VileRancour wrote:

sliderider wrote:

I noticed some users on Youtube claiming they got movies that are still under copyright protection that they uploaded from Internet Archive now, too, so they are no longer content to merely distribute pirated software they are distributing pirated films now, too. I think it's plainly obvious at this point that the organizers of Internet Archive have less than honorable intentions.

"Honorable" is an interesting choice of terms. What about Youtube, then? They don't uphold the spirit or letter of the law any better than Archive does, they simply make it *easier* for copyright holders (and copyright trolls) to get things taken down, and add a horribly broken system to detect 'violations'. The only qualitative difference is that Youtube's motives begin and end with monetary profit.

The difference between Youtube and Internet Archive is that Youtube doesn't have a download button. If they were merely archiving the material to keep it from disappearing forever, they wouldn't need a download button. The fact that they do allow others to download the material they archived shows intent to distribute what isn't theirs to distribute. We don't need Internet Archive anyway, we have the Library of Congress that keeps copies of everything.

sliderider wrote:

We don't need Internet Archive anyway, we have the Library of Congress that keeps copies of everything.

I thought their collection was limited to printed matter.

The internet archive is the way digital content should be archived. Libraries are really dropping the ball on this and other things - no wonder nobody needs them any more. Imagine the wayback machine didn't exist for instance.. I bet google has a pretty good cache of the internet over the last 10 years that nobody but them can access.

Having everything downloadable increases redundancy and encourages participation - if publishers are concerned they could possibly opt out.. but they should have to prove they are archiving their own content properly first.

There is so much content out there that needs to be stored.. I don't think the library of congress is going to regard promotional cds shipped with cereal or demo diskettes as worth their time. Plus a lot of commercial software eventually becomes hard to find.. Now is the time to act on this stuff so it is preserved forever.

kreats wrote:

The internet archive is the way digital content should be archived. Libraries are really dropping the ball on this and other things - no wonder nobody needs them any more. Imagine the wayback machine didn't exist for instance.. I bet google has a pretty good cache of the internet over the last 10 years that nobody but them can access.

Having everything downloadable increases redundancy and encourages participation - if publishers are concerned they could possibly opt out.. but they should have to prove they are archiving their own content properly first.

There is so much content out there that needs to be stored.. I don't think the library of congress is going to regard promotional cds shipped with cereal or demo diskettes as worth their time. Plus a lot of commercial software eventually becomes hard to find.. Now is the time to act on this stuff so it is preserved forever.

Having everything downloadable is a violation of copyright law. You could easily say the same thing about torrent files, but the courts disagree.

Letting software go extinct is similar to burning books - or at least watching them burn and not putting out the fire. I think this is a worse crime than copyright infringement.

Plus, companies not having their material available for when copyright expires breaks the bargain of copyright anyway.

Storage distributed over the Internet is the best way of keeping these things alive - the internet archive could be gone tomorrow for all we know.

One way to deal with this is to limit the duration of copyright to something much shorter than it currently is. Like, 5-10 years. This way, you can legally start archiving before there is a considerable chance of works going extinct.

kreats wrote:

Letting software go extinct is similar to burning books - or at least watching them burn and not putting out the fire. I think this is a worse crime than copyright infringement.

Plus, companies not having their material available for when copyright expires breaks the bargain of copyright anyway.

Storage distributed over the Internet is the best way of keeping these things alive - the internet archive could be gone tomorrow for all we know.

Don't you think it should be up to the copyright holder to decide what happens to their creations? Maybe they don't want their work to stay around forever. Who are you to make that choice for them?

Not at all - copyright offers protections with the assumption it will fall into the public domain. With books they are obliged to lodge a copy with the library of congress.

If they hadn't published the software or benefited from the protections of copyright that would be something different however.

dr_st wrote:

One way to deal with this is to limit the duration of copyright to something much shorter than it currently is. Like, 5-10 years. This way, you can legally start archiving before there is a considerable chance of works going extinct.

I'd say that 5 years is too short. The original concept of copyright was to protect the creator for a period of time, but then fall into public domain. This was with the realization that civilization is built upon the works of those that preceded. Too restrictive copyright is a detriment to advancement. But we still need to protect the creators, so it is a balancing act. At one time copyrights were for 17 years until all of the Disney extensions were added. Now it can be over a century. Of course this varies from country to country. Perhaps 10 to 15 might be more reasonable, especially with software.

17 years is too long to wait to archive software though. Even 15 years is too much. e.g pretend it's 1990 - who is archiving stuff from 1975? I bet a lot of that stuff is gone forever.

Someone has to do it, and nobody is paying for it to be done.

Nothing prevents anyone from archiving old software, but distributing it is another matter.

But nobody is paying for old software to be archived.. hence distributing is the cheapest way of archiving it. Last I saw, the internet archive is a bunch of servers in a church - this is too fragile to rely upon.

But there are various archival projects that I know of that are, like the Software Preservation Society. They are staying within legal boundaries, even if archive.org is not. Just because you are do not know about these projects and do not have access does not mean they do not exist. And as I noted before, archive.org is doing a lousy job of archiving old games and software. Their archives are next to worthless. Anything else is moot given the current law.

Even if it isn't up to your standards - the way the internet archive is doing it works & the world would be much poorer without it. Their archives are not worthless to me.

