Derek - Curious if you have an opinion about web-dot-archive-dot-org a.k.a. Internet Archive a.k.a. Wayback Machine. On the one hand, I've definitely used it to get around paywalls.* On the other, the Wayback Machine gets stuff up that would be lost to history if the Wayback Machine weren't collecting it, e.g., in 2010 there was a long brilliant Singles Jukebox thread about Ke$ha, it spilled over into 51 comments which caused the Singles Jukebox site to screw up and only show the 51st comment (it's by me!) whereas the Wayback Machine has all 51 comments. And when the music magazine Stylus went dead its site did too, so the only way to find my friend Dave Moore's 2007 Stylus piece on The Bluffer's Guide To Teenpop or his interview with Brie Larson is at the Wayback Machine. Also, the Wayback Machine's got my Disco Tex essay, from when I typed it up for my friend Mark Sinker's website (now not operable) sometime in the early '00s. Here's Dave's Brie Larson interview:
*But this is something of a PITA: have to get a URL by hovering over a link with my cursor, copy that URL from the bottom left corner of my screen by hand, and type it in digit by digit.
As far as I can tell Internet Archive does stuff that's legal, and if they'd just keep at that instead of, um, innovating quite so aggressively in the IP realm they'd be fine. The early pandemic's Emergency Library from IA was the kind of "every crisis is an opportunity" grab that I worried would be more prevalent. Clearly overreach, a little sinister, and—again—an erasure of legit libraries, which didn't "close" during the pandemic but did their important work online. I'm a big borrower of ebooks from the public library and would love to see the money currently spent on disruption going to expand libraries' digital holdings instead.
The Canadian independent publisher and author Kenneth Whyte has been very critical of their “National Emergency Library.” You may find this long piece he wrote about it of interest:
If only Meta would trade: open access to its algorithms for access to author’s content. In a dream world.
Derek - Curious if you have an opinion about web-dot-archive-dot-org a.k.a. Internet Archive a.k.a. Wayback Machine. On the one hand, I've definitely used it to get around paywalls.* On the other, the Wayback Machine gets stuff up that would be lost to history if the Wayback Machine weren't collecting it, e.g., in 2010 there was a long brilliant Singles Jukebox thread about Ke$ha, it spilled over into 51 comments which caused the Singles Jukebox site to screw up and only show the 51st comment (it's by me!) whereas the Wayback Machine has all 51 comments. And when the music magazine Stylus went dead its site did too, so the only way to find my friend Dave Moore's 2007 Stylus piece on The Bluffer's Guide To Teenpop or his interview with Brie Larson is at the Wayback Machine. Also, the Wayback Machine's got my Disco Tex essay, from when I typed it up for my friend Mark Sinker's website (now not operable) sometime in the early '00s. Here's Dave's Brie Larson interview:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110523104133/http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/pop_playground/sugar-shock-013-bunnies-traps-and-slip-n-slides-an-interview-with-brie-larson.htm
*But this is something of a PITA: have to get a URL by hovering over a link with my cursor, copy that URL from the bottom left corner of my screen by hand, and type it in digit by digit.
As far as I can tell Internet Archive does stuff that's legal, and if they'd just keep at that instead of, um, innovating quite so aggressively in the IP realm they'd be fine. The early pandemic's Emergency Library from IA was the kind of "every crisis is an opportunity" grab that I worried would be more prevalent. Clearly overreach, a little sinister, and—again—an erasure of legit libraries, which didn't "close" during the pandemic but did their important work online. I'm a big borrower of ebooks from the public library and would love to see the money currently spent on disruption going to expand libraries' digital holdings instead.
The Canadian independent publisher and author Kenneth Whyte has been very critical of their “National Emergency Library.” You may find this long piece he wrote about it of interest:
https://shush.substack.com/p/this-has-to-stop