Slashdot Mirror
Ask About 10 Years of Free Web Publishing
This week's Slashdot questions go to Paul Jones, director of ibiblio.org (formerly MetaLab, before that SunSITE) since it first went live in August, 1992. Ibiblio hosts the world's largest Linux archive (including the LDP), plenty of streamed and downloadable music, the world's longest-running Web cartoon (Dr. Fun), and thousands of texts on topics too numerous to list here. This is truly "the public's library and digital archive," 100% GPL, copyleft, and/or public domain, sponsored jointly by the Center for the Public Domain and UNC. Lots of people talk about free online publishing. Paul Jones just does it, day after day, year after year. Ask him whatever you want; we'll send 10 of the highest moderated questions to him and post his answers as soon as we get them back.
DRM? Palladium?
What's your take on these two technologies?
Are you afraid they'll ultimately destroy what you have been working for, for the past 10 years? If not, why?
Optional question: What about the copyright extension we have seen?
Another optional question: Linux... or BSD? =)
Looking back on 10 years of doing this, what would classify as your greatest success, and your greatest failure?
Personally I'd really like to know what the difference in bandwidth usage, hits, cost, and other boring logistical statistics the site produces are...
*HOW* many gigs per day, HOW much cost per day, how many people download the latest linux ISO on their cable/dsl just because they can?
Sunsite (as I'll forever call it) isn't just a measure of the pulse of linux penetration, it's been the heart of it for me over the years. -_-()
What is the center's view on the publishing of material that might be considered "offensive" or "dangerous", and does the center make subjective judgements upon the importance of one piece of intellectual property over another on the basis of 'artistic worth', 'decency', etc.? With only limited resources available to promote the archiving of data, is there the risk that important fringe documents may be left by the wayside, or ignored due to political/social concerns?
My only experience with Ibiblio is via Project Gutenberg, so maybe you're the wrong person to ask, but I'm troubled by some of PG's design decisions, and wonder if you can throw any light on them:
- the preference for ascii over html (I've seen a few cases lately where html-versions were offered too-- will this be the future policy?)
- the annoying pages of smallprint at the start
- the 'server indirection' that requires a decision *every single time* of which server to use
- the absence (or obscure placement) of basic bibliographic info like publication-date
It seems like these choices were made several generations ago, in Internet Time, so I hope they're all being reconsidered?
What do you do for revenue? Most free hosting services are plauged with crappy obtrusive ads and pop up/under windows that annoy me to no end. I try to avoid these sites (ie geocities/angelfire) however you don't have much in the way of ads, how to you have any capital?? (and if you wouldn't mind telling the slashdot editors maybe they can remove some of the larger ads on the site...
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
What's your most requested pieces of content?
Which ones get the most traffic?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
One of the things that people frequently ask about sites like ibiblio.org
is "They are great. But how long will they be around?"
Do you see this as a concern (esp. after the LWN announcement) and do you have any
comments regardning this. Are there any good approaches you suggest (like augmenting
free usership with voluntary subscriptions, etc) for such free sites in general ?
Thanks.
DO NOT PANIC
In general how supportive have you found the producers of such content to be of your services? Do many if any really believe that something like this will cause them to starve to death?
It's amazing how spiritual an elaborated beer commercial can be. -- Philip K. Dick
What's your backup strategy? I imagine it's hard to deal with both so much data as well being under constant bombardment from clients around the world. How often is data archived? Have you had any major data loss incidents and, if so, how well were you able to deal with them?
From everything I've read, you sound like a very busy person. How do you manage your time? Do you have any time management tips or advice?
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2B1ASK1
Where do I send the cheque?
You host a slew of subgenius content, so it must be asked ... do you have slack?
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
I've been using ibiblio for a long time, back long ago when it was still SunSITE and now I read through your feature articles which I think many times are top notch. One thing I have noticed about the entire project however is how much support you have from various organizations. That sort of baseline support coupled with the ideals of public domain and free as in speech information are what I think makes ibiblio so awesome. However it this leads to my mainquestion, how replicatable is the ibiblio project.
