The objections to this oversimplified reasoning usually point to the fact that, among other things, there's a documented rise in obesity among animals as well, across a variety of situations (feral rats, lab primates, domestic pets). Lab primates aren't eating out more or getting less PE in schools, which suggests the possibility of an environmental factor[1].
> particularly deep fried foods.
This is a very early-1990s understanding of nutrition. The low-fat recommendations pushed by the USDA and followed to a large degree by American consumers didn't do anything to halt the obesity rise, because excess dietary fat isn't nearly as bad for you as excess processed carbs/sugar.
Although descriptive of the legal situation, I object to the term "pirate library". There is no practical difference between a pirate library and a brick and mortar library, except the larger stock of books online. My local library even has a photocopier.
A library is a place where you can choose a book, and read it for free. That's how it's been for thousands of years. Copyright is a modern intruder and has no right to brand bone fide libraries as "pirate".
> There is no practical difference between a pirate library and a brick and mortar library, except the larger stock of books online.
Physical libraries purchase the books they own, own them legally, and can legally lend them out. The practical difference between the two couldn't be more stark - physical libraries operate within the law, pirates operate in spite of it.
>My local library even has a photocopier.
They don't intend for you to use it to copy the books they lend you, though. There's a reason that libraries don't run printing presses in the back and only carry limited copies of a book - because they depend on copyright law for their survival.
> Physical libraries purchase the books they own, own them legally, and can legally lend them out. The practical difference between the two couldn't be more stark - physical libraries operate within the law, pirates operate in spite of it.
The law is broken. There is no legal mechanism to lend out a digital file. That's the law's fault, not the lender's fault.
> libraries don't run printing presses in the back and only carry limited copies of a book
Now that is an important difference. But no one bothers trying to make a lend-only digital library because it's more difficult and no less illegal.
> The law is broken. There is no legal mechanism to lend out a digital file. That's the law's fault, not the lender's fault.
Oh yes, there are laws covering lending out digital files. They might not have been written specifically for the purpose but they're used anyway. Lending out digital files is, as anyone who has an insight in the industry, fraught with all sorts of silly artificial restrictions. In Sweden it is actually much more expensive for a library to lend out a digital publication that a physical one, especially when the publication is recent and popular. Depending on the contract the library has with the publisher they'll have to buy a one-time license any time a publication is lent out, other contracts stipulate a fee per loan plus an artificial 'wear' limit on digital publications. In contrast a physical publication is bought once - at a higher price than that charged in a book shop - after which it can be lent out until it falls apart.
I do not borrow digital publications from the library for this reason. Where digital technology could be used to further the mission of libraries it is now used to counter them. How... very much expected. Fortunately there are alternatives, as mentioned in the article.
Imagine you go to Ancient Greece and tell them: "in the future there will be a library of over 1 million books and papers containing the knowledge of the world, that any person rich or poor can access from almost anywhere in the world"
Do you think their reaction will be: A) wonder that such a library can exist, or B) to tell you that it is not a library because of the flagrant copyright violations.
Libgen and scihub are among the most amazing products of humanity, that will receive a prominent place in human history. That they are illegal is an almost boring item of trivia.
Not in the US. US libraries are protected under what is referred to as the "first sale" doctrine, meaning that once a physical object is purchased, it's the purchasers prerogative to do whatever they like with it, including loan it. Publishers and libraries have a bit of a love/hate relationship. Even though publishers would like to prevent loaning, libraries buy a lot of material and also purchase quite a bit from the back catalog of titles that would otherwise not sell much any more.
Also not in Sweden, but the government uses a small trick where tax money is diverted to Swedish (exclusively) authors that have a book loaned. This is technically not part of copyright law since Berne convention prohibits countries from making a distinction between authors of different nations.
Are there a lot of writers publishing Swedish only? I'm learning Swedish very slowly, and would love to know how the Nordic languages are fairing amidst English's cultural domination.
It depends on what you would consider a lot. The swedish writers organisation has about 3000 members [1] and 1720 Swedish books of fiction was published 2016 [2].
If Elsevier or IEEE had a subscription model priced like Netflix, I'd be glad to give them my money. But as it is, access to academic and research material at low rates, to me is a question of survival. I'm glad and extremely grateful for the work of scholars like Elbakyan. They are basically doing God's work as far as I am concerned.
