Today, the Internet Archive, alongside a coalition of public interest organizations, library groups, and consumer advocates, supports Senator Ron Wyden’s call for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to protect consumers in the digital marketplace. In a letter to FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, we urge the Commission to clarify what constitutes a true “sale” of digital goods. In an era where digital purchases can vanish without warning, true sales are exceedingly rare. The public deserves transparency and, ultimately, the same enduring ownership rights they expect when buying physical items—the rights to use, preserve, and transfer.
Real-world examples have shown how easy it is for these rights to be undermined in the digital marketplace: from Amazon’s deletion of Orwell’s classic 1984 from Kindles, to Microsoft’s closure of its ebook store, to Sony stripping purchased Discovery shows from users’ libraries. These incidents expose the gap between consumer expectations of a sale and corporate practices that fall far short of true ownership. When companies advertise a “sale,” but retain the power to revoke access, it is not just misleading—it erodes public trust, undermines libraries’ ability to preserve access to knowledge, and harms everyday people who believe they are purchasing something permanent.
Our message to the FTC is clear: if digital goods can be deleted, disabled, or restricted after purchase, they should not be marketed as “sales.” With strong federal guidance on what it means to truly own digital products, consumers, creators, libraries, and the public can enjoy a more trustworthy and transparent digital future.
Read the full letter urging the FTC to stand up for digital ownership rights here.
The following guest post from journalist and computer historian Josh Renaud is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. Read more essays online or download the full report now.
Mom and Me (Atari ST, 1985) (color) by Yaakov Kirschen, preserved and playable at the Internet Archive.
Whether it’s Pac-Man or Pikachu, Link or Lara Croft, Master Chief or Mario, we love playing video games.
But what about preserving them?
Data shows we spend big money on video games: more than $200 billion globally. By some reports, gaming is now bigger than the global film industry and the North American sports industry combined.
Despite all this growth, data also shows the industry has done a poor job stewarding its heritage and history. In fact, a recent study shows classic games are in critical danger of being lost.
Only 13 percent of all classic games released between 1960 and 2009 are currently commercially available.
Survey of the Video Game Reissue Market in the United States (2023).
Only 13 percent of all classic games released between 1960 and 2009 are currently commercially available, according to the “Survey of the Video Game Reissue Market in the United States,” published in 2023 by Phil Salvador for the Video Game History Foundation and the Software Preservation Network.
Worse, this percentage drops below three percent for games released before 1985, “the foundational era of video games,” the study found.
The study considered a random sample of 1,500 games from the MobyGames database, as well as the entire catalog of the Nintendo Game Boy—4,000 games altogether.
The commercial unavailability of so many classic games leaves few viable options for playing them today. People can attempt to track down and buy increasingly-rare vintage games and hardware, visit a few specialty institutions, or resort to piracy, the study noted. Terrible options all around.
But what about cases where a game was never archived in the first place?
Journalist and computer historian, Josh Renaud.
That was a situation I ran into when I wanted to find copies of “Mom and Me” and “Murray and Me,” two graphical chatbots created in 1985 by Yaakov Kirschen, the Israeli artist best known for the “Dry Bones” cartoon in the Jerusalem Post. Kirschen died on April 14, 2025, at the age of 87.
These “artificial personalities” were among the earliest entertainment software released for the Atari ST computer, and they got splashy write-ups in newspapers including the London Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times. Even three-time Pulitzer prize winner Thomas Friedman wrote a profile in the New York Times.
Despite that publicity, and the advantage of getting in on the ground floor of a brand new computer platform, probably fewer than 2,000 copies were sold. Apparently I was one of the very few who had copies, which I received from my uncle Jim when he handed down his old Atari 520ST computer to my family in the early 1990s. I remember being amused as my brothers and I conversed with “Mom” and “Murray” back then.
When nostalgia hit me decades later, I began searching online for disk images of these old programs. But there weren’t any, except for one obscure German translation of “Murray” in monochrome.
