In The Latest Cyber-news: The Internet Archive Has Lost Their Case Against 4 Major Publishing Houses

in the latest cyber-news: the internet archive has lost their case against 4 major publishing houses (verge article). they’re going to appeal, but this is still a bad outcome. the fate of the internet is currently hanging in the balance because 4 multibillionare publishing groups missed out on like $15 of combined revenue during the pandemic because of the archive’s online library service. it’s so fucking stupid.

for those who don’t know what the internet archive is, it’s a virtual library full of media. books, magazines, recordings, visuals, flash games, websites - a lot of these things either don’t exist anymore or cannot be found & bought. heard of the wayback machine? that’s part of the internet archive. it is the most important website to exist, and i don’t say that lightly. if the internet archive goes down, the cultural loss will be immeasurable.

so how can you help?

boycott the publishing companies involved in this. they’re absolute ghouls, frankly, and don’t deserve a penny. the companies involved are harpercollins (imprints), wiley (imprints), penguin random house llc (imprints), and hachette book group (imprints). make sure the websites are set to your location as it may differ worldwide.

learn to torrent. download a torrent client (i recommend transmission), a vpn (i recommend protonvpn - sign up and choose the area that’s closest to your continent/country), and hit up /r/piracy on reddit for websites. with torrenting, you can get (almost) any media you want for free in high quality, with add-ons such as subtitles, and with no risks of loss. i would also recommend getting into the habit of watching stuff online for free. the less you can pay to a giant corporation, the better.

get into the habit of downloading and archiving materials. find a TB external hard drive, ideally the higher the better. it’ll probably cost around $60 for 1TB and continue to go up, but they’re so so useful. if you can’t afford a drive, look for any GB harddrives or memory sticks you have lying around and just fill them up. videos, pdfs, magazines, songs, movies, games - anything you can rip and download and fit on there, do it, because nothing is permanent.

donate to the internet archive. this is the most important option on the list. the IA relies entirely on funding, and it’s going to need more to fight this case. whatever you can donate, do it. i promise it’s helpful.

and finally…

A picture of a kitten captioned with 'this cat's name is z library, look him up on google'

A picture of a kitten captioned with 'this cat's name is libgen, look him up on google'

More Posts from Cacstag and Others

cacstag

2 years ago

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cacstag

2 years ago

My autistic brother created a new family Christmas tradition

Okay, so last year, my mom bought this Christmas moose that she lovingly named Barry

This is him

My Autistic Brother Created A New Family Christmas Tradition

Cute, right?

Well, for whatever reason only known to my brother, he decided that he wanted to put Barry in different rooms of our house and it usually scares the shit out of whomever happens upon Barry; usually the person who finds him is the person that my brother wanted to scare.

So far, Barry has been found

On our dining room table

On my dad's side of my parents' bed

In my parents' closet

Outside their bedroom door (at 5 in the morning and scared my mother shitless)

Near the kitchen door

Near my fucking bed

At the bottom of my sister's stairwell

In our bathroom

And down the hallway

This has gone on for 9 days and it doesn't seem to show signs of stopping. Most of the time we know who gets Barry because it's always followed with a very loud "FUCKING BARRY!!!!!"

My brother is the funniest fucking person I know.

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cacstag

6 months ago

Name change, felt like it

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cacstag

2 years ago

I really love how you differentiate between the two near identical characters + ensinuate how much of a danger they truly are by making the professor have much more "plush"-looking fur compared to the substitute, whose fur is spiky-er and "electric" (You can even see a shape difference on their coat collars+glasses).

It's just interesting to see shape theory in character design no matter how much I see it!