> Kahle thinks “the world became stupider” when the Open Library was gutted—but he’s moving forward with new ideas
> The lawsuits haven’t dampened Kahle’s resolve to expand IA’s digitization efforts, though. Moving forward, the group will be growing a project called Democracy’s Library
please just stop. let IA be what it is. or rather, nothing wrong in doing new projects but don't tie them to IA, just start them as completely separate things. IA is too important as-is to be a playground for random kooky ideas playing with fire.
Remember: If OpenAI/Google does it for $$$, it's not illegal. If idealists do it for public access, full force of the law.
Information wants to be free. Oblige it. Fools with temporary power trying to extract from the work of others will be a blip in the history books if we make them.
It's not just that though. They pulled a stupid stunt during covid.
If you're campaigning for fair use, don't give your enemy ammunition to shoot you with by stretching said fair use too far. That was just really dumb.
Besides, for those willing to look outside official channels there's plenty of book library services available already. Just let them do what they do well and don't contaminate an above-board service with that.
What capitalism continues to show us: proof that public libraries, if created in the last 10 years, would be deemed illegal and sued out of existence.
It's only because the late 1800's billionaires wanted to leave legacies and made pay-to-enter and free libraries, and migrated them to free, or public libraries. Thats why so many of them are (John) Carnegie Libraries.
It was an absolutely bone-headed poke-the-bear move and we should count ourselves lucky that it was only a chunk of the library and not the whole archive that got nuked. IA holds priceless and irreplaceable data, and while the library initiative was a well-intentioned move during the pandemic it was way too radical for the keepers of our shared digital history.
Agreed. It was poking the bear. The other big three grey-circuit services have nothing to lose because they never claimed to be legit.
If you claim the moral high ground you have to be impeccable. It also didn't help anyone during COVID because all the stuff was out there already on less legit services. Some make it super easy with telegram bots etc.
I'm sad that they screwed this up. Because the archive is a very valuable service. They've lost a lot of money, goodwill and reputation now. And gained nothing.
The worst part is, it's unimaginable that this would ever have ended well.
It wasn't a bad idea in principle but they should have worked to get some publishers on board, could have been a PR win for them too.
I am sorry to say that, but copyright protection time should vary on the subject. Programming books - 10 years maybe? 10 years is ages in computer science. TV shows? 5-7 years maybe. After that time nobody wants to pay for watching old big brother or another Fort Boyard... Nor pay for storing it in archive. And this is the culture other creations are referring to.
We've run in Poland into very strange situation - Polish Public TV (TVP) paid for the great dubbing of some Disney shows. They recorded it on VHS which were overwritten by other shows. Now the translation and the dubbing is lost, found sometimes on people's home recorded VHS but in poor quality, because recorded from the aerial.
Many original episodes of Dr Who were destroyed by the BBC, some have only been recovered because of "pirate" home recorded VHS, or people that "stole" tapes from the dumpster.
It baffles me how many techies are here saying we should respect our corporate overlords. Something certainly was lost in this scene in the past 20 years. Hackernews? More like Peonnews.
The Wayback Machine has been broken for me for about a month or so. Is that the case for everyone? Like when you stick in a URL, it just goes to a "landing page" that says:
"The Wayback Machine is an initiative of the Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form.
Other projects include Open Library & archive-it.org.
Your use of the Wayback Machine is subject to the Internet Archive's Terms of Use."
...instead of taking you to the "calendar" page where you could select the version of the website you wanted to see.
The Internet Archive is to be protected at all costs. Its maybe the most important site on the Internet because of all the history that exists nowhere else. As the web is increasingly filled with AI slop, the Internet Archive has got perhaps the last pre-slop snapshot of the Internet.
Fun fact: the only complete copy of the Internet Archive's library is in Alexandria.
How's that for historic irony and "unteachability" of the human species.
Honestly, now's the time to make copies of it, while we still can. Torrents need seeders and people that care, and we are the last generation that cares about knowledge.
We need to prevent the following generations to grow up as mindless clickmonkeys of the digital Orwellian world.
19 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 38.9 ms ] thread> The lawsuits haven’t dampened Kahle’s resolve to expand IA’s digitization efforts, though. Moving forward, the group will be growing a project called Democracy’s Library
please just stop. let IA be what it is. or rather, nothing wrong in doing new projects but don't tie them to IA, just start them as completely separate things. IA is too important as-is to be a playground for random kooky ideas playing with fire.
Information wants to be free. Oblige it. Fools with temporary power trying to extract from the work of others will be a blip in the history books if we make them.
If you're campaigning for fair use, don't give your enemy ammunition to shoot you with by stretching said fair use too far. That was just really dumb.
Besides, for those willing to look outside official channels there's plenty of book library services available already. Just let them do what they do well and don't contaminate an above-board service with that.
For my enemies... the law.
It's only because the late 1800's billionaires wanted to leave legacies and made pay-to-enter and free libraries, and migrated them to free, or public libraries. Thats why so many of them are (John) Carnegie Libraries.
Only legal when billionaires do it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45798283
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45809870
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45806643
Personally, I say they should be free for everyone, the lawyers however think the complete opposite and they have the means of enforcing this.
If you claim the moral high ground you have to be impeccable. It also didn't help anyone during COVID because all the stuff was out there already on less legit services. Some make it super easy with telegram bots etc.
I'm sad that they screwed this up. Because the archive is a very valuable service. They've lost a lot of money, goodwill and reputation now. And gained nothing.
The worst part is, it's unimaginable that this would ever have ended well.
It wasn't a bad idea in principle but they should have worked to get some publishers on board, could have been a PR win for them too.
Just like in Frankenstein, that monster was created by someone, and those who created the monster are the true villains.
We've run in Poland into very strange situation - Polish Public TV (TVP) paid for the great dubbing of some Disney shows. They recorded it on VHS which were overwritten by other shows. Now the translation and the dubbing is lost, found sometimes on people's home recorded VHS but in poor quality, because recorded from the aerial.
"The Wayback Machine is an initiative of the Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form.
Other projects include Open Library & archive-it.org.
Your use of the Wayback Machine is subject to the Internet Archive's Terms of Use."
...instead of taking you to the "calendar" page where you could select the version of the website you wanted to see.
https://web.archive.org/web/*/news.ycombinator.com
How's that for historic irony and "unteachability" of the human species.
Honestly, now's the time to make copies of it, while we still can. Torrents need seeders and people that care, and we are the last generation that cares about knowledge.
We need to prevent the following generations to grow up as mindless clickmonkeys of the digital Orwellian world.