It was a startling realization: not all software has been preserved in an archive.
I wrote about this predicament in 2014 on my blog, Break Into Chat, which put me in touch with Kevin Ng, who also had some copies. We each made digital images of our old floppy disks, preserving several original versions of “Mom” and “Murray.” But the monochrome version of “Mom” remains lost.
In the years since then, I have continued researching Kirschen’s other lost software, ranging from multiple Jewish and secular educational games for the Apple II computer, to his “artificial creativity” autonomous music composing technology for the Commodore Amiga and the IBM PC. Like “Mom” and “Murray,” none of it sold well, nor was it preserved despite good publicity.
With the help of three fellow retrocomputing enthusiasts in St. Louis, I recovered many of Kirschen’s games and programs from floppy disks Kirschen sent to me. Keith Hacke imaged most of the Apple II and the IBM PC disks, while I imaged the Commodore Amiga disks using hardware loaned by Dan Hevey and Scott Duensing.
I published the disk images with summarized histories on Break Into Chat. Then I uploaded them to the Internet Archive, making them playable in web browsers—but more importantly, preserving them for posterity.
I’m proud to have played a part in bringing this dead software back to life, and restoring a part of Kirschen’s legacy. I think this work is worth rediscovering today.
Take “Nosh Kosh” from 1983, for example. Essentially a Jewish take on Pac-Man, this is an action game designed to teach children about kashrut, Jewish dietary law. It was one of three games modeled on existing arcade classics made by Kirschen together with Gesher Educational Affiliates in Israel.
In “Nosh Kosh,” the player moves a kippah-wearing character named Chunky around the screen, trying to eat all the food items while avoiding three non-kosher bad guys: Peter Pig, Larry Lobster, and Freddy Frogslegs. There are three kinds of food—ice cream, meat, and carrots—but the player must wait a bit between eating the meat and ice cream, otherwise Chunky will yell “Oy!” and lose a life.
Or consider Kirschen and Gesher’s more ambitious “The Georgia Variations,” a choice-based narrative game about Jewish history, identity, and migration, introduced the same year as “Nosh Kosh.”
In this game, the player takes on the role of Boris Goldberg, a Jewish boy in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century who must make decisions about school, work, marriage, and even what to do in the face of persecution and pogroms. The player’s decisions affect the storyline, but in the end, all the threads eventually lead to the same ending: Goldberg immigrates to Atlanta, Georgia.
Niche educational games like these were far less popular than mainstream action and adventure games. The hobbyists and amateur archivists who preserved software of that time often skipped this genre entirely. And today, these sorts of games may not hold much interest for the general public.
So why bother preserving them?
The prolific Apple II preservationist “4am” gave a great answer in Paleotronic magazine:
“This was how we taught math and science and grammar and history to an entire generation of children. That seems like something worth saving.”
That’s certainly true of Kirschen’s work. In the Apple II games he made with Gesher, we see Jewish educators’ early steps learning to use a new medium to reach kids. And Kirschen’s later work with “artificial personalities” and “artificial creativity” foreshadows the promise and pitfalls of today’s AI craze.
I’m glad to have played a part in bringing this software back to life so others can have the opportunity to play it and study it.
About the author
Josh Renaud is a journalist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He publishes computer history research on his website, Break Into Chat. He is interested in recovering lost or obscure software, and telling the stories of the people who made and used it. In 2024 he received a Geffen and Lewyn Family Southern Jewish Research Fellowship from Emory University to study papers related to Gesher’s educational computer games.
Inside the Internet Archive’s San Francisco headquarters, you’ll find racks of servers preserving humanity’s digital memory — from old websites to disappearing government data, books to historic videotapes.
“We are a digital library for our times — and hopefully, for all times,” says Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine.
But preserving access to information isn’t always easy. From political pressure to digital vanishing acts, the work of saving knowledge requires both care and courage.
In a time when websites can be taken down overnight — from climate change pages to stories celebrating diversity — the Wayback Machine ensures they’re not lost forever.
