generalize like that.

[Lutzb]

One of my relatives is one of those micro publishers. Selected works are printed and bound to extremely high standards and materials in a way that their customers are willing to pay 1k-25k+ per book. These editions only have a couple of prints and are mostly made to customer requests.

There is a market for these type of books, albeit a very small one.

[ascagnel_]

You don't even need custom bindings —- library bindings are a thing, even if they cost significantly more then a typical hard cover binding.

[m4rtink]

The Czech National libraries do that for newspapers, magazines and other periodicals - they bind the copies they get automatically for preservation to big books, so they can be better stored in their archives.

Apparently it is getting harder to find people who can do that as most schools no longer have book binding as a course you can study.

[tookmund]

> I often see well-made books from the 17th or 18th centuries which are still in good nick

At the risk of stating the obvious, any poorly made books from then wouldn’t have lasted this long and so you would never see them.

[ortusdux]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

[Aurornis]

> It's ridiculous that in the 21st century, publication standards have fallen to the point where for most works a disposable format is the only type available - where no amount of money could buy a truly decent hardback copy.

This is purely a response to market demand. Publishers aren’t going to put in the extra expense of binding high quality versions of every book so it can occupy warehouse space while consumers everywhere buy the cheap paperback.

> And if the publisher keeps a book in print - but only in bestseller-grade materials, bogroll paper that furrows in any humidity and perfect binding that molts its pages a couple of dry seasons later - and if it refuses to print a durable hardback copy with signatures, good paper and decent print - something that will still be readable in several generations' time - any other publisher keen to have a crack at it should be able to, again without any compensation for the original publisher, though perhaps in this case, with matching royalties for the author.

This is all based on the idea that there is hidden demand for something, but publishers are choosing to deprive us all of it for reasons. That if we open up the laws, another company will come along and satisfy this hidden market opportunity and associated profits that publishers are declining to take.

The simpler explanation is that these high quality editions aren’t being published because the publishers have the data about demand for them. They know they won’t sell.

If the goal is preservation, laws forcing publishers to print on slightly nicer paper isn’t going to solve the problem. It needs to be a robust digital archive and it needs to exist somewhere other than in unsold warehouse inventory or some book collector’s shelf. You’re trying to solve a problem with last century’s technology.

[abdullahkhalids]

Large publishers are optimizing their overall revenue/profit, not the revenue/profit per book. Given that large publishers dictate a significant fraction of what appears on bookstore shelves, how concentrated publicity drives of new books/authors drives their sales at the expense of old books/authors, and how the emergence of second hand books outside their control drives sales in different categories, its extremely likely that the advantageous strategy often is to not print older titles even when there is demand for them.

[ShinyLeftPad]

I have even less sympathy for IP stealing LLM operators

[phoghed]

It’s been determined that training on lawfully acquired works is fair use. Presumably in this discussion of shredding physical books Dario and Sam are not pulling heists at the local library.

I’m sure there’s ongoing litigation, and better sources than this, but fair use was determined in June 2025 in a sf federal district court https://www.goodwinlaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/06/...

Similar conclusion vs meta https://www.jw.com/news/insights-kadrey-meta-bartz-anthropic...

And the more recent $1.5B settlement did not overturn it https://www.reuters.com/world/us-judge-approves-anthropics-1...

[shimman]

Might surprise people to learn but the law isn't the final arbiter on what is moral or just. The law only decides what is legal and as we've seen over our lived history as humans, many "legal" things may not be those we want society to uphold.

[TeMPOraL]

It's not really a surprise to many here, but we don't want to go back there too often, because that topic is well trodden - the intellectual property in its current form is far worse offender against "what is moral or just" than anything LLM companies ever did.

In fact, the whole problem of shredding books (destructive format-shifting) was created by copyright laws in the first place, and that in itself is a concession hard won against the IP establishment - and all that way before LLMs became a thing.

[ShinyLeftPad]

> the intellectual property in its current form is far worse offender

It absolutely is... for LLM operators. For the rest of us it's a minor nuisance.

In fact, it is pretty just for the rest of us. because if it was observed by the spirit then we would either not see this tech pushing people out of jobs OR those people would be entitled to pay,

[phoghed]

Yes IP theft and fair use are discussing legality, not morality. Whether or not it’s moral for someone to make money off somebody else’s labor or Reddit comments, I don’t want to get into a discussion about personally.

[roarcher]

The comment you originally replied to was clearly discussing morality. You don't get to insert your little "erm, ackshually" and then pretend to be a neutral observer.

[phoghed]

lmao no it’s not

[rc5150]

Okay, then step aside while others discuss the morality.

