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<p>Take a look at overdrive.com - it's a portal mechanism to "<span
class="tout__description">more than 30,000 libraries in 40+
countries"</span>. My own library, in tiny Nevada County in
California, is hooked up to Overdrive. I've borrowed hundreds of
books, with a 3-week loan for each. Occasionally I have to wait
for a copy to be returned before I can borrow it, or put a title
on their suggestion list and wait until they purchase it. <br>
</p>
<p>It takes seconds to borrow a book and have it available on
whatever reading devices you happen to have, and the
infrastructure also "syncs" your reading between devices. So you
can read a book on your Kindle, put it down, and later pick up
your phone, tablet, laptop, et al and continue reading from where
you left off. Pretty nice. It's hooked in with the
Amazon/Kindle infrastructure, and maybe others too, which enforce
the lending rules. (Not sure how resistant it is to a motivated
and talented hacker) <br>
</p>
<p>Some items are available in Kindle format, or EPub, or PDF, or
some combination. It even includes audiobooks and videos,
although I've only used it for books.<br>
</p>
<p>It all works very well. It's even free. All you need is your
library card from your local library. The BPL is a member, so if
you have a BPL library card that's all you need.</p>
<p>That particular wheel has been around for a while....<br>
</p>
<p>/Jack<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2/25/19 9:33 AM, John Day wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:82C6B71A-C0D1-4918-9B78-A7CD961AF79F@comcast.net">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
Not really related to this discussion. The head of the Internet
Archive and the head of Boston Public Library were on Boston
Public Radio last week. They were announcing a cooperation where
you can check-out material in the BPL collection through the
Internet Archive and only one person has access to the material at
a time. Just like it was checked out. What I didn’t hear them
talk about was when the ‘book’ or whatever is returned, how is it
they ensure the borrower doesn’t still have a copy?
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Any thoughts?</div>
<div class="">John<br class="">
<div><br class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">On Feb 25, 2019, at 11:14, Andrew G. Malis
<<a href="mailto:agmalis@gmail.com" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">agmalis@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<div class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="">Jack,
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">In addition to the Internet Archive
(already mentioned), you should also check out <a
href="https://decentralizedweb.net/" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">https://decentralizedweb.net</a>
.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Cheers,</div>
<div class="">Andy</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br class="">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Feb 24, 2019
at 9:58 PM Jack Haverty <<a
href="mailto:jack@3kitty.org" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">jack@3kitty.org</a>>
wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px
0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid
rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" class="">
<p class="">True, but I think a first step is a
persistent crowd-sourced public store, which is
what I described. Perhaps "restricted" material
could be simply stored encrypted, and thus visible
in search engines and accessible only to people
with the appropriate key, or maybe "permission"
credentials. Volunteers might be reluctant to
participate if that became too common. <br
class="">
</p>
<p class="">There's also other considerations, e.g.,
tracking the provenance of an item, so you can
tell whether or not something is authentic, where
it came from, when it was created, etc. Probably
many more such things to ponder. <br class="">
</p>
<p class="">IMHO those kinds of capabilities could
be add-ons to a persistent store as meta-data
mechanisms, possibly many of them all independent,
associating their metadata with items in the
warehouse by some kind of unique ID - perhaps just
a large-enough hash of each of the contents.
They could be added as someone gets interested in
doing so.<br class="">
</p>
<p class="">Anybody could build a metadata mechanism
"on top of" the persistent store. Some might be
built by volunteers and free, others by
corporations and for sale. This is almost what
the Web is, except that the Web store isn't
persistent - things on the Web disappear without
warning. Someone might put a web site "in front
of" the persistent store and use today's web tools
pretty much as is to access materials stored
there.<br class="">
</p>
<p class="">/Jack<br class="">
</p>
<div
class="gmail-m_-5474394948743262562moz-cite-prefix">On
2/24/19 4:07 PM, Vint Cerf wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="">not all data that we might
want to preserve needs to be publicly
accessible.
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">v</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
</div>
<br class="">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Feb
24, 2019 at 6:23 PM Jack Haverty <<a
href="mailto:jack@3kitty.org"
target="_blank" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">jack@3kitty.org</a>>
wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid
rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" class="">
<p class="">I don't know much about SOLID,
but it appears to be addressing the
problem of handling individuals' personal
private data, and controlling who can
access it. What I described was somewhat
of the inverse - making data public,
survivable, and accessible to everyone.
