Item — HN Reader

This is such a good post about:

a. how the internet archive is building its political archive

b. proving to other cultural heritage institutions that they can get their act together and preserve culture today and make it relevant today

Ok, so Ted Cruz ads are a particular part of culture, but bravo.

I used to work at The New York Public Library's Labs and we had to fight to do anything with anything that wasn't blatantly in the public domain. Meanwhile, one of my colleagues there, Leonard Richardson, would go off and create massive archives like the Minecraft Geological Survey (http://mcgs.crummy.com/#mcgs) in the evenings.

Seriously, we need more folks working in these big organizations that are very good at surviving for more than a hundred years, acting as arks of human culture, that can collect and make useful today's materials. It's just our ability to remember today at stake.

So much culture is going to be lost because people are shell shocked by copyright lawyers and the constant drumbeat of expansive copyright enforcement. We are destroying ourselves to protect the perpetual income streams of publishers.

History only qualifies as a profit center to them, If it didn't happen when nitrate film was burning, it will take a lot of organization and legislation to make it happen with bits and bytes.