Newsmaker: Fighting to protect copyright 'orphans'

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Who are the natural "enemies" of the Internet Archive?
Kahle: Everyone seems to like the idea of preservation of cultural materials. But folks are nervous about disruptions in commercial practices that are just now getting formed. Libraries and publishing, however, have always existed in parallel. What happened is that some overzealous copyright laws got passed with heavy lobbying from folks like Disney and these are screwing things up. I think of it as collateral damage. Instead of keeping just Mickey Mouse or just the profitable works under copyright for longer, they fundamentally changed the structure of copyright. So the problem we find mostly is not that we are stepping on toes, it's that we run the risk of stepping on a legal landmine from a previous war.

You have one of the first $100 laptops. What is your take on that project?

When I got to hold the $100 laptop in my hand, I had one of those experiences that does not happen very often: This is important. The organization is nonprofit, the goal is great, and it has to be open to succeed. It is bottom-up, built for Linux and openness. We are a library for the machine, so we hope to have millions of new users in the coming year. I am very interested in the rise of the technical nonprofits. There are very interesting things happening there, where the new products out of big companies are getting more locked down and closed all the time.

How is the Wayback Machine distributed around the world?

Kahle: We have our servers in San Francisco. What happens to libraries is they are burned, and they are usually burned by governments. So we are working to build an "international library system" of a few great libraries that have exchange agreements. Our first was the library of Alexandria in Egypt, and they got a full copy of what we have and vice versa. They are scanning Arabic books. We are just starting to work with the European Archive in Amsterdam. They have a partial mirror and are looking for funding and help. It is an exciting time and scary time. Hard drives fail all the time, people screw up and governments make bad calls.

What happened is that some overzealous copyright laws got passed with heavy lobbying from folks like Disney and these are screwing things up. I think of it as collateral damage.

Rik Riel (from the audience) asks: What's your opinion on the potential threats of ISPs throttling certain content (i.e. violating Net neutrality)?

Kahle: It is a huge and important issue. A way to frame it is that in the '80s, the battle was over the "transport layer." Basically ArpaNet/Internet vs. the phone companies. We, in the open world, made huge wins, companies prospered and all sorts of things went great. The battle in the '90s was at the software level: browsers, protocols, etc. Basically it was the open world of the Web vs. the closed worlds of AOL and Lexis/Nexis. Again, we made huge wins there. Yes, the dominant browser was closed source, but it talked the open protocols. And the great progress of Firefox, Linux and Ubuntu give reason for hope at that layer.

The 2000s is the battle at the content layer: open or closed. iTunes is a loser in this view. DRM, central control, etc. Google's restrictions on the books they are scanning is a loss on this front. So we need real help to build an open content layer that is not centrally controlled. Wikipedia is a great example of a win. But now we are seeing new attacks on fronts we thought we won--most particularly the transport layer. The phone companies have all gotten back together again to make their monopoly. In the ultimate thumbing of the nose they are calling it AT&T. And they are at their old tactics again. So we have to fight like nuts to keep the transport open, the software open and the content open. It is good for the public and it is good for businesses. It is just not good for monopolies, and that is a good thing in most people's views.

AlexisJ Onmura (from the audience) asks: Which new technology--if the Internet Archive had the opportunity to try--do you think can do what stone has done for ancient civilizations in terms of longtime storage?

Kahle: You can make a durable printout on something like stone and the like, but I would like to argue for something else. If you look at the world as a whole since writing started in Sumeria, there has been an up-and-running civilization somewhere. So I believe we can have long term storage and access--which is key--by building a set of International Libraries in different jurisdictions that have active trade agreements. When one melts down, then when they come back up, the others can and are motivated to rebuild it. If this were in place, I could sleep.  

More Newsmakers

[amadensor]

The intent of copyright

The original intent was to promote literary and artistic works by allowing the original authors an publishers to make a profit from them. This is good, but there is no profit to be made from out of print books. I do not see where distributing out of print works violates the spirit of the law.

Perhaps a system could be put in place where if a work is very popular, it could be put back in print, and removed, temporarily, from the online archive. This would not only help the archivers by opening up out of print books, but also publishers by letting them know what should be back in print.

[Too Old For IT]

The problem with archiving in-print works

... is that it will bring an end to writing and publishing.

Why bother if Khale and others are just going to distribute a year's worth of an author's work for free? Tho to be fair, Richard Stallman has been driving for this to happen to print authors for years.

I fail to see what these two and others have against writers that they want to steal their work.

[amadensor]

The intent of copyright

The original intent was to promote literary and artistic works by allowing the original authors an publishers to make a profit from them. This is good, but there is no profit to be made from out of print books. I do not see where distributing out of print works violates the spirit of the law.

Perhaps a system could be put in place where if a work is very popular, it could be put back in print, and removed, temporarily, from the online archive. This would not only help the archivers by opening up out of print books, but also publishers by letting them know what should be back in print.

[Too Old For IT]

The problem with archiving in-print works

... is that it will bring an end to writing and publishing.

Why bother if Khale and others are just going to distribute a year's worth of an author's work for free? Tho to be fair, Richard Stallman has been driving for this to happen to print authors for years.

I fail to see what these two and others have against writers that they want to steal their work.

[danxy]

Traditional Libraries are the enemy

I scan a lot of public domain books and I'll tell you, an unexpected blockade was not publishers--it was libraries. Not books in open stacks, but books in "archives" or "special collections". Here I am scanning and preserving books forever in digital form and the librarians don't allow any copying. It doesn't matter if the book is public domain and not in fragile condition. They like their "inward retentiveness" I guess. What good are books that are locked up that nobody can see.

My book archive, by the way, is on Yosemite at
yosemite.ca.us/library

[Golem_one]

They're the predecessors of the I.T. department

Librarians are like the technicians in corporate and institutional I.T.
departments. Now we have the worst situation - Librarians and the
I.T. departments working together.

[danxy]

Traditional Libraries are the enemy

I scan a lot of public domain books and I'll tell you, an unexpected blockade was not publishers--it was libraries. Not books in open stacks, but books in "archives" or "special collections". Here I am scanning and preserving books forever in digital form and the librarians don't allow any copying. It doesn't matter if the book is public domain and not in fragile condition. They like their "inward retentiveness" I guess. What good are books that are locked up that nobody can see.

My book archive, by the way, is on Yosemite at
yosemite.ca.us/library

[Golem_one]

They're the predecessors of the I.T. department

Librarians are like the technicians in corporate and institutional I.T.
departments. Now we have the worst situation - Librarians and the
I.T. departments working together.