I think ibiblio HAS to be as large of a project as it is because it is one of so few projects of a similar nature. How unique is your organization's situation in terms of third party support? Not everyone can exactly plop down and decide to run a massive network dedicated to freedom of information and dissemination. Outside of university CS departments there's little support for the sort of information ibiblio propogates, I think the next largest group in that arena would be the OSDN network. A large part of any organization's focus and drive is going to be the people involved, obviously the people you have have working on your poject aren't replicatable but thereare like minded folk in the world. Besides the personal specifics of your group how replicatable is the ibiblio project? Is it something any dedicated group of individuals could accomplish if they set out to do it or did it require the right people at the right place at the right time with the Sun at a particular angle to happen?
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I noticed that you are one of the founders of the American Open Technology Consortium and/or GeekPAC - the lobbying group that got a bit of fanfare a few months back when it was formed, but has been pretty quiet since then.
With Congress launching seemingly daily attacks on our technological freedom in order to support the revenue models of a few huge businesses, the need for a voice in Washington is growing urgent. Is the AOTC/GeekPAC working to get our voices heard? Is there a need for an umbrella group to tie together various groups like GeekPAC, Public Knowledge, Digital Consumer, etc.?
When the radio, television, cars and countless other technologies were first developed, anyone with access to the technology could use it for whatever purpose without any hassles aside from those presented by the technology itself. When new, radio/television content was provided by anyone with something to communicate. In time, licencing, increasing costs of use and other factors were introduced that presented barriers to entry for the enthusiast. Radio and television have since become read-only media.
By fluke or by design, similar barriers are going up around the internet. Bandwidth costs money, overzealous IP lawyers, new laws and a miriade of other factors are starting to inhibit the enthusiasts ability to write on this medium.
With large business and government seeking to control the internet as it does other media, how long to you anticipate the internet remaining a read-write technology for the home user?
I've downloaded my share of things, and find that the 3 Mbps cap on my cable modem is almost always my bottleneck. So my question is fairly simple (albeit broad) -- can you describe your setup a bit, in terms of bandwidth (both what you have for an Internet connection, and how much traffic you actually use), servers, storage (I'd venture to guess it's to the tune of several terabytes?), etc.
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suwain_2
Over the past ten years, what has been the most personally rewarding part of your work?
iBiblio stands out as an excellent repository for a wide range of culturally valuable resources. As it and other sites grow in size, the importance of good searching and indexing becomes extremely relevant. Have you given any thought to how you might want to cope with this? Specifically, are there any metadata schemata that you are considering using? I would love to see iBiblio be used more like a content feed to research/cross-referencing applications.
I heard you talk at the Southern Presses conference last year about the use of trust metrics (like Slashdot's karma and Advogato's peer certification) as a possible alternative to the "top-down" means of filtering that scholarly and commercial publishers use, namely formal peer review and mass marketing, respectively. Are you more or less optimistic about the long-term viability of this model then you were then? (Especially in light of the powerful efforts to keep control of the gates we're seeing these days from Hollywood, the recording industry, and their political allies...)
I'm trying to build a net radio station that is totally free and redistributable. I use free software (linux, icecast, liveice) to broadcast music, and only broadcast music that is licensed to the public under the EFF's Open Audio License, OpenMusic.com's Open Music License or even the GPL. I broadcast 100 songs by 10 artists, 24/7. Not the most exciting playlist, but it's up and running.
Of course I'd like to find more music to play that is already under these licenses (I've scoured openaudioregistry.org, but other suggestions welcome), but I'm also trying to convince artists, both friends and strangers, to release the music on these licenses. Usually, a band has a web-site or posts their music to mp3.com and they advertise it as "free!", but after a couple of emails, it's clear that the artists don't use free in the same way I do. Most of the artists that I talk to have either forgotten, or have never encountered, the idea of art truly free to the public. When I describe the ideas of public domain, copyright, licensing, etc. their eyes glaze over (you actually can see it over email!) and they inform me that they hate "lawyer talk".
Given your experience, maybe you can offer some insight here.
How do you appeal to an artist to take their hard work and donate it to the public and in a meaningfully legal way?