this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023

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Internet archive is library of alexandria of our time (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I hope this time it wont burn down

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 10 months ago

remember, the library of Alexandria only burnt down because they lost funding and couldn't afford maintenance

[–] [email protected] 54 points 10 months ago

Internet Archive deserves public funding

[–] [email protected] 50 points 10 months ago

I agree and would add Wikipedia.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They must be getting 1,000 take down notices a day. Some of the videos and music up there that you can just download is staggering.

[+] [email protected] -9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Yea imo, they’ve done too far in their scope. You can’t just put up copyrighted works that are still readily for sale unrestricted like that. The whole library model only makes sense based on scarcity.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I would argue broadening of the scope only increases legitimacy—if the goal is to build an archive of literally everything, any objection to an individual piece of content is of diminishing validity.

And FWIW, I think an archive of everything is an incredibly valuable endeavour we should protect. We've already lost far too much media.

[+] [email protected] -12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Be realistic. If every movie ever produced were legally available on IA, no one would ever buy a movie again. If no one ever buys a movie again, the industry would crumble overnight and there would no longer be new movies. Libraries exist in the physical space under much stricter limitations. They simply can’t stock a million copies of the same thing. The logistics limit them. Going digital is a paradigm shift that causes the entire model to be questioned, especially if these pieces of media aren’t being paid for.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Straight up piracy is simpler than getting all your content from archive.org if it was there anyway (e.g. the direct download speeds are very limited, there's no real discoverability). People still pay for movies and streaming services, so if the content being available for free was going to kill the industry, it would have already happened.

In fact we've repeatedly seen over and over again, people just pay for content if the service is actually better than piracy. Convenience is king, and archive.org is not optimised for convenient content consumption à la netflix, and as far as I can tell changing that is not a goal of theirs.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are we talking about the merits of the Internet Archive as a library or whether or not piracy matters? If you conflate the two, then IA is piracy and they will lose.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Ah sorry, I may have misunderstood you, I thought you were suggesting if the content was on IA people would pirate the content from there and destroy the film industry.

I pointed out that the focus is archival and not making it easy to pirate stuff, and that there already exists easier ways to do that. Therefore it wouldn't change anything that's not happening already except preserving human culture (which is a particularly valuable endeavour in my opinion)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Another commentator mentioned allowing uploading but not downloading might be the solution. If the work became orphaned or anything it could be opened up for download.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Why not? That's exactly what physical libraries do. Why should it be any different for a library that so happens to be on the internet?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It's because you're not using that legally bought copy. You're creating a new copy from that one.

I love the internet archive, especially when dealing with older consoles and pc's but I see why there's a problem. I think copyrighted works should probably still be uploaded but maybe not downloadable until there's no other way. That way we can upload for posterity without it being linked to piracy. But also that's an unrealistic moderation nightmare to deal with

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

You can copy blu-rays you got from your library. You can scan a book. If the time spend doing so, is your only argument, that's pretty weak. No offense, that's just what it is.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The issue is that if you do personal copies you're not usually putting them out there for the whole world to see publicly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

With some exceptions, everyone can visit every library everywhere on earth. It's not different than a big website, aside of some inconsistencies.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago

Libraries aren't making endless copies of things that people can take and not give back though

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

That’s a good idea.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's not a very big deal that it burnt down.

The library was largely made of copies, and not much was actually lost.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I thought they kept the originals and returned the copies? Plus even if they were copies, the chances that those copies were the only remaining one when it burnt down is pretty high

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Barely anything was left in the library by the time it burned down. It's quite a myth that all that much was lost at all. By the time of its destruction, most of its books and knowledge has been moved elsewhere due to decades of reduced funding and support.

Furthermore, the burning did not destroy the entire library. It was a gradual process over a long period of time. What destroyed far more of the books is a lack of care to copy them. Paper and papyrus don't last that long, so the only way to permanently maintain them was by copying them out again. Which is a lot of work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Oh I didn't know that, that's super interesting! Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Well on its way to becoming an STC

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Climate change is gonna melt this bitch to the core.