#internet archive

[probablyasocialecologist]

Libraries have traditionally operated on a basic premise: Once they purchase a book, they can lend it out to patrons as much (or as little) as they like. Library copies often come from publishers, but they can also come from donations, used book sales, or other libraries. However the library obtains the book, once the library legally owns it, it is theirs to lend as they see fit.  Not so for digital books. To make licensed e-books available to patrons, libraries have to pay publishers multiple times over. First, they must subscribe (for a fee) to aggregator platforms such as Overdrive. Aggregators, like streaming services such as HBO’s Max, have total control over adding or removing content from their catalogue. Content can be removed at any time, for any reason, without input from your local library. The decision happens not at the community level but at the corporate one, thousands of miles from the patrons affected.  Then libraries must purchase each individual copy of each individual title that they want to offer as an e-book. These e-book copies are not only priced at a steep markup—up to 300% over consumer retail—but are also time- and loan-limited, meaning the files self-destruct after a certain number of loans. The library then needs to repurchase the same book, at a new price, in order to keep it in stock.  This upending of the traditional order puts massive financial strain on libraries and the taxpayers that fund them. It also opens up a world of privacy concerns; while libraries are restricted in the reader data they can collect and share, private companies are under no such obligation. Some libraries have turned to another solution: controlled digital lending, or CDL, a process by which a library scans the physical books it already has in its collection, makes secure digital copies, and lends those out on a one-to-one “owned to loaned” ratio.  The Internet Archive was an early pioneer of this technique. When the digital copy is loaned, the physical copy is sequestered from borrowing; when the physical copy is checked out, the digital copy becomes unavailable. The benefits to libraries are obvious; delicate books can be circulated without fear of damage, volumes can be moved off-site for facilities work without interrupting patron access, and older and endangered works become searchable and can get a second chance at life. Library patrons, who fund their local library’s purchases with their tax dollars, also benefit from the ability to freely access the books. Publishers are, unfortunately, not a fan of this model, and in 2020 four of them sued the Internet Archive over its CDL program. The suit ultimately focused on the Internet Archive’s lending of 127 books that were already commercially available through licensed aggregators. The publisher plaintiffs accused the Internet Archive of mass copyright infringement, while the Internet Archive argued that its digitization and lending program was a fair use. The trial court sided with the publishers, and on September 4, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reaffirmed that decision with some alterations to the underlying reasoning.  This decision harms libraries. It locks them into an e-book ecosystem designed to extract as much money as possible while harvesting (and reselling) reader data en masse. It leaves local communities’ reading habits at the mercy of curatorial decisions made by four dominant publishing companies thousands of miles away. It steers Americans away from one of the few remaining bastions of privacy protection and funnels them into a surveillance ecosystem that, like Big Tech, becomes more dangerous with each passing data breach. And by increasing the price for access to knowledge, it puts up even more barriers between underserved communities and the American dream.

11 September 2024

[mircrobios]

konichiwa (⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)

[omegastag]

GIRLS YOU CAN HIT (original .pdf)

WHY DO FASCISTS WANT TO KILL TRANS WOMEN?

In a nine-day period between June 25 and July 3, six Black trans women - Brayla Stone, Merci Mack, Shaki Peters, Draya McCarty, and Tatiana Hall - were found murdered. The news barely made a ripple; Black trans women and trans women of color are murdered regularly - and no one is shocked, because the gender class structure is operating as usual. Liberal-individualist analysis claims that this is simply the result of amorphous personal "prejudices" -- that individual men, fearful of the unknown or afraid of change, attack trans women for personal reasons.

This is both idealist and ahistorical, a comforting fantasy that naturalizes and atomizes the oppression of trans women as a class and protects the underlying gender class structure of the empire.

In fact, reactionaries make trans women a primary target. ICE imprisons trans women in special separate concentration camps under under even worse conditions than cisgender men and women, and during protests, police subject captured trans women for especially brutal treatment. On July 25, a group of pro-police protesters outside Pittsburgh switched their chant from “all lives matter" to "kill transgenders" and "kill faggots." State power and reactionary elements target trans women specifically - but why? Because the oppression of trans women as a class is critical to the gender class structure of the empire, and by centering the oppression of trans women in our material feminist analysis, we can understand that class structure much more clearly.

