And anyway, why is it unreasonable for copyright holders to expect to be able to get paid for their work rather than have a massive library loophole where they just never get paid as long as you're a nonprofit?
Here you go, you can steal beer from my store as long as you’re a nonprofit organization.
> For a decade, the Archive had loaned out individual e-books to one user at a time without triggering any lawsuits. That changed when IA decided to temporarily lift the cap on loans from its Open Library project
So stupid. They had a working system that they blew up through their own actions and now the library is dead.
IMO the only two reform the copyright system needs are DCMA takedown abuse and copyright term length. All the other concepts of copyright make perfect sense. If I create something I should be able to consent to giving or not giving it to someone.
A lot of the software engineers on this forum wouldn’t like what happens to their profession without copyright.
If there were no copyrights, no author would make any money.
And how many actually make a living off of writing books? The authors I know all have jobs.
Cory Doctorow showed that this isn't true.
(I think the US copyright system is hugely broken and the social contract needs to be re-negotiated, but I comment here in the interests of facts, not in support of the broken system.)
It's easier to make money when you comply with The Man
I'm old enough to recall the term in active use, and to have received the appellation from one who'd had it likewise handed down. I regard both as epiphenomena of the Internet's frontier or "Wild West" days, of which California has proven as terminal as it was for the nominate example after the US Civil War - not wholly for dissimilar reasons, if we take Vietnam, for the Internet, as the war whose loss would spur the migration.
The copyright system as a whole should by torn up.
At least it give a clear signal to anyone with a ounce of moral which publisher to avoid at all cost.