- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
It looks like the internet archive is needed assistance, I just heard about this today and figured lemmy could help spread this message around
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Modern corporations are a damned plague. Most of these fuckers would destroy our whole cultural heritage in a heartbeat if it meant making a profit.
Yes, corporations exist to make profit, but come on, there are limits.
there are limits
I am glad you have a moral centre.
But that is the capitalist way. A Redditor once wrote: “*Corporations have no morals, no ethics, no code of conduct, no feelings, no empathy, and zero accountability. They have one goal and one goal only: to increase profits at all costs.”
Case in point: the climate crisis. Corporations are literally destroying their own home for a symbol of success that, like their products, is man-made: money. It is the ultimate pursuit of vanity.
Crazy, if you think about it for a moment.
Yeah. The monsters gnawing away at nature, public infrastructure, your friends? They are called corporations.
Btw, megacorps have multiple faces and are especially hungry.your friends?
I do not understand. Could you explain what you mean please?
The AI techbros wanna scare you with tales of AI becoming sentient and going rogue to destroy us all, when corporations, mindless machines made out of people to maximize profits at all cost, are already doing all that
i guess it doesnt matter to the execs, they will always have their little islands to live on while they destroy the rest of the world
Who’s gonna tell them that the small islands are the first thing to go in the climate crisis
Billionaires remember! Yacht first, island second.
True, but they’ll be the only ones able to afford to buy a boat. Lol.
And yet by law in some places (the US being one, I believe) they are treated as people, with certain rights.
Like people, but with a feduciary responsibility to gain wealth at every opportunity. Corporations are almost like vampires: they don’t need food or water, they don’t age, they have inhuman power, yet they wear the guise of people; they pass as human to make it easier to drain us of our blood, an endless thirst they feel compelled to heed.
Well said
Agreed, now what do we do about it?
I quit a very very well paid IT job in a very big corp because I did not want to participate to their anti-human, anti-planet shit…
What are you doing about it?
What am I doing about it? For the most part, nothing at the moment besides actively refusing to purchase from a small number of companies—Nestlé, Walmart, Amazon, etc—mostly out of principal as I’m not illusioned enough to think one person will make a difference in this sense). Primarily because at the moment I live in a dead-end job making barely enough money to buy food and trying to keep my car from disintegrating long enough for me to get to work and back.
Frankly, I’d love to do more, but there’s really not much I can do. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though. Just because you don’t have an alternative ready doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to dislike the current situation.
Thank you for your reply! You are doing what you can and that is important!
I appreciate you understanding. It really sucks our world has come to just having to deal with it most of the time.
I agree that that is the capitalist way, which is one of the reasons I hate capitalism. I’m no tankie, but I believe there are other ways, even ways that still use personal property as well as currency, beyond capitalism, which is just the use of personal property and currency to obtain more personal property and currency at all costs in an endless cycle.
Yes, corporations exist to make profit
Maybe now they do, but that itself is a cancerous perversion of their original purpose.
come and destroy the IPFS, then!
What is the IPFS?
a decentralized file hosting/sharing protocol that powers library genesis, for example
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a protocol, hypermedia, and file sharing peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system. It allows users to host and receive content in a manner similar to BitTorrent.
That’s pretty cool. :)
corporations attack anything that might challenge their ability to make a quick buck: everyone and everything else be damned. sadly the only way to overcome this kind of monster is a decentralized network of information hoarders. appealing lawsuits is just a bandaid.
the internet archive needs to reorganize. as long as it makes itself into a target as a centralized org, it will also get shot at by soulless corporate husks. im envisioning moving everything onto ipfs, that way anyone can help host as much or little as they like.
Ipfs into I2P would probably be ideal !
i2p integration would be awesome
They don’t need to do anything so drastic. They just need to stop doing things that blatantly provoke legal attacks like this. Their “Emergency Covid Library” was a foolish stunt that is endangering their primary objective of information preservation, they wouldn’t have been sued if they’d just kept on carrying on as they were before.
the corporations dont care. why should the archive be under the pressure of the soulless suits at all? any “stunts” are just excuses for doing what they will do anyway: pick on anyone who doesnt bow to their petty whims.
no, saying that this is the archive’s fault is so gross, and just says that you accept their bullying and blackmail as somehow moral
archive should decentralize, that’s the only real solution imo
Archive has been around for well over a decade with no issues outside of sporadic DMCA claims against user uploaded content. For many many years they have been left alone, despite hosting a shit ton of copyrighted material.