[phoghed]

You don’t seem to be doing so, but I eagerly await your doubtless profound and unique insights on the topic.

> step aside

Isn’t that what I explicitly just did in the comment you replied to?

[HedonicEscal8r]

Yup, and IP theft is morally good. Are we not on HackerNews?

[tancop]

no, we have always been on law-abiding-citizen-except-when-its-white-collar-crime news. the only moral problem here is people cant decide if copyright landlords or ai scammers are better for their portfolio.

[sofixa]

No, courts so far in the jurisdictions which have heard such cases, have ruled it's fair use. There is plenty of ongoing litigation in many jurisdictions, so it's way too early to just decree "it's been determined". It likely won't be for years to come.

[bscphil]

Why did Anthropic settle with authors for 1.5 billion then? Surely their lawyers must have decided there's a pretty good chance of judges ultimately deciding that it is copyright infringement?

[rileymat2]

They had illegally obtained books. 1.5 billion is an incredible deal compared to the per book infringement fine. https://fortune.com/2026/07/21/anthropic-copyright-settlemen...

[hn_acker]

Anthropic settled because even though the training is fair use, Anthropic did not acquire all of the training material through legal means.

[nativeit]

If a case is settled by the parties, it cannot be cited as establishing precedent.

[xienze]

You could also ask why the other side agreed to that settlement. It's not a one-way street.

[qwytw]

It was about piracy, though? Not fair use.

[EnergyAmy]

Did you manually set those utm_source parameters?

[ButlerianJihad]

You don’t know what “Fair Use” is.

Fair Use is not an activity that you engage in. Fair Use is not a category with criteria that you meet. Fair Use is not a precedent that paves the way for everything afterwards.

Fair Use is a defense that can be used in court when you’re named in a copyright lawsuit. Fair Use is how you justify your actions before the court finds infringement.

[hn_acker]

Fair use is a legal defense with a specific test to demonstrate whether a particular instance of use of a copyrighted work is not infringement. Although fair use is always evaluated on a case by case basis, fair use does produce some precedent (example at [1], not related to TFA), and fair use is not mere justification [2]:

> Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work... is not an infringement of copyright.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....

[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107

[phoghed]

Sure, everywhere it’s been legally tested so far and there’s been a conclusion, the outcome has been in favor of the LLM trainer. They just can’t steal the books, they have to pay for them. So claims by random HN users that it’s IP theft and copyright infringement and all that are currently incorrect.

Now if you look at how fair use is used colloquially, everyone understood what I meant except the autistic pedants.

[gruez]

>>It’s been determined that training on lawfully acquired works is fair use

>You don’t know what “Fair Use” is.

This isn't the opinion of some armchair HN commenter. Actual judges have affirmed this, as other commenters in this thread has pointed out.

[Marsymars]

Depends on jurisdiction, clearly.

e.g. Canada doesn't have fair use, but from wiki on fair dealing in Canada, "According to the Supreme Court of Canada, it is more than a simple defence; it is an integral part of the Copyright Act of Canada, providing balance between the rights of owners and users."

[parineum]

s/fair use/ip theft

The comment uses the same language as it's parent.

[DonsDiscountGas]

It's not copying (and hence not stealing) if you destroy the original book. That is where copyright law has brought us

[trescenzi]

No one reasonable is concerned for publishers they are concerned for the books. Assuming the allegations are correct historical artifacts are being destroyed with no trace. It doesn’t even matter if they republish it. The artifact itself and the time it has transited is the valuable thing. It is simply immoral to destroy stuff like this.

[kevin_thibedeau]

> I often see well-made books from the 17th or 18th centuries which are still in good nick.

Those books predate the development of wood pulp paper. It isn't the publisher's fault they can't economically print on rag paper anymore.

[SimonTemplar]

This has little to do with copyright, chances are many of these books were written before that. It’s much more about preserving knowledge. AI labs are a bit like the Borg. They eat up knowledge and so far the average output is often questionable.

[jolmg]

> I've limited sympathy for the publishers.

This doesn't affect publishers.

It affects humanity as a whole by having large private parties hoard books to partly destroy them. The covers and spines can have historical value too. There's not even a reason for these companies to release their scans to the public once the copyright expires.

It prevents proper preservation by archivists and preservationists.

[ctolsen]

I'd go for the less complex version: just make copyright last for like 20 years at most.

[nyeah]

Yeah it's as if the publishers are somehow strapped for cash compared to AI companies.

[cataphract]

The post doesn't call for the sympathy for the publishers, so I'm not sure what you're responding to.

