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The Internet Archive/National Emergency Library discussion can use its own thread, so here it is. A couple of news articles for everyone catching up: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/internet-archive-ends-emergency-library-early-to-appease-publishers/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/controversy-surrounds-national-emergency-library-180974554/ You're also welcome to post about anything else related to publishing here, too!
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Jun 14, 2020 03:05
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| # ? May 2, 2024 06:21 |
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Artists and authors being compensated for their work is good. The internet archive is a good resource. The internet archive should not be a free for all download source for contemporary works. That just about sums it up.
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Jun 14, 2020 03:35
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Basically, yes, I agree with jivjov. The Internet Archive does a lot of cool work and a lot of legitimate institutions upload their resources to it. But allowing any number of people to borrow their books is clearly over the line, because they don't have a central authority to make sure that people aren't uploading anything they please. And I think that's the real issue. Calling it a "national" library was misleading, as it implies that the library is state-backed and only available to people from one country, neither of which are true. Saying it's only temporary, for the duration of the pandemic, is equally alarming because we don't know how long the pandemic might last (what counts as an end to the pandemic, anyway?) and that end of unrestricted borrowing is reliant on the Archive's goodwill.
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Jun 14, 2020 05:05
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Why would authors want to force people to give them money? I mean, if you like someone's work and you think they're a good person, you're going to find a way to pay them, either by buying their stuff or giving them money directly on Patreon. Only people who are lovely or genuinely have no money are going to pirate your books so why worry about trying to force them to give you money? Why not just focus on the people who want to pay you and have the ability?
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Jun 14, 2020 14:36
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jivjov posted:The internet archive should not be a free for all download source for contemporary works. It never was and you are once again completely misrepresenting the facts of the situation.
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Jun 14, 2020 15:03
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Why would authors want to force people to give them money? They need money to live, OP
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Jun 14, 2020 15:04
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OctoberCountry posted:It never was and you are once again completely misrepresenting the facts of the situation. Yeah, the attempt to turn this whole thing into an argument about piracy wildly misses the point
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Jun 14, 2020 15:15
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Crimpolioni posted:They need money to live, OP I'm not saying authors shouldn't get money, I'm saying if they focus on the message of "If you support me and enjoy my work, buy my book, show up to my reading, donate to my Patreon" people will give them money. Most people aren't looking to constantly just steal steal steal, and they want an author they like to get paid.
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Jun 14, 2020 15:21
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Yeah, the attempt to turn this whole thing into an argument about piracy wildly misses the point https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/1272186232701956097?s=20
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Jun 14, 2020 16:56
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OctoberCountry posted:It never was and you are once again completely misrepresenting the facts of the situation. It was basically correct. Ask yourself: why are publishers not suing libraries if the IA is just being a library? Why did the IA fold if they were on a sound legal basis? Perhaps the facts differ. Maybe worth looking into.
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Jun 14, 2020 17:02
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now that I’ve been scolded by someone who uses the word “y’all,” I’ve completely reversed my opinion
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Jun 14, 2020 17:29
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Why do you keep posting NK Jemisins opinion like she is the prime authority on the matter This is.literally the third time you have used an NK Jemisin tweet as the sole basis of your argument Copernic posted:It was basically correct. Ask yourself: why are publishers not suing libraries if the IA is just being a library? Why did the IA fold if they were on a sound legal basis? Perhaps the facts differ. Maybe worth looking into. Why did a non profit fold instead of engaging in a lengthy legal battle with a much richer opponent that would certainly bankrupt them? Is that seriously your argument? Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jun 14, 2020 |
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Jun 14, 2020 17:34
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your opposition to predatory publishers is racism, actually. I win.
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Jun 14, 2020 17:38
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The people yelling at jemisin are definitly very concerned with predatory publishing practices, lmao
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Jun 14, 2020 17:47
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I mean, my essential position remains one more concerned about information preservation and access than anything else. I find the implications of total corporate control to access to information compounded with the century long exploitation and extension of copyright law to be a significant threat to future generations The sheer amount of information that might be lost or censored by the extended authority of companies to hold "licenses" to the material is concerning Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Jun 14, 2020 |
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Jun 14, 2020 17:48
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Crimpolioni posted:The people yelling at jemisin are definitly very concerned with predatory publishing practices, lmao Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to court the appearance that I agree with any bad people about something
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Jun 14, 2020 17:51
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Bonaventure posted:Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to court the appearance that I agree with any bad people about something was hoping for some more criticism of the way she speaks, tbh
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Jun 14, 2020 17:58
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it is indeed a powerful talisman.