Occasional legal battles that they’ve handled with no problems with the help of the EFF. This is the first “existential threat” to them in quite a long time.
This is absolutely because they pulled the emergency library stunt, and they were loud as hell about it. They literally broke the law and shouted about it.
Libraries are allowed to scan/digitize books they own physically. They are only allowed to lend out as many as they physically own though. Archive knew this and allowed infinite “lend outs”. They even openly acknowledged that this was against the law in their announcement post when they did this.
I can absolutely say this is their own damn fault while disagreeing with the law they broke. There, I just did.
This is absolutely because they pulled the emergency library stunt, and they were loud as hell about it. They literally broke the law and shouted about it.
I think that you are right as to why the publishers picked them specifically to go after in the first place. I don’t think they should have done the “emergency library”.
That said, the publishers arguments show they have an anti-library agenda that goes beyond just the emergency library.
Libraries are allowed to scan/digitize books they own physically. They are only allowed to lend out as many as they physically own though. Archive knew this and allowed infinite “lend outs”. They even openly acknowledged that this was against the law in their announcement post when they did this.
The trouble is that the publishers are not just going after them for infinite lend-outs. The publishers are arguing that they shouldn’t be allowed to lend out any digital copies of a book they’ve scanned from a physical copy, even if they lock away the corresponding numbers of physical copies.
Worse, they got a court to agree with them on that, which is where the appeal comes in.
The publishers want it to be that physical copies can only be lent out as physical copies, and for digital copies the libraries have to purchase a subscription for a set number of library patrons and concurrent borrows, specifically for digital lending, and with a finite life. This is all about growing publisher revenue. The publishers are not stopping at saying the number of digital copies lent must be less than or equal to the number of physical copies, and are going after archive.org for their entire digital library programme.
this is a fair assessment.
regardless, if they want to do what they’re doing, they need to decentralize.
They need to decentralize because it was always only a matter of time before they pissed off the wrong capitalist sociopath or piss baby politician.
Yeah, as soon as I read about that I realized that they fucked up.
It was increadibly irresponsible by them at their current legal status.
They could just not poke the bear
they tied meat to themselves and ran at the bear screaming
Would you care the elaborate more?
The nonprofit Internet Archive is appealing a judgment that threatens the future of all libraries. Big publishers are suing to cut off libraries’ ownership and control of digital books, opening new paths for digital book bans and dangerous surveillance.
Join 28,000+ signers on the petition below to show your support for the Internet Archive, libraries’ digital rights, and an open internet with safe, uncensored access to knowledge.
Lol, a petition won’t stop this unless it’s a petition to bribe the judge. The US is owned by corporations.
Sure, but it is still better than doing nothing.
It feels better than doing nothing.
If you can convince yourself you’re not doing nothing.
I’ve never been that good a liar.Large petitions also serve as a way of getting the word out.
Yep. Petition gets large enough for media attention, word is spread, MAYBE people get active.
But Then police beat on them, Trump supporters defend the corporate interests of their supreme lord, it all goes down the shitter anyway.
So don’t ever get active or protest or do anything?
I don’t know.
I still think there’s at least some value, even if the only thing it accomplishes is getting people to talk about it. Many people have never even heard of The Internet Archive.
Either way, there isn’t really a reason not to.
Only things that are effective are better than doing nothing. Doing ineffective things only gives a false sense of accomplishment and thus reduces the incentive to try harder to be effective, which means they’re actually worse than doing nothing.
Online petitions, “free speech zones,” and other easily-ignorable things are like honeypots for activism, designed to neuter it.
Sure, but “effectiveness” is usually not a binary and is often difficult to measure. Small, but persistent changes should still add up. Eventually.
So long as people recognize that these things are in fact quite toothless, I’m not sure they are entirely detrimental. There’s no reason this couldn’t be used as a starting point for more effective action, now that signatories are in greater contact with the campaign.
It’s not even a question of being “owned by corporations”. Judges don’t care about petitions. They’re not politicians, their job is to adjudicate the law.
In theory. In the US, at least (I don’t know about other countries), some judge positions are voted in, In that sense, they most certainly are politicians.
