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fuzzy

@AndersBaerbock @internetarchive anyways, say I go donate some books to my library, they add those books to their collection and start circulating them. They didn't get permission to give those books out or store them from the publisher, hell, they didn't even pay for them. It's still not piracy.
Now, if I donate books to the Internet Archive and they start circulating those books in the exact same way my local library does, just through a digital rather than a physical medium, it's piracy?

19 Mar 2023 at 18:02 | Wall-to-wall | Open on indieweb.social
6 comments
Anders Baerbock

@socks @internetarchive
Yes it is piracy, since the act of storing («detaching» the words from the printed book) in a retrieval system and electronically transmitting the literary work —the book— is expressly forbidden by the copyright notice.

In contrast, storing and lending the printed item is not forbidden and therefore the library does not need to ask for permission.

19 Mar 2023 at 18:17 | Open on mastodon.social
fuzzy

@AndersBaerbock @internetarchive If that's considered piracy under the law, then the law should be changed. There is no functional difference whether one loans a book digitally or physically.

19 Mar 2023 at 18:34 | Open on indieweb.social
Anders Baerbock

@socks @internetarchive
Changing the law corresponds to the legislative branch in democratic countries.

For publishers, there's actually an important difference: When libraries lend physical books, those items get worn out and eventually need replacement. Besides the hassle for the user who may prefer to buy his/her own copy instead of making recurrent trips to borrow one.
But lending electronically will be only good business for the manufacturers and sellers of electronic equipment.

19 Mar 2023 at 18:40 | Open on mastodon.social
fuzzy

@AndersBaerbock @internetarchive Digital books, and by extension anything digital, becomes obsolete and unreadable if not either replaced or maintained. A good example of this is the Domesday Book. The physical version from almost 1000 years ago is still readable, but an electronic version from the 80s is almost impossible to look through now because no modern computers can read it and no one bothered to maintain it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Dome

19 Mar 2023 at 18:49 | Open on indieweb.social
Anders Baerbock replied to fuzzy

@socks @internetarchive
mmm... that's questionable since the electronic age just started and everything is still somehow volatile. The maintenance of the book-reading software to chase the moving operative systems is also a business different from publishing, so far mostly intermediaries like Amazon engage in capturing customers with the promise of maintaining their own software forever.

But that's a talk for another thread. Have a great Sunday.

19 Mar 2023 at 19:10 | Open on mastodon.social
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