[HN Gopher] Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive still workin...
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Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive still working to
democratize knowledge
Author : ingve
Score : 150 points
Date : 2022-03-26 11:11 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.niemanlab.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.niemanlab.org)
| wackget wrote:
| Archive.org is blocked by UK mobile ISPs and has been for many
| years: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/internet-
| archive-...
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I'm generally a big fan of the IA, but lately they've gotten lost
| on one big issue and this could hurt them. They tried to give
| away digital books still under copyright when the pandemic began.
| They seemed to think that this was somehow helping people who
| couldn't get to a physical library, but this was kind of a ruse.
| First, many bookstores were still open online and they were
| desparate for orders to stay in business. Second, many libraries
| were also operating, albeit under COVID rules.
|
| When they started this plan, I wrote my friends at the IA and
| begged them not to go down this route. They answered with lots of
| rhetoric about how they were some how helping and seemed
| oblivious to the claims of the authors and the libraries.
|
| So I'm not surprised that they're being sued. They went down this
| path willfully.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| I wonder if they were always planning to bring the concept of
| CDL to court and this was a good way to provoke that while not
| making it too easy to be painted as feckless pirates by the
| plaintiffs (they were just trying to help in a national crisis,
| you know?).
|
| CDL seems a common sense process, inasmuch as copyright can be
| said to be sensible. If I own a book, I can show it to others,
| even electronically, but only to one person at time, and I
| don't look at it while showing it, so I'm not actually
| increasing the copies in circulation. Most normal (as in, not
| familiar with IP law) people would probably agree that that
| seems a reasonable way for a library to operate, since that's
| fundamentally how normal libraries _do_ operate (except for the
| electronic bit). Those weird DVD-ripping jukeboxes that locked
| the data and /or discs down are similar too, and they were
| declared legal.
|
| However, making sense is not required under the law: the
| concept has (apparently, according to the plaintiffs) never
| been actually legally tested. It is in the IA's interest to
| actually test it, as getting it legally proven to be a valid
| way to run a library would be revolutionary: any library could
| suddenly lend their legally-held holdings digitally without
| legal clouds around them. It would also put the IA's massive
| CDL system on a solid footing.
|
| Meanwhile, proving it illegal would raise difficult questions
| over what it means to own even a physical item. As a form of
| accelerationism, that can work to the IA's advantage too, by
| shining a light on the fact that you, yes you, actually do not
| really own a book in that it's illegal to lend it in certain
| ways.
|
| Either way, the outcome will be very interesting, though it'll
| be far better if CDL comes out as allowed.
| ilamont wrote:
| > So I'm not surprised that they're being sued. They went down
| this path willfully.
|
| That's right. And when compelled to remove copyrighted works by
| living authors, Kahle made claims equating the lawsuits with
| "digital book burnings."
|
| If Ray Bradbury were still alive, he would have likely have
| rejected this claim. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of
| America (SFWA), which Bradbury was long associated with, and
| many major writers still belong to, has been critical of the
| IA's actions from the beginning:
|
| _The Internet Archive justified these actions based on an
| unproven and dubious legal argument called "Controlled Digital
| Lending" which supposedly would allow the Archive to make and
| distribute a single digital copy of a donated physical book in
| their storehouse as long as they "control" its distribution. It
| was and is SFWA's understanding that this is not library
| lending, but direct infringement of authors' copyrights. As if
| this wasn't bad enough, using the Coronavirus pandemic as an
| excuse, the Archive has created the "National Emergency
| Library" and removed virtually all controls from the digital
| copies so that they can be viewed and downloaded by an
| unlimited number of readers. The uncontrolled distribution of
| copyrighted material is an additional blow to authors who are
| already facing long-term disruption of their income because of
| the pandemic. Uncontrolled Digital Lending lacks any legal
| argument or justification._
|
| https://www.sfwa.org/2020/04/08/infringement-alert-national-...
| kombucha13 wrote:
| Idk I like the idea of controlled digital lending. There was
| a really niche topic book (the seminal work on the expulsion
| of Zainichi Koreans from Japan to the DPRK post-WWII) that I
| had been trying to find for a while. It was out of print and
| fetching 100 plus dollars on the resale market and I couldn't
| find a library that had it. Luckily IA had a single copy that
| they are lending out to one user at a time via a DRM applet
| on their site. I have to check it out every hour in order to
| read it but I'm super grateful.
