Open Access News

The powerful distribution mechanisms of the networked world, particularly peer-to-peer file sharing, present a unique challenge to the rule of law. But at present no one will meet that challenge. While filesharers will not compromise on ultimate freedom, corporations cannot see past the bottom line. The result is bad news for posterity....The rise of p2p, and of other systems of distribution between human peers (the peer in p2p refers to machines, not humans, and their position of equality in a network) enabled by the disintermediary powers of the internet, has been matched by an unprecedented strengthening in copyright law. In each phenomenon, there is an accountability deficit....What has gone unconsidered is the educational value of public domain archiving....At present, anyone can legally download works from organisations who are working with Free, Open Source or Creative Commons licences and material in the public domain to distribute artistic materials legally. But even these projects encounter strange barriers. Brewster Kahle is attempting one such project in the Internet Archive. Kahle has fought and won legislative rights to extract software code from dated technology, hardware from perhaps only a decade ago which is quickly becoming unreadable either due to material decay or technological obsolescence. As yet he is not permitted to publish such material, but was granted the rights to archive the software on contemporary hard disks provided that he adhered to conventional copyright law. Distribution may be made possible in the future via a lawsuit (Kahle v. Gonzales) currently in process. Yet the lengths which he has had to go to stay within the law when his desire is to archive a piece of software which would be valued at less than a few dollars in today's money, seem ridiculous....[W]e must go further and tear down the walls of worldwide dictatorship which have lead to the restrictive DMCA and EUCD legislation, until research and archiving are once again permitted, until such systems are held up to review or even outlawed due to their clear and direct obstruction of the recording of the events of this century. Projects such as the Internet Archive are essential, but accountability must extend further until a library is permitted to be built and referenced by the general public in order to prevent the coming of a digital dark age.