Publishers Weekly: Judgment Phase of Internet Archive Copyright Case Appears Imminent. “It’s now been more than four months since a federal judge found the Internet Archive liable for copyright infringement for its program to scan and lend library books. But after a court order late last week, the parties finally appear headed toward the judgment phase of the litigation.”
Internet Archive Blog: Building Democracy’s Library—Celebrate with the Internet Archive on October 19. “Why is it that on the internet the best information is often locked behind paywalls? Brewster Kahle, founder of The Internet Archive, believes it’s time to turn that scarcity model upside down and build an internet based on abundance. Join us for an evening event where he’ll share a new project—Democracy’s Library—a free, open, online compendium of government research and publications from around the world. Why? Because democracies need an educated citizenry to thrive.” The event will be both in-person and virtual.
The Nation: You Can’t Buy These Books. “In reality, the publishers’ attack on the Internet Archive is a Trojan horse for a very different, and radical, idea: that e-books are fundamentally—legally—different from paper books. If accepted, their argument would remove e-books from the many statutory protections upon which library rights positively depend. That outcome would leave libraries vulnerable to the draconian licensing deals under which e-books are increasingly offered. And libraries would have to pay and pay, in the absence of digital books that can be permanently bought and owned outright.”
Publishers Weekly: Internet Archive, Publishers to Seek Summary Judgment in Book Scanning Lawsuit. “A federal court in New York has ordered motions for summary judgment by early summer in a lawsuit filed by four major publishers against the Internet Archive over its scanning and lending of print library books, putting the fate of the closely watched copyright case on track to be in the court’s hands by early fall.”
Input: Flickr deleted, and then undeleted, 5 million archival images. “After a Twitter thread by Danish designer Jonas Lönborg brought attention to the heartbreaking erasure, Flickr CEO Don MacAskill responded that Flickr’s recommendation for the Internet Archive to delete the account had been ‘a mistake.’ He explained that the 5 million book images ‘were drowning out the rest of the Commons members’ and announced a new solution: Flickr will restore the account but move it out of the Commons.”
Internet Archive Blog: A Holiday Jackpot: The Lounge is Open. “Previous sets of items, including arcade machines, handheld toys, computer software and flash animations, all represent thousands and in some cases tens of thousands of individual items from history, all playable in the browser. The Jackpot Lounge is much more focused and refers to one specific group of coin-operated games: Gambling Machines.”
Internet Archive: Reflecting on 9/11: Twenty Years of Archived TV News – Special Event and Resources. “On Thursday, September 9, the Internet Archive will host an online webinar, ‘Reflecting on 9/11: Twenty Years of Archived TV News’ Learn from scholars, journalists, archivists, and data scientists about the importance of archived television for gaining insights into our evolving understanding of history and society.”
Data Horde: How to recover your Yahoo! Groups from the Internet Archive. “Yahoo! Groups, once upon a time a hub to many online communities, was shut down in 2020. Yahoo! Groups used to host mailing lists going as far back as 1997, and perhaps you may have once been a part of it yourself. Users were offered a Get Your Data tool to download their messages and other data, prior to the shutdown, but many people were unable to respond on short notice. Thankfully, owing to the efforts of the Save Yahoo Groups Project and Archive Team the data of many groups has been preserved. If you missed out on the GYD tool, you might still be able to retrieve your groups’ data by following the steps below.”
Internet Archive: After Searching for a Decade, Legendary Hollywood Research Library Finds a New Home. “For 50 years in Hollywood, generations of filmmakers would beat a path to the Michelson Cinema Research Library, where renowned film researcher Lillian Michelson could hunt down the answer to just about any question. She was the human card catalogue to a library of more than one million books, photos, periodicals and clippings. But ever since Lillian retired a decade ago, the Michelson Cinema Research Library has been languishing in cold storage, looking for a home. Today it has found one. Lillian Michelson, 92, announced that she is donating her library and life’s work to the Internet Archive. For its part, the nonprofit digital library vows to preserve her collection for the long-term and digitize as much of it as possible, making it accessible to the world.”
The Gamer: Nintendo’s Camp Hyrule Games Are Now Available On The Internet Archives. “If summer camp was your way of escaping the school routine, and you also loved The Legend of Zelda, then Nintendo’s Camp Hyrule must have been the event for you. What stands as Nintendo’s biggest online event now has its collection of games available on the Internet Archive. First appearing in 1995, Camp Hyrule was the virtual place to be in August, where a host of online games were available to play within its summer camp simulation. The catalogue of games included trivia challenges, sports games, rhythm minigames, and more.”
Internet Archive: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive. “Great news for everyone concerned about the Flash end of life planned for end of 2020: The Internet Archive is now emulating Flash animations, games and toys in our software collection.”
Internet Archive Blog: Weaving Books into the Web—Starting with Wikipedia. “The Internet Archive has transformed 130,000 references to books in Wikipedia into live links to 50,000 digitized Internet Archive books in several Wikipedia language editions including English, Greek, and Arabic. And we are just getting started.”
Internet Archive: Calculating the True Value of A Library that is Free. “The Internet Archive, which runs the project Open Library, is working to create a vast network of online book lending in order to make all books accessible to all people. Open Library cares about the input of its readers. As Open librarian and Internet Archive Software Engineer Mek Karpeles describes, ‘Open Library’s theory is that readers deserve a say in what’s on their bookshelves,’ which is why he and his team have created a new Book Sponsorship feature.”
The Next Web: The Wayback Machine can now highlight changes in copy on websites. “The new feature, called ‘Changes,’ lets you compare two different archives of a given URL. It gives a side-by-side comparison, with changes highlighted in blue (added content) and yellow (deleted content).” ooo!
Internet Archive: Boston Public Library’s 78rpm Records Come to the Internet: Reformatting the Boston Public Library Sound Archives. “Following eighteen months of work, more than 50,000 78rpm record ‘sides’ from the Boston Public Library’s sound archives have now been digitized and made freely available online by the Internet Archive.” I listened to a Cab Calloway song from 1946 (“Hey Now, Hey Now” if you care) and while it did have pops and crackles I was surprised at how good the sound quality was.
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