| shkkmo wrote:
| That issue isn't nearly as straight forwards as you are trying
| to present it.
|
| > First, many bookstores were still open online and they were
| desparate for orders to stay in business.
|
| Bookstores were not an option for all the people who lost their
| job during the pandemic.
|
| > Second, many libraries were also operating, albeit under
| COVID rules.
|
| And many libraries were closed, leaving people with no access
| to affordable reading material.
|
| > They tried to give away digital books still under copyright
| when the pandemic began.
|
| This doesn't seem accurate at all. The IA expanded their
| existing lending program and removed wait limits, they didn't
| start "giving away books".
|
| The ongoing efforts to hobble libraries abilities to lend
| eBooks is a significant factor in this.
|
| While I will buy that this expanded lending program broke the
| crappy copyright laws we are stuck with, I whole heartedly
| support this IA decision.
|
| If these industry associations didn't have their head so far up
| their ass, they would have realized what a wonderful
| opportunity the pandemic was to boost book readership and their
| overall market, rather than trying to sue the IA because they
| want to ring every last penny out of the crisis.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| I agree - A real, processional company shouldn't be skirting
| the law. IA is too important a source of legal archives, it
| shouldn't be risking that.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The books were _not_ given away, they were lent, with
| significant DRM-enforced restrictions, whilst libraries were
| closed. What they did was allow multiple users to concurrently
| borrow a single work in some cases, where previously this
| wouldn 't have been allowed. But they also had the support of
| multiple physical libraries while doing this, so there's that
| too.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I believe in the Internet Archive ! many happy returns
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I have a disorder where I go through phases where I compulsively
| scan and clean-up old books and booklets that are long out of
| print but which, for one reason or another, had made an
| impression on my younger self. I have uploaded those to the
| Internet Archive so that they might be more likely to outlive me.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Thank you for putting in the effort!
|
| For those who don't know, if you don't need the book or media
| back, you can mail the artifact to the Internet Archive's San
| Francisco address and it will be added to their catalog as
| processing capacity permits. I'm sending them a family
| members's extensive LP collection when they pass, for example.
|
| https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-make-a-physical-donat...
| scrollaway wrote:
| Thank you, fellow archivist :)
| edward wrote:
| The people at the Internet Archive do amazing work. They can
| always benefit from donations. See https://archive.org/donate
| causality0 wrote:
| The IA is one of the purer forces for good on the internet. It's
| definitely worth your donations. I do wonder, though, how well-
| filled the niche is for providers for the content that can't be
| on IA, specifically that which has been requested to be taken
| down. Quite a lot of the "wild west" era internet content both
| ranks highly on things I personally want preserved and is quite
| likely to have takedown requests.
| ravenstine wrote:
| It'd be pretty cool if someone could organize an "Internet Wild
| West" archive specifically for that kind of content and host it
| using torrents and I2P so that it can't be easily challenged.
| Yeah, there's probably a lot of problems with that, but there's
| nevertheless parts of the Before Time that I'd like preserved.
|
| This is why I download and archive locally things I enjoy
| repeatedly and find significant. If I remember something I once
| loved or laughed hysterically at back in the old days, I use
| yt-dlp to download it because I know someday it'll get erased
| and a shrinking minority of people will even remember what it
| was.
|
| To me, it's about _personal culture_. There are videos and
| other online content that became an institution in my young
| brain, but inevitably faded into irrelevance, eventually
| disappearing entirely in some cases. If I remember a piece of
| media but find that it 's been lost for good, it's like I've
| lost a small part of myself.
|
| In any case, I definitely recommend creating a personal
| archive. I agree that the Internet Archive is an amazing thing
| and that we are blessed to have it, but clearly not everything
| has an obvious place on it and I think it's only a matter of
| time before the Cathedral, if you will, recognizes its
| existence and subverts or destroys it.
| causality0 wrote:
| _If I remember a piece of media but find that it 's been lost
| for good, it's like I've lost a small part of myself._
|
| I could not have phrased it more perfectly myself. Those
| things are a part of us. Back in the day your preserved
| memories were a journal, a book, a photograph, a videotape.