But maybe there's overlap in any
implementation. Certainly there are lots
of pieces already in place somewhere, as
evidenced by the success of viruses,
pirated videos, and the like.<br class="">
</p>
<p class="">The Internet has made possible
new sorts of social mechanisms. What I'm
imagining is more like applying
Internet-style "crowd-funding" to the
problem of a historical archive, where
people contribute cycles and bytes rather
than euros and dollars. <br class="">
</p>
<p class="">That wasn't possible
pre-Internet, but it is now. Thinking
"outside the box" is a lot easier. The
Internet made the box much bigger....</p>
<p class="">/Jack<br class="">
</p>
<p class=""><br class="">
</p>
<div
class="gmail-m_-5474394948743262562gmail-m_-5922535944441398686moz-cite-prefix">On
2/24/19 2:45 PM, Vint Cerf wrote:<br
class="">
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="">isn't that what
SOLID is supposed to do?
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">v</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
</div>
<br class="">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On
Sun, Feb 24, 2019 at 1:47 PM Jack
Haverty <<a
href="mailto:jack@3kitty.org"
target="_blank" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">jack@3kitty.org</a>>
wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid
rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">[Changed
the subject line]<br class="">
<br class="">
I read the recent messages on the
forum just before going to sleep, and<br
class="">
then I had a dream....literally.<br
class="">
<br class="">
There's a whole different perspective
on Internet History that might be<br
class="">
very revealing. Instead of questions
like "Who built the Internet?",<br
class="">
perhaps also ask "Who paid for the
Internet?" If historians "followed<br
class="">
the money" like many other
investigators, they might find some<br
class="">
interesting insights. I didn't
realize until today that the IETF is<br
class="">
funded by ... Me! Through my
payments for my .org domain, maybe by
now<br class="">
I've paid for an urn or two of coffee
at an IETF meeting.<br class="">
<br class="">
But my dream was of how to fund some
kind of Internet repository of<br
class="">
historical materials, not subject to
the management whims or financial<br
class="">
success of an "institution". My
dream reminded me that such mechanisms<br
class="">
already exist, have been running at
scale for years, are self-funded,<br
class="">
and seem essentially impossible to
excise even when governments or<br
class="">
industry giants try to do so.<br
class="">
<br class="">
My dream is of a Benevolent BotNet
(apologies to my alma mater, BBN). <br
class="">
Instead of hosting and propagating
malware and viruses, or stealing<br
class="">
computer cycle to mine cryptocurrency,
the BBN would simply store,<br
class="">
replicate, and distribute historical
materials on demand. No doubt<br
class="">
Richard's comment on Pirate Bay
triggered this part of the dream.<br
class="">
<br class="">
Such technology obviously exists, and
survives despite serious efforts<br
class="">
to eradicate it. Where the Internet
was coopted for evil, perhaps the<br
class="">
evil could be coopted for good?<br
class="">
<br class="">
Maybe even better would be a mechanism
that didn't rely on theft and<br
class="">
subterfuge at all. Perhaps something
akin to the SETI mechanisms, where<br
class="">
people voluntarily donate their
computer resources to analyze radio<br
class="">
signals, by simply downloading a piece
of code and allowing it to run on<br
class="">
their computers.<br class="">
<br class="">
So, my dream was that some new
software appears, which is freely<br
class="">
downloaded by thousands or millions of
people around the world, which<br
class="">
uses a few GB of the disk on their
machines, and stores historical<br
class="">
material in a redundant, highly
survivable, persistent, distrubuted<br
class="">
historical warehouse. One, or many,
search engines (go Google!, Bing!,<br
class="">
DuckDuckGo!) would allow people to
find material in the warehouse. <br
class="">
Anyone could contribute material to
the historical archive by simply<br
class="">
placing a copy into the disk area of
their machine that they've shared,<br
class="">
from where it would be automatically
distributed and replicated.<br
class="">
<br class="">
Perhaps this is one or more apps that
can be downloaded. Or perhaps a<br
class="">
plug in or extension to popular
browsers. Or maybe an addition to<br
class="">
existing mechanisms like BitTorrent.
