From Christian Heilmann (via Om Malik):

The global library is burning

...

On the social web, knowledge is smothered by agenda and on the publisher web by ads and paywalls and contracts. Ever tried to look up some news from 12 years ago? Back in library days you were able to do that. On news portals, most articles are deleted after a year, and on newspaper web sites you hardly ever get access to the archives โ€“ even with a subscription.

(Aside: Just checked my local newspaper, hoping for a counter-example, and it's true there too. Even with my monthly, inflated subscription payments, I don't have access to the archives. Though I bet my local library does, as it did (natch) during the "library days".)

This -- what ultimately boils down to the loss (or "unremediation") of [paper] ownership -- is, perhaps, why we need a more thorough Archive.org.

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