WHAT IS THE GENDER CLASS STRUCTURE OF THE EMPIRE?

Fundamentally, the gender class structure is built on the domination of white men over women; white women constitute a subordinated but privileged class under the control ("protection") of white men, and reactionary white manhood is ultimately defined in terms of control of women.

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF TRANS WOMEN (AND NONBINARY TRANSFEMININE PEOPLE, WHO ARE TREATED LIKE TRANS WOMEN) IN THIS GENDER CLASS STRUCTURE?

Trans women, nonbinary transfeminine people, and feminine gay cisgender men are treated as a gender underclass. Structurally, they are "girls you can hit." They are also subject to substantial sexual violence in the form of sexual assault and rape. Cisgender women from oppressed and colonized nations are treated more like "girls you can hit" if they are less acceptable as potential members of the "protected" class of potential wives and mothers.

Thus, Black and Indigenous women are treated disposably as "girls you can hit." Likewise, sex workers, who are seen as disqualified from the "protected" class of women, are "girls you can hit." The further they are from the "protected" class of women, the more disposable they are, and they are treated more and more like trans women. This develops intersectionally as well; Black trans women are often accused of sex work to justify violent treatment, and Black trans women sex workers are murdered casually.

WHY DO CISGENDER MEN OPPRESS TRANS WOMEN? IN OTHER WORDS, HOW DO CISGENDER MEN BENEFIT MATERIALLY FROM OPPRESSING TRANS WOMEN?

This dynamic arises in childhood, where they are an acceptable target for violence and covert sex ("practice girls") by boys trying to enact their manhood. Men can gain status and an identity as controllers of women by hurting “girls you can hit." They "protect" (white, cis) women in the same way that the police "protect" communities: by enacting violence on the underclass, they gain control over the "respectable" class of women.

The threat to the women they control is supposed to be implicit, not enacted: "Serve me faithfully and you will never be hurt the way | hurt those sissies in middle school." But the opposite side of the coin is that any "protected" woman who refuses to comply in a serious and sustained way can be threatened with degradation to the underclass.

WHY DO CISGENDER WOMEN OPPRESS TRANS WOMEN? IN OTHER WORDS, HOW DO CISGENDER WOMEN BENEFIT MATERIALLY FROM OPPRESSING TRANS WOMEN?

They get to not be treated like trans women, sex workers, and other "girls you can hit." Their respectable status is contingent on having an underclass they are not part of.

HOW DOES THE OPPRESSION OF TRANS MEN (AND NONBINARY TRANSMASCULINE PEOPLE, WHO ARE TREATED LIKE TRANS MEN) FIT INTO THIS GENDER CLASS STRUCTURE?

The greatest threat to a trans woman's life is being treated like a trans woman. For trans men and nonbinary transmasculine people, the greatest threat to their lives is being treated like a cis woman. We can see this play out in fascist fantasies of "correcting’ trans men to become cis women, and in the way that transmisogynists like JK Rowling claim that "trans activists [code for trans women] are seducing your daughters into mutilating their healthy, fertile female bodies in an impossible attempt to become men." In fascist and reactionary rhetoric, trans men are framed as deluded, innocent cis women who have to be saved from a horrible error. In the material world, this agenda often plays out in the form of corrective rape and other atrocities.

Trans men from colonized communities are treated much more violently, as in the case of the murdered Tony McDade; there is no prospect of forcing them to be "protected" women, so they are treated disposablly, like trans women.

HOW DOES TRANS WOMEN’S LIBERATION THREATEN THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE EMPIRE? IN OTHER WORDS, WHY DO REACTIONARIES WANT TO WIPE OUT TRANS WOMEN?

The reactionaries are not mistaken to see the liberation of trans women (and sex workers) as linked to the liberation of cis women from colonized communities, nor is their targeting of trans women a mistake.

The liberation of trans women and "girls you can hit" in general would invert the gendered class structure of the empire and strike a critical blow to the control of "protected" women that reactionary men depend on for both social reproduction, personal exercise of power, and identity formation.

WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR US?

We must center the liberation of trans women, sex workers, and other “girls you can hit." This will immediately help to liberate cis women from colonized nations, remove the hierarchical power of "protected" white cis women over other women, degrade the power of white cisgender men over oppressed genders, and remove the basis for treating trans men and transmasculine people as deluded cis women.

