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description: online project for book data by the Internet Archive

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Walled Culture: How Big Content Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Keep Creators Poor
by Glyn Moody
Published 26 Sep 2022

By 2020, we can spark a new ‘Carnegie moment’ in which thousands of libraries unlock their analog collections for a new generation of learners, enabling free, long-term, public access to knowledge.”99 By 2022, the Open Libraries project had digitised 2.7 million books, and the Internet Archive had been operating its digital lending library for a decade. However, for 12 weeks during the spring of 2020, the Internet Archive’s system worked a little differently. The global Covid-19 pandemic forced libraries around the world to close their physical locations, and library patrons could not access the millions of books that libraries had bought from publishers. Libraries and schools across the globe reached out to the Internet Archive for help. Under those unprecedented circumstances, the Internet Archive lifted its one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio (while retaining other controls, such as a two-week loan period and DRM to prevent copying and redistribution) and launched, along with over 100 library endorsements,100 the ‘National Emergency Library’ (NEL).

In 2022, it held 45 million images, texts, videos and sounds from across the nation. The efforts of both of these entities are dwarfed by that of the Internet Archive.87 In 2005, the Internet Archive announced the Open Content Alliance,88 which coordinated hundreds of libraries to digitise millions of books. The Open Library89 project has created a catalogue of books that helps people find scanned books on archive.org90 as well as in other projects. This was an open alternative to the Google project, and has continued to digitise over 1 million books per year. As well as the Internet Archive’s unique archive of the Internet over the last twenty-five years, which amounts to nearly 600 billion Web pages, there are also scans of 28 million books and texts; 14 million audio recordings (including 220,000 live concerts); 6 million videos (including 2 million TV news programmes); 3.5 million images; and 580,000 software programs.

