Re:The US Library of Congress has put 25M items free online
by xvilka on Monday May 29, 2017 @12:59AM
(#14437479)
Meanwhile Elsevier, who is widely known for inhibiting science progress by setting incredible high prices even for government funded research papers, makes a move against SciHub [1] and LibGen [2] again [3].
(Note that the filesizes in the directory listing are all wrong -- that's the original index.html from loc.gov/cds/downloads/MDSConnect/)
This makes it a lot easier to use this dataset at e.g. hackathons, where a lot of people would simultaneously pester that LoC server, which already seemed pretty bandwidth-limited on its own when I downloaded the files.
Re:The US Library of Congress has put 25M items free online
by voltagex_ on Monday May 29, 2017 @12:45AM
(#14437448)
Having never done this before I've got to have a look at the internetarchive tool first, but yes, that would work (I'd hate to take your money then not be able to deliver).
Re:The US Library of Congress has put 25M items free online
by tombrossman on Monday May 29, 2017 @08:19AM
(#14438720)
This amount of usage falls well within most VPS companies' free trial / promo codes offerings and should cost you nothing. Use a throwaway email account and drop it after a month.
AWS will give you a whole year if you haven't tried them yet and the other popular VPS companies (DO, Linode, etc.) all will give you at least $10 startup credit. This is probably simpler and faster than figuring out how to receive <$4 from some random internet commenter.
Re:The US Library of Congress has put 25M items free online
by wordupmaking on Sunday May 28, 2017 @03:26PM
(#14435719)
What's the copyright? Would it be legal to unzip those and serve them directly, so archive.org or anyone else can make them more inviting for access?
I know you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth but there's not even an index or a rough idea what something like "Name Authorities" might mean. That's not what I call wide open doors, that more seems like doing some legally required minimum.
It's basically an authentication provider maintained by the Library of Congress, which serves to define cannonical identifiers for library-catalogued entities, like books and public figures.
Re:The US Library of Congress has put 25M items free online
by pmoriarty on Sunday May 28, 2017 @04:28PM
(#14435952)
I wonder how much more extensive the release could have been were copyright laws not in the way.
Then there's the old question of whether the works under copyright today will ever go in to the public domain, or if their copyright will be extended forever by future changes in copyright law.
Re:The US Library of Congress has put 25M items free online
by pmoriarty on Sunday May 28, 2017 @04:58PM
(#14436063)
They didn't have to limit their release just to bibliographic index files. If they wanted to, they could have released manuscripts, letters, newsletters, videos, or any other media they have. But they may have felt inhibited by copyright laws.
So my question is, had copyright laws not been an issue, how much more would they have released?
There is also the larger question of whether the value of copyright law outweighs the value of not having it, so that everyone can benefit from this treasure trove of knowledge.
Re:The US Library of Congress has put 25M items free online
by AndrewUnmuted on Sunday May 28, 2017 @10:19PM
(#14437035)
I don't think these records meet the standard definition of 'media' anyway. This is really just data that can be used for cataloguing purposes and other media custodian/librarian applications.
Given that the LoC has made it their goal to archive at least one copy of everything, I think they are not quite the right people to fall into your anti-copyright cross hairs. However, I do strongly agree with your overall premises.
[1] https://sci-hub.cc/
[2] http://libgen.io/
[3] https://torrentfreak.com/elsevier-wants-15-million-piracy-da...
It's slightly more than 100GB and here it is: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmWSzgkftVrkh2859bGT44ahzoqcGhFkjsrQUtH...
(Note that the filesizes in the directory listing are all wrong -- that's the original index.html from loc.gov/cds/downloads/MDSConnect/)
This makes it a lot easier to use this dataset at e.g. hackathons, where a lot of people would simultaneously pester that LoC server, which already seemed pretty bandwidth-limited on its own when I downloaded the files.
Or list it: `ipfs ls QmWSzgkftVrkh2859bGT44ahzoqcGhFkjsrQUtHen9hVw9`
Or copy it into your local filesystem `ipfs get QmWSzgkftVrkh2859bGT44ahzoqcGhFkjsrQUtHen9hVw9`
AWS will give you a whole year if you haven't tried them yet and the other popular VPS companies (DO, Linode, etc.) all will give you at least $10 startup credit. This is probably simpler and faster than figuring out how to receive <$4 from some random internet commenter.
Anywho, the amount of data is actually ~19GB which is well within what I can upload with my home connection. Unfortunately the ia tool is failing for me: https://github.com/jjjake/internetarchive/issues/176
Also, it's not really about the $3, more that a tonne of "$3" projects really add up over a year or so.
I know you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth but there's not even an index or a rough idea what something like "Name Authorities" might mean. That's not what I call wide open doors, that more seems like doing some legally required minimum.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_...
I can't imagine you'd get sued for putting online a copy of this if you comply with C&D notices, then again I'm very narrow-minded.
Regarding Name Authorities, this article should clarify it somewhat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authority_control
It's basically an authentication provider maintained by the Library of Congress, which serves to define cannonical identifiers for library-catalogued entities, like books and public figures.
The Library of Congress uses the MARC standard (developed internally) and that is the format of the Name Authorities files: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARC_standards
Then there's the old question of whether the works under copyright today will ever go in to the public domain, or if their copyright will be extended forever by future changes in copyright law.
So my question is, had copyright laws not been an issue, how much more would they have released?
There is also the larger question of whether the value of copyright law outweighs the value of not having it, so that everyone can benefit from this treasure trove of knowledge.
Given that the LoC has made it their goal to archive at least one copy of everything, I think they are not quite the right people to fall into your anti-copyright cross hairs. However, I do strongly agree with your overall premises.
The Library of Congress has put materials online for a number of years. American Memory was the first I became aware of:
https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
According to Wikipedia, it began in 1994.
https://github.com/edsu/pymarc