On top of that, HAVE YOU SEEN OUR SUPREME COURT. THAT SHIT’S THE HALLMARK CHANNEL OF “OWNED BY OTHER ENTITIES”, be it actual politicians (Trump) or CEOs (also Trump), many of whom ARE both executives and politicans (again, not only Trump, but also a number of other reps & senators).
C’mon it’s at least worth a shot. To me at least.
With the current judges we could probably buy one fairly cheap. Crowd source lobbying I guess
Except it’s not a threat to the future of all libraries, it’s a threat to the future of “libraries” that decide to completely ignore copyright and give out an unlimited number of copies of ebooks. Basically turning themselves into book-focused piracy sites.
I’m incredibly frustrated with Internet Archive for bringing this on themselves. It is not their mandate to fight copyright, that’s something better left in the hands of activist organizations like the EFF. The Internet Archive’s mandate is to archive the Internet, to store and preserve knowledge. Distributing it is secondary to that goal. And picking unnecessary fights with big publishing houses like this is directly contrary to that goal, since now the Internet Archive is in danger.
It’s like they’re carrying around a precious baby and they decided it was a good idea to start whacking a bear with a stick. Now the bear is eating their leg and they’re screaming “oh my god help me, the bear is threatening this baby!” Well yeah, but you shouldn’t have brought a baby with you when you went on a bear-whacking expedition. You should have known exactly what that bear was going to do.
Exactly. I hate fucking everything about this. I love the internet archive and nearly all they do.
In principal I love their “covid-19 emergency library” or whatever they called it. In practice? They absolutely know better than to pull stunts and I’m terrified that this will spell the end for one of the greatest knowledge and media resources of the modern age. For shit that was effectively already available to the public through ebook piracy sites.
They already operated on shaky ground, hosting downloads for a metric ton of shit that is unquestionably still under copyright (despite their claims to only be archival of things that are not), skating by on technicalities and by not drawing too much attention to themselves.
Plus, there were so fucking many better ways to do the “free digital library” thing without jeapordizing themselves.
- Have some volunteers “misuse resources”: load an SSD up with the book files, “borrow” some compute power to decrypt/remove drm, pass batches off to existing ebook “dumping” groups to stagger releases and obsfucate the true source. This would ensure that any material they had which was not already available on the high seas would get there.
- Make a big red banner on the site to a blog post with the generic “While we would never condone piracy or copyright infringement, we understand that times are extremely hard right now [blah blah] here are some links to community guides on how to access learning literature (pirate ebooks) during these trying times [blah blah] Please abide by your local laws.”
You summed it up exactly. As one politician put it, the Internet Archive does not decide copyright. They have became to big for there own shoes.
The thing that drives me nuts is that I really do value that baby they’re carrying around. It is precious. But I don’t want to give the Internet Archive money just to funnel into the pockets of their lawyers and settlement payments to big publishers due to these unrelated quixotic battles.
I was hoping that the IA would have learned a lesson from losing this court case, they should have settled as soon as they could. I’m sure the publishers don’t want the bad publicity of “destroying” the Internet Archive, they just want them to stop blatantly violating their copyrights. But this appeal suggests that they haven’t learned that lesson yet.
In an ideal world there’d either be some kind of leadership shakeup at the IA to get rid of whoever was behind this stunt, or some kind of alternative IA-like organization appears to pick up the archive before the IA goes broke and its collection ends up being sold off to the highest bidder. Or simply destroyed.
I’m sure the publishers don’t want the bad publicity of “destroying” the Internet Archive
LOL. LMAO, even.
I have little doubt that publishers detest the Internet Archive and the deepest desire of their shriveled, blackened heart is to (figuratively) mount its stuffed corpse as a trophy over their fireplace mantel.
Cynicism like this is completely unfalsifiable not to mention unproductive.
True, but that doesn’t make him wrong. While generalizing is inherently wrong, the chances of ANY corporation giving a fuck about their image for destroying something that could spell them not earning a couple of bucks is low to null.
Look around. The amount of complains about privacy breaches from all the tech giants, and some midgets, is at its highest ever, and do you see any of them pedaling back?
I am part of an executive suite myself, and while I’m trying to make a difference, you should see the ridiculous amount of pushback I get on ANYTHING that could spell improving user and staff experience, sometimes even when it has absolutely no negative financial impact. It’s like they’re programmed to destroy.
You will find a few good men and women in the Corp world, but this few can’t do much against the majority, which happens to be full of bloodsucking pricks.