_Hart 53 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620163648/http://www.gutenbergnews.org/about/history-of-project-gutenberg/ 54 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620163648/http://www.gutenbergnews.org/about/history-of-project-gutenberg/ 55 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620163725/https://pro.europeana.eu/about-us/mission 56 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621071000/https://www.europeana.eu/en 57 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621070928/https://pro.europeana.eu/post/the-missing-decades-the-20th-century-black-hole-in-europeana 58 https://web.archive.org/web/20160206043510/http://books.google.com/googlebooks/about/history.html 59 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621071024/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition 60 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621071132/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books 61 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621071154/https://www.authorsguild.org/who-we-are/ 62 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621071953/https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/21/technology/writers-sue-google-accusing-it-of-copyright-violation.html 63 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621072029/https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/publishers-sue-google-over-book-search-project/ 64 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620164503/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-tragedy-of-google-books/523320/ 65 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620171524/https://www.authorsguild.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Amended-Settlement-Agreement.pdf 66 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621072210/https://facultydirectory.virginia.edu/faculty/sv2r 67 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620171618/https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/40/3/copyright-creativity-catalogs/DavisVol40No3_Vaidhyanathan.pdf 68 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620164503/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-tragedy-of-google-books/523320/ 69 https://web.archive.org/web/20131103165236/http://publishers.org/press/85/ 70 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621072300/https://www.eff.org/cases/authors-guild-v-google-part-ii-fair-use-proceedings 71 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621072320/https://www.hathitrust.org/authors_guild_lawsuit_information 72 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621072339/https://www.hathitrust.org/press_10-13-2008 73 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620172106/https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/copyright/article/48659-authors-guild-sues-libraries-over-scan-plan.html 74 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621073236/https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/business/media/authors-sue-to-remove-books-from-digital-archive.html 75 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620172106/https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/copyright/article/48659-authors-guild-sues-libraries-over-scan-plan.html 76 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621073355/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_use 77 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620173115/https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/copyright/article/54321-in-hathitrust-ruling-judge-says-google-scanning-is-fair-use.html 78 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620173140/https://www.wipo.int/marrakesh_treaty/en/ 79 https://web.archive.org/web/20220705085826/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Love_%28NGO_director%29 80 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620173240/https://www.keionline.org/ 81 https://web.archive.org/web/20220909084848/https://walledculture.org/interview-james-love/ 82 https://web.archive.org/web/20220701065841/https://corporateeurope.org/en/power-lobbies/2017/03/marrakesh-brussels-long-arm-eu-copyright-lobby 83 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621164103/https://www.wired.com/2017/04/how-google-book-search-got-lost/ 84 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620183320/https://www.hathitrust.org/files/14MillionBooksand6MillionVisitors_1.pdf 85 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621164158/https://www.europeana.eu/en/about-us 86 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620183528/https://dp.la/ 87 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621034828/https://archive.org/ 88 https://web.archive.org/web/20220701073551/https://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/03/business/in-challenge-to-google-yahoo-will-scan-books.html 89 https://web.archive.org/web/20220701073629/https://openlibrary.org/ 90 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621034828/https://archive.org/ 91 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621074031/https://walledculture.org/interview-brewster-kahle-libraries-role-3-internet-battles-licensing-pains-the-national-emergency-library-and-the-internet-archives-controlled-digital-lending-efforts-vs-the-publishers-lawsuit/ 92 https://web.archive.org/web/20220817072842/https:/digitalcommons.du.edu/collaborativelibrarianship/vol12/iss2/8 93 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621074146/https://www.hathitrust.org/ETAS-Description 94 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621075018/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_digital_lending 95 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621075101/https://controlleddigitallending.org/ 96 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621075139/https://controlleddigitallending.org/faq 97 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621183602/http://openlibraries.online/ 98 https://web.archive.org/web/20220701075026/https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703279704575335193054884632 99 https://web.archive.org/web/20220121095547/https://archive.org/details/TransformingourLibrariesintoDigitalLibraries102016 100 https://web.archive.org/web/20220701075207/https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vQeYK7dKWH7Qqw9wLVnmEo1ZktykuULBq15j7L2gPCXSL3zem4WZO4JFyj-dS9yVK6BTnu7T1UAluOl/pub 101 https://web.archive.org/web/20220701075343/https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-national-emergency-library-is-a-gift-to-readers-everywhere 102 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621164306/https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/internet-archives-uncontrolled-digital-lending/ 103 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621164330/https://publishers.org/news/comment-from-aap-president-and-ceo-maria-pallante-on-the-internet-archives-national-emergency-library/ 104 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621164359/https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/83472-publishers-charge-the-internet-archive-with-copyright-infringement.html 105 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620201839/https://www.publishersweekly.com/binary-data/ARTICLE_ATTACHMENT/file/000/004/4388-1.pdf 106 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620201859/https://blog.archive.org/2020/06/10/temporary-national-emergency-library-to-close-2-weeks-early-returning-to-traditional-controlled-digital-lending/ 107 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621165251/https://walledculture.org/interview-brewster-kahle-libraries-role-3-internet-battles-licensing-pains-the-national-emergency-library-and-the-internet-archives-controlled-digital-lending-efforts-vs-the-publishers-lawsuit/ 108 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621164359/https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/83472-publishers-charge-the-internet-archive-with-copyright-infringement.html 109 https://web.archive.org/web/20220701075637/https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/04/major-publishers-sue-internet-archives-digital-library-program-midst-pandemic/ 110 https://web.archive.org/web/20220701075917/https://help.archive.org/help/national-emergency-library-faqs/ 111 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621165356/https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/trade-shows-events/article/62877-ala-2014-raising-the-stakes.html 112 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620202027/https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/77532-tor-scales-back-library-e-book-lending-as-part-of-test.html 113 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621075324/https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/e-book-library-pricing-the-game-changes-again/ 114 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620202210/https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/46333-librarian-unhappiness-over-new-harper-e-book-lending-policy-grows.html 115 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620203003/https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/80758-after-tor-experiment-macmillan-expands-embargo-on-library-e-books.html 116 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621075545/https://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2019/07/ala-denounces-new-macmillan-library-lending-model-urges-library-customers 117 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620203047/https://www.publishersweekly.com/binary-data/ARTICLE_ATTACHMENT/file/000/004/4353-1.pdf 118 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621165501/https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/an-app-called-libby-and-the-surprisingly-big-business-of-library-e-books 119 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621165531/https://company.overdrive.com/2020/05/14/check-out-mays-trending-titles-on-libby/ 120 https://web.archive.org/web/20220621165603/https://publishers.org/news/aap-october-2020-statshot-report-publishing-industry-up-7-3-for-month-down-1-0-year-to-date/ 121 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620203518/https://www.authorsalliance.org/2021/12/10/update-aap-sues-maryland-over-e-lending-law/ 122 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620203541/https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/85785-maryland-legislature-passes-law-supporting-library-access-to-digital-content.html 123 https://web.archive.org/web/20220620203604/https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/AAP-v.

