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Authors fume as online library "lends" unlimited free books:
For almost a decade, the Internet Archive, an online library best known for its Internet Wayback Machine, has let users "borrow" scanned digital copies of books held in its warehouse. Until recently, users could only check out as many copies as the organization had physical copies. But last week, The Internet Archive announced it was eliminating that restriction, allowing an unlimited number of users to check out a book simultaneously. The Internet Archive calls this the National Emergency Library.
Initial media coverage of the service was strongly positive. The New Yorker declared it a "gift to readers everywhere." But as word of the new service spread, it triggered a backlash from authors and publishers.
"As a reminder, there is no author bailout, booksellers bailout, or publisher bailout," author Alexander Chee tweeted on Friday. "The Internet Archive's 'emergency' copyrights grab endangers many already in terrible danger."
"It is a tarted-up piracy site," wrote author James Gleick.
Previously:
Internet Archive Suspends E-Book Lending "Waiting Lists" During U.S. National Emergency
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday April 02 2020, @02:36PM (3 children)
I does seem that most good artists are compelled to make art - however, they are even more strongly compelled to eat. And if making art doesn't fund their eating habit, then they have to do something else to fund it, rather than making art. Yeah, they'll still make a little art, but making art after a long soul-draining day at the office is difficult, assuming you even have the time. Art requires inspiration, and emotional exhaustion tends to rob you of that.
I'm not a fan of artificial scarcity, but so far it's at the top of a very short list of ways to fund artists so that they have the time and energy to make art. Patronage used to work okay, so long as you were content with output of the handful of artists that found wealthy patrons, and things like Patreon and kickstarter have begun democratizing that... but it's not (yet?) an effective way for most artists to fund themselves.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday April 02 2020, @03:42PM (1 child)
Back in the "old days", creators used to live on the patron model: patrons gave them money so they'd create works for them. This is how Mozart earned a living, for instance.
Copyright sounds like a good idea: give authors a limited time to have exclusive control over their work, and then release it to society in the public domain, after ~20 years. But now it's been totally perverted by the copyright cartels so that stuff almost never falls into the public domain until all the copies of it have been destroyed by sheer age, unless someone bothered to illegally copy it, which is what we see with software. There's an enormous amount of software out there which would no longer exist if some people hadn't been "pirating" it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2020, @06:36PM
Most people don't realize how much further information could be gleaned about the 'real' hardware of the era versus its documented capabilities, as well as code hacks that cause subtle bugs that may exhibit in emulation once no one knows why those bugs exist, and whether they were intended or unintended operation of the code in question.
The amount of history being lost because we aren't appropriating and archiving copies of raw source code, revision control, etc for future generations is obscene and more than a little sad.
*said while looking at a pile of computer systems from 1983 to 2010.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday April 02 2020, @09:46PM
The problem is in the distribution system. An author usually can't sell a book to a major book publisher until they have an agent, it is very rare for an agent to have any interest in an author until a publisher is interested in their work. Before an author makes a dime, they have already fallen prey to a parasitical system. Their only hope is to land as big an advance as possible, in most cases that may be all they ever get off any particular work unless it sells at stratospheric levels, like Rowling somehow managed with her Harry Potter books. Otherwise, publishers will quickly shunt the book off to whatever format makes them the most profit and pays the fewest royalties to the author (Authors, read the fine print!) after a minimal stretch in the better royalty paying formats.