Digital Future of the Library of Congress
lesinator writes "On Monday the 28th the US Library of Congress
is holding the eighth lecture in its series on
Managing Knowledge
and Creativity in a Digital Context. Previous speakers include
David Weinberger on blogging,
Brewster Kahle -
founding member
of archive.org and the wayback machine, and
Lawrence Lessig on intellectual
property
and the creative commons. After the lecture questions will be taken from the audience and the internet. C-Span
will be broadcasting the lecture
live at 6:30 PM EST, and also has
archives of previous lectures. Audio archives of previous lecture are available at Audible.com in the Selected Free Media section."
Here an interesting talks they might give:
i) What if the Apostles had had technological means to prevent the reproduction of the New Testament?
ii) Would our culture be diminished if the people who rediscovered Beowulf had been unable to decrypt the manuscript?
iii) Is the continual repitition and reworking of myth and fable through the Oral Tradition disrespectful of the content creators who first recorded these stories?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
It is amusing that this story follows directly after a story about Microsoft proprietary file formats.
The Library of Congress should insist that all 'publications' be submitted to it in open formats. What good is it if they have something on file that nobody can read! The extreme is that they have to have a licensed copy of every piece of software that ever created a file. If all the formats have to be open then at least historians can cobble together something that can read a file of interest.
With the ip laws as stupid as they are now, we run the real risk of losing the record of our age.