I don't think I'd bother contributing to the SPS as it is like throwing things into a black pit. But i have considered doing so to the IA cause it is a community i can interact with and contribute to and download useful resources from (not necessarily commercial software).

There is room for both approaches (though the SPS is actually doing for free, that which should be done by paid librarians) but the important thing is getting everything while it still remains available.

Two questions I want to ask related to this discussion:

1. Whom does such extended terms for intellectual property benefit anyway? I get that the idea is to keep the property safe for approximately as long as the original creators, or the average human being in healthy conditions lives, AKA 80 to 100 years. But the problem, as noted, is that most medium on which software is stored on is pretty fragile compared to things like hardcopy books and sheets properly stored. I mean, is anyone here sure a USB drive will last for longer than 30 years?

2. Is the law always right? Laws are made for a reason, but it's not uncommon to see laws which are outdated, absurd, or made only to serve the interests of one group at the cost of everyone else. To pose this in a different way, suppose you people lived during the Imperial Ages where laws upholding slavery and racism were common, would you support or oppose them?

I don't feel that stealing games, movies or any entertainment has any good justification most of the time, but I do want to hear answers to these questions. It should be interesting.

XagferI wrote:

1. Whom does such extended terms for intellectual property benefit anyway?

First, please clarify what you mean. "Intellectual property" is a term which is used to refer collectively to a broad and pretty disjoint group of concepts, and laws, which have surprisingly little to do with each other.

In this case you clearly refer to copyright. Who does such long extended terms benefit? The answer is simple - the copyright holders, most notably the big corporations which own the copyrights to some very popular works (e.g., Disney).

XagferI wrote:

But the problem, as noted, is that most medium on which software is stored on is pretty fragile compared to things like hardcopy books and sheets properly stored. I mean, is anyone here sure a USB drive will last for longer than 30 years?

Well, the longevity of physical media does not have direct relations to copyright law. Copyright law allows private copying for backup purposes. However, some later additions made it illegal to break any protection that is added to the content, without which such copies cannot be made.

XagferI wrote:

2. Is the law always right? Laws are made for a reason, but it's not uncommon to see laws which are outdated, absurd, or made only to serve the interests of one group at the cost of everyone else..

What is the definition of "right"? Do you mean to ask whether a law is always good for society? The answer is, of course, "no". Otherwise laws would never have to be changed/adapted, which of course happens all the time. Whether in this particular case the current law is "good" is a complex question, and there are definitely conflicting opinions on it. Still, as long as it is the law, it is not good to disregard it openly. Rather, someone who believes it to be bad, should fight to get it changed.

dr_st wrote:

In this case you clearly refer to copyright. Who does such long extended terms benefit? The answer is simple - the copyright holders, most notably the big corporations which own the copyrights to some very popular works (e.g., Disney).

Well duh. The question here is, Disney, and pretty much any megacorporation, is not going to be around forever. Every company or organization is going to wither out eventually. So if they do, and the media created still remains under copyright but can't be stored reliably, whom does it benefit?

dr_st wrote:

. Still, as long as it is the law, it is not good to disregard it openly. Rather, someone who believes it to be bad, should fight to get it changed.

So are you saying Mahatma Gandhi should have never organized his Salt Satyagraha, Civil Disobedience Movement, and other such campaigns? Before any of you get agitated over the example, I know that stealing entertainment can't be justified in the same way his campaigns are, after all he was fighting against the oppression of an entire subcontinent while most people stealing entertainment merely want to get it for free.

Some laws are best disregarded openly.. like recording programmes from the television. Format shifting was technically illegal in Australia only very recently and the lack of enforcement there made the law irrelevant. I think a lawsuit against the internet archive would blow up in their faces.

XagferI wrote:

Well duh. The question here is, Disney, and pretty much any megacorporation, is not going to be around forever. Every company or organization is going to wither out eventually. So if they do, and the media created still remains under copyright but can't be stored reliably, whom does it benefit?

I am not sure about this, but I'm under the impression that if the copyright holder ceases to exist, and there is no agreement in place to inherit the rights, then the works fall into the public domain. Is that not the case?

XagferI wrote:

So are you saying Mahatma Gandhi should have never organized his Salt Satyagraha, Civil Disobedience Movement, and other such campaigns? Before any of you get agitated over the example, I know that stealing entertainment can't be justified in the same way his campaigns are, after all he was fighting against the oppression of an entire subcontinent while most people stealing entertainment merely want to get it for free.

You know, I will rephrase what I say and clarify it. It is not good to merely disregard it openly out of an "I don't care" approach. If you want to change the law, however, disregarding it openly as part of a political disobedience movement, like your Gandhi example, may well be a good way to get it changed, but one must be prepared to suffer consequences taking this approach, even if in the long run they will succeed.

dr_st wrote:

I am not sure about this, but I'm under the impression that if the copyright holder ceases to exist, and there is no agreement in place to inherit the rights, then the works fall into the public domain. Is that not the case?

If a corporation goes under somebody will buy the assets, so this is very rare. It may be that the actual IP holder may not even know all that they own. When ScummVM adds support for a new game this often involves tracking down the IP holder. Sometimes this can take a fair bit of research.