RE: https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon/116015180016712361
I have been thinking for quite some time that we need a decentralized network for preserving public domain works. The #InternetArchive is important, but they are one single American organization and thus vulnerable (and the fact that they are playing fast and loose with copyright sometimes doesn't help). We need to spread those works out more.
@juergen_hubert@mementomori.social
The reason why The Internet Archive hasn't been shut down is that it does NOT play fast and loose with copyright. Archiving news stories and website pages is 100% Fair Use. But I agree wth you that there needs to be more organizations like IA.
What about the "National Emergency Library"?
@juergen_hubert@mementomori.social
You're talking about IA's response to Covid and national lock down when 90%+ of working age adults and school/ college aged children and young adults were all forced to work and study from home on a weekend's notice? When every Library in this Country shuttered as well?
You're talking about a novel and new idea from an organization who's mission to archive and preserve the Internet's knowledge.
You're talking about an organization that was sued by publishers, and where the publishers won.
And you're talking about an organization that complied with the Court's order and discontinued it's service.
You're also talking about an organization that, when it launched said "National Emergency Library", was not breaking any Copyright law.
It wasn't only until Publishers sued, and won, where a Court determined that the Internet Archive was not entitled to Fair Use for the National Emergency Library.
At least in the US, every one accused of a crime or violating a regulation is presumed innocent and is emphatically not guilty until either a Judge or a Jury convicts them.
So, to respond and answer your original question:
> What about the "National Emergency Library"?
What about it?
😎
https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-emergency-library-to-provide-digitized-books-to-students-and-the-public/
> To address our unprecedented global and immediate need for access to reading and research materials, as of today, March 24, 2020, the Internet Archive will suspend waitlists for the 1.4 million (and growing) books in our lending library by creating a National Emergency Library to serve the nation’s displaced learners. This suspension will run through June 30, 2020, or the end of the US national emergency, whichever is later.
'You're also talking about an organization that, when it launched said "National Emergency Library", was not breaking any Copyright law.'
They distributed more digital copies of books than they actually bought, without any agreement to that effect with copyright holders. How is that "not breaking any copyright law"?
@juergen_hubert@mementomori.social
Because under U.S. Law and the Constitution, a Defendant is presumed innocent until they are convicted in a Court of Law.
It doesn't matter if I murdered my neighbor, or downloaded 300TB of music from Spotify.
I would not be guilty of either crime until I was convicted.
The Internet Archive wasn't convicted until the Publishers won their case in Court. Therefore, when the Publishers sued The Internet Archive, they were not guilty of any crime or civil infraction.
A lawsuit is an accusation only. A criminal indictment is an accusation only.
...so by the same standards, US companies aren't violating my privacy rights unless they are convicted in an US court?
Okay, sure, whatever. If that's your understanding of the legal part of what they did, then you do you.
So let me tackle this from another perspective.
I am a self-published author.
I have released a very large portion of my work under a #CreativeCommons Zero license. I am generally in favor of the free flow of information.
But I still wouldn't want others to freely share my work in its entirety - that is, including the parts for which I retain #copyright - without my consent.
Even if our legal perspectives differ - do you agree that consent matters?
@juergen_hubert@mementomori.social
> ...so by the same standards, US companies aren't violating my privacy rights unless they are convicted in an US court?
That's not what I said and I'm sure you know that.
Does US Law and the Constitution apply in Countries other than the US?
I mean, look, I may be guilty of violating the UK's Terrorism Act if I write, "I support Palestine Action and the fundamental rights of all Palestinians. Free Gaza! Free Palestine! From the river to the sea Palestine will be free!"
> The UK government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organization under the Terrorism Act 2000 in July 2025, making it a crime to be a member or express support, punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
But those same words are protected speech by the US Constitution. Since I am a US Citizen, on US soil, I can say whatever the fuck I want about Israel or the UK Government. Fuck Israel and fuck Yvette Cooper and Kier Starmer. Actually, fuck King Charles, too, for marrying Diana when he didn't love her, and treating Harry like shit.
But I'm sure if the UK Government wanted to, they could put out a warrant for my arrest. But I'd have a pretty good chance to quash it because of the First Amendment.
The UK has a different legal and justice system than the US, and has no Freedom of Speech. "Proscription" is blatantly Unconstitutional in the US. It's not in the UK.
So geography definitely matters, and while other Countries have the concept of innocent until proven guilty, no other countries are as absolute in that than the US.
> I am a self-published author.
So am I.
> I have released a very large portion of my work under a #CreativeCommons Zero license. I am generally in favor of the free flow of information.
All of my works are released under CC-BY-SA, even the one's I sell at Amazon. I respect your CC0 decision.
> But I still wouldn't want others to freely share my work in its entirety - that is, including the parts for which I retain #copyright - without my consent.
Have you read the CC0 license? If you don't want others to freely share your works you need to license your works under a different license.
> Even if our legal perspectives differ - do you agree that consent matters?
Not when it comes to works I've created and have made the conscious decision to let others use my work freely, no. Sorry.
@juergen_hubert i fear that decentralisation might work poorly in this case - long term preservation of curated accessible data needs effort and money. You'll need to store each item on many nodes - and this will need some orchestration and management. And global search should be possible, which is an issue.
Well, #Fediverse systems like #BookWyrm and #NeoDB already allow for global search of media metadata.
I realize that storing actual PDFs and the like on such servers will require a lot more server capacity, but is the principle really all that different?
And there are plenty of independent digital libraries hosted by universities and research institutes, such as the MDZ (which I use a lot). But they use different software and generally only allow local search.
I feel that if there was a Fediverse approach to hosting and searching for such documents - one which private users could also host - then it would be a huge step forward for preserving our cultural heritage.
@juergen_hubert for me the main difficulty (apart from having enough manpower and storage) is how to preserve data in the long run in the environment where each node can go offline at any time, taking all its archive into a void. This needs distributed backup, which is non-trivial. I have no idea if this is implemented in fediverse anyhow
@juergen_hubert I'm thinking along similar lines, but so far I've only downloaded an offline version of wikpedia Project Gutenberg. Not really what we need, but better than nothing.
@juergen_hubert, they have a subsidiary in Europe, but that does not fully address the problem.
