Comment by hilbert42 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hilbert42 | Hacker News Reader

As bad as this decision is perhaps it's been necessary. We need a showdown over copyright before the public finally wakes up and realizes that existing copyright law is unfair and inequitable.

It's only when complaints from the public arrive on mass at the feet of legislators will they finally take action. Hopefully, this decision will increase the likelihood of that happening.

Alternatively, with such decisions continuing to maintain the status quo over copyright, and with the rage of those committed to copyright reform deepening, discontent could widen to the extent where copyright law is simply ignored altogether and that policing it becomes impossible—copyright anarchy will then reign.

We are already at the beginning of the end of the copyright wars and publishers are still acting in ways that will ultimately ensure they'll end up on the losing side.

As a result of this decision, don't be surprised to see a fork of the Internet Archive created in some favorable jurisdiction along the lines of Alexandra Elbakyan's Sci-Hub. If that were to happen then it would serve these miserable the publishers damn well right as they have been acting as greedy unreasonable shits for many decades.

> don't be surprised to see a fork of the Internet Archive created in some favorable jurisdiction along the lines of Alexandra Elbakyan's Sci-Hub.

The countries that are not party to the TRIPS agreement, Berne convention, or the Universal Copyright Convention:

    East Timor
    Eritrea
    Marshall Islands
    Palau

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_internation...

Right, also it may not matter if certain countries don't apply strict enforcement, witness Sci-Hub.

Why does it have to be worse, before it gets better?

Unfortunately, it's often the way of politics, people will often put up with or tolerate a lot of abuse before they snap and go 'riot'. We've seen this often enough down the ages to know it's basically true.

Also, there's another important mitigating factor hindering copyright reform. As outspoken copyright reformer Cory Doctorow points out, most people have very little interest in copyright reform as they don't see copyright issues impinging much on their daily lives.

Whilst in recent decades copyright has come from a subject that the average person's knowledge of which would hardly fill a sentence to a much talked about topic (at least for a reasonable percentage of the population), the actual details of matters concerned with copyright reform are either difficult to understand or have little relevance—or both. Many know all's not well with copyright but it doesn't affect them sufficiently for them to become involved politically.

Essentially, we end up with several camps—the vast majority who'd like to see 'something' done but who are not sufficiently committed to do anything about it (these are the people who've been placated by iTunes and such, as these services offer the path of least resistance).

Then there are the pirates (a small but not insubstantial lot), who, almost by definition, have solved their copyright problems.

Lastly, there's the tiny numbers of people lobbying seriously for change (like some of us here who are posting to these columns on HN).

In opposition we have well funded Big Media and Publishing, with bags of money, they can lobby politicians very effectively, witness the power and extent of existing copyright law in almost every country not to mention WIPO, international copyright treaties, etc.

In summary, we reformers are not only heavily outgunned but also we're without reinforcements. For that to change something significant has to happen to stir the wrath of the great unwashed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com