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Jun 14, 2020 18:07
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The ebooks were still DRM-protected and were explicitly provided for people who would be getting them from brick-and-mortar libraries anyway but couldn't because of the lockdown.
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Jun 14, 2020 18:09
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I feel like there's a competing at the heart of this: what do authors themselves want. A certain view is that authors write to progress society, to impart a view and become another member of the conversation. I know there are authors who write so their solitude isn't absolute. It's a way of putting themselves and their views forwards and ask for attention, for their work, to be valued. This competes with the ideas authors want to make money, to survive, and more. Becoming an author "to get rich" seems foolish, but at the centre of that is a truth. Some authors do want their work to provide them with comfort and safety, and more. Then there's the idea that many authors don't even have "safety" from what little their works provide, even if it does alter the conversation at the centre of society. And many authors have far more than mere safety, but comforts and riches, despite doing nothing to add to any conversation. Should authors be "noble" and take comfort from the viewpoints they're adding to society? Should authors sacrifice for art? Is it wrong to profit from something necessary to society? Is it wrong to get rich from placating the needs of people, beyond the furthering of any society? None of these questions are actually about writing, really.
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Jun 14, 2020 21:41
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This is a red herring, and her attempts to tie this issue to larger racial issues are fairly insulting to anyone with a brain. Suing the internet archive won't give authors any additional control over their work(which they are receiving a pittance for in any case under the present system), it will give the large publishers bringing the lawsuit greater control over it, and possibly have an effect on how libraries distribute books more broadly. The publishers would like a world in which libraries don't exist and you have to pay them to access all books.
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Jun 14, 2020 22:40
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Absolutely To reiterate, internet archive isnt piracy However, piracy has been the sole progressive force behind digital distribution and the piracy label is something corporations can conveniently attach to any force of technological progress that challenges the hegemony they have created.
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Jun 14, 2020 22:44
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Soulseek has done more for art than a million lawyers ever could
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Jun 14, 2020 22:59
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I think the biggest hegemony they protect was brought up in the previous thread. The idea they're "guardians" of quality. If you want to be discussed as part of "the culture," featured in newspapers that set the cultural conversation, pushed into bookstores as part of the meaning-of-now, then you need (as it stands) publishers. Their power is that they exist and decide what gets to exist. This is as much a function of marketing as it is control over what gets made into a book. There's plenty of ways to have any writing appear, in book form, as part of some publishing networks, as part of "piracy" networks. Their power isn't that these are shut down in fact, but that they're effectively shut down by softer powers in determining what's valid.
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Jun 14, 2020 23:03
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As for the authors going "But I want to make money from my work!" it reminds me of a joke someone once told me about how American politics works. You are at a restaurant with a rich friend and an immigrant friend and combine your money to pay for the meal. Each of you ate an equal amount of food at the same price. The waiter comes back with ten dollars in change. The rich friend takes nine dollars and then says to you "that immigrant wants your dollar!" Its sort of the same idea here. If your concern is making a living off your writing, the non profit digital library is not the one ripping you off.
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Jun 14, 2020 23:08
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I use the IA for my research on a regular basis, which focuses primarily on American books and texts between the Civil War and WWII. While a lot of stuff is available through Hathitrust, there are times when IA is the only source for some of the stuff I'm interested in. And because one of my foci of actually digital preservation of texts, the IAs preservation of digital variants is itself pretty interesting to me. The availability of high quality OCR-able scans has completely changed the nature of the work I do in ways that are problematic but still, I would argue, fundamentally more democratic than was possible in the past. I am no longer confined to texts which have institutional support; I can read much more broadly and encounter works written and printed by marginalized groups which would have been difficult to access even if anyone had really known they existed in some basement of a University or private library somewhere. In this perspective, the challenge is not that copies of successful or mainstream texts will get stuffed behind a paywall but the opposite: that marginal works, because they have nobody to advocate for them, will get lost in the corporate archives in a living death where they are still under copyright but not being read by anyone. Most books don't make money and most books are seldom if ever read. I'm skeptical of the various moral claims pro and con what IA is doing but I can only say that for *my* purposes it's more useful the more open it is.
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Jun 14, 2020 23:55
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Copernic posted:It was basically correct. Ask yourself: why are publishers not suing libraries if the IA is just being a library? Why did the IA fold if they were on a sound legal basis? Perhaps the facts differ. Maybe worth looking into. Legal battles are determined by who is richer, not who is right.
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Jun 15, 2020 00:22
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jivjov posted:The internet archive should not be a free for all download source for contemporary works. Actually this would be extremely cool and good. The technology is there and only reason it hasn't happened is because of the inefficiencies of capitalism. The state should subsidize artists, and art should be available to the masses. Under a socialist system, art rooted in currently oppressed communities that publishers deem "unprofitable" can be funded and made available to a mass audience. Society has advanced past the need for capitalist publishers.