pages: 397 words: 102,910

The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet
by Justin Peters
Published 11 Feb 2013

In 1999, he sold his company, Alexa Internet—an homage to his beloved Library of Alexandria—to Amazon for $250 million in stock, and then turned his attentions to building and maintaining the Internet Archive, which he founded in 1996. The nonprofit Internet Archive is dedicated to the overwhelming task of archiving the entire World Wide Web. It sends little “spiders” spinning across the Web to “crawl” through every website they can find and to memorize what those sites looked like on any given day. Those snapshots are then stored on the Internet Archive’s servers, where they serve as a massive, functional photo album of the World Wide Web past and present. For Kahle, however, archiving websites for posterity had always been a prelude to the archiving of books.

., 245. 65 “American Censorship Day,” November 17, 2011, https://web.archive.org/web/20111117023831/http://americancensorship.org/. 66 Ibid., November 18, 2011, https://web.archive.org/web/20111118014748/http://americancensorship.org/. 67 Moon, Ruffini, and Segal, Hacking Politics, 117. 68 Brewster Kahle, “12 Hours Dark: Internet Archive vs. Censorship,” Internet Archive Blogs, January 17, 2012, https://blog.archive.org/2012/01/17/12-hours-dark-internet-archive-vs-censorship/. 69 Senator Bob Menendez, Twitter post, January 17, 2012, 3:17 p.m., https://twitter.com/SenatorMenendez. 70 Senator Jeff Merkley, Twitter post, January 18, 2012, 8:47 a.m., https://twitter.com/SenJeffMerkley. 71 Senator Mark Kirk, “Kirk Announces Opposition to PROTECT IP Act,” news release, January 18, 2012, http://kirk-press.enews.senate.gov/mail/util.cfm?

For Kahle, however, archiving websites for posterity had always been a prelude to the archiving of books. In late summer 2002, Kahle began uploading public-domain books onto the Internet Archive servers. Then he purchased an old Ford minivan and christened it the Internet Bookmobile. On the side of the bookmobile, written in the Comic Sans typeface, was the phrase 1,000,000 Books Inside (soon). Inside the bookmobile were a couple of laptop computers, a high-speed color printer, and a bookbinding machine; on its roof sat a satellite dish connected to the Internet Archive’s servers in California. That fall, Kahle packed his eight-year-old son, a couple of friends, and a freelance journalist named Richard Koman into the bookmobile, and drove it cross-country in a mobile demonstration of the good things that can happen when the public domain meets an eccentric, civic-minded multimillionaire.

pages: 374 words: 97,288

The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy
by Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz
Published 4 Nov 2016

Mechanical ingenuity ... should be employed in making the acquisition of knowledge less cumbrous and less tedious; that as we travel by steam, so we should also read by steam, and be helped in our studies by the varied resources of modern invention.”53 How does one “read by steam” in the digital age? Numerous library-related entities are exploring that question, from the Internet Archive’s Open Library to the Digital Public Library of America.54 Even the New York Public Library has a geek team, a group they call NYPL Labs.55 NYPL Labs has produced many interesting projects to date—from annotating Google Maps of New York City with photos from their city archives to assisting scientists in analyzing climate change by tracking fish prices from nearly a century of digitized New York restaurant menus.

