The Internet Archive is augmenting its existing mirrors — one in San Francisco, one in Amsterdam, one at the Library of Alexandria (that is: San Andreas fault, below sea level, military dictatorship) — with a copy in Canada, on the premise that "lots of copies keep stuff safe."
Canada is hardly a paragon of freedom. The new guy looks great with his shirt off (so does Putin), but he also rescued the old Prime Minister's "Patroit Act fanfic" surveillance bill and broke his promise to fix it after the election.
But Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle is right: lots of copies are better. If Canada tries to censor the Internet Archive, it probably won't go after the same stuff as Trump, nor at the same time. More copies are better.
The Archive is a tax-deductible charity, and I send them money every year.
So this year, we have set a new goal: to create a copy of Internet Archive’s digital collections in another country. We are building the Internet Archive of Canada because, to quote our friends at LOCKSS, “lots of copies keep stuff safe.” This project will cost millions. So this is the one time of the year I will ask you: please make a tax-deductible donation to help make sure the Internet Archive lasts forever.On November 9th in America, we woke up to a new administration promising radical change. It was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change.
For us, it means keeping our cultural materials safe, private and perpetually accessible. It means preparing for a Web that may face greater restrictions.
It means serving patrons in a world in which government surveillance is not going away; indeed it looks like it will increase.
Throughout history, libraries have fought against terrible violations of privacy—where people have been rounded up simply for what they read. At the Internet Archive, we are fighting to protect our readers’ privacy in the digital world.
Help Us Keep the Archive Free, Accessible, and Private
[Brewster Kahle/Archive.org]
The Internet Archive is building a Canadian copy to protect itself from Trump [Adi Robertson/The Verge]