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Jun 15, 2020 02:56
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Atrocious Joe posted:Actually this would be extremely cool and good. The technology is there and only reason it hasn't happened is because of the inefficiencies of capitalism. The state should subsidize artists, and art should be available to the masses. Under a socialist system, art rooted in currently oppressed communities that publishers deem "unprofitable" can be funded and made available to a mass audience. Society has advanced past the need for capitalist publishers. So patronage again.
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Jun 15, 2020 03:35
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Atrocious Joe posted:Actually this would be extremely cool and good. The technology is there and only reason it hasn't happened is because of the inefficiencies of capitalism. The state should subsidize artists, and art should be available to the masses. Under a socialist system, art rooted in currently oppressed communities that publishers deem "unprofitable" can be funded and made available to a mass audience. Society has advanced past the need for capitalist publishers. And when authors stop needing to rely on sales and actually do get that state sponsored stipend, then I'm all for it. It is manifestly cruel and just completely boneheaded to say to authors "Despite living in a civilization that requires you to make money, we're gonna hold you to more idealistic and utopian standards".
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Jun 15, 2020 07:28
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Mrenda posted:I feel like there's a competing at the heart of this: what do authors themselves want. A certain view is that authors write to progress society, to impart a view and become another member of the conversation. I know there are authors who write so their solitude isn't absolute. It's a way of putting themselves and their views forwards and ask for attention, for their work, to be valued. This competes with the ideas authors want to make money, to survive, and more. Becoming an author "to get rich" seems foolish, but at the centre of that is a truth. Some authors do want their work to provide them with comfort and safety, and more. Then there's the idea that many authors don't even have "safety" from what little their works provide, even if it does alter the conversation at the centre of society. And many authors have far more than mere safety, but comforts and riches, despite doing nothing to add to any conversation. This is a false dichotomy; you can want both, and neither desire invalidates the other. Even great artists weren't in it just to progress society; we know Shakespeare was more interested in social climbing than preserving his legacy as a playwright; Tolstoy wrote "Master and Man" (iirc) to add to a collection of previously-written short stories, so people would buy it; Joyce felt free to drag Oliver Gogarty's reputation through the mud. An author's intentions have nothing to do with whether or not they should be paid for their writing. quote:Should authors be "noble" and take comfort from the viewpoints they're adding to society? Should authors sacrifice for art? Is it wrong to profit from something necessary to society? Is it wrong to get rich from placating the needs of people, beyond the furthering of any society? None of these questions are actually about writing, really. Authors shouldn't be "noble" any more than nurses should be.
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Jun 15, 2020 08:42
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jivjov posted:And when authors stop needing to rely on sales and actually do get that state sponsored stipend, then I'm all for it. It is manifestly cruel and just completely boneheaded to say to authors "Despite living in a civilization that requires you to make money, we're gonna hold you to more idealistic and utopian standards". Its feels a lot like not tipping the waitress, and saying it's because she should be getting a liveable wage without having to simper for the customers.
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Jun 15, 2020 09:02
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Crimpolioni posted:Its feels a lot like not tipping the waitress, and saying it's because she should be getting a liveable wage without having to simper for the customers. This is such a great comparison, yeah. Tip culture sucks and needs to end. But I still tip because I can't end the practice of underpaying waitstaff with naught but my own wishful thinking.
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Jun 15, 2020 13:53
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The tipping metaphor is A. reductive and B. inaccurate to the topic. As long as the paradigm is kept to "If you use thing, pay person" without considering that we are discussing information and not a service its going to miss a lot of the significance. Access to information is not equivalent to receiving service from a waiter, and reducing the author's role in the construction of information to that of a "provider" is both reductive and inaccurate.
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Jun 15, 2020 14:15
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I do think there is a certain weird theoretical conundrum of what exactly a book is, and the type of labor required to produce it. Like, most workers don't care what happens to commodities they work on, because they are paid by the hour, not by how the commodity they produce preforms in the market. It's obvious though that the text of books aren't commodities, because they aren't interchangeable. A physical book of course is a commodity, as any copy of " Star Wars: Aftermath" is replaceable by any other copy. The increasing popularity of ebooks is making physical books less important than the text of the book.* Publishers treat the text of books like commodities too though. For example, a publisher looks to put out a certain number of YA, crime, and romance novels a quarter. There has to be some interchangeability when it comes to books for that thinking to make sense. To me, the way publishers approach writers most resembles to me how television shopping channels like QVC approach small businesses and inventors. Or at least how Lori Greiner makes her QVC deals on Shark Tank. In those deals, the larger television seller gives an initial sum to the small business to begin selling their product, but takes most the profit. If the product sells past a certain number, the originating small business gets a bigger share of the profit. I know this doesn't exactly resemble authors' relationship with publishers, but its closer than that of the average wage worker's experience. So, is writing a book regular labor, and should it be paid by the time required to produce it? Or is writing an entrepreneurial enterprise, an investment of time and energy by an author that has a chance of not paying off? Is a writer a worker or an entrepreneur? *Why do we focus so much on authors being robbed of a sales because of piracy, and not all the layoffs at printers and bookstores caused by the shift to ebooks?
