archive.org
public domain - what is it?
the book mobile is designed to demonstrate what is the public domain
essentially the book mobile is just a mobile printer and book binder hooked up by satelite to source - oh cool we get to see the book mobile and print out our own book! :)
these folks go around and print books for $1.00 a book this compares with the cost of lending/shelving a book of $2.00 (library of congress)
brewster kahle - public access to the public domain
India is building 30 book mobiles!
Anywhere books is going to be taking over the bookmobiles.
universal access to all human knowledge
challenges - we keep burning, destroying our libraries.
alexandria
library congress - already burnt once
we are good at collecting but not very good at distribution so the answer is -
digitise and replicate
"dark archives" - burying archives bad idea
brewster estimates that there are about 16 million books in the public domain in US libraries - only about 20K are digitised and accessible
archive.org and creative commons are working together to copyright fix against all books.
Digitised Public Domain=Public Domain
Raises the issue of potential for resetting copyright clock when a published work is digitised.
Heroes -
Rick Prelinger - movie archive - he has taken his top films and put them on archive.org
Michael Hart - has keyed in books - they re-key books - they are up to 10K books.
Gretchen Phillips - scans childrens books
Charles Franks - proof reading and scans and ocr book - he distributes across volunteers the proof reading of the ocr product.
Million Book Project - scanning books in india
Tim O'Reilly - because he has gone with the founders copyright law - ie. 14 years copyright.
what is working against the growth of the public domain -
copyright laws...just keep on getting longer and longer
access...can't get to it even when it is digital
license...adding licenses to digital products ie. even if they are public domain, some companies are taking digital versions and licensing them - licenses are pertual. the tricky bit is that even though you can take your own digital copy the raw product is often very difficult to get to...dark archives!