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toomuchtodoyesterday at 9:34 PM1 replyview on HN

The Internet Archive tried, at great cost and peril, to defend its ability to lend books as an online library due to format shift (physical books get first sale doctrine, ebooks are licensed, you cannot own them), and were told no by the system, so “pirating” it is until copyright changes and becomes more reasonable. Disk is cheap, and the Internet global. Global distributed storage system durability and availability is the path to success until laws change imho.

(Archiving culture alone is not the same as also enabling universal access to the culture and knowledge one is acting as custodian for and serving to global citizens)

The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41447758 - September 2024 (793 comments)

https://archive.org/details/brewsterkahlelongnowfoundation

Totally unrelated: Dweb camp 2026 is coming up for those interested: https://dwebcamp.org/

(no affiliation with any person or entity mentioned in this comment)


Replies

xp84today at 12:22 AM

As a wise man once said, if “buying” isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing. Words to live by, arrrrrrrr.