It is not a great situation. I wish they would break into smaller organizations
I love the internet archive but yeah, there was just no way this wasn’t going to backfire. And by handling things the way they did they damaged the reasonable defense of archivist (not only for themselves) because publishers and others often cite that archival and backups are just
“pseudonyms”“synonymous” for piracy.They aren’t but the way this was handled made it impossible for them to argue otherwise and it also creates a legal precedent for lawsuits and judgments by publishers against others who are doing such work.
it’s a threat to the future of “libraries” that decide to completely ignore copyright and give out an unlimited number of copies of ebooks
So do I, so this is very bad.
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Another excerpt under why from the FAQ section
**The Internet Archive has been scanning millions of print books that they own, and loaning them out to anyone around the world, for free. Other libraries like the Boston Public Library are using the same process to make digital books too.
This is happening because major publishers offer no option for libraries to permanently purchase digital books and carry out their traditional role of preservation.
Instead, libraries are forced to pay high licensing fees to “rent” books from big tech vendors that regard patron privacy as a premium feature and are vulnerable to censorship from book banners. Under this regime, publishers act as malicious gatekeepers, preventing the free flow of information and undermining libraries’ ability to serve their patrons.
But it looks bad if publishers sue the Boston Public Library. So instead, they’ve launched an attack on a groundbreaking nonprofit, including a lawsuit with clear repercussions for every library in the US. On March 24, 2023, a lower court judge issued a ruling that stated the profits of big media companies are more important than the right of libraries to preserve our history and ensure it’s available to the world. Then, in a copyright troll move for the ages, the same attorney representing Big Publishing filed a second absurd lawsuit against the Internet Archive for it’s research library of old music recordings.
Nevertheless, the Internet Archive are appealing to a higher court and will keep fighting for the digital rights of libraries.**
This buries the lede so deep it’s popping out the other side of the globe.
The entire core of this case is that (in abscence of more lenient agreements with publishers) traditional libraries are allowed to digitize physical books in their posession, as long as they do not lend out more copies than they physically own. The Internet Archive decided that they would lend out infinite copies, because “covid lol”.
Boston Public Library isn’t being sued because they don’t lend out more than they own! It has precisely zero to do with fucking optics.
Edit: Don’t get me wrong, I hope they win this case, but them continuing to play stupid helps nobody. Unfortunately, as discussed thoroughly online when they opened the covid19 emergency digital library, they fucked around. Now it seems they may have to find out.
Fuck.
I really hope someone gets hold of the data and shares it on p2p or otherwise. If all this data is deleted it would be equivalent to nuking pyramids or burning Picasso paintings.
Honestly, I’d say it would be much much worse than your examples. It would be erasing parts of history itself.
Fuck yes, we need to get our hands on this stuff for fucks sake. I have shit there I don’t even know I need yet
Can someone fucking near get their ass there and do a legendary copy paste operation on a massive scale
Exactly. Losing Internet and digital history would create another dark ages for future historians. Everything we’ve done would just be gone.
If I had more money than humanly usable I would create a project that transcribes wikipedia or whatever onto stone/metal plates so it’s not forgotten.
…library… Alexandria…
Good luck, every day more than 1PB is uploaded to IA.
That’s one of the reasons why uploads to the Archive have torrents.
Now if they’d just fix the damn tracker…
Everyone that wants context should read this: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-internet-archives-last-ditch
Listen, I love the IA and everything they stand for, but they’re not winning this. They fucked up and gave away copyrighted content, for free, in unlimited amounts during covid. They then proceed to melt down in court because they know it’s impossible to win. Now they’re seeking empathy from everyone and not talking about why they got sued - which is giving away potentially millions of copies of other people’s work…
Assuming they don’t win, is there any contingency in place to preserve all their data? I don’t know how exactly because I assume there’s an absolute fuckton of it, but it would be such a shame if all of that was lost forever.
I’d love to see it become like the Pirate Bay, where they squish one and ten more pop up to replace it, but I don’t know if that’s even possible.
That worked for pirate bay because they were storing a miniscule amount of actual data. Torrents are really small. The actual data is stored in the peer to peer network. The torrents are just tracking where in the p2p stuff is.
IA isn’t like that. They probably store exabytes of data.
@textfiles@mastodon.archive.org Thoughts?
@Cracks_InTheWalls @CrabAndBroom I think there are tons and tons of yummy little square boxes that will take all of the letters you type into a keyboard and then put them somewhere for everybody to see.
