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- Hacker News
- > As mentioned elsewhere, this is also IP theft on a massive scale.
Scanning a legitimately purchased book is IP theft? How can he hold such a copyright-maximalist view, and at the same time defend the Internet Archive?
- i dont get it.
this is a complicated way of counting how many of each word is in the book.
clearly fair use.
does the author think cutting up a book is a copyright concern? theyre buying the books, its up to them what to do with their copy. if you want the books preserved, maybe fund your libraries to get a copy or two?
by 8note - It's not necessarily doctrinally that crazy in copyright law. Some courts have considered AI training on copyrighted works a "transformative" use (traditionally more protected in fair use analysis), while providing human beings access to the works a "consumptive" use (traditionally less protected).
There's also a fair use consideration that favors noncommercial use compared to commercial use, but that's not the only question, and the statute doesn't say clearly how to combine the fair use factors.
But it's possible under the Copyright Act that some commercial uses of copyrighted works could be considered fair uses while some noncommercial uses could simultaneously not be considered fair uses.
by schoen - Everyone turning into Metallica.
The whole "copyright infringement is theft" meme seems to have stuck.
20 years ago it was all "information wants to be free" and "infringement is not theft; being deprived of speculative profit is not a loss."
How the turn tables.
by wotamess - Original full title (too long): It is a sign of the times that Amazon gets to call this fair use while huge corporations try to sue the Internet Archive out of business.
- The 404 Media report referenced in the article was submitted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330742
“We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility” (404media.co)
164 points | 3 days ago | 321 comments
by WalterGR - Copyright law prefers the destructive method. It's not that they're skirting the law but that the law is set up very badly in the first place.by Dylan16807
- I think this is impressive backwards reasoning.
Before my lifetime, copyright law all but choked and killed the public domain. And now everything is stale and the same.
This particular battle was lost with Google Books and the attempt to make the world's largest library. The modern library of Alexandria.
But then copyright lawyers got involved to get their pound of flesh. And here we are.
I am upset about the destruction of knowledge. Paper is a superior storage medium to any hard-drive any day. We're recovering words from paper from over a thousand years ago. I think it's a mistake to not work with a non-profit, use cheap COTS non-destructive scanning, and write off the costs of rebinding them and rehousing them.
Everyone is impressively short sighted.
by areoform