this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
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Internet Archive is in danger (www.battleforlibraries.com)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

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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[–] [email protected] 181 points 5 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 124 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (12 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah. The monsters gnawing away at nature, public infrastructure, your friends? They are called corporations.
Btw, megacorps have multiple faces and are especially hungry.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] Weslee 23 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Who's gonna tell them that the small islands are the first thing to go in the climate crisis

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[–] grue 14 points 5 months ago

Yes, corporations exist to make profit

Maybe now they do, but that itself is a cancerous perversion of their original purpose.

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[–] [email protected] 105 points 5 months ago (10 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Ipfs into I2P would probably be ideal !

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago

i2p integration would be awesome

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Europe is voting this weekend. If you care about copyright reform, you should consider voting for the European Pirate Party. IA is probably in the wrong here, legally. But many would argue it's morally right to have free access to information. Sure, shadow libraries are popping up everywhere and we have access to more information than ever before, but if we really want access for everyone, we need different copyright laws, and for that we need politicians.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Sadly in countries without a pirate party, like Denmark, you can't (as far as I know) vote for the EP pirate party.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Would you care the elaborate more?

[–] [email protected] 90 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (5 children)

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.

Battleforlibraries

[–] [email protected] 32 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Lol, a petition won't stop this unless it's a petition to bribe the judge. The US is owned by corporations.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Sure, but it is still better than doing nothing.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

It feels better than doing nothing.
If you can convince yourself you're not doing nothing.
I've never been that good a liar.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago (12 children)

Large petitions also serve as a way of getting the word out.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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).

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (12 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

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."
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[–] [email protected] 37 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Honestly, I'd say it would be much much worse than your examples. It would be erasing parts of history itself.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

...library... Alexandria...

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago (8 children)

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...

[–] [email protected] 73 points 5 months ago (7 children)

And everyone that wants unbiased context should read the wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachette_v._Internet_Archive

The judgment basically completely ignored IA's arguments towards fair use. EFF filed an amicus brief that explains how baseless the judgment was. Assuming the entire US court system isn't in the corporate pocket yet they will win this on appeal.

It's ridiculous to assume that an organization whose main purpose is data archival would knowingly and blatantly ignore copyright law. IA didn't ignore it, they did they homework and saw that their use qualified as fair use. Then they met a judge who doesn't give a shit about that. Nobody can prepare for that in advance.

[–] orangeboats 29 points 5 months ago

Assuming the entire US court system isn't in the corporate pocket

I love your optimism

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (6 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

This one pertains to the lawsuits.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

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...

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago

Made me look for internet archive merch and found they actually do have a store for it

https://store.archive.org/

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Is this suppost to be a link

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I was trying to link to Battleforlibraries but I failed, it's my first lemmy post

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[–] nifty 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Surely not or else companies would be doing this every day to avoid litigation.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

Just sent them a couple of bucks. Wish I could give more but the conversion rate on my currency is atrocious lol 🫠

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