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Comment by beebmam | Hacker News Reader

For me, I can't help but place blame on the actual agents of its potential demise: the plaintiffs of this lawsuit

Yes, I think that perspective is actually more relevant, even if the IA might have made a mistake.

But I see only victims in this conflict. Most authors today don't really eat with golden spoons and to have an organisation that helps them get their fair share of the work they put into the books is certainly necessary in the internet age.

On the other hand the internet archive is an extremely valuable service. I hope some form of agreement can be reached that doesn't end in even more dysfunctional laws or judgments around copyright or the end of business for any participant.

Personally, I find it hard to be sympathetic to the publishers and authors when they are so over-the-top. Painting the Internet Archive as "vile" and claiming they don't provide any valuable service strikes me as so far from the truth as to be insulting. It feels like they are targeting people who don't really know much about what IA is or what they do... That makes me wonder if it's really about more than IA and their emergency lending program, but now I'm probably starting to sound paranoid.

I'm sure that some authors lost some dollars to this program, but is it really all that much? The coverage on the lawsuit doesn't mention how much injury the publishers (and, to a much lesser degree, their authors) have suffered.

I’m writing a novel. I’ve been at it since 2016, partly because project planning is just as hard outside of software and partly because I have a full-time job too. Based on what people like Charlie Stross blog about, and based on the few sales estimates I can find, even if I reach the heady highs of ranking 214th biggest SciFi writer by sales, I will make less than $40k in lifetime sales for four year’s work.

As income goes, this is a lottery.

This has little or nothing to do with any supposed reduction in book sales the Internet Archive or any other library, dead-tree or bittorrent, has caused, and quite a lot to do with publishers screwing authors out of royalties for books they do sell. I have no sympathy any author too stupid to realize that publishers are to blame for their still needing a day job after (for example of Myke Cole) twelve books, two TV shows, and a comic series.

If piracy had zero or positive impact, a genuinely greedy publisher wouldn’t care or would actively encourage it.

When I do finally finish this thing and try to get it published, I will go though a normal publisher, because I like listening to the advice of people who’ve been though things before: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/03/why-i-d...

Also, no: most authors need day jobs because sales are a generally power-law distributions.

Whoa, you have very inflated view of how much an author makes. I follow Myke Cole on Twitter his tag line is:

9 fantasy novels, 1 sci-fi novel, 2 history books, 2 TV shows, 1 comic series, 1 day job, 0 sleep

The guy has published 12 books and STILL needs a day job.

I'm not familiar with Myke Cole or his books. I'm sure they are quite good. I think that quality is more important then quantity though.

Some people on here seem to make one app and kick back for years on the earnings while others churn out one after the other unprofitable software tool.

I myself have written 3 novella, 1 book of short stories, 1 movie, 2 native apps, and 4 web apps. I can't live on the royalties from any of them but I know there are people who do less and get more.

This is the fallacy of assuming that people would pay for content they can't pirate.

That’s a reply to an argument for abolishing BitTorrent, and not on-topic. What the Archive did is obviate the need to even pirate: everyone could get content “for free” from a legal entity operating under US laws and subsuming all liabilities.

Suddenly you can get your book for free without even the legal or ethical hazards.

I haven't seen any evidence that the shrinking earnings of authors are related to piracy. From what I've read, publishers are simply retaining more of the profits for themselves and, often, theorizing that piracy is somehow raising their costs yet providing little by way of documentation.

https://www.statista.com/topics/3928/reading-habits-in-the-u...

It seems unlikely to me that piracy is a major factor, as headline-grabbing as it often tends to be. It's hard for me to even hazard a guess how the IA's "emergency library" would really affect things; it's not piracy in any conventional understanding of the term, but maybe that makes it more likely to cost authors potential sales, because it's so easy to read the book for free. But I want to triple underline that maybe and surround it with question marks.

That's what sukilot said: it is a fallacy to assume that people would pay for content that they can't pirate. In actuality, it's the other way around: people pirate content that they can't pay for (either because they have no money (at all or in a currency that the publisher accepts), or because the publish refuses to deliver the content (either at all or in a format they can actully use, ie not DRM-encumbered or otherwise defective)).

That would be great if I’ve misunderstood and the Internet Archive is really only lending our books that aren’t for sale. (And, as is probably universal on this site, I think DRM in books is both bad and dumb: bad for accessibility, dumb because of how easy it is to OCR text).

Likewise, unless I misunderstood, they already had a legit lending library system set up, but they broke the rules and made it infinite free copies for everyone.

I hope there is a happy ending to this story, because I like the internet archive, but at the moment it looks like they got their legal advice from the same minds who came up with Freeman Of The Land.

> That would be great if I've misunderstood and the Internet Archive is really only lending our books that aren't for sale.

I'm not sure if they are only lending books that aren't for sale, but my understanding is that the overwhelming majority of the books involved are in fact not available for purchase. A book that is only available in DRM-encumbered form is not available at all.

There is no fallacy in my statement, it's an anecdote supplied to show some fairly popular, published authors are not making enough money to quit their day job. For those authors, losing income would be painful. It's an example that proves the comment I'm replying to isn't correct.

I'm not even arguing that they would lose money.

They are targeting their competitor.

The authors aren't involved in this, unfortunately.

The plaintiffs here are publishers—you know, the ones who take the vast majority of all profit from all book sales, despite massive increases in scalability over the past century.

If the plaintiffs win this, authors won't see a cent.

I am an author, I'm published by one of the publishers involved, and I'm very happy that they're doing it.

"...to have an organisation that helps them get their fair share of the work they put into the books is certainly necessary in the internet age..."

The publishers?

IA has ruffled a lot of feathers over the years with their copying of copyrighted content, putting all the eggs in a single basket was understandable given the resource constraints they are operating under, starting a war using that basket as a shield was not the best move they could have made, especially knowing who the opposition is.

The publishers have been out for their blood for a long time, this is essentially handing them a very easy victory. They'll be very lucky if they survive - and so will we.

Assuming it is possible to copy the data I would support an effort to make an off-line backup on the off chance that they get shut down completely and lose access to their assets.

The plaintiffs are arguing that IA broke the law and that they as plaintiffs had their rights violated.

If IA shuts down it will technically be the courts fining them, but I have trouble pinning blame on the court or the injured party asking for relief. Nor can IA claim ignorance here.

That's a bit like blaming the iceberg for sinking the Titanic. I mean, what did you expect was going to happen?

Either way, whoever gets the blame doesn't matter to the outcome. Court rulings don't have to be popular.

"Without any license or any payment to authors or publishers, [Internet Archive] scans print books"

That's a lie, unless they are alleging that those print books were stolen, they were bought and paid for. That is how print books work, for the most part?

The entire sentence is not a lie, as you know. You extraction of the first part is misleading.

That is not how digital lending libraries work. You must only lend out the number of copies you own. Similarly, you can’t buy a movie and set up a free streaming site. IA has no legal leg to stand on

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