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Jun 15, 2020 15:10
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Atrocious Joe posted:
Because half of TBB are amateur authors who dream of being the next GRRM
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Jun 15, 2020 15:19
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Atrocious Joe posted:*Why do we focus so much on authors being robbed of a sales because of piracy, and not all the layoffs at printers and bookstores caused by the shift to ebooks? The same reason it's being ignored that the lawsuit has nothing to do with paying authors and is all about a handful of giant companies setting favorable legal precedent to tighten their control over digital distribution.
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Jun 15, 2020 15:56
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Atrocious Joe posted:the shift to ebooks
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Jun 15, 2020 16:38
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I'm glad to see this brought up because it is a popular misconception that ebooks have killed print when in fact, more print books are bought now than ever before. But I think his point would still be supported by different wording such as "the expansion to ebooks." It may not be the case that ebooks are taking market share from print, but they're an identifiably new phenomenon with their own massive economic footprint as well.
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Jun 15, 2020 17:46
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| # ? May 2, 2024 06:21 |
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Atrocious Joe posted:I do think there is a certain weird theoretical conundrum of what exactly a book is, and the type of labor required to produce it. Like, most workers don't care what happens to commodities they work on, because they are paid by the hour, not by how the commodity they produce preforms in the market. I dunno about this. There's no "text" of a book outside of a material instance of that text. If you have words, they're represented in some form, not simply when they're published, but even when they're being produced. The words that I'm writing right now are being rendered on my screen, you're reading them on yours etc. The idea of a text that exists independently of its material form is difficult for me, as a fairly committed materialist, to countenance. Raymond Williams, my favorite dude, has some interesting stuff to say on this topic in Marxism and Literature: quote:If 'reality' and 'speaking about reality' (the 'material social process' and 'language') are taken as categorically distinct, concepts such as 'reflection' and 'mediation' are inevitable. The same pressure can be observed in attempts to interpret the Marxist phrase 'the production and reproduction of real life' as if production were the primary social (economic) process and 'reproduction' its 'symbolic' or 'signifying' or 'cultural' counterpart. Such attempts are either alternatives to the Marxist emphasis on an inherent and constitutive 'practical consciousness', or, at their best, ways of specifying its actual operations. The problem is different, from the beginning, if we see language and signification as indissoluble elements of the material social process itself, involved all the time in both production and reproduction....(99) Atrocious Joe posted:So, is writing a book regular labor, and should it be paid by the time required to produce it? Or is writing an entrepreneurial enterprise, an investment of time and energy by an author that has a chance of not paying off? Is a writer a worker or an entrepreneur? I'm not sure what to make of this question, in part because I'm not sure I understand the definition of "regular labor" being employed here. Piecework, which still exists in many factories, seems to me to be form of regular labor. Although it is of course not exactly the same as labor paid by the hour, it is also nothing like entrepreneurship. The worker is no more really an entrepreneur than an Uber driver is. Moreover, selling your labor by the hour is also an investment of time and energy that has a chance of not paying off -- this is in fact the wager that workers and businesses make when they contract for hourly labor at a stable rate: I'm giving you my hour now, but you're not paying me until next Tuesday, by which point the value of the dollar you're paying me may have fallen or risen. Behind this question I think there are certain more fundamental questions about consent and relation to the means of production that play a structural role in determining what writers write, how they write it, how it gets distributed and so forth. Atrocious Joe posted:*Why do we focus so much on authors being robbed of a sales because of piracy, and not all the layoffs at printers and bookstores caused by the shift to ebooks? Apropos of this, Matt Kirschenbaum is a phenomenal scholar who works at the intersection of book history and digital culture. His two most recent works, Bibliologistics: The Nature of Books Now or a Memorable Fancy and Books.Files:Preservation of Digital Assets in the Contemporary Publishing Industry: A Report take a look at how much has changed in the production process of books in late capital. Might help put some meat on the bones of the conversation we're having here. cda fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jun 15, 2020 |
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Jun 15, 2020 18:33
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