When you sign up for IEEE they SPAM you relentlessly for years even after you close your account. I'm not a fan of the IEEE for that reason or for their highly conservative political stance.
Yes, they use call centers with pressure tactics to get you to keep it up. Almost all EE research is done via an IEEE whitepaper though, so not much of a choice.
Negotiated might be strong term. Most libraries work through middlemen who do that negotiation and are then given a rate that they can take or leave. There's no "shopping around" for digital media since publishers control the pricing and availability. This is proving to be a budgeting challenge since digital media is more expensive that physical. There are no discounts from wholesalers for bulk purchasing. Many libraries get physical media at up to a 40% discount from retail because they buy so much.
Of course, digital media does not need to be maintained. It does not need to be cataloged and reshelved; it does not wear out or get damaged. But libraries are still adapting to this shift since there still is a great deal of physical media checking out and that staff is still needed.
The library landscape is surprisingly varied in the United States. Big systems such as New York, Chicago and Los Angelos exert a huge amount of control on the "middle men" that service them (and a 40% discount is where all systems start and always have). This is of course not surprising. Like all parts of the book industry the ecosystem surrounding libraries is changing very fast.
The digital media side is not as clear as you are making it out to be. Publishers do not in fact set the pricing and availability, because the publishers don't particularly want to be in the business of servicing libraries (just like they don't want to be in the business of library binding and cataloging) so they have to allow third parties the ability to do some negotiations. In many ways its just like physical books (the cost of physical books is largely not the act of creating the physical copy).
The difference is that the classic rift between desires of libraries and publishers is more stark with electronic books. Libraries want to provide access as cheaply as possible usually as a governmental agency and publishers want to have a profitable business.
That doesn't even begin to talk about the existential crisis libraries are going through. Its a fairly interesting thing to watch as an outside observer.
I don't work in this space but my wife does and I've had drinks with enough publishers, jobbers and librarians to see it as fascinating
I am a librarian who works with digital media, so I see this industry close up as part of my job. So a few things:
The vast majority of libraries are not NYPL, LAPL, King County PL, etc. Most are medium to small and servicing almost every town in the United States. They are arranged in a dizzying array of geographic, bureaucratic and budgetary configurations. I once worked with a library that was a unified system with shelf level access to items, but every municipality funded its own local branch, so money went into a central system and had to be accounted for when purchasing items. They handled 15 different budgets. It was staggering.
This make negotiation impossible. We rely on vendors like Overdrive, Baker and Taylor, Midwest Tape, Recorded Books, etc, to provide access to digital materials. And though there are sales, digital materials are unquestionably more expensive. I work in a system with a service population of about 500,000 (it's a statewide consortia of local libraries), and hold lists can run into the 100s for a popular title. If the title is from Penguin Random House, it will likely cost more than $50 per copy, leading to thousands of dollars just to keep hold times down to a few months. If the publisher is Harper Collins or Simon and Schuster the price will be more reasonable, but we lose copies as we check them out. For example, say we buy 15 copies that have 52 checkouts each. As soon as we've checked those 15 copies out 52 times, we're down to 14 copies. It is very challenging and if we exerted influence, it would not be like this. And our that our most popular device, the Kindle, is controlled by a vendor that is fanatical about its control over the service and was dragged kicking and screaming into working with libraries.
But physical materials still remain our most popular items. E-book sales have stagnated at around 35% (not including Amazon's nebulous self-publishing numbers) and we've seen the same in libraries. That makes it difficult to shift staff. As a colleague of mine once said, "In government I can't lay everyone off and rehire people with the right skills". Over time it will work out, but in the short term the budgetary challenges are limiting access.
All that said, we are healthy. The library as a physical space and American institution will be OK because people have a strong attachment to the idea and the use case.
> This make negotiation impossible. We rely on vendors like Overdrive, Baker and Taylor, Midwest Tape, Recorded Books, etc, to provide access to digital materials.
But how is that different than your previous interactions with the wholesale/jobber market? You relied on them for rebinding, catalog record import, fulfillment, etc. The only difference I can see is that its harder to become competent in the delivery of e-books than it is in the delivery of physical books because its more new.
> and hold lists can run into the 100s for a popular title
How much of that is just that demand is easier to generate with digital books. I don't need to go to the library to get the book, there is no cost to be on a hold list and it is delivered as soon as it is available?
