Not to make a false dichotomy out of this case but it is worrying to me how OpenAI presents itself as a crucial force for humanity's technological progress and then justifying its blatant copyright infringements when doing so (with some people believing the bs). Yet the Internet Archive, with far fewer resources, seems to do a better job of storing and eventually helping in advancing knowledge while fighting tougher copyright battles.
And unlike with OAI, I don't find myself questioning the Archive's motives every other day.
That's what hype does, I guess.
OpenAI's big promise is that it will allegedly yield some society-changing technological development someday. As most, Internet Archive promises to not lose what we already have.
I'd replace at most with at _least_. Archiving is the minimum that they have promised; what can be disseminated when, to whom, how, and for what purposes is unsettled business, clearly.
I'm fairly anti-copyright as it goes but does anyone else find this whole discussion bizarre?
The site hosts things like full ROM sets, PDFs of in print books, the lot. You can just whack things in a search engine and half of the time an IA page comes up with the goods.
The fact that they've survived this long is baffling to me.
I love the Internet Archive and deeply respect Brewster Kahle, but I think it is time for someone with money to fork it: with the Archive's permission, to make a copy of the Wayback Machine and its data as well as the older books and other resources that aren't vulnerable to copyright claims. The new organization should have a more robust governance structure, too, to ensure its long-term survival.
Does anybody here have a few hundred million dollars to donate to such a project?
I don't think they have a clone of the wayback machine yet but Internet Archive Canada exists with a headquarters in Vancouver, presumably with a separate corporate hierarchy but can't find the information this moment
This would be a great time for a philanthropist to come forward and support the Internet Archive for what it is--a public institution.
Man we really would deserve it if we let these ghouls destroy the archive
> plaintiffs characterized it as a hub for piracy
Because it is. I’m sure the founders of Napster, TPB, kickasstorrents also felt they were “enabling freedom of information” but at the end of the day, the way their service is used is to facilitate piracy at scale.
I’m shocked at how long the internet archive has stuck around. At least the lawyers are getting paid.
And no, I’m not writing this as someone who is particularly opposed to piracy in general, but let’s call a spade a spade.
There just are things in this world more important than the profits of publishers and their billionaire investors, that regular people have melted their brains to the point where they reflexively protect the interests of the boot crushing them, is precisely the reason I said we deserve it. I still feel pity for you all, just so you know.
While I do agree that the deal with ebooks vs libraries is utter bullshit, I also feel like the IA unnecessarily burned far too much money on that.
The US courts have consistently supported copyright owners when they claim that ebooks are magically different from physical books, so it was reasonable to predict a loss: they should have started with a very small set of books that they could have afforded to lose with (so it became mostly legal costs). Instead they set themselves up for a huge civil penalty as well.
Again, I think the “ebooks are magically different from physical books” claims are nonsense, but I feel the IA self inflicted an unnecessarily high penalty in a case they were unlikely to win.