User:Rita Graca/readingwriting3
Abstract
Library Genesis is a digital library with a catalog of more than 25 million documents. The website owners describe themselves as “random book collectors”, which means they don’t accept requests or focus on curating materials. The topics are broad: from business, economy, and geology to housekeeping and leisure. The dimension of this library is enormous, there are even several copies of the same books. The content is mostly written material. Although this huge library seems to take information without any specific methodology, the reasons don’t seem completely apolitical. The main page of the website links to a letter of solidarity with strong opinions on sharing materials, copyright, moral values, etc. All people are encouraged to upload content and to download it too. There’s no score to maintain, log-in necessary, or price to pay. The desire of the platform to exist is well seen in the possibility of downloading all content, accessing the database and making mirrors.
Group reflection and questions
What could be the motivation to make such a library? What is the message they might be trying to spread? The scale, the amount of data provided in a library is directly related to the energy and time needed to provide them. How is responsibility distributed ? How are shadow libraries of different scales and purposes interconnected? Are shadow libraries interconnected to each other, even if they have different scales and purposes, because what they have in common is that they brake the law (so they are vulnerable)? flag of convenience Do they have moral goals, or anarchist goals? Is an anarchist goal immoral (or moral)? Symbolic gesture Is it a solidarity gesture? You can copy the website and mirror it. They don't claim ownership Is there a heroic attitude of "liberating" knowledge? (robin hood style) What values does it communicate? Can these values be seen as coming from a particular cultural context (e.g. post-Communist, Eastern-bloc samzidat techniques)? Is it moral to publish books which have a commercial goal? Is the librarian replaced by a random algorithm? Is there a librarian? Who is responsible and what are they responsible for? Non-curation can be a critical position; it is nort imposing a particular position. Are they collecting material just because they can? Yes! No filters; Is this dissident activity? They don't care a lot about the quality, everything is welcome. Duplicated material Do they try to curate doubled material? Why is it easier to support piracy for academic research than for recreational purposes? Distinctions between "knowledge" and "information" / Democratic principle of sharing knowledge in the name of progress / Providing a benefit to society What are the conditions of making something legitimate? (if we shift back to copyright - see also bootleg drugs,) benefit for the greater good? is it based on profit? What would be the first shadow library to be considered legitimate? Why can't a fiction book (or anything besides articles) be considered research, culture, important to share, meaningful...?