> It is very challenging and if we exerted influence, it would not be like this
Sure, but if you could exert perfect influence you'd get the books for free ;)
Look, I'm not saying we've reached an optimal system for ebooks and libraries but its fairly easy to understand the publishers position. Too many people get caught up in the physical costs of books, which are not what the publisher is worried about. They are worried about recouping all the pre-production IP costs and marketing dollars they put into the things that don't sell. That they've fallen back onto a model that poorly mimics physical books is probably unfortunate, but completely unsurprising.
> All that said, we are healthy. The library as a physical space and American institution will be OK because people have a strong attachment to the idea and the use case.
Completely and totally agree and can think of few groups of people more likely to adapt to the new information dense world than librarians. I'm much more worried about the publishers...
What do you mean by this? At least at my library, there is no monetary cost to be on the hold list for any resource, but you can only put a hold on a limited number of resources; and Overdrive checkouts work just the same.
> But how is that different than your previous interactions with the wholesale/jobber market? You relied on them for rebinding, catalog record import, fulfillment, etc. The only difference I can see is that its harder to become competent in the delivery of e-books than it is in the delivery of physical books because its more new.
Because working with wholesalers is different than working with agency pricing, especially once you bring DRM into the fold. Previously, publishers controlled the creation of materials, now they control the pricing as well. Additionally, only a few vendors have the capability of distributing ebooks, and those vendors also control the devices for consumption as well. So if a user comes in with a nook, an iPad, a Kindle, etc, we also need to come up with mechanisms to get that content to their devices. This means we're working with vendors who either have contracts with Amazon (of which there is only one), the ability to operate Adobe DRM licensing servers, or the ability to make a good mobile app. We control almost none of the process. NYPL is currently working on an app to unify ebooks across vendors but because of DRM this requires vendors to play ball as well, and as a result it's a less than optimal experience for the user. The barriers to entry in this market are huge. (Also, most public libraries do not rebind, and often then do their own processing and do copy cataloging through a coop (OCLC).)
Once physical materials leave the publisher, they have lost control of the process, pricing, distribution, etc. Now a small number of players control everything from the creation, sale, distribution and even reading experience for that item. A few big players can hope to crack this market, but most libraries can't rely on their budget from year to year, making even unified pressure difficult.
> How much of that is just that demand is easier to generate with digital books. I don't need to go to the library to get the book, there is no cost to be on a hold list and it is delivered as soon as it is available?
I would argue that e-books are harder to get than physical ones, especially if you are already a regular library user. You have to own a device and be tech savvy enough to get through the setup process. But setting that aside, this doesn't change the fact that it's more expensive to meet digital demand than physical demand.
I predate ebooks in this industry, so I have seen it evolve a great deal. The prices have come down, the user experience has improved ten-fold, and cooperation has improved among libraries to the point that even the smallest library can offer e-books. But until libraries can make their own devices, build their own software, break the agency pricing model, and get rid of DRM it will never reach the point physical materials have.
But as I said, we focus on the bad, and not the good. Usage of audiobooks has increased 20% every year for the past several years, driven almost entirely by electronic titles (this is our only format where electronic circulation is higher than physical). E-books are far more accessible for users with disabilities or simply older readers who struggle with seeing or even holding books. E-books never get stolen or damaged, nor do they wear out (indeed, this is the argument Random House made when they increased their pricing). Publishers have discovered they want to work with libraries because libraries are big spenders and buy materials that would otherwise not sell (especially backlist titles).
The larger "threat", if you want to call it that, of e-books is not major publishers, but Amazon, YouTube, Spotify, etc. The industry is changing and increasingly, creators do not need to work with a publisher to be successful. A large chunk of the market for materials is being hoovered away into silos. Personally I feel the library's future is in its physical space.
Yes, and that 'feature' of block chains is never really touted by blockchain supporters. Basically, if 51% of the network think you have too much money, they can just take it from you with no recourse available.
> Basically, if 51% of the network think you have too much money, they can just take it from you with no recourse available.
That's not how it works. Even if you had 99.99% of the hash rate, you still have to work within the rules of the chain, so a "give me your money" without a valid signature would still be rejected as invalid by every full node (and you just wasted your hashing power). What having 51% or more of the hash rate allows is a double spend attack: you can undo recent transactions, so you can spend a coin twice.