., 214 Information costs, 7–10, 17–21, 74, 81, 187–190 Infringement, 12, 22, 27, 40, 45, 47, 50, 75, 97, 118, 123, 130, 155, 162, 164, 176–179, 183–185 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 186 Intangible property. See Property Intellectual property, 11–19, 24–26, 62–63, 71, 75, 111, 173 Internet Archive, 117 Internet of Things (IoT), 13, 135, 140–141, 145, 150, 152, 157 Interview, The, 9, 197 Isbell, Jason, 51 Iyengar, Sheena S., 211 Jailbreaking, 141–143 Jazz Photo Corp. v. International Trade Commission, 164 Jeep. See Chrysler, 147 Jefferson, Thomas, 19, 95, 199 Jobs, Steve, 133, 141, 143, 225 Johansen, Jon, 131–133 John Deere (Deere & Company), 144–146, 167 John D.

Ct. 2443 (2015), http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-1175_2qe4.pdf, accessed September 3, 2015 (finding that hotels have a right to object to government searches for information about their guests). 53. Quoted in Steven R. Harris, “Mortgaging Our Future on Ownership, or, the Pleasures of Renting,” Against the Grain 23, no. 4 (2011): 28, http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5934&context=atg, accessed September 4, 2015. 54. For more information on these endeavors, see Open Library’s website, https://openlibrary.org/, accessed September 4, 2015, and the Digital Public Library of America’s website, http://dp.la/, accessed September 4, 2015. 55. Additional information on NYPL Labs can be found at http://www.nypl.org/collections/labs, accessed September 4, 2015. 56. HathiTrust, https://www.hathitrust.org/, accessed September 4, 2015. 57.

Four Battlegrounds
by Paul Scharre
Published 18 Jan 2023

,” Microsoft (China), January 22, 2019, https://www.msra.cn/zh-cn/news/outreach-articles/%E5%AE%9E%E4%B9%A0%E6%B4%BE-%E8%83%A1%E6%98%8E%E6%98%8A%EF%BC%9A%E5%9C%A8msra%E7%A0%94%E7%A9%B6%E6%9C%BA%E5%99%A8%E9%98%85%E8%AF%BB%E7%90%86%E8%A7%A3%E6%98%AF%E4%B8%80%E7%A7%8D%E6%80%8E%E6%A0%B7, (page discontinued), archived by the Internet Archive September 4, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20190904143341/https://www.msra.cn/zh-cn/news/outreach-articles/%E5%AE%9E%E4%B9%A0%E6%B4%BE-%E8%83%A1%E6%98%8E%E6%98%8A%EF%BC%9A%E5%9C%A8msra%E7%A0%94%E7%A9%B6%E6%9C%BA%E5%99%A8%E9%98%85%E8%AF%BB%E7%90%86%E8%A7%A3%E6%98%AF%E4%B8%80%E7%A7%8D%E6%80%8E%E6%A0%B7. 161interns “apply as individuals”: Luo, interview. 161“I am a professor myself”: Pan, interview. 161ties between U.S.

Reg. 34495, document no. 10869, (June 5, 2020), https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/06/05/2020-10869/addition-of-entities-to-the-entity-list-revision-of-certain-entries-on-the-entity-list. 161Harbin Institute of Technology and the other Seven Sons of National Defense: Alex Joske, The China Defence Universities Tracker (report no. 23/2019, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, November 2019), https://www.aspi.org.au/report/china-defence-universities-tracker. 162valuable feeder for talent into the Chinese defense industry: Ryan Fedasiuk and Emily Weinstein, Universities and the Chinese Defense Technology Workforce (Center for Security and Emerging Technology, December 2020), https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/universities-and-the-chinese-defense-technology-workforce/. 162more than a quarter of Microsoft Research Asia’s collaborative training projects with universities in China: “2018年微软亚洲研究院-教育部产学合作协同育人项目(第一批) [2018 Microsoft Research Asia—Ministry of Education Industry—University Cooperation Collaborative Education Project (First Batch)],” Microsoft Research Asia, October 2018, captured by the Internet Archive October 15, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20201015180833/https://www.msra.cn/zh-cn/connections/academic-programs/academia-industry-cooperation-2018-1; Fedasiuk and Weinstein, Universities and the Chinese Defense Technology Workforce, 33–34. Microsoft changed its policies for research in China in 2019, including no longer working with organizations on the Entity List, no longer accepting visiting researchers from any Chinese military institutions, and placing additional restrictions on research on sensitive topics such as facial recognition.