[carriesthewind]

One of the really frustrating things about the IA's actions is how unnecessary it all was, and yet the people uncritically defending them don't seem to be able to acknowledge that. One consistent trend I keep seeing with most of the people who are defending the IA's actions with their "Open Library" is that they describe how valuable the "Open Library" was/is to them. But then the things they describe are things that are almost always either a) well within the bounds of existing copyright law (e.g. out-of-copyright materials, legally owned or reproduced material (e.g. open licenses), or materials they are accessing as someone with a print disability) or b) within a much more careful and restricted use of CDL (e.g. out of print materials). Because that is a super-valuable resource that they provide! (And will hopefully still be able to provide!) They didn't need to lend out copies of popular, in-copyright materials with existing e-books! It's just! Arg!

[crashurcar]

some blue web textures & tiles

[i’ll post more soon]

[okaydays22]

[arconinternet]

The Virtual Cities Internet Cookbook (Website, ~1997-2019)

You can read its over 6000 free recipes here.

Includes recipes from United States senators, congresspeople and governors.

Historically accurate 1999-era screenshot taken using oldweb.today.

[ayeforscotland]

This is absolutely catastrophic.

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]

[veggietale]

server towers at the internet archive, each blue light signifies an article being accessed or edited (in real time!)

[azuremist]

I haven’t seen any posts about this! But, thanks to the Internet Archive lawsuit, half a million books have been removed from their library. They are calling for people to share their experiences to help them regain access to these books, so please considering sending something in!

6/17/2024 edit: They’re also requesting that people sign an open letter asking the publishers to restore access, so please consider doing that too!

Google Form || Open letter || More about the effects of this lawsuit

[eroticlamb]

Kinetica Art Fair, 2012, featuring 'Pony' by Tim Lewis  (video source)

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

I love you PBS I love you NPR I love you public libraries I love you wikipedia I love you project gutenberg I love you librivox I love you libby I love you hoopla I love you openlibrary I love you internet archive I love you resources that make information free and accessible to the public

[beggars-opera]

One very important note on the immense value of the Internet Archive that I haven't seen mentioned yet:

It crawls major newspapers like the New York Times multiple times per day.

For anything other than one of those scrolling updates breaking news pages, you can access it from the Archive usually within an hour or two of it being published. No paywall. You want international news? You got it. Opinion? That too. Recipes? It's all here. Page not yet archived? There's a button for that and now you got it.

There are various paywall-evading extensions and tricks out there, but they don't always work. This does.

Go forth and read the newspaper.

[carriesthewind]

Reading through some of the Appendix for the MfSJ in Hachette and my god, does it really emphasizes how knowingly sloppy and reckless the IA was. These are all statements of material fact by the publishers that the IA agreed were undisputed:

"Internet Archive does not always comply with its [own claimed] five year limitation. For example, two of the Works in Suit, All the Presidents’ Women and The Man Who Solved the Market, were published in 2019 and republished on the IA’s Website that same year." A-6066

"Mr. Kahle stated in a July 2019 blog post that Internet Archive 'has worked with 500 libraries over the last 15 years to digitize 3.5M books. But based on copyright concerns the selection has often been restricted to [public domain] books.'" A-6080

"Internet Archive’s former Director of Finance, Jacques Cressaty, also testified that, by 2016, 'our library partners ran out of books that were out of copyright, so pre-1923, and they’re reluctant to give us books that were in copyright.'" A-6080

"Mr. Freeland testified that Internet Archive 'was aware … that some partner libraries did not suppress circulation when they agreed to bec[o]me a partner library and put their books into controlled digital lending.'" A-6127

"Mr. Freeland testified that Internet Archive is also aware that even if a library puts a physical book into a non-circulating reference collection, it could be read in the library while the ebook equivalent is checked out." A-6127

Bonus: More cataloger nightmare fuel:

"The Internet Archive has stated that “Open Library’s book catalog has millions of books and thousands of data errors. Sometimes author names are misspelled, book covers are missing, or works and authors are duplicated or conflated.” A-6130

[engravedlives]

weirdcore backrooms graphics stamps