[LINK] Internet leading to cultural 'black hole': Library

[Kim Holburn]

On the subject of digital archiving and copyright which is an  
important part of the equation.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/internet-archive-wants-book-copyright-indemnity-like-google.ars

> Internet Archive wants book copyright indemnity like Google
>
> The Internet Archive is concerned that the settlement reached by  
> Google and The Authors Guild over the search giant's book- 
> digitization project will put its own online library effort at a  
> competitive disadvantage.

>

> The Internet Archive, perhaps best known for its website archive the  
> Wayback Machine <http://www.archive.org/index.php>, has let a  
> federal judge know that it would like to be covered by same the  
> copyright liability protection that Google will enjoy as part of its  
> settlement with The Authors Guild. On Friday, the Internet Archive  
> submitted a letter to Judge Denny Chin requesting permission to  
> intervene in The Authors Guild v. Google, arguing that the proposed  
> settlement of the case would hinder it from competing against Google.




On 2009/Apr/20, at 2:30 AM, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:

> <brd>
> Haven't we always had "black holes" in our recorded history?
> eg before printing and before reading/writing became widespread.
>
> Plus ça change, plus ça meme chose.
> //</brd>
>
> Internet leading to cultural 'black hole': Library
> Asher Moses
> April 20, 2009 - 7:48AM
> WA Today
> http://www.watoday.com.au/sport/internet-leading-to-cultural-black-hole-library-20090420-abv1.html
>
> Australia is in danger of losing its cultural heritage and much of its
> recent history if ephemeral material on the web isn't archived for
> future generations, the National Library of Australia has warned.
>
> Library manager of web archiving, Paul Koerbin, said that with
> everything from government documents to personal photos and video  
> clips
> now being published exclusively online, the transient, dynamic  
> nature of
> the web meant that much of this information would be lost over time.
>
> "There is a serious issue regarding the loss of our digital cultural
> heritage," he said.
>
> "We are losing history ... the fact is there will be 'black holes'  
> that
> future researchers will have to deal with."
>
> His comments come after Lynne Brindley, the head of the British  
> Library,
> warned that as websites come and go, the memory of the nation  
> disappears
> too, leaving historians and citizens of the future with a "black  
> hole in
> the knowledge base of the 21st century".
>
> To help rectify the problem, major cultural institutions like the NLA
> are archiving some of the important material on the web, but this is
> only done on an ad-hoc basis and tight resources mean they are not  
> even
> close to capturing all the most critical websites.
>
> In San Francisco, the non-profit Internet Archive
> (http://www.archive.org) automatically scrapes parts of the web and  
> its
> Wayback Machine allows people to surf back in time to see what their
> favourites sites looked like as far back as 1996. It already contains
> three petabytes of data, which equates to more than three million  
> gigabytes.
>
> The NLA has been archiving Australian online publications at its  
> Pandora
> website (http://pandora.nla.gov.au) for a decade but, as of March, it
> has captured just 21,614 "archived titles".
>
> This includes the plethora of websites associated with the Sydney
> Olympics, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's "Kevin07" election site and the
> site of the 2007 APEC summit, held in Sydney.
>
> Government websites are of particular interest to the NLA as these  
> often
> disappear or change completely after elections.
>
> Other smaller-scale Australian web archiving projects include Sydney's
> Powerhouse Museum, which last year asked the public to submit their
> personal emails - from the heart-wrenching to the hilarious - in an
> effort to preserve present-day communications for future generations.
>
> It received just 10,000 emails, enough to create only a snapshot of
> contemporary life.
>
> Mr Koerbin said the web had changed considerably from the time the NLA
> began archiving and was now "highly dynamic, enormous in size and ever
> growing". The trend towards social networking - as opposed to simply
> publishing material on a web page - made the task of archiving  
> extremely
> complex and daunting, as did copyright law and privacy regulations.
>
> "While it has always been an issue to determine what we should try and
> preserve this is much more complicated now and in fact we can probably
> do relatively less," he said.
>
> -- 
>
> Regards
> brd
>
> Bernard Robertson-Dunn
> Canberra Australia
> brd at iimetro.com.au
>
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-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
Ph: +39 06 855 4294  M: +39 3494957443
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