Much of the code already exists,<br
class="">
as evidenced by the millions of
computers unwittingly participating in
a<br class="">
Botnet, or willingly running code like
SETI.<br class="">
<br class="">
Dave's offer of disk space is just the
start. I suspect many people<br
class="">
would contribute some unused chunk of
their computers and network<br
class="">
capacity. I have a few Terabytes on
my NAS that are empty...you<br
class="">
probably do too. With enough
participants, the BBN becomes<br
class="">
self-suficient even as people come and
go.<br class="">
<br class="">
All it would seem to take is for
someone to sit down and write the<br
class="">
code....in the classic Internet spirit
of Rough Consensus and Running Code.<br
class="">
<br class="">
Dave....?<br class="">
<br class="">
/Jack Haverty<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
On 2/24/19 7:42 AM, Dave Taht wrote:<br
class="">
> Joe Touch <<a
href="mailto:touch@strayalpha.com"
target="_blank" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">touch@strayalpha.com</a>>
writes:<br class="">
><br class="">
>> On Feb 23, 2019, at 12:42 PM,
Jack Haverty <<a
href="mailto:jack@3kitty.org"
target="_blank" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">jack@3kitty.org</a>>
wrote:<br class="">
>><br class="">
>> But "<a
href="mailto:internet-history@postel.org"
target="_blank" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">internet-history@postel.org</a>",
and others like it, even RFC<br
class="">
>> repositories, likely
exist at the whim of their sponsor. <br
class="">
>><br class="">
>> Indeed - even assuming
volunteers run them - they’re’s still
the issue<br class="">
>> of hosting and net access.<br
class="">
>><br class="">
>> I have old repositories
(end2end-interest, for one) that even
the ISOC<br class="">
>> has declined to host (even
though the E2E-RG originated there).<br
class="">
>><br class="">
>> Then again, if you want to
see the worst of “free riders”, go
attend<br class="">
>> an IETF. Companies send
armies there for free training and
free<br class="">
>> consulting. <br class="">
>><br class="">
>> PS - speaking as list admin,
if anyone wants to offer a place to
host<br class="">
>> this list more reliably and
archivally, please do let me know
(contact<br class="">
>> me directly off-list).<br
class="">
> My email list server currently
lives on linode in the cloud. The cost
is<br class="">
> $5/month for 25GB of SSD storage.
( <a
href="https://www.linode.com/pricing"
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank"
class="" moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.linode.com/pricing</a><br
class="">
> ). Has IPv6 and IPv4. It's paid
for via a patreon donation.<br
class="">
><br class="">
> It's not like I'm using much of
that box - or the bandwidth available
-<br class="">
> how big are these archives?<br
class="">
><br class="">
> I wouldn't mind sharing that
existing list server, but I long ago<br
class="">
> switched to violating whatever
RFC it was that said starttls was a<br
class="">
> "should" - to *mandate* starttls
only - which cuts down on spam (and<br
class="">
> sigh, about 13% of my measured
potential correspondents, still). The<br
class="">
> biggest administrative cost I'd
had was dealing with spam.<br class="">
><br class="">
> If that's not an acceptable
policy for these lists/archives, well,
go<br class="">
> burn the 5 bucks/mo on yer own.<br
class="">
><br class="">
><br class="">
>> Joe<br class="">
>><br class="">
>><br class="">
>> _______<br class="">
>> internet-history mailing list<br
class="">
>> <a
href="mailto:internet-history@postel.org"
target="_blank" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">internet-history@postel.org</a><br
class="">
>> <a
href="http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history"
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank"
class="" moz-do-not-send="true">http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history</a><br
class="">
>> Contact <a
href="mailto:list-owner@postel.org"
target="_blank" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">list-owner@postel.org</a>
for assistance.<br class="">
_______<br class="">
internet-history mailing list<br
class="">
<a
href="mailto:internet-history@postel.org"
target="_blank" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">internet-history@postel.org</a><br
class="">
<a
href="http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history"
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank"
class="" moz-do-not-send="true">http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history</a><br
class="">
Contact <a
href="mailto:list-owner@postel.org"
target="_blank" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">list-owner@postel.org</a>
for assistance.<br class="">
</blockquote>
</div>
<br class="" clear="all">
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
-- <br class="">
<div dir="ltr"
class="gmail-m_-5474394948743262562gmail-m_-5922535944441398686gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr" class="">New postal
address:
<div class="">Google<br class="">
<div class="">1875 Explorer Street,
10th Floor</div>
<div class="">Reston, VA 20190</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br class="" clear="all">
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
-- <br class="">
<div dir="ltr"
class="gmail-m_-5474394948743262562gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr" class="">New postal address:
<div class="">Google<br class="">
<div class="">1875 Explorer Street, 10th
Floor</div>
<div class="">Reston, VA 20190</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
_______<br class="">
internet-history mailing list<br class="">
<a href="mailto:internet-history@postel.org"
target="_blank" class="" moz-do-not-send="true">internet-history@postel.org</a><br
class="">
<a
href="http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history"
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history</a><br
class="">
Contact <a href="mailto:list-owner@postel.org"
target="_blank" class="" moz-do-not-send="true">list-owner@postel.org</a>
for assistance.<br class="">
</blockquote>
</div>
_______<br class="">
internet-history mailing list<br class="">
<a href="mailto:internet-history@postel.org" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">internet-history@postel.org</a><br
class="">
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history">http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history</a><br class="">
Contact <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:list-owner@postel.org">list-owner@postel.org</a> for assistance.<br class="">
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br class="">
</div>
</blockquote>
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