The Future Of Ideas - THE FATE OF THE COMMONS IN A CONNECTED WORLD

Aaron Swartz and Lessing
at the launch party for Creative Commons (2002)

"The Internet revolution has come. Some say it has gone.
What was responsible for its birth?
Who is responsible for its demise?"
"In The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig explains how the Internet revolution has produced a counterrevolution of devastating power and effect.
The explosion of innovation we have seen in the environment of the Internet was not conjured from some new, previously unimagined technological magic; instead, it came from an ideal as old as the nation.
Creativity flourished there because the Internet protected an innovation commons. The Internet's very design built a neutral platform upon which the widest range of creators could experiment. The legal architecture surrounding it protected this free space so that culture and information - the ideas of our era - could flow freely and inspire an unprecedented breadth of expression.
But this structural design is changing - both legally and technically."
"This shift will destroy the opportunities for creativity and innovation that the Internet originally engendered.
The cultural dinosaurs of our recent past are moving to quickly remake cyberspace so that they can better protect their interests against the future.
Powerful forces are swiftly using both law and technology to "tame" the internet, transforming it from an open forum for ideas into nothing more than cable television on speed.
Innovation, once again, will be directed from the top down, increasingly controlled by owners of the networks, holders of the largest patent portfolios, and, most invidiously, hoarders of copyrights." — https://archive.org/details/TheFutureOfIdeas/page/n1/mode/2up

#book #copyright #patents #cartels
#internet #commons #creativity #publicaccess #CreativeCommons
#libraries #education #information #digitaltools
#LawrenceLessig #AaronSwartz

National Library of Norwegian digitizing its multi-hundred-thousand book collection, dating to Middle Ages

The National Library of Norway is digitizing its entire collection. The Norwegian Legal Deposit Act requires that all published content, in all media, be deposited with the National Library of Norway. The collection is also being expanded through purchases and gifts. The digital collection contains material dating from the Middle Ages up to the current day.

In parallel with digitizing of analogue material, the National Library of Norway is working to expand the scope of publications covered by legal digital deposit legislation. The Library wishes to receive the digital source of the publication and in this way expand collection’s digital content. The digitizing programme started in 2006. It is estimated that it will take 20–30 years for the entire collection to be digitized.

Something tells me there's a few good sagas in there somewhere ....

That's a bit of link disambiguation from The Verge, whose article is brief to the point of near uselessness, and a bit more at The Atlantic:

If you happen to be in Norway, as measured by your IP address, you will be able to access all 20th-century works, even those still under copyright. Non-copyrighted works from all time periods will be available for download.

Here in the States, we are struggling to make even a small percentage of English-language works accessible to the citizens of our fine country, despite the efforts of groups like the Digital Public Library of America, Hathi Trust, and (I dare say) Google.

Having been engaged in some pretty significant research projects myself, found the availability of online records HUGELY helpful (I just tracked down William Stanley Jevons's The Coal Question yesterday, as well as, incidentally, his mid-19th century economics textbook, will likely write about this more later), this brings joy to my cold, black heart. I do remember the days when research meant trekking to libraries (and not just local ones), and long hours spent in reading rooms, with crumbling hardcopy, poorly-scanned microfiche, and other limited technologies.

h/t Reddit /r/technology

#Library #PublicAccess #DigitalPublishing #History