Former Air Force engineer Jessica Peterson, whose achievements were erased from the live web:
“I didn’t know [the Wayback Machine] existed… It gave me some relief.”
Whether you’re a researcher, student, journalist, or citizen — our goal is the same: Universal access to all knowledge.
If you value a free and open internet, watch this video. Then explore the Wayback Machine:https://web.archive.org/
For many years, the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) maintained a large library of books on drug use and policy at its New York City headquarters. As researchers shifted to working online, DPA’s Jules Netherland said she noticed fewer people coming into the office to use the collection.
“It became clear if we really wanted people to benefit from our resources that digitization was the way to go,” said Netherland, managing director of the Alliance’s Department of Research and Academic Engagement. It was also an opportunity to add to the growing collection of the Substance Abuse Librarians and Information Specialists (SALIS).
DPA donated its book collection to the Internet Archive to be digitized and made available for lending and for the print disabled. A team was sent to New York to pick up the books, which were packaged onto three pallets and shipped to a facility for scanning and storage.
Now, the digital version of the DPA library, with 2,260 items, is available to the public at https://archive.org/details/dpa. It is part of the larger SALIS collection of 8,647 items on alcohol and substance abuse digitized by SALIS.
The public has responded with curiosity. In January, 10,000 items were accessed in the digitized collection. Rosenberg speculates the audience is likely researchers, historians, healthcare providers, and policymakers.
In the rapidly evolving field of drug policy, which spans many disciplines, Netherland said it’s important to provide evidence-based information to the public. The hope is to enhance advocacy efforts with easier access to the organization’s collection. DPA developed a resource guide to encourage its use on the Internet Archive.
In donating its collection, DPA helped build the Internet Archive’s SALIS collection. Since 2008, SALIS has helped preserve thousands of items from physical libraries with research from drug and alcohol fields that have closed, said Andrea Mitchell, SALIS executive director.
About 30 years ago, there were approximately 95 libraries, clearinghouses, and resource centers around the world devoted to collecting, cataloguing, and disseminating information concerning alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs, Mitchell said. However, today the majority of those libraries or databases have closed. The U.S. government has also shut down collections, including the National Institute on Drug Abuse, whose library went back to 1935. “We’re losing important resources and knowledge,” Mitchell said.
This leaves a void in access that has been filled, in part, by digitized collections online. Mitchell said The SALIS Collection includes materials that go back to 1774 and books from medicine, sociology, psychology, economics, law and policy, criminal justice, and other fields. In addition to books, there are government documents, grey literature, and newsletters.
The DPA collection was one of the larger libraries in the U.S., Mitchell said, and its donation to the Internet Archive is significant and welcome.
The Internet Archive is interested in receiving more curated collections like DPA’s on specific subject matters, Rosenberg added. “These really valuable books for research and resources are often not preserved when funding is lost at the library that houses them,” she saidTo find out more about the physical item donation process, go to the Help page for details.
A coalition of major record labels has filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive—demanding $700 million for our work preserving and providing access to historical 78rpm records. These fragile, obsolete discs hold some of the earliest recordings of a vanishing American culture. But this lawsuit goes far beyond old records. It’s an attack on the Internet Archive itself.
This lawsuit is an existential threat to the Internet Archive and everything we preserve—including the Wayback Machine, a cornerstone of memory and preservation on the internet.
At a time when digital information is disappearing, being rewritten, or erased entirely, the tools to preserve history must be defended—not dismantled.
This isn’t just about music. It’s about whether future generations will have access to knowledge, history, and culture.
The following guest post from Christina Moretta, Photo Curator and Acting San Francisco History Center Manager at San Francisco Public Library, is part of a series written by members of Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. Community Webs advances the capacity of community-focused memory organizations to build web and digital archives documenting local histories.
