The article is about the internet archive’s book library, however I’m very open to discussing tweets.
Maybe this is because I was taught “once it’s on the Internet it’s out there forever” growing up, but I have no problem with everything posted to the internet being archived forever. Why should someone have the ability to scrub their past and pretend they are perfect? Sure I don’t agree with every opinion I’ve ever posted, but that doesn’t mean I should be able to pretend I never said those things.
I see no difference between a newspaper recording a public speech and the Internet Archive recording a public tweet.
Why should someone have the ability to scrub their past and pretend they are perfect?
That’s not what it does. People are capable of changing on their own and thus should have the right for their past mistakes or opinions to be forgotten, or just to be forgotten anyway.
Having their past or just current opinions dragged up can actually have the opposite effect and force them to double down. So having some way of getting rid of it all could actually help them work through their terrible opinions.
If someone go out in public spouting terrible opinions, I think they should be responsible for explaining why they were wrong and why they no longer believe what they used to. That is hard and requires actually growing as a person, instead of just deleting their past and pretending they never said what they did.
We think it’s okay to grow, learn from it and not do it again without necessarily explaining it etc. But we do understand the value of doing it the way you think it should be done too.
I agree, those are examples of things that should be able to be deleted from an archive. In my mind those are different issues than just the archive though, and we should probably have laws in place ensuring that content like that can be removed from anywhere on the Internet.
But it really seems like you’re arguing that “some content shouldn’t be archived forever”, not that “an archive must receive consent before recording public Internet data.”
Yes. There’s an agreement and a system in place for that. While I support the internet archives efforts in general. Consent is a very important right. Not everyone cares or wants everything about them preserved. People also want the right to be forgotten.
A balance, definitely needs to be struck. Even if it is opt-out.
Im very curious what you mean by " there’s an agreement and a system in place for that." Can an author tell a library that they are not allowed to lend specific books? I’ve never heard of anything like that
An author can tell anyone that. And as long as they still control the rights to their work, they can enforce it. Should you sign your rights over to a publisher, then that becomes the publisher’s prerogative, not yours.
The consensus and case law surrounding traditional libraries. Is that libraries generally still bought physical copies. Even in the age of the e-book today. They still play by publisher rules of artificial scarcity and limited lending. Only lending out for a limited period, the number of licenses they purchased from the publisher.
The Internet archive however, allows everyone to infinitely duplicate items in the archive. Which is great for retention. But as a business model, it sucks. I support the archives mission. But is the archive supporting any of those they archive? And while generally invaluable in a good way. They don’t offer a way to be forgotten for those that do want to be forgotten. Then again neither do most major internet focused entities. Reddit etc undeleting comments their authors deleted for instance.
I really don’t understand how this would work. They can’t do the normal legal nonsense of claiming they are only selling me a license to the book, if they sell a physical copy of the book to me. After they sell me a physical book they cannot prevent me from lending or reselling it.
If authors/publishers could find some way to legally do this they would, I just don’t think they can.
I understand why a library can’t make copies of a book (as far as I understood it the internet archive was “limiting” access to how many copies of a book can be viewed at a time) the copyright protections are clear. But copyright does not cover resale or lending.
Oh then I misunderstood you. Yes, if an author self publishes and sells copies. Their control over said copy largely ends when it leaves their possession. In fact they only maintain one right to it after that point. The copy right. Which unfortunately IA is a bit fast and loose with.
I’m not opposed to “the right to be forgotten” but imo that should apply to private speech, not something posted publicly. If you publish something on the open internet I feel like you’ve given up that right (like an author deciding to give copies of a book to friends vs an author selling a book in stores)
These corporations absolutely are immortal thieves. But it is important to respect consent as well. The solution isn’t to ignore consent, but to change the system to make the thieves obsolete or irrelevant. To find better ways to reward those who culturally enrich society outside of capitalist cycles of false scarcity.
The Internet Archive is a good project.
However, like most tech obsessives, they still don’t understand, or perhaps care about, consent.
Does an author need to consent to have their book added to a physical library?
Once you publish and widely sell a work should an author really get to decide that their book cannot be borrowed or lent?
That isn’t what we are talking about, apologies for not being clear with that.
We are talking about them not taking down things like tweets etc without what they consider a ‘good reason’.