Lol, fair. I’m still not well versed in inter-service ActivityPub stuff. I don’t know if you’ll see this or see any of the parent comments here on Lemmy.
Contingency plans if IA loses the appeal about the library stuff, or in general has something happen that puts IA’s collections at risk of being lost. Any thoughts on the matter? Also cool if it’s not something you want to talk about, I know you don’t speak for the whole org.
How do we archive the archive?
@Cracks_InTheWalls I’m quite aware of the thread you are connecting me to. My answer stays the same.
Ah, understood. Thanks!
That’s not the full article, see https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5556650/the-internet-archives-last-ditch-effort-to-save-itself
I don’t know what happend the last few years with Lunduke, but it seems like he went down the conservative/conspiracy rabbit hole and now I don’t trust anything he writes anymore. Please see for yourself, this article is a good starting point: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-tech-industry-hates-you?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
I think this explains his stance a bit https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=rRDEkMAcwrQ I agree with some bits (because code quality does matter more than being nice when it is your profession), disagree with some (because being a grumpy idiot will harm your ability to build on collaborative projects).
PS: but yea, then there is also the video about the tech industry where he cherrypicks outrage and contradicts himself and agrees that Linus is rude and divisive…which sort of discredits him, because he only seems to like angry but competent people when they agree with him.
Yeah, pretty much everyone who understands copyright agreed that this was the dumbest idea imaginable. But IA stupidly proceeded anyways, and now they’re finding out that the long studded dildo of justice rarely arrives lubed.
I love IA. I use it all the time. But this was just a blatantly stupid move. No amount of crying about it is going to change the fact that they seriously fucked up and angered the most well-established copyright holders in the world.
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The DDOS attack or the lawsuits?
This one pertains to the lawsuits.
ill mention this in every thread about them:
run the archive team warrior if you can. it helps them archive black boxes like telegram, discord, reddit…
Didn’t know about this, but sounds like a good cause.
Is there any legal risk involved with this? Is it recommended to run behind a VPN?
No, VPNs are not allowed. See here for more info.
Made me look for internet archive merch and found they actually do have a store for it
Is this suppost to be a link
I was trying to link to Battleforlibraries but I failed, it’s my first lemmy post
Please update the post to include the link. Use the edit button.
Okay I edited the post and changed the link, tell me If I was successful!
It was successful. Thank you.
Can they sink the IA name and just set up as another entity? I mean, declare bankruptcy etc. What happens to the archived data in this scenario? I am not a lawyer so I have no idea
Edit perhaps they can setup up an entity, sell the data to it, and bankrupt IA?
Surely not or else companies would be doing this every day to avoid litigation.
The mercenary company Blackgate(?) has done it a dozen times.
Again, I have no idea what I am talking about but you can have provisions to protect assets in bankruptcy. But besides that, I am not sure if distributing the assets to another nonprofit entity prior would help save the archived data
I mean, companies with a lot of employees, sure. But companies that are mostly just data, like movie watching sites, do it all the time
Just sent them a couple of bucks. Wish I could give more but the conversion rate on my currency is atrocious lol 🫠
There’s no link. Down voted.
Update: OP updated the post to include a link. Up voted.
Seriously no one cares if you downvote or upvote stuff. Get lost with your inept attempt at manipulation
Yeah and I was supposed to stay calm and cute this whole week see what you have done with your shitty comment?
I was asking others to downvote low effort content to improve the quality of the content on the platform for others.
Yeah where? You just said down voted like your personal opinion on the post mattered. Then edited to say upvoted like anyone cared or you were deluded into thinking it was thanks to your little tiny point down
Maybe I am angry but the frikin internet archive is going down, I hate this shit
not enough AI features! /s
They made a really dumb move and now have to pay for it. I understand their importance but it doesn’t seem like they do - or they are naive enough to believe corpos have good will.
They broke law in such a dumb way, and it’s a pity they put their entire project in jeopardy. My only thought while deciding to donate is “what will prevent them from doing something this dumb again?”
They should have:
- Not sell out to AI.
- Deleted doxxing info (they already removed stuff like Mike Matei’s racist webcomics on behalf of Mike Matei).
Mike Matei’s racist webcomics
What’s this, now?
Oh. Oh, no! I’d heard he was a shitty person, but I wasn’t expecting that!