San Francisco History Center (SFHC) of the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) is the official archive for the City and County of San Francisco. SFHC serves all library users and levels of interest, from the merely curious to those engaging in scholarly research. Because of the Center’s archival function, it also administers the archival collections of the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center.
Internet Archive has supported our work to preserve and provide access to San Francisco’s history in many ways. Since 2007, Internet Archive has hosted SFPL digitized content, including local documents and city directories. In 2017, SFPL became one of the first members of Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. This program has provided us with the tools we need to preserve local web-based content that will be important for future researchers investigating San Francisco’s history.
The East/West (Dong xi bao) newspaper was acquired the easy way – original subscription by the SFPL’s Periodical Department in the late 1960s. There are only a handful of institutions that have East/West in their holdings as microfilm only. SFHC has the complete run in paper format.
In late 1966, Gordon Lew and two Chinese newspaper colleagues, Kenneth Joe and Ken Wong, began the idea of East/West, a bilingual weekly newspaper published out of San Francisco’s Chinatown. The inaugural issue was in January 1967 and the newspaper ran for over twenty-two years with the last issue in September 1989. Lew became the publisher and editor, Joe worked in the Chinese section, and Wong was the principal writer in the English section. East/West was an important community newspaper, with extensive coverage of local Chinatown news, social activities, the work of Chinese American political figures, and international developments such as the normalization of China ties.
East/West was published in English and Chinese, and for many years, the two sections had approximately the same number of pages. The editorial and perhaps the main news article in the English section would be translated into Chinese. The Chinese section tended to focus more on culture, arts, and history, and it often reprinted articles from other sources. Advertisements filled both sections from the very beginning for local businesses and services. Most were community ads as the newspaper served non-profit organizations that arose in the wake of the Chinese American and Asian American empowerment movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
Miss Chinatown, East/West, 1977, Vol. 11, no. 9, p. 14
Researchers and scholars of 20th-century Chinese American communities in the United States will appreciate the online availability of this unique resource. Many important issues cropped up in Chinese America and Asian America starting in the late 1960s and these can be found in East/West from the community perspective. By being a bilingual publication, the newspaper captured and shared the voice of the community. In addition, San Francisco Chinese Americans had limited political power in the 1960s. East/West focused on emerging Chinese American political figures and urged the community to increase its voting and general political participation.
In 2003, the Paul Radin Papers were donated to the SFHC by Professor Luis S. Kemnitzer of San Francisco State University on behalf of Calvin Fast Wolf and Mary Sacharoff-Fast Wolf. Mary Wolf was a would-be biographer of Radin who had acquired original papers from her friend and Radin’s widow, Doris Woodward Radin, as well as colleagues.
Dr. Paul Radin (1883-1959) is considered to be one of the formative influences in contemporary anthropology and ethnography in the United States and Europe. The bulk of the Paul Radin Papers consists of surveys from Radin’s supervision of over 200 workers who interviewed ethnic groups in the San Francisco Bay Area for the State Emergency Relief Administration of California (SERA) over a period of nine months in 1934-1935. Known as SERA project 2-F2-98 (3-F2-145), its abstract was published in 1935 as The Survey of San Francisco’s Minorities: Its Purpose and Results. The stated purpose was a cultural survey to find employment for “white collar” unemployed workers on temporary relief. Radin’s focus was “to study the steps in the adjustment and assimilation of minority groups in San Francisco and Alameda counties.” Bypassing a typical questionnaire method, Radin instead had the amateur interviewers record anything and everything which the interviewees wished to say. The results appear in a narrative format—sometimes in the form of poetry and short stories—and encompass all manner of immigrant experiences. Survey materials include typed and handwritten interviews and research on ethnic groups. Some interviewers identify themselves, and their report appears in their own hand.
Jon Y. Lee’s notes, Paul Radin Papers
A portion of the Paul Radin Papers includes SERA worker Jon Y. Lee’s papers including material for The Golden Mountain. Lee was the son of Chinese immigrants who settled in Oakland, California. Radin hired Lee as a fieldworker to collect Chinatown traditions in Oakland, California. Today, Lee is recognized as the first Asian American to work professionally as a folklorist.
