The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently ruled in Hachette v Internet Archive that the Internet Archive's Open Library violated copyright law. Molly White today published the best response I have seen so far:
My beliefs are simple, and hardly radical: Libraries are critical infrastructure. Access to information is a human right. When you buy a book you should truly own it. When a library buys a book, they should be able to lend it. Readers should be able to read without any third parties spying over their shoulders, or preventing them from accessing the materials they have legally obtained.
Hachette and the other plaintiff publishers have argued that, by lending out one-to-one digital copies of books they have legally purchased, the Internet Archive’s Open Library is infringing upon the publishers’ copyright and damaging their sales. And, without any evidence of actual harm to the publishers, the Second Circuit went right along with it. They also went a step further, again without evidence, to suggest that libraries are inherently detrimental to society.
[B]y fighting [Controlled Digital Lending], publishers are seeking to overstep the established boundaries of intellectual property law to exert continued control over an item that has already been purchased from them. And they are seeking to diminish the critical rights of readers to read the books they want without being subjected to censorship and surveillance. This is part and parcel with other attempts by digital publishers — of books, but also of films, video games, and other media — to turn media purchases into rentals, so as to extract endless money and private data from their customers.
In other words: even though libraries have been around far longer than the Copyright Act itself, libraries are now a threat to authors. The true meaning is clear: publishers’ abilities to extract exorbitant rents and exert control over readers outweigh the incredible benefits of increased public access to books.
US law protects rentiers better than most of our peer countries' laws do. Yet another reason to get the plutocratic Republicans out of Congress.
The intersection of my vacation next week and my group's usual work-from-home schedule means I won't come back to my office for two weeks. Other than saving a few bucks on Metra this month, I'm also getting just a bit more time with Cassie before I leave her for a week.
I've also just finished an invasive refactoring of our product's unit tests, so while those are running I either stare out my window or read all these things:
- Yes, Virginia (and Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina), you are much better off than you were four years ago.
- The Illinois Attorney General has filed an environmental suit against Trump Tower for refusing to fix its water-intake system.
- A New York City cop who fought against "courtesy cards" won a $175,000 settlement from the city.
- A developer plans to raze a 175-year-old house in Glencoe, Ill., designed by William Boyington, because we can't have nice things anymore.
- Speaking of not having nice things, after £175m spent and 12 years of construction, the Old Street roundabout in Islington, London, looks...about the same as before.
Finally, the New York Times ran a story in its Travel section Tuesday claiming Marseille has some of the best pizza in Europe. I will research this assertion and report back on the 24th.
I just finished a 75-minute open-level French test as part of a QA study that Duolingo invited me to participate in. What an eye-opener. And quelle épuisement!
The test started well enough but got a lot harder as it went on, for two principal reasons. First, the order of sections went precisely in the order of my abilities: reading, writing, listening, speaking. Turns out I read French a lot better than I write it, write it better than I understand it, and speak it like a reject from a Pink Panther film. Some poor evaluator will have to listen to me going on for nearly three minutes about how hard the job of cat-herder is. What's worse, I only just now learned the word berger. "Herder des chats" is, apparently, not a thing, but berger de chats potentially is. I hope whoever scores that response at least has a sense of humor.
The second reason it got harder is that "open level" bit I mentioned. Each section got progressively more difficult, such that by the end of the listening part I could barely pick out the topic let alone individual words. Senegalese fishermen, you may be surprised to learn, are harder to understand than recorded announcements at train stations.
Still, I'm glad I did it. I don't know if they'll share the results with me, because they only want the data to calibrate their language-learning product. I hope they do, particularly before I pop out of the Chunnel just over two weeks from now.
I'm dog-sitting again, so a nervous beagle wandered up to my office during the test to see why I hadn't fed her yet. I suppose they both could use an around-the-block and some kibble. I will try to speak French to them, if only for my own practice.
Oh, and if you haven't been able to get to Weather Now this afternoon, that's because I shut it down for a bit while I root out a connection-exhaustion problem. I believe there are too many bots hitting it the last few days, but it still shouldn't crash when they do. Until I can fix the problem, or get rid of the bots, I'm only going to have it up a little bit at a time. (Its data collection continues unaffected, however.)
I spent 56 minutes trying to get ADT to change a single setting at my house, and it turned out, they changed the wrong setting. I will try again Friday, when I have time.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world:
Finally, Slow Horses season 4 came out today, so at some point this evening I'll visit Slough House and get a dose of Jackson Lamb's sarcasm.
