Birbla

Discussion summary

Discussions revolve around the implications of large-scale book scanning projects, copyright issues, and the impact of AI on publishing. Participants debate the fairness of copyright laws and the accessibility of digital archives.

What the discussion says

  • Some argue that copyright should not apply to naturally occurring or publicly available content.
  • Others highlight the potential for AI to generate books and the challenges it poses to traditional publishing.
  • There is concern about digital access to archives like the New York Times and international sharing of literature.
“If you shouldn't be able to copyright GRAPES...you shouldn't be able to copyright BOOKS.”
— tolerance
“AI publishing is just email spam, but for books.”
— inigyou

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  • Hacker News
  • "If you work at Google and have access to this data, then we realize that $200,000 means little to you, but you'd be hailed a legendary archivist if you're able to sneak out this data."

    Yeah, but still, I think I'd prefer to do it anonymously than be the legendary archivist rotting away in prison.

    by incompatible
  • Anyone afraid of being laid off at google right now? Perhaps this is a backup :)
    by DeepYogurt
  • I live in Canada but was born in Italy. I want to often buy books in Italian (digital) and it's incredibly complicated because licensing deals are never for people speaking Italian in Canada.

    You often need an Italian credit card to pay.

    The digital world is crazy.

    by Fire-Dragon-DoL
  • > Plead read [this] carefully before working on a bounty.

    [this] appears as a link to a .li address, and that goes bad places.

    Should be https://annas-archive.gl/volunteering#bounties

    by jagged-chisel
  • Who is behind Annas archive, there is a lot of english speakers involved in the team and forums! Anyway as long as buying isn´t owning no issues here.
    by trilogic
  • I wonder how long it will be before they offer bounties for internet scrapes.

    Cloudflare captchas have made the internet unusable for me, and I'm sure it will only get worse over time. I'd much rather just browse (or even torrent) a copy of archive.is or similar. The latter would be much better for privacy, and hey, I run ad blockers anyway.

    by hedora
  • https://SourceLibrary.org has about 16,000 rare books translated — most for the first time. 50,000 books archived (will be translated when we have $$ for it). More tokens than English Wikipedia and about .75 petabytes.

    Not sure if we will qualify for a bounty, but happy to share! Btw, we are looking for funding from small or large donors who want to help us translate the Renaissance…

    by dr_dshiv
  • I live in a country where the selection of available books, especially in English, is very limited. Buying online from foreign markets comes with a long list of administrative hurdles and limits.

    If it were not for Anna's Archive and Z-Library, I would've never been able to read the books that shaped who I am today, or keep my passion for learning alive.

    Thanks, AA and ZLib! (Also, thank you to the authors whose books and knowledge I consumed without being able to pay them back.)

    by ahmedfromtunis

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