With this collection online, international scholars can now easily access narratives about the immigrant experience from their country/region to assist with their diaspora studies. The typed descriptions allow for OCR discovery and for one to gather more information on the San Francisco immigrant experience in the 1910s and 1920s.
Internet Archive and Community Webs are thankful for the support from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission for Collaborative Access to Diverse Public Library Local History Collections, which will digitize and provide access to a diverse range of local history archives that represent the experiences of immigrant, indigenous, and African American communities throughout the United States.
The Internet Archive is proud to join in celebrating a major milestone in the preservation of global cultural heritage: documents related to the history of slavery in Aruba have been officially added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World (MoW) International Register. The digitized documents have been preserved and are accessible online through the Coleccion Aruba and the Internet Archive.
These newly recognized documents are held by the National Archives of Aruba (ANA) and the National Library of Aruba (BNA). They offer crucial insight into the lives of enslaved people and their descendants in Aruba, helping to illuminate a shared painful past and its continuing impact on the present.
The nomination was prepared collaboratively by the Aruba National Committee for UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program (MoW-AW), UNESCO Aruba, ANA, and BNA. With the registration now official, these documents are not only globally recognized as having international significance—they are also more accessible than ever before.
The historical materials are available online through the Coleccion Aruba digital heritage site, as well as on the Internet Archive, supporting the goals of open access for schools, researchers, and the general public. This achievement underscores the importance of digitization and long-term preservation to ensure that future generations can continue to learn from these vital records.
The Internet Archive congratulates MoW-AW, UNESCO Aruba, the National Archives and National Library of Aruba, and their partners in Curaçao, Sint Maarten, Suriname, and the Netherlands on this historic achievement.
Brewster Kahle accepting the “Project Owl”, which he was awarded by the Dutch Wikipedia community. Telderszaal, Academiegebouw (Leiden). Vera de Kok, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Internet Archive was recently honored for its valuable contribution to the Dutch-language Wikipedia community at an event at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle accepted the 2024 Project Uil award at a March 18 gathering of prominent figures in the Dutch open knowledge movement including librarians, archivists, scholars, and representatives from national cultural institutions.
The WikiUilen awards have been given out since 2015 on behalf of the Dutch Wikipedia community in recognition of hardworking Wikipedia volunteers and organizations. Candidates in eight categories (project, writer, editor, newcomer, etc.) are nominated and voted on by fellow Wikipedians. The Internet Archive received the project award and a small replica of an ancient Greek owl sculpture. (“Uilen” in Dutch translates to “owls” in English.)
“The owl is a symbol of wisdom,” said Ronald Velgersdijk, organizer of the Dutch awards, in presenting the statue to Kahle. “We give this project award because the Internet Archive is very important for sharing knowledge and it is very important for Wikimedia. We use it a lot to cite our sources and find information.”
In a concerted effort to ground the information ecosystem in facts, Kahle explained how the Internet Archive has prioritized obtaining and digitizing books referenced in Wikipedia. Since 2016, the Internet Archive has identified and fixed more than 22 million broken links in over 200 language editions of Wikipedia. By pointing readers back to archived web pages in the Wayback Machine and digital books available online, the aim is to increase the credibility of Wikipedia with reliable links and sources, he said.
“The partnership between Wikipedia and the Internet Archive is very strong and growing,” Kahle said.
Watch the Wiki Owl presentation to Internet Archive
Jos Damen, a librarian at Leiden University, helped host the event, which drew nearly 100 attendees. An advocate of open access publishing and a Dutch Wikipedian with over 1 million edits, Damen said he admires the work of the Internet Archive and leans on its resources.
“First and foremost of value is the presence of websites in the Wayback Machine,” Damen said. “As librarians, we all know that links that you access now will be gone in two to five years. It’s important to see these links frozen in time in the Wayback Machine, and then being able to have that reference in Wikipedia.”
