Barbarians at the Gates – Ideas Roadshow

"It’s the sort of inspiring cultural preservation and dissemination initiative that, back when the internet was first being developed, we all idealistically predicted would happen but almost never did, as our collective societal attention became fixated on the likes of pornography, video games and social media (if not all three simultaneously).  

The Internet Archive, however, is, thankfully, the exception that proves the rule: a tangible demonstration that no matter how bleakly trivial and mercenary our contemporary societal landscape might become, there are still millions out there quietly doing their best to enhance our rapidly evolving notion of community by making high-quality ideas broadly available to the widest possible public....

The amount of economic harm that the publishers are presently suffering as a result of the IA has not only never been quantified, it has not even been roughly attempted to be quantified. And it is most difficult to coherently argue with someone who is crying out that their livelihood is being threatened by a particular situation when they don’t provide one iota of tangible evidence that such a thing is actually occurring....

I truly believe that in a reasonable world, the existence of organizations like the Internet Archive would indeed represent an existential threat to the publishing industry, particularly its tiny academic subsection...."