I feel like this has been one of my soapbox things for a while now, but
Americans, the Internet Archive and Wikipedia stand as two of the biggest contributions to human knowledge preservation in all of history. To lose either would be a huge backslide for us as a civilization, and it never really seemed like a genuine threat until recent events over there.
I know there’s a lot of other shit going on right now, but you must do what you can to ensure both are able to continue their work.
One of my senators is a trust fund baby who started out in venture capital. My other senator insists on receiving fucking faxes. Neither respond to constituents.
My congressman, famous coward Don Bacon, is retiring to take a lobbying job at a defense contractor and was never receptive to feedback anyway. On account of being a coward and all.
America is currently run by chaos goblins, and frankly even in the post-Trump era, it’s likely that the right will remain chaos goblins for some time. Given that we have only two parties, our policies are bound to be volatile.
In light of that, I would strongly recommend other nations step up with alternatives to function as a backup to American institutions that the world has come to rely on. Think of us as a close friend with sudden-onset schizophrenia and act accordingly.
Americans
It’s not the public. It’s the corporate copyright and IP holders. Because why should preservation efforts be allowed when the rights holders are letting the IP rot, and sometimes actively deleting source code?
It’s not that Americans are against either of these per se; it’s that they’re indifferent. Ignoring people brainwashed by the right-wing propaganda against Wikipedia, sane Americans largely take Wikipedia for granted. I don’t mean that bitterly; I mean that it’s been there for 25 years, its quality is better than ever, finances are good, (edit: many people read it through some intermediary), and everyday people therefore don’t consider how unstable its position really is, how much work there is to do, and how irreplaceable it is.
As for the IA, sample 1000 American adults. I’ll bet you five or fewer could tell you what the hell an “Internet Archive” is.
sane Americans largely take Wikipedia for granted
North America is Wikipedia’s largest funding source by a factor of more than 2. I’m not sure why you’re calling Americans out here.
Are you supposing that IA is better known in other countries than in the US? Are you basing that on anything?
I’m not sure why you’re calling Americans out here.
Because the original comment (not made by me) was an appeal to Americans. The subsequent comment said it’s not the [American] public. Thus I’m specifically limiting what I’m saying to Americans, regardless of the relative extent to which it applies elsewhere. Because that’s whom the conversation – that I didn’t start – is about.
The rest of the conversation, though, was about a (mostly) exclusively American thing, relating to lobbying and legislation against Wikipedia and IA. I’ve got no problem with shitting on the US for things we’re actually doing, but saying the public doesn’t support Wikipedia when we’re actually the #1 supporter worldwide of Wikipedia feels kind of disingenuous.
if we cant protect them, we didnt deserve them in the first place.
The NYT doesn’t seem to dislike the Internet Achive specifically. They just want to protect their content from AI scrapers.
I’m not sure what the solution is, but I know any legislation that would address it likely won’t be around until one or both sites go under.
They could whitelist the archivers or contribute directly.