But the rules of the chain can be changed. If for instance 90% of the full nodes decide to change their software so that "give me your money" is now valid in some special circumstance X even without a valid signature, and that "give me your money" transaction is sent to the network, these 90% of the nodes will allow it to be added to the chain, and let the chain grow on top of it; while the other 10% will grow a separate chain on top of the last block without the "give me your money" transaction. Soon, each side has an incompatible view of which transactions are in the blockchain; this is called a "hard fork". And if the minority side is small enough, it will no longer matter if they still say you have your money, since everyone else you want to transact with will say you don't.
That's what blockchain proponents tend to omit: the blockchain is a social construct. Its rules are fixed as long as the majority of participants want them to be. When they decide to change the rules, like that time when the Bitcoin developers fixed a database bug which changed the validity of some blocks, the rules will change. Even retroactively.
It seems to me that large blockchains^ are some of the most stable social structures in existence. The rules of Bitcoin have been in place for 8 years with only minor modifications, despite huge sums of money passing through the system.
This compares very favourably with other social structures, such as nation states, especially 8 year old nation states.
^ Large as in Bitcoin and Ethereum, smaller networks are much easier to manipulate.
> It seems to me that large blockchains^ are some of the most stable social structures in existence. The rules of Bitcoin have been in place for 8 years
Indeed. Makes the Swiss federation and the King James Bible look quaint doesn't it.
This is a nice illustration that all property in general is a social construct: you only truly own something if the rest of the society agrees that you do. Blockchain is one particular way to set the rules, but our regular property laws are not any different in principle.
Yes. This was true before and after the hard fork. Seems like common sense to me, but I guess it's a good thing that the hard fork happened because it educated people that this is possible.
Hydroelectric power, like geothermal, is only applicable if the geography permits it. It is also a potential WMD, so you'd better hope the area where you are building your dam is either not near a population center or is (geo)politically stable.
ITER is an almost pointless project, because its design is already outdated even before it has completed. DEMO, if it ever exists, will almost certainly have more in common with ARC than with ITER.
At least in the UK, merchants pay very low fees to process debit card payments, to the extent that some merchants (e.g. budget airlines) do not accept or charge a penalty for using credit cards.
Merchants pay up to 1.75% (Square) to process in-person payments. Whether this cost is embedded into the prices of what you buy or whether it's made clear to you is irrelevant to that point - that you're paying this. And even when credit cards are more expensive to process - do you ever get a discount for using a debit card at the supermarket? Cash?
Anybody who cares about the privacy of their communication can still use an open source stack. So yes it works as a tool for oppression and for catching extremely inept criminals, but it doesn't do much else for national security.
Plausible deniability only works if any doubts are actually interpreted in your favor (which, as history shows, isn't guaranteed in practice even in legal systems where it should be in theory), and it's easily possible to make laws that turn most practical options into crimes.
Yes, it's plausible that the non-approved software stack on your phone isn't doing any illegal encryption, but that fails if having non-approved OS on your phone a crime by itself.
Yes, it's plausible that the TrueCrypt volume you have doesn't contain anything bad, but that fails if mere possession of TrueCrypt tools is a crime by itself.
Yes, it's plausible that the encrypted traffic sent to/from your phone didn't contain anything bad, but that fails if having any encrypted traffic not going through state-approved MITM https is a crime by itself.
Etc ad infinitum. Don't underestimate the coercive power of gov't if they actually want to restrict something. Technical means can protect you only if you physically live outside of their reach.
They may as well ban all files of random data of unknown origin. If it passes diehard tests with flying colors, confiscate it and arrest all known possessors of it.
The point I'm trying to make is that in an oppressive regime the only thing that actually provides plausible deniability is having and using the exact same hardware/software as everyone else uses; a rooted phone with an opensource OS, unusual chat apps or cryptography tools won't give you any plausible deniability but actually make everything even more risky for you.
Wait so the name of the website is stored in plain text? So if I want to store my login for gaymidgetporn.com, there will be a file on my computer with that name?
And anything or anybody on my computer can see all the websites for which I have logins just by doing ls ~/.password-store ?
If someone compromised your machine (even just user-level access, not root) you're already done. Your browser history is not encrypted and they could get the same kind of information from there.
Nope, we are fat because there are many cheap sources of calories, particularly deep fried foods.