There's a Minecraft server that has books and articles stored. it's called The Uncensored Library, (visit.uncensoredlibrary.com), and they have various articles and books that are free to view. The Uncensored Library was created by Reporters Without Borders. If I were the people of the Internet Archive, I'd be talking to the folks in the RSF about porting some of their content to this virtual library.
It only contains a relatively small collection of banned reporting from various countries, not the whole Internet Archive, and only in the form of in-game books, not anything really usable IRL. It's neat but basically a promotional project for RWB.
Maybe I'm just seeing potential where there isn't any, but I really think if the people of the Archive could find a way to get their stuff stored in TUL, or perhaps build a Library of their own, the publishers couldn't go after them then, because to the outside observer, all they see is a buncha dudes playing Minecraft.
It's just not practical -- no Minecraft server or map can realistically hold all the books in the Archive, or even just the 500k that were removed. Even if it could, you'd only be able to read them by literally taking your avatar to the book object and reading it in the tiny in-game interface.
The Minecraft thing is just a gimmick to promote awareness of press freedom and censorship, not a plausible way to deliver books to people. If the IA wanted to "set books free" they'd be better off using torrents or something like Libgen (and even then they'd still be criminally liable for making the files available, even if the publishers couldn't stop the files from being shared further).
Maybe the fact you have to be there and read it while connected is the secret sauce to prove that it's a "real" library, meaning they have a fixed number of copies (max players connected to the server at any given time) and that helps them get protected the same way a real library is?
Doubt thats the point. I mean, real libraries at this point also lend out e-books, and i dont think they have an upper limit. Probably more to do that libraries (or the cities that finance them) have deals with publishers, and IA doesnt.
YMMV, but my local library system has a limit on the number of e-books that can be checked out at a time. Some e-books they only have 1 or 2 “copies” of, other they have 20+ “copies”. Seems dumb to me that there’s a limit, but I’m sure they’re forced to do it for a reason.
I had a look at this map and ifirc the problem is that the Minecraft books have a very small word limit. Only a few hundred words. You cannot even put a full article on a Minecraft book, let alone an actual book.
"Because what is legal is always right.
And what is right is always legal."
No?
In a fascist state, your mindset is welcome, "Well they broke the rule, they must pay," but do you never abstract one more level? Is the rule itself breaking something?
Those who downvote you say yes. Nuance is important. The rule has two main affects that I see.
Direct effect (the goal) :Publishers maintain a monopoly on bookselling low value books, the structure of their business preventing any competition.
Okay lets think about #1. Is that good or bad?
Indirect effect : the members of that society now have a restricted access to knowledge.
Okay lets think about #2. Is that good or bad?
Being critical in thought enough to recognize the flaws of the first quote is key.
This isn't about right or wrong though. It's explicitly about whether or not they broke the law.
They did. They did so loudly and proudly. This is why we are here, where they lost the legal battle.
If someone is pointing a gun at you with their finger on the trigger, and you say "Just try to shoot me! I dare you! You know you won't you little chickenshit." then you should have a pretty good expectation to get shot.
Everything else is valid, but significantly less important. IA has to operate in the rules that currently exist, not what the rules should be. There are better ways to get bad laws changed than to dare someone to find you guilty of them.
Maybe this case will be the first building block towards overturning the asinine digital lending laws. I would love if it was, but I'm not holding my breath.
It would be more accurate if you said, "This is not about right and wrong (for me)."
If you say it's not about right and wrong, dead stop, then you are pledging full faith to the institutions, the very ones we are critiquing.
Basically, you are dismissing my opinion as misguided, dismissing me as missing the point and I am telling you it was expressed exactly as intended.
In short, you are arguing on the wrong conceptual meta-level for me to respond without dismissing my own claim. If I take as True that "this isn't about right and wrong" (it is), then I am setting aside the power I have in a democratic society to say, "Fuck this I'm changing it." Maybe we've just been stuck in gridlock politics, with a ruling class that strips and monetizes every aspect of humanity that the society today doesn't realize the power citizens wield.
Not sure. Been fun to think and share thoughts with you though. Thanks for your time and have a nice night.
An impasse is a perfectly acceptable outcome on a sane platform like Lemmy.
Just want to let you know why you're being downvoted. It's not because you're wrong. From a legal perspective you're right. This court case was decided this way because you're right.
But that last line about having no sympathy. There's a meme for this.
It's an asshole perspective that the IA dearly needs to listen to. Don't poke a bear when you have so much to lose. Doesn't matter if you're "in the right". The history books are littered with the corpses of righteous people.
Let the EFF handle the quixotic battles, it's what they're best at.
One paragraph discusses action, the other discusses philosophy. I only took issue with your regressive philosophy. I'm open to correcting misunderstandings, elaborate if you feel I continue to miss something.
It's a quote of an opinion, so in general I ignore them. I'm usually more interested in distilling ideas constructed with some line of reasoning.
But I guess we can look at this one. Find it's essence. Tho it doesn't seem very deep..
"Societies with rule of law are dictatorships. How leaders are selected and the existence of fundamental Constitutional rights is not a factor."
So in short.
Having laws at all is a dictatorship.
Yeah, that is one of the opinions I'd ignore. It's easy to have that opinion inside the walls of a lawed society.
Luckily it is valid to respond to an opinion with an opinion, and mine is that I imagine everyone (except the strongest with the most resources) would abandon that perspective as soon as they lived in a world with no laws.
