Proposal: Put Library of Congress' Contents Online

Mark_Uplanguage writes "The idea to scan in all materials available at the U.S. Library of Congress was presented at the Web 2.0 conference this week (as just one of many ideas presented). The proposed cost of $260 million would create a huge benefit to society (well, at least to those who can read English)."

Comments

Can't do that.

[Pig Hogger]

This would violate the publishers' god-given right to milk their "creations" until the heat-death of the Universe.

Re:Can't do that.

[InfiniteWisdom]

until the heat-death of the Universe.

Hey its still a finite time
- Walt Disney

Re:Can't do that.

[Saeger]

How did you get on my /.friends-list with an attitude like that?

The internet has stripped away the convenient medium(s) that used to contain an inherently scarce message that could physically command the price you asked for. The new reality of the situation is that either you think DRM + DMCA can and should be used to keep doing things the old way, by keeping a decades-old instance of information artificially scarce, or you think-- like millions already do --that information is cheap, and the value lies in the inherently scarce service of performing or creating NEW information. New systems will emerge to fund creation and promote progress, but it won't be the "right to profit" gravytrain of the past.

--

well, at least to those who can read English

[ForestGrump]

and to those who can't, they can copy and paste the text into a translator.

So yes, it would benefit society as a whole.

Grump.

For once

[theskeptic]

a Library of Congress jokes will be on topic.

Storage

[Neon Spiral Injector]

How data much storage would this require? Could someone give it to me in laymen's terms?

Re:Storage

[jrockway]

About 1.0003 libraries of congress.

Re:Storage

[SunPin]

About 750 million cubic hogsheads.

Re:Storage

[Ghostgate]

This will require 1.28 Libraries of Congress to store. The overhead is for all of the faulty copy protection to be added, which a 13-year-old somewhere in Europe is already working on cracking.

Re:Storage

[BorgCopyeditor]

Let's see:

engaging "3-2-1 Contact" mode...

• If each byte of data were the size of a grain of sand, the LOC archive would be roughly the size of Laguna Beach!
• If each byte of data were the thickness of a hair on a fly's ass, the LOC's collection, laid side by side, would be over 6 feet long!
• If each byte of data were worth $0.01 U.S., the LOC database would rival the gross national product of Uzbekistan!

Re:Storage

[operagost]

Don't use a Pentium chip next time.

It'd be faster...

[Anonymous Coward]

...just to put the whole dictionary on line. Figure it this way- you can use it to make all the other books out of it, and it gets around the whole copyright thingie, too (if you use a sufficiently old dictionary).

Units?!

[skraps]

He estimated that the scanned images would take up about a terabyte of space [...]

Uhh.. "terabyte"? Again with these esoteric units!
Someone, please.. how much is that in LOC?

Homeland Security Savings

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea to scan in all materials available at the U.S. Library of Congress was presented at the Web 2.0 conference this week (as just one of many ideas presented). The proposed cost of $260 million would create a huge benefit to society

It would probably pay for itself too since FBI agents would no longer have to travel to libraries to secretly gather records of who borrowed what. They can just use Carnivore to do it instead.

Why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should work... its a lot of information though: about 1 library of congresses worth.

Ametrica!

[Doc Ruby]

Finally, Slashdot can establish that for official purposes:

1 Library of Congress = $260M

And the 2004 US Federal budget can be spec'd at 0.000243754522 LoC:s (Libraries of Congress per second).

The theory of everything

[antikarma]

At long last, we shall finally know just how much one unit of Libraries of Congress is. This could quite possibly have profound effects on how we understand the universe. For example, for many years we have known that the universe is approximately 42 Libraries of Congress. Now we can fully understand its meaning.

Re:The theory of everything

[Pfhorrest]

Oh dear God, they've found the Question.

Goodbye, Universe.

Halfbaked

[n08ody]

you've perused the Libray of Congress, but have you perused the Library of Congress Online

Missing something?

[ravenspear]

In a traditional library it's not really easy to...

1. walk in and pick up a book
2. strike the author's name from it and replace it with your own
3. replace the copyright notice with your own
4. Make one thousand perfect copies
5. Offer it for sale, start taking orders, and PROFIT!

...all within 30 minutes.

I could easily do that on the internet.

Re:Er

[Anonymous Coward]

If they started now, I wonder how many dog years it would take.

Re:We need to get our priorities straight

[Zoop]

Since Congress and the President can so easily pull out a hundred billion dollars to bomb the hell out of another country, I see no reason we can't come up with a whimpy $260 million for something as worthwhile as this.

I'm sorry, I don't get it. How does your proposal bomb anybody?

Are you suggesting we should bomb libraries?

I mean, I see libraries, I see money, but I'm missing the bombs.

Tell you what, rewrite your proposal with bombs and maybe some cool submunitions and make sure they're Furin libraries, and we'll talk.

What, you want me to starve to death?

[Banner]

Oh yeah, put 'em all online. I have a hard enough time already in libraries and book stores! If I could read any book I wanted to (even if they're only the ones already out of copyright) online, I'd probably not leave my computer until I passed out!!

Great

[Konster]

This will be great! You know all those ads that claim such and such can transmit the Library of Congress in so and so seconds?

Now we'll be able to test their notions!

Library of Congress Transfer Rates

[xombo]

Isn't the size of the Library of Congress what people used to use as a quantifier for the speed of high-bandwidth connections? I remember several years ago that companies would brag that they can transfer the entire Library of Congress to England or wherever in less than 2 seconds and what have you. I suppose a statement like that would indicate that there are already digital versions of the Library of Congress out there somewhere meaning it will take virtually nothing dollar-wise to put it online (since I guess it's been flowing back and forth for years).

Now I have a real problem...

[HellYeahAutomaton]

I just downloaded the LoC.ps.tgz from the local WPI Internet2 tap using gnutella and my printer just ran out of ink....

Re:Er

[mrgreen4242]

assuming that ANY item ever enters the public domain from now on

The ghost of Sonny Bono with haunt you forever, being sure that you know nothing will ever reach the public domain again...

Re:Er

[Anonymous Coward]

Some information wants to be free. I happen to have some informations that does not want to be free. Unfortunately the very nature of this information means I cannot tell you what it is.

hmmm....

[Atrax]

well, at least to those who can read English

So that leaves out most Americans. Thanks from the rest of the world!

(tongue firmly in cheek)

That's a lot of developers .. are they off-shore?

[ReidMaynard]

Amazon already has 65,000 developers who are working on ways to plunder information on its site for their own ends. The payback for Amazon is the selling of more stuff through its site.

WOW..from Amazon's open job page it seems most developer jobs are in Washington state. If we assume a salary of $100,000 per this results in Amazon spending 6.5 Billion dollars per year, just on developers.

Or maybe this is a typo.

Of course you could do some cost cutting and move it off-shore for less than $500,000,000.00/yr. Anyway, they seem to have a lot of openings.