You can wonder all you like, and call me a cynic, but the US runs on money not culture. The American identity is built on money and wealth and excess, not on anything you might describe as "culture".
The IA would not "fail" if it was just left alone, but business never saw a nickel they didn't want to grab, so the law suits are not exactly surprising. And I expect the courts to lean towards the publishers.
> The USA's biggest export is our culture...like it or not. Think of movies, music, etc. Some of it is intangible.
Yeah, but that's not high culture. It's mass-market culture that makes a lot of money.
I think what the GP is referring to as "culture" is high culture--the kind of stuff that is not popular and requires subsidies and special effort to sustain.
It's also one of those phrases where people insist that's not what it means. You can see this bizzare battle playing out on its wikipedia page:
> In popular usage, the term high culture identifies the culture either of the upper class (an aristocracy) or of a status class (the intelligentsia); high culture also identifies a society’s common repository of broad-range knowledge and tradition (folk culture) that transcends the social-class system of the society.
Libraries used to keep archives of old newspapers and publications on microfilm, and anyone who needed to research something could go and look through those archives. The IA holds a similar function today - but it's the only one with its breadth and age. If we lose the IA, we lose a lot of important historical information.
Newspapers very frequently maintain and provide public access to their own online archives. That's not a function the IA is even especially good at--its coverage is spotty, and unless you have an old URL, it's very hard to find stuff in the IA.
The one unique thing the IA does is have is a broad and deep collection of internet ephemera.
That's what I was referring to. Blogs especially are an important source of historical information from this period that will not exist in newspaper archives -- and many of those have appeared and disappeared in the last 20 years. IA is the only record we have of much of that.
This is actually the worst way to preserve newspapers. There are two major problems:
1. It's their own content. Sometimes they find old content embarrassing and hide it.
2. Sometimes newspapers shut down. When that happens, the archive disappears! This defeats the whole purpose of archival.
Indeed, but that’s not the definition of “high culture” as proposed a few posts up, so I don’t see how it’s relevant to the thread.
If we look to the mainstream,the movies,music etc are all commercial. There's a reason a studio would rather make another Marvel movie than something more meaningful. That's not to say that -only- Marvel movies are made, and they are very entertaining, but the -reason- they are made at all us economic.
For software we celebrate money-raised, MRR, user numbers and engagement. We dont celebrate programs for their life-impact. We don't celebrate the software used yo design the James Webb telescope. Or the software in an MRI machine. We don't throw VC levels of funding at prosthetics, things that have value beyond just ygr monetary, even more so when the monetary value is near-nil, just like the IA.
I say all this not to change it, at a fundamental level it can't be changed, bug rather to understand it.
They give dollars and get resources and services.
That's like saying fiat currency is just as valuable as lithium deposits. It's the hubris of the West.
Empires that over-expand and seize too much sow the seeds of their own military destruction. Economic empires backed by ever-increasing military become overwhelming and then define any pushback as terrorism. What you end up with is a planetary-scale protection racket. Please do not construe this as an endorsement of other would-be hegemonies.
and i'd dispute that entertainment is our #1 export. not all exports are on the books; i'd bet arms is our real #1 export.
1. See page 22-23 of https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2023-02/trad1222.pdf
2. FY2022 had $51.9B of sales to foreign militaries and $153.7B direct commercial sales, for a total of $205.6B: https://www.state.gov/fiscal-year-2022-u-s-arms-transfers-an...
> You can look this information up pretty easily.
if you read what i wrote carefully you'll see you can't just look this information up pretty easily.
As time goes on, cultures continue to evolve and adapt. The constant flow of information and the increasing connectivity between people all over the world make it inevitable that cultures will blend, sometimes harmoniously and sometimes with friction. It is essential to recognize the value of cultural exchange and learn from one another, taking the best of each culture and finding a way to make them work together.
For example, in a globalized world, it is essential to find a balance between the fast-paced, individualistic nature of American culture and the more collective, deeply rooted traditions of older cultures. There is merit in both approaches, and finding a way to incorporate them could lead to a more balanced, harmonious society.
It is also crucial to address the societal issues that come with cultural blending. This includes combating xenophobia, promoting understanding and empathy, and fostering open communication between different cultural groups. By doing so, we can work towards a world where everyone has the opportunity to learn from one another, grow, and thrive.
In conclusion, as we move forward into an increasingly interconnected world, it is essential to embrace the cultural diversity that comes with it. By recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of each culture, we can learn from one another and work towards building a more inclusive, harmonious society.