Damen said it’s critical to not only fix links to books, but also to add images and attribution for photos on Wikipedia. For instance, a photograph of small copper stones in the pavement in several European countries, signifying the last place where Jewish people lived before they were taken to concentration camps, is a powerful image that can make a page more engaging, he said. (See Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein)
Kahle’s remarks covered the history, evolving support, and challenges facing libraries. He spoke about the mission of the Internet Archive to provide universal access to all knowledge, and gave an overview of Internet Archive Europe – which has a somewhat different focus.
“The idea [of Internet Archive Europe] is to try to build our collective intelligence using all sorts of interesting tools so we can have better decision making,” Kahle said.
Last November, Beatrice Murch was named Program Manager of Internet Archive Europe. She is working to find open knowledge champions in Europe interested in making information in a variety of languages translated and available in new ways.
“The hope is that Internet Archive Europe can use AI tools to bring collections to life and make them more interesting to the public,” Murch said. “We are trying hard to find the right message to engage partners and make data on the Internet Archive accessible to more people, including those with disabilities.
”The Wiki-Uil in the Netherlands is modeled after the German example, started in 2014. Learn more about the Dutch Wiki Uil awards.
The following discussion between writer Caralee Adams and book historian Allie Alvis is part of ourVanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. Read more essays online or download the full report now.
Like many in the early days of Instagram, Allie Alvis shared what they had for dinner or funny things they encountered on their personal account. It was in Edinburgh, Scotland, when pursuing their master’s degree in book history that they were inspired to post about the university’s incredible book collection, library and items from the used and antiquarian bookshop where they worked.
“To my surprise, people really, really enjoyed it,” said Alvis, of videos and photos they curated of delicately paging through rare books. “I started getting questions from friends and family. And then it just sort of picked up steam with institutions and bookish colleagues following me. I have no idea how I ended up at 255,000 followers now.”
The self-described “pink-haired book historian” mainly posts on Instagram (@Book_Historia), but also is active on TikTok, X, Bluesky, Tumblr, Threads and Facebook. Alvis aims to share something new at least once a week, in addition to working as curator of special collections at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in Winterthur, Delaware.
Alvis said they never set out to become a super popular influencer, but they enjoy sharing their passion for rare books and educating the public.
“It’s been a crazy ride that my followers have grown to such an extent,” they said. “It really has been a grand experiment.”
Among the most popular items they’ve recently shared: a French sample book of foil ornaments from the late 19th century. “It’s just delicious—sparkly, metal. It’s just to die for,” they said.
Alvis’s posts are filled with descriptive narration and an authentic reverence for the historic books they present. They maintain that there’s more to a rare book than what’s on its pages. There’s history behind the author who wrote it, the place where it was made, and the materials used to make it.
“Because that history remains, you want to preserve it,” Alvis said. “You want to keep it in the best possible condition so other people can learn from it.”
Having materials online means that people from all parts of the world can view them without having to travel, which is good for the environment. It’s also useful in knowledge sharing and teaching to have access from beyond your local library, said Alvis, who has a bachelor’s degree in linguistics from the University of Kansas, a master’s of science in book history at the University of Edinburgh and master’s of science in information management from the University of Glasgow.
“I approach digital initiatives from an access standpoint,” Alvis said. “I love that digitization and the Internet Archive gives more people access to materials—and that helps to preserve it.”
Whether putting together scholarly articles or a social media post, Alvis turns to many sources in their research—including the Internet Archive. They especially appreciate the ephemeral material that it has preserved, digitized and made freely available, along with the vast collection of books.
“I have my library reference books at home and in the office, but sometimes that one book you need that one page from is just out of reach,” Alvis said. “The short-time lending option on the Internet Archive has saved me so many times.”