The article is about the internet archive’s book library, however I’m very open to discussing tweets.
Maybe this is because I was taught “once it’s on the Internet it’s out there forever” growing up, but I have no problem with everything posted to the internet being archived forever. Why should someone have the ability to scrub their past and pretend they are perfect? Sure I don’t agree with every opinion I’ve ever posted, but that doesn’t mean I should be able to pretend I never said those things.
I see no difference between a newspaper recording a public speech and the Internet Archive recording a public tweet.
That’s not what it does. People are capable of changing on their own and thus should have the right for their past mistakes or opinions to be forgotten, or just to be forgotten anyway.
Having their past or just current opinions dragged up can actually have the opposite effect and force them to double down. So having some way of getting rid of it all could actually help them work through their terrible opinions.
If someone go out in public spouting terrible opinions, I think they should be responsible for explaining why they were wrong and why they no longer believe what they used to. That is hard and requires actually growing as a person, instead of just deleting their past and pretending they never said what they did.
We think it’s okay to grow, learn from it and not do it again without necessarily explaining it etc. But we do understand the value of doing it the way you think it should be done too.
Because things can be posted about other people without their consent. Things like revenge porn, the location of air defenses, etc.
I think it’s something that is currently being figured out in various legal systems around the world.
I agree, those are examples of things that should be able to be deleted from an archive. In my mind those are different issues than just the archive though, and we should probably have laws in place ensuring that content like that can be removed from anywhere on the Internet.
But it really seems like you’re arguing that “some content shouldn’t be archived forever”, not that “an archive must receive consent before recording public Internet data.”
Yes. There’s an agreement and a system in place for that. While I support the internet archives efforts in general. Consent is a very important right. Not everyone cares or wants everything about them preserved. People also want the right to be forgotten.
A balance, definitely needs to be struck. Even if it is opt-out.
Im very curious what you mean by " there’s an agreement and a system in place for that." Can an author tell a library that they are not allowed to lend specific books? I’ve never heard of anything like that
An author can tell anyone that. And as long as they still control the rights to their work, they can enforce it. Should you sign your rights over to a publisher, then that becomes the publisher’s prerogative, not yours.
The consensus and case law surrounding traditional libraries. Is that libraries generally still bought physical copies. Even in the age of the e-book today. They still play by publisher rules of artificial scarcity and limited lending. Only lending out for a limited period, the number of licenses they purchased from the publisher.
The Internet archive however, allows everyone to infinitely duplicate items in the archive. Which is great for retention. But as a business model, it sucks. I support the archives mission. But is the archive supporting any of those they archive? And while generally invaluable in a good way. They don’t offer a way to be forgotten for those that do want to be forgotten. Then again neither do most major internet focused entities. Reddit etc undeleting comments their authors deleted for instance.
I really don’t understand how this would work. They can’t do the normal legal nonsense of claiming they are only selling me a license to the book, if they sell a physical copy of the book to me. After they sell me a physical book they cannot prevent me from lending or reselling it.
If authors/publishers could find some way to legally do this they would, I just don’t think they can.
I understand why a library can’t make copies of a book (as far as I understood it the internet archive was “limiting” access to how many copies of a book can be viewed at a time) the copyright protections are clear. But copyright does not cover resale or lending.
Oh then I misunderstood you. Yes, if an author self publishes and sells copies. Their control over said copy largely ends when it leaves their possession. In fact they only maintain one right to it after that point. The copy right. Which unfortunately IA is a bit fast and loose with.
I’m not opposed to “the right to be forgotten” but imo that should apply to private speech, not something posted publicly. If you publish something on the open internet I feel like you’ve given up that right (like an author deciding to give copies of a book to friends vs an author selling a book in stores)
Yes, this exactly.
Yeah, the concent of a megacorporation who owns the rights to a bunch of books shouldn’t matter when freedom of information is on the line.
That isn’t what we are talking about, apologies for not being clear with that.
We are talking about them not taking down things like tweets etc without what they consider a ‘good reason’.
These corporations absolutely are immortal thieves. But it is important to respect consent as well. The solution isn’t to ignore consent, but to change the system to make the thieves obsolete or irrelevant. To find better ways to reward those who culturally enrich society outside of capitalist cycles of false scarcity.