| Now they live on the cloud and all it takes to lose part of
| it is for a creator to decide that content doesn't suit their
| brand anymore and erase it. Just going through your Youtube
| Liked Videos list and seeing how many are no longer available
| should be enough to send a cold chill down your spine.
|
| If I like it, I save it. There are some things I suspect I
| may have the only existing copy of. I wish someone would come
| up with a site archiver like HTTRACK but built for archival
| of modern websites that are full of content not hosted
| directly on the site's server.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| YouTube's search experience became so bad that I can't find
| videos that I watched 10 years or more ago. And I can't tell
| whether it's because their search algorithm & UI went
| downhill or because the videos have been removed.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's all of those things combined. Their
| search has become heavily weighed towards mainstream media,
| so if a video even has a single keyword that can be related
| to a current event or important person, it may be
| impossible to find because CNN, Vox, and Jimmy Kimmel Live
| dominate most of the results.
|
| The search feature also seems to return less in general,
| and has become geared towards suggesting content below the
| fold. You can get it to keep returning more that's related
| to the search query by just continuing to scroll, but it
| runs out remarkably quickly.
|
| So yeah, if you like it, download it. I don't care what
| anyone says about copyright. Unless it's something you know
| will be around, it can disappear for good.
| verisimi wrote:
| I'm a big fan.. and I agree with:
|
| "Corporations continue to control access to materials that are in
| the library, which is controlling preservation, and it's killing
| us."
|
| .. but why get into bed with Cloudflare?
| nix23 wrote:
| >.. but why get into bed with Cloudflare?
|
| Why not, is Cloudlfare controlling preservation? Is Cloudflare
| not exchangeable?
| verisimi wrote:
| Its not controlling preservation but it is involved:
|
| "Through our partnership with Cloudflare, we are learning
| about, and archiving, web pages we might not have otherwise
| known about, and by integrating with Cloudflare's Always
| Online service, archives of those pages are available to
| people trying to access them if they become unavailable via
| the live web," said Mark Graham, Director of the Wayback
| Machine at the Internet Archive.
|
| https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/press-
| releases/2020/cloudfl...
|
| But the broader point is that now they are in the door would
| we even hear about any new developments in the partnership?
| temp8964 wrote:
| What if someday the CEO of Cloudflare decides some websites
| should not be archived?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The Internet Archive will continue to rely on its own
| infrastructure to perform crawls. You can take corporate
| handouts without becoming beholden to the corporation.
| Centigonal wrote:
| Brewster Kahle is a fascinating human being. Before the Internet
| Archive, he created and sold Alexa.com to Amazon, and sold a
| different company to AOL. He had a similar start to many current
| serial entrepreneurs or VC folks, but he chose a different path.
| 30367286 wrote:
| A long time ago, on what.cd, I spent some time to upload rare and
| odd CDs I found at the library in Austin, TX. For a while, I had
| only one downloader, consistently. A user name Librarian. I
| looked up their IP address as it was connected to my seedbox and
| it was The Internet Archive's. I suspect they have more content
| than they let on -- that they are sitting on a trove of content
| that they are waiting for copyright expirations or reform.
|
| If I were Kahle, on my death bed I would just upload the entire
| archive to some IPFS or torrent site and just let it all be free.
|
| Side note: libgen is still around and it's also another pure
| instance of what the internet should be.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > I suspect they have more content than they let on -- that
| they are sitting on a trove of content that they are waiting
| for copyright expirations or reform.
|
| This is one of the things that their official status as a
| "library" explicitly allows them to do, so yes, I think they
| have even acknowledged that. When stuff goes into the public
| domain, the Internet Archive will release it.
| [deleted]
| dewey wrote:
| > Librarian
|
| If I'm remembering it correctly the user name was "Archivist".
| As far as I know most of the meta data of the albums that were
| listed on What are publicly visible on archive.org.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'm somewhat encouraged to see that Kayle's view of Hathi Trust
| is largely that I've formed: all but entirely useless.
|
| Even Hathi's version of IA's Bookreader is crippled.
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