A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto (1993)
The cycle of building, burning, and rebuilding the Great Digital Libraries of Alexandria (e.g., Napster, Pirate Bay, Demonoid, what.cd, redacted, etc.) has gotten old.<p>At this point I&#x27;m inclined to ask-- what would a cypherpunk <i>not</i> do? I.e., let&#x27;s remove crypto and magically-dev&#x27;ing-ourselves-out-of-holes from the equation.<p>There must be policy wonks here on HN who know the ins and outs of local&#x2F;state&#x2F;federal government, copyright law&#x2F;fair use, etc. (I&#x27;m assuming the U.S. IP lobby is the 400 pound gorilla in the room.)<p>What are some good starting points to look for a more robust way out of the problem-- how do we sustainably grow a crowd-sourcable archive for copyrighted digital artifacts? What&#x27;s an approach that could eventually be on a referenda or party platform? Does archive.org have any idea? Any other orgs have an idea?<p>There should be a sustainable solution to bootstrapping civic databases to archive and make available&#x2F;discoverable all the shits citizens care about without waiting 70+ years for it to enter the public domain.<p>It&#x27;s absurd as it is now. We&#x27;ve got a scientific database duct-taped together by a fucking grad student in hiding, and AFAICT nearly every researcher uses it.<p>What&#x27;s the reasonable legislation to say, &quot;As long as the project does X and avoids Y, the project may archive Z&quot; for all digital artifacts Z in some domain?<p>Edit: clarifications