-----
This is the prompt and result about context :
make a bullet list of contextual errors
Portraying American culture as entirely childish and immature without considering its positive aspects and contributions
Oversimplifying complex cultural elements and reducing them to stereotypes (e.g., Americans as fat and ignorant, ancient cultures as wise and settled)
Assuming that older cultures are inherently more dangerous and should be feared
Overgeneralizing the portrayal of American culture through movies and TV series, which may not always accurately represent reality
Suggesting that the police are not doing enough to protect society and should be more like community policing, without considering the complexities and challenges in law enforcement
Imposing a hierarchical structure on cultures (e.g., referring to ancient cultures as "big brothers" and assuming their superiority)
Failing to acknowledge the diversity and complexity within each culture and the possibility of positive change and growth
---
I may or may not complete this as an article - which was started just a comment -
Consider as draft : https://gist.github.com/firatsarlar/44edbe877cb8ffd587ba6284...
If you want to offend, please kindly do that. The world "myself" bothering me -I'm not make these comments for yourself- , provoked me, changed my emotional state. If you want to share openly argue, I already made a submission - which will never see the sun -, go there, say something. Or say authentically what you feel - say bad things in private or openly, I do not my, because I'm reflecting my pure emotions right now. And yes. My intention is not to offend you but, I need to say a big NO to you. Sorry if you emotionally offend. I do not know you, and you are a candidate - in a real community- of new friend to me.
And please think: You should thank me for my 1 hour effort to make my comment solid, understandable, for the sake of quality. Thanks my downvote. It made me some kind of joke "Do not Elonize me" And sorry for my emotional, instant, Chinglish - People mock my English like that-. I cant use tools we build because of haters, ignorants, paranoids, unwarenes - I can easily take all those words to me and look at that mirror -
I passed this way on SO. Argue with people - yes I'm emotional sometimes-, I felt kicked there, not a place for me, .... Idea was simple - I cant rich my upper brain because of emotional state so even I would like to share that post - Put a badge to people's profile Not a Native speaker. Because as we can see currently my English is not enough for higher communication. I'm old. Not live in English speaking country - so not use it -. My grammar rusty. Mockers were right it is Chinglish :) - I'm not Chinese by the way-. Some advised Google Translate, which I was already trying and not getting the way I want to say. So, knowing or not knowing do not alienize me, please welcome me, no need to hug. Just smile. Think pure, I now you can summarize but , one of my downvoted - suspicious- comments about has had a quote like " I do not find time to make it short, please forgive me" I'm doing what they apology.
It is your karma, it is your self sufficiency to generate summaries, Please continue to punish me if you like it. As I said, It make me productive - yes aggressive- Look at I wrote lots of human words - not AI , synthetic - And it is my naked poor English community could easily mock. Yes It is USA, I need to talk in your language. Yes It is yourself, you don't me to summarize my post for you. Thanks. Apologies. PLUR -< if you know what this mean
Everyone was telling the internet archive that this was a dumb idea because it opened them to lawsuits with ruinous fines. Now the chickens are coming home to roost and IA is crying foul.
It can be true that the internet archive is an invaluable store of history while also being true that they made an embarrassing own-goal.
Oh you sweet summer child.
Now it's arguably a culture of attention and political or tribal identity.
fortunately, someone saying that does not make it real. Think of a "soup" and of "experiment" and you will get more detail. Resolving an entire nation to a 1 or 0 classification is not defensible, right?
Our culture can be a rich one and also not value the things the IA represent.
This isn’t an American problem, it’s a drawback to the economic system the globe has adopted.
> I wonder if there needs to be a cultural equivalent, where a repository of digital or physical artifacts is "too big to fail" because of the negative cultural impact their failure would have.
If there is, the Internet Archive isn't it.
Yeah, it's super important in certain weird technology and library subcultures, but few people outside of them would even notice it if disappeared. If they shut down, the story wouldn't even be able to muscle it's way onto the front page of the New York Times: it would loose to whatever the latest Trump drama is and the Nth repetition of the standard mass shooting media package.
> In the absence of that, anyone who sees high cultural value to the preservation of these digital artifacts should, counterintuitively, not treat the Internet Archive as having some special status, but should treat it as a liability. It has become the custodian of too much, and too much is on the line if it fails.
> Rather than trying to constantly shore up the IA so it can't fail financially, we should be looking at ways to preserve those artifacts redundantly, so that even if the IA fails, it's not a calamity.
Yeah, especially since the Internet Archive (as an organization) has proven itself to be irresponsible.
Lots of people want to turn the publishers into the villains, for ideological reasons as well as a bias towards the Internet Archive, but the it's the IA that fucked up here. They imperiled their core mission for some unnecessary grandstanding. They either need to fire whatever lawyers OK'd the "Emergency Library" or the leaders that refused to listen to sane legal advice telling them not to do it.