Department of Commerce, “Commerce Adds China’s SMIC to the Entity List”; “Addition of Entities to the Entity List, Revision of Entry on the Entity List, and Removal of Entities From the Entity List.” 184production capacity at the 14 nm node: “About Us,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, 2022, captured by the Internet Archive February 1, 2022, https://web.archive.org/web/20220201031506/https://www.smics.com/en/site/about_summary; Khan, Mann, and Peterson, The Semiconductor Supply Chain, 21, 23; Anton Shilov, “China to Ramp Up High-Volume Production Using 14nm Node by End of 2022,” Tom’s Hardware, June 23, 2021, https://www.tomshardware.com/news/china-hopes-to-ramp-up-14nm-production-in-2022.

pages: 267 words: 78,857

Discardia: More Life, Less Stuff
by Dinah Sanders
Published 7 Oct 2011

Sell the three most valuable things that you don't want to own anymore on eBay or craigslist, or go to an appraiser, have a yard sale, or whatever works best. Turn them into money, take 10–20% of it for something fun, like dinner out, and use the rest to discard some debt. Enjoy more free stuff. Visit the library. Take advantage of the great entertainment resources online, such as the Internet Archive’s Open Library and free songs offered by bands on their websites. If you do spend money on something, pay less for it. About to go shopping? Think about whether all of it really needs to be brand new. Sure, you don't want hand-me-down underwear or food, but what about a winter coat? A dining table?

The New York Times. 06 May 2010. http://nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/05/06/business/businessspecial/20100506-pack-ss.html?src=tptw NeighborGoods. http://neighborgoods.net OmniFocus personal task management software for Mac. http://omnigroup.com/products/omnifocus Onstad, Chris. “Achewood: Are You a Hoarder?” Techland. Time. 17 November 2009. http://techland.time.com/2009/11/17/are-you-a-hoarder Open Library. http://openlibrary.org Organdonor.gov. http://organdonor.gov Pomplamoose. http://pomplamoose.com ____. “Always in the Season.” 17 December 2009. http://youtube.com/watch?v=Il-OFaFzHQM Powazek, Derek. “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” Just a Thought. 4 February 2006. http://powazek.com/2006/02/000563.html Prentice, Steven.

pages: 536 words: 79,887

A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains
by Isabella Lucy Bird and Daniel J. Boorstin
Published 1 Jan 1873

An awe-inspiring woman, she is also a talented writer who brings to life Colorado of more than one hundred years ago, when today's big cities were only a small collection of frame houses, and while and beautiful areas were still largely untouched. --Erica Bauermeister [Amazon] About This ePub 1st Edition 1879, John Murray, London Open Library OL7022845M Internet Archive inrockyladyslife00birdrich 1st Modern Edition 1960, University of Oklahoma Press Series: The Western Frontier Library Series (Book 14) Introduction by Daniel J. Boorstin OCLC 654948612 Revised Edition 1975-12-15, University of Oklahoma Press ISBN 0806113286 Series: The Western Frontier Library Series (Book 14) Introduction by Daniel J.

pages: 743 words: 201,651

Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World
by Timothy Garton Ash
Published 23 May 2016