[tracker1]

That's one that really gets me... if I'm buying a classic work or reprint, I'd really like a decent copy that can be handed down generationally... no such thing gets published today. I can understand a technical manual or programming book being printed in a lesser quality, even some education materials as they're likely to only be read through maybe once and maybe sparsely used for reference.

I can even understand the cheaper novel prints... but there should be decent hard back/cover copies that are much higher quality than what we see today. There's really zero excuse for it. Other than general enshitification we see everywhere.

I think if a work is out of publication/availability for over a decade, then copyright should maybe be forfeit altogether. Especially, if that would include digital copies, that has pretty much zero production cost.

[streetfighter64]

> When a publisher has no incentive to keep an edition in print, it should be available to any other publisher to print

How do you adjudicate that? And wouldn't it just lead to loopholes such as "Ghost Printings" (cf. Ghost Flights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_flight_(commercial_aviat... ) where the books are technically printed in the required volume but practically unavailable to customers through one method or another. Because, the cost of wastefully printing a few books to warehouse, is less than the potential losses of the IP rights, probably.

[flir]

I think putting the works in a print-on-demand catalogue at an unreasonable price would be more likely.

But there are worse outcomes.

[tourmalinetaco]

15 years, 5 year extension, that’s it. That’s all we ever need, and there is no logical reason to extend it outside of the kind of greed they warned about in The Bible. Additionally, any and all source code, assets, etc should all be entered into the copyright office and released when it enters the public domain. This should even include printing assets and high res copies of artwork.

Copyright can be intrinsic, sure, but only to maybe 5-10yrs, far less than the maximum to incentivize registration (and thus incentivizing archiving of culture).

I should be able to freely download every Disney film prior to 2006, compile Killer7 for the fun of it, buy a hardback of the LOTR trilogy from any printer I wish, and do so without any interference from the copyright holders.

However, because we don’t live in a utopia and Sonny Bozo became a politician, I’ll be waving a certain jolly flag for the foreseeable future.

[eudamoniac]

I've never read a coherent argument for why all of these "should"s should be. I understand you want to read the books. But I don't see how that desire results in the laws needing to be changed so that you can read everything you want, even things the author or owner doesn't want you to read.

There is not a shortage of books in print. I don't understand why people get so hung up on a few of them being out of print. It is okay for someone to own something cool and not let anyone see it. The cool thing doesn't suddenly become a societal necessity because it is words written down.

[jolmg]

> There is not a shortage of books in print. I don't understand why people get so hung up on a few of them being out of print.

Because the point isn't so much in reading whatever text as if all text is the same. The point is the spreading of knowledge. A single book can contain knowledge not present in any other.

> But I don't see how that desire results in the laws needing to be changed so that you can read everything you want

In order for your "people" (country, etc.) to do better, you want them to be educated. In order for people to understand one another, you want them to be able to see all the same various perspectives there are. It makes perfect sense for laws to aim for these goals. This is why libraries exist.

> It is okay for someone to own something cool and not let anyone see it. The cool thing doesn't suddenly become a societal necessity because it is words written down.

Books aren't simply trinkets, like an item you bought at a gift-shop.

> I understand you want to read the books.

I think you're looking at this too much as what people want for their own individual selves, when it's more of what people want for everyone. It's about what they believe is best for society as a whole. They don't need to want to read a book themselves.

[eudamoniac]

Which books are in copyright, not being published, and contain unique valuable knowledge? I've never seen this be the case. It's always some genre fiction or obsolete botanical text or something. I've never seen valuable knowledge locked away like you are describing.

[TFNA]

"Which books are in copyright, not being published, and contain unique valuable knowledge?" Most works in a large number of academic domains from the twentieth century.

In my own field (at the intersection of linguistics, history and archaeology) I am constantly, multiple times per day, referring to information in publications from e.g the 1960s or 1970s that never got republished later except as a brief citation to that old book. And guess what, nearly all that twentieth-century scholarship is still under copyright, often from the big German or Dutch publishers that enforce their claims fiercely. The academic community has been doing a lot of work to scan our institutional libraries and upload them to the shadow libraries, but this is still all illegal copyright violation.

[tesseract]

You're going to make me quote the "Dive Manual" scene from _Cryptonomicon_ again, aren't you.

(It features a software engineer introspecting about the fact that his line of work has caused him to dramatically overvalue recency when evaluating books about... pretty much any other technical field.)

[nobodyandproud]

I agree. However, AI companies have managed to make publishers and copyright owners saints by comparison.

[andrepd]

Thanks for your thoughts, but how is this is anyway relevant to the issue at hand? I'm sad that this is the top comment...