It's pretty much indispensible to anybody who's a researcher.
It's very frequent that you're tracking down citations to webpages that don't exist anymore, and the IA is the only way to find sources.
Not to mention that it's also often the only way to quickly get access to non-bestseller books that are more than a couple of decades old, which is also commonly needed for research purposes. Many of these books are only otherwise available in the country's largest research libraries. (Google has copies too, but nobody can view them.)
It's not weird or a subculture unless you think those labels apply to researchers. And there are a lot of researchers out there, across academics, non-fiction authors, and journalists.
I do think the label applies to researchers. And except for the case of "tracking down citations to webpages that don't exist anymore," researchers can continue to do all those things using traditional methods (which may be a harder, but still easy enough, especially if it's your job).
It's also the case that pre-web, a lot of that sort of content was pretty much lost to time. Per a discussion, a little while back, relatively little from the BBS era is preserved because it was mostly a distributed group of hobbyists.
No they can't. Citations that point to URL's that no longer exist require IA. There's no other tool currently.
Or any other authority figure. My favorite exchange that I personally witnessed during early COVID was this one:
A, conspiratorially: You should hear what the dentist has to say about the COVID vaccine.
B: Why, does it affect my teeth?
[0] an informative article and the American College of Dentists response:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/the-tro...
https://www.acd.org/position-papers/the-college-responds-to-...
You may personally be one of the people who cares about the IA, or know a lot of people who care, but if you go to a shopping mall six months after the IA shuts down and ask people about it at random, you'd find that level of knowledge and caring is unusual. It's not the kind of too-big-to-fail that the government would take interest in.
If the Internet Archive shuts down and its archive lost, the economy will keep humming, masses of people won't lose their jobs let alone be inconvenienced, etc. Sure, some paper about Geocities culture cira 1997 won't get written, some researcher won't be able to access some old dead link, and I won't be able to access the download the PDF manual for some old product from a company that went out-of-business. Life will go on with almost no disruption, and no one will lose an election because they failed to act to save it.
At the very least in a just world, I think the ability to reference historical data from the web probably would influence some elections.
In the unjust world we actually live in, access to historical data can be used as a tool (or weapon!) by journalists, pacs, candidates, etc. to find strengths and weaknesses, and to influence elections.
"back in 2026, the candidate enacted XYZ, as proven by [1][2][3] (all ia links). Ten years later this ended in <great victory|terrible disaster> therefore you <should|shouldn't> vote for them"
... Also, eg. Wikipedia often uses IA links for references to deal with link rot, which happens a lot more than you'd think. I won't say WP would shut down completely, but it's effectiveness would definitely be degraded.
Same probably for a lot of professions and jobs that require research. (including eg. secretaries, special librarians, political assistants, etc...)
Just because you personally can't imagine the impact on society, doesn't mean it doesn't have an impact on society.
This is just more libertarian bullshit that entire government departments could disappear without anyone noticing. But if NOAA disappeared it would wreck the economy. What a terrible example.
People would notice!
Not that that’s necessarily true for the internet archive, but…
I think the archive made a bad decision. I do not think it is generally irresponsible.
Either they have a grand plan for the targets they are painting on themselves, or they are bloody irresponsible idiots; I'm inclined to bet on the latter given no further contexts.
Not just a "this was a bad decision" line, but past a few others as well. eg "reckless behaviour", "wilful disregard", and probably more. :(
Hopefully some kind of Hail Mary saves the day. But at the _very_ least the senior people at the IA who reviewed and green-lit this program should be moved to less senior roles. They clearly needed an adult in charge to have said "No, don't do this". :(
But if no-one pushes against the encroaching draconian copyright laws, then they will continue to get worse. The IA has a philosophy that is counter to a lot of entrenched mainstream organisation, and this move was aligned with their philosophy, if not necessarily their best interests.
It was bold, and we're talking about it, and even testing it in court. So it went against them, which is not surprising, but it's better than if they'd just been meek, battened down the hatches, and not do anything at all.
I applaud them.
And if anyone in this thread is using the IA and hasn't donated to them recently, it's a good time to do it.
While that's true, having our custodian of archiving the internet bet the farm on stupid shit like this is outstandingly irresponsible. :(
So yeah, applaud places which do it all you want. And I'll be right there with you in a lot of cases.
But this? This was far past just stupid. :(
I mean, they are the villains here. They’re sueing the IA over something that is less than a footnote in their balance book.
They’re purely doing this for the chilling effect it will have on other people that might be impertinent enough to try and share their books with others.
