The Archive is a Digital Library
Brewster Kahle: "If its not on the Internet, it doesn't exist."
Are traditional libraries used anymore?
The Goal: Universal Access to All Human Knowledge
The Library of Alexandria, 300 B.C., was the closest we've ever come (supposedly had 70% of all books ever written). It burned down.
Is it possible today?
Technically:
estimates are that there are around 100 million books (there are 28 million volumes at Library of Congress)
~ 1 megabyte per book
A thousand megabytes is a Gigabyte and a thousand Gigabytes is a Terabyte. So for 28 million volumes we need about 28 terabytes. Kahle estimates that one could buy 28 terabytes of disk space for $60,000. Kahle emphasizes this point and looks to the future by saying,"Disk space is free, memory is free".
How does this change the way we think about computers?
"user" data now stored on servers (Gmail, del.icio.us)
The Google grid
Money:
In India bookscanning is such that a book can be scanned for about $10.With robotic page turner, the cost in this country can get to about that price.
So 280 million bucks to scan the entire library of congress.
The U.S. spends 12 billion a year on libraries.
The Powers that be:
This scares publishers. A lot.
Copyright: Books are the third battle-line, after music and now video. Lawrence Lessig is the strongest proponent of free culture, and trying to rein in the Music Industry and the Movie Industry.
Copyright used to be 18 years, and one could renew for another 18. Explcit renewal was necessary.
Due to Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and numerous prior extensions, the law is now:life of the author plus 70 years (or 95 years if the author is a corporation)
Even if book is out of print. Onous is on "remixer" who must find the author (or descendents, etc.)