1. The Internet Archive and Open Library:
Close, but not quite free
Michael Strickland
April 28, 2010

2. Founding of Internet Archive
• 1996 -- now
• Brewster Kahle
o computer scientist
o digital librarian
• "Universal access to all human knowledge in the world"

3. The Wayback Machine
• Saves copy of publicly available webpages every 2-6
months
• Uses in research about internet
• Changed the way think about original digital content
• Opened to public in 2001

4. Wayback Machine and copyright
• The Archive plays it safe
• Removal policy similar to YouTube's, but not easy to
appeal removal
• 2002 Scientology scandal
• Avoided successful litigation against the Archive

5. Other Internet Archive projects
• More archival of primary source documents -
text, audio, video
• Ourmedia: encouraging reuse

6. Million Books Projects
Open Content Alliance
• 2002: 100,000 scanned books for the Million Books
Project
• 2005: launched Open Content Alliance with Yahoo
• Microsoft, others donate equipment

7. Business models
• OCA public domain only at the moment
• Potential for revenue from copyrighted works (or Google
wouldn't bother)
• Expensive but one-time and necessary process

8. Open Content Alliance / Google Books
• Google Books starts scanning in 2004
• Similar to OCA, but scanning copyrighted works, different
endgame
• OCA moves slowly legally, but Google got sued
• Eldred v. Ashcroft, Kahle v. Gonzalez

9. Open Content Alliance / Google Books (cont.)
• Lawsuit settlement could lead to privatization of
knowledge
• Chilling effects -> Monopoly over orphan works
• Kahle: "The history of digital materials in companies'
hands is one of … loss"
• Only non-profits can be trusted long-term

10. The Open Library
• "One webpage for every book ever published"
• Wiki for book data
• Next-generation, open catalogue system

12. Technical overview
• Contributions made without claim to copyright
• Software running site is open source
• Built for varying levels of participation and contribution

13. Participating on the wiki
• Wiki calls for more focused details than Wikipedia
• Facts: book dimensions, tables of contents, etc.
• Very low participation
• Raymond: An empty bazaar == a cathedral
• Majority of contributions by bots

14. Working with the API
• Creating a widget for adding data while on third party
sites
• API, like rest of site, incomplete

17. Creativity through freedom
• Media-based sites like Ourmedia encourages creativity
through mashups
• Open Library wiki doesn't allow for this
• Participating at deeper levels = different kind of creativity

18. www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001222.html

19. Generative versus tethered
• Google books : tethered
Internet Archive : generative
Open Library : both
• Only works for non-profits

20. Looking forward
• Open Library will be having a larger launch in the coming
months
• Will thrive regardless of commercial alternatives (Google
Books)