In their work curating decorative arts and art history, some objects are easier to capture through scanning than others. For example, it can be challenging for digital preservation to reflect the dimensionality of button samples, metal ornaments, or perfume labels. But it is useful with wallpaper samples or other flat objects. There are also limits because of the sheer volume of material and limited resources.
Alvis said librarians, academics, booksellers, and book collectors are embracing digitization and social media as tools to both further knowledge and highlight collections. Many also now understand that access is an important part of preservation.
“It would be amazing if everything could be scanned—but there is just so much of it,” Alvis said.
Still, as a librarian, Alvis said, much has been saved—and for that, they’re thankful: “It is only because previous generations have preserved this material—to the extent that they have—that I have work.”
Lila Bailey gives the keynote address at Georgetown Law’s iPIP Clinic Celebration.
Libraries, now more than ever, need innovative, dedicated champions to help them meet the needs of the public in the digital age. Internet Archive’s Lila Bailey said she sees hope in the talents of Georgetown University law students working at the school’s Intellectual Property and Information Policy Clinic (iPIP).
Bailey, Internet Archive’s senior policy counsel, was the keynote speaker at iPIP’s fifth anniversary celebration in Washington, D.C., on March 27. She praised the clinic for providing quality research and creative work products on projects that have helped the Internet Archive promote awareness of the public domain, controlled digital lending, and other issues related to the public interest mission of libraries at a challenging time.
“Libraries are at the forefront of using technologies of the day to serve the informational needs of their communities. And they do it without trying to sell you anything, and without selling any data about you either,” Bailey said. “Right now, libraries—whether they are digital, or brick and mortar—are under threat.”
Between moves to ban books, defund institutions, and dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services, libraries are facing perilous times. Publishers have simply stopped selling digital books to libraries, forcing them to use commercial platforms that come with terms and conditions that restrict how those materials may be used, Bailey explained. The iPIP clinic had a hand in drafting a paper on the topic, she noted, called, “The Publisher Playbook.”
Today, libraries need lawyers, yet most don’t have in-house counsel, Bailey said. That makes the contributions of student law clinics so vital at this juncture.
“Clinics play an important role in the library and public interest tech community by expanding our capacity to tackle these existential threats and to pursue opportunities for positive changes,” Bailey said. “[iPIP’s Founder] Amanda Levendowski has built a truly outstanding clinical program in these five short years.”
Bailey explained under copyright law, a library can lend out a book it owns to as many people as it wants to, for as long as it wants to. It can also preserve a book for the long term, and make it available long past when a publisher may sell it. The law also allows libraries to make copies of a book in an accessible format for patrons who are blind or have other print-disabilities, and participate in interlibrary loan arrangements, so that patrons of other libraries can access books they don’t have in their own collections. Yet, Bailey said, under these licensing models with publishers, none of those practices is allowed.
“These market-based threats are a completely new kind of challenge that require creative legal and policy interventions,” Bailey said.
In her remarks, Bailey described how her interest in the field began nearly twenty years ago when she chose to go to law school at University of California Berkeley, in part because of its Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic. “[The internet] was new. I was optimistic to democratize access to information and saw it as a revolutionary force,” she said. Bailey’s first client at the clinic was the Internet Archive, working on a project that would eventually become the TV News Archive. She later became a teaching fellow at the clinic, and joined the Internet Archive staff in 2017.
Since iPIP’s first semester in 2020, Bailey said she has worked closely with student teams that exceeded her expectations, delivering materials to advance the needs of the Internet Archive, and the wider library community.
“The iPIP Clinic has become an indispensable partner to me as I do my work as an advocate for libraries working to build a healthier digital information ecosystem,” Bailey said.
Amanda Levendowski, associate professor of law and the founding director of the iPIP Clinic, credited Bailey and her willingness to work with students as a reason the clinic has been successful in tackling cutting-edge issues at the intersection of technological advancements and social justice.
“Library lawyering work is an exercise in imagination,” Levendowski said. “A sense of play and creativity around the law has never been more important, because that’s going to be how we get out of the moment we’re in.”
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