The carefully crafted and widely used Creative Commons licences, pioneered by Lawrence Lessig, give a clear set of rules, allowing several variants of free reproduction.42 Freespeechdebate.com uses one of them, a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence, which means that you are free to copy, distribute, display and perform the content of the site, and to make derivative works from it, provided you give credit to the original author of the content, do not use the content for commercial purposes and distribute any derivative work under the same kind of Creative Commons licence.43 Freely available digital library resources, such as the Digital Public Library of America, Europeana and the Internet Archive—to name but three—support this purpose.44 So does the scientific preprint site arXiv, which reportedly includes half of all the world’s physics papers.45 Second, open access can enhance not merely the dissemination but the production of knowledge. On occasion, crowdsourcing has generated scientific results that could not have been found by a single researcher, or only at vast expense of time and money.

‘Copyright & Attribution’, Free Speech Debate, http://freespeechdebate.com/en/copyright-attribution/ 44. on the Digital Public Library, see Darnton, ‘The National Digital Public Library Is Launched!’, New York Review of Books, 25 April 2013, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/apr/25/national-digital-public-library-launched/. Europeana, http://www.europeana.eu/portal/ and the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/index.php 45. see Nielsen 2012, 161–63 46. Galaxy Zoo, http://perma.cc/W5M4-PAHW 47. I take these examples from Nielsen 2012, 1–3, 133–42 48. see ‘Gottfrid Svartholm-Warg on Freedom of Speech 2007’, 20 May 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJiWuw7Qk5E 49. see Gabrielle Guillemin, ‘Does ACTA Threaten Online Freedom of Expression & Privacy?’

He was involved in pioneering the widely used RSS web feed, worked with Tim Berners-Lee to improve data sharing through the Semantic Web and with cyberlaw guru Lawrence Lessig on the Creative Commons licences. All this by age 26.38 Swartz believed passionately that data, information and knowledge should be freely accessible to all. So he obtained the book-cataloguing data kept by the Library of Congress, for which it usually charged, and posted it on something called the Open Library. He found his way into 19.9 million pages of electronic records of US court proceedings and uploaded them for all to see on theinfo.org.39 Using his computer skills and his Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) guest access to the JSTOR online library of journal articles, for which most universities pay a hefty fee, he started downloading articles to a laptop hidden in a wiring cupboard at MIT.

The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture
by Orlando Figes
Published 7 Oct 2019

Pauline Viardot to Joaquina Garcia, July 1851, private collection. 25. Paul Young, Globalization and the Great Exhibition: The Victorian New World Order (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 51–2; Charles Babbage, The Exposition of 1851 (London, 1851), pp. 42–3. 26. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ‘Review: May–October 1850’, Neue Rheinische Zeitung, cited from Marxist-org Internet Archive. 27. Clare Pettitt, Patent Inventions: Intellectual Property and the Victorian Novel (Oxford, 2004), p. 86. 28. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (New York, 2002). 29. Pettitt, Patent Inventions, pp. 145–6; Charles Fay, The Palace of Industry 1851 (Cambridge, 1951), p. 53. 30.

Places such as Firminy (with 17,000 inhabitants), Rive-de-Gier (15,000) and Beaune (12,000) got their first free public library after 1885, though none had more than 1,500 books.73 Much of the initiative came from philanthropic organizations such as the Bibliothèques des Amis de l’Instruction, established in 1861 by the printer Jean-Baptiste Girard, whose declared, rather hopeful aim was to wean the labouring classes off the cabaret by opening libraries for them. The public-library movement was slower to develop in the rest of Europe. But everywhere it gathered pace from the 1880s, as public groups became more active in pushing for the opening of libraries. In Germany there was the Verein für Förderung der Volksbildung (Society for the Promotion of Popular Education), which opened some 200 rural libraries; in Transylvania the Kulturvereine, which organized a hundred libraries in the German-speaking towns; in Holland the Vereeniging voor Volksbibliotheken; and in Italy the Società Promotrice delle Biblioteche Popolari, which opened 540 public libraries between 1867 and 1893.