Um... I don't get the impression that you are speaking from any sort of authority
Look up any of their stats and tell me that's librarians and "weird technologists".
Small example: 600,000 new users per month are niche technologists?
https://archive.org/about/stats.php
More ppl in every town prob use IA than their local library. It's important (albeit overly central, but they are working on resolving that via IPFS and other technologies)
What do New York Times reporters use to check web history when researching for their stories? Do they just make stuff up?
That is not a good metric. If the louvre burned, that would make headlines everywhere, but it would be nowhere near as disasterous as if the internet archive was destroyed.
A service can be important even if few people use it directly. The service can have downstream effects that are beneficial to a lot of people because the people who do use it are creating and disseminating other content that filters its way down.
An analogy would be the US National Weather Service (NOAA). Few people look directly at an NOAA feed, but it's used by news channels, apps, airlines, scientists, etc. and becomes content and services that most people have benefited from.
A robust archive lowers the cost/time of doing research. It enables fact checking and investigation, particularly of an historical or obscure nature. It services the long tail of less frequently accessed content that many of us will, at some time, want access to. Basically all the reasons a research library is useful.
I'm sure most people in the US hadn't heard of many of the banks involved in the 2008 financial crisis, but many of them, after that fact, might agree that they were indeed too big to fail.
But “too big to fail” is bad policy no matter what you apply it to. That we have practiced this bad policy does not mean we should continue doubling down on it.
Its 212 petabytes as of december 2021[1], that alone would be a bit less than 12 thousand 18 TB HDDs or LTO-9's. We've made virtually zero significant progress in long-term storage technology.
Its like if they are getting burned like the library of alexandria because of some copyright vampires, I wouldn't even be angry, just sad, its just what we deserve.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Alexandrina#Intern...
The future will laugh at us as some primitive ignorant culture with our heads shoved up our asses dismantling society because of some imaginary oh so sacred legal fiction called copyright.
Why do some hoarding rent seekers hold every key here and get to indiscriminately burn down our global village on a whim like a feudal lord and all we can say is "please sire, spare the library, can you burn it more slowly than the rest?"
We overthrew monarchies 200 years ago so we wouldn't have to deal with this anymore. Having these assholes sneak back in through some courtier backdoor via an institution where people still wear wigs and robes to make us all renters from (intellectual) property lords, it needs to go.
Or this one? - https://netpreserve.org/
(no association with IA, just an active contributor)
My personal opinion is that they’re going about this the wrong way, with IPFS, anything blockchain, etc. They can support this entire model with a DHT (supporting PKI for identity) and torrent advertising, the latest version of BitTorrent (which has great support for cross swarm file serving by hash), and RSS or other feeds for advertising the corpus or chunks of it.
I maintain a metadata copy in R2 of all IA items and their metadata, and would love to work on the ArchiveTeam equivalent of a Warrior appliance: appliance or containers starts, consumes an RSS feed to request the least seeded items, download them up to disk space allowed, and then serve downloaded item files to the swarm.
Here it is: https://loc.gov
If the Internet Archive is "too big to fail" then there should be more scrutiny of their actions and the avoidance of risky behavior.
Anybody with any legal sense could have told you that the "National Emergency Library" was a risky move.
In the US that would be the Library of Congress with its Mandatory Deposit requirement.
We don't need to look too far. IA could simply extend their middle-finger and move to Mexico, Spain, Thailand, or Sealand. Frankly, IA should be mirrored in every country that does not respect the West's initiative of blocking access and unresolvable takedown notices. Fuck US copyright anti-information bullshit. Publishers represent themselves and their own greed, not the authors and artists that created the content. There are rare success stories[1], but how many other works have been looted by publishers at the expense of the long dead content creator's family?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/jun/14/books.booksnew...
Unfortunately, the US government directly expands the reach of (US) copyright, patents, and trademarks with the "Free Trade" agreements they've managed to get countries around the world to sign up to.
If Sealand had an effective army ;), and could thereby say "Thanks, but no" then that might be an option. Until then though...
We should make better use of it.
Add to it other educational materials that would otherwise show up on youtube or elsewhere with advertisements, and you have a decent basis for the 21st century and beyond.
I wonder if there needs to be a cultural equivalent, where a repository of digital or physical artifacts is "too big to fail" because of the negative cultural impact their failure would have.
In the absence of that, anyone who sees high cultural value to the preservation of these digital artifacts should, counterintuitively, not treat the Internet Archive as having some special status, but should treat it as a liability. It has become the custodian of too much, and too much is on the line if it fails.
Rather than trying to constantly shore up the IA so it can't fail financially, we should be looking at ways to preserve those artifacts redundantly, so that even if the IA fails, it's not a calamity.