Before I bugger off to get at least a couple of daylight hours in this sunny, 22°C afternoon, here are the most interesting stories that popped up today:
Finally, the Chicago White Sox have surpassed their team record for losses, going 31-108 through yesterday. If they lose 13 of the remaining 22 games—which would actually represent an improvement over their performance so far—they will surpass the 1962 New York Mets' record 120 losses in a season. For reasons passing understanding, they're still charging for tickets, with box seats going for $69 and some tickets as high as $309. They have lots of seats left, though, so maybe I'll just take the El down there this weekend to see the Athletics beat them?
As promised, I took a 25-kilometer walk up the North Branch Trail yesterday, which did not disappoint:
The weather cooperated brilliantly (though it did get a little warm towards the end), and my multiple applications of SPF-50 sunscreen seems to have kept me from crisping. The trail, of course, is lovely:
In total, I got 40,707 steps, which would have been a personal record back in the day but I'm pleased to say didn't even get into my top-10 step days since 2014.
Cassie spent the day at her usual day camp, but still got an hour and a quarter of walks. Of course she didn't accompany me on the 4-hour trail hike, but she nevertheless plotzed before I did:
Also, a shout out to my Hoka Stability shoes. My feet feel just fine today, and in fact given the forecast (23°C and sunny) I will probably get another 10 km today. Or, at least, spend lots of time outside.
During this last full week of summer, I haven't had a lot of time at home because we had to work in the office every day. And what a week.
I got home from work (and got Cassie home from day camp) right before some pretty impressive storms hit on Tuesday:
After discussing with a friend how a lot of the humidity we've experienced this summer comes from corn and soybean transpiration to our west, he discussed it with Bing's DALL-E 3:
(Not sure what happened with the spine of the book...or the windmill in the cover photo...or the title...but I did laugh.)
Relief is coming, though. A line of thunderstorms went through just before sunrise, and the cold front driving them will drop the dewpoint from 21°C now to 15°C by this time tomorrow:
Then Wednesday night my doorbell camera picked something up that I didn't expect:
Turns out, I have a new houseguest, who has politely set up shop by my front door to help keep mosquitoes (and one unfortunate cicada!) out:
That is a furrow or foliate spider, as far as I can tell.
Wednesday evening she even got a visitor:
Sadly, as is typical of orb weaver romances, her gentleman caller probably did not survive the evening. I don't judge; she's caught a lot of mosquitoes, she's entitled to celebrate. And I think I saw some baby spiders last night, so maybe I'll invite a couple inside?
Today, I'm taking a PTO day to catch up on everything, and to clear a path for my 4-hour walk tomorrow.
A few weeks ago I planned a PTO day to take a 25 km walk tomorrow along the North Branch Trail with pizza at the end. (I'll do my annual marathon walk in October.) Sadly, the weather forecast bodes against it, with scattered thunderstorms and dewpoints over 22°C. But, since I've already got tomorrow off, and I have a solid PTO bank right now, I'll still take the day away from the office. And autumn begins Sunday.
Good thing, too, because the articles piled up this morning, and I haven't had time to finish yesterday's:
Finally, Washington Post reporter Christine Mi spent 80 hours crossing the US on Amtrak this summer. I am envious. Also sad, because the equivalent trip in Europe would have taken less than half the time on newer rolling stock, and not burned a quarter of the Diesel.
The forecast still predicts today will be the hottest day of the year. Last night at IDTWHQ the temperature got all the way down to 26.2°C right before sunrise. We have a heat advisory until 10pm, by which time the thunderstorms should have arrived. Good thing Cassie and I got a bit of extra time on our walk to day camp this morning.
Elsewhere in the world:
Finally, Garmin has released its latest fitness watch that doubles as a freaking Dick Tracy wrist phone. I mean, first, how cool is that? And second, how come it took 90 years after Dick Tracy got one?
I just walked Cassie about 7 blocks (1.4 km) and she took her sweet time, sniffing every blade of grass. Part of that I'm sure was that she spent 3 nights boarded, which she finds exhausting. The other part was that it's still 30°C just a few minutes before sunset.
And yay, woo, we get even worse tomorrow:
As Chicago Public School students return to class Monday, the heat index is expected to break [38°C].
The National Weather Service in Chicago issued an excessive heat warning from Monday afternoon to Tuesday evening due to the “dangerously hot and humid conditions.” The city is opening cooling centers and urging Chicagoans to stay indoors when possible.
Heat index values could reach [42°C] Monday and [43°C] Tuesday. Meanwhile, overnight temperatures are only expected to drop to [the high 20s].
This anticipated extreme heat arrives after the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency declared an Air Pollution Action Day for Chicago-area counties Sunday due to high ozone levels, which are caused by pollutants emitted by cars, industrial sources and wildfires such as those currently blazing in Canada.
But hey, we have only had a handful of days like this so far this summer, and autumn starts (meteorologically) next Sunday.
Still, I look forward to the slice of the year where I don't feel like I need to shower every time I go outside. The NCDC predicts that will start Saturday. One can hope.