foreign
[Music]
so thank you very much once again
um I I bet this isn't a talk you were
expecting so I hope to at least uh maybe
a bit of a downer but at least you'll
learn something from it uh in the Devcon
in uh in Japan
um I suggested that the issues once we
start to have currencies with interest
that we could have debt with interest
that you get runaway wealth inequality
and historically according to David
Graber and Michael Hudson it leads to
Civil Wars
um so we needed some mechanism to have
jubilees or other mechanisms of doing
debt relief or things can go very wrong
okay so I'm going to give another kind
of uh thing to worry about that I hope
is going to be at least useful uh uh to
you on a going forward basis and it
revolves around the term digital
ownership of what is did ownership how
it's being manipulated what are the
risks what are the large corporations
trying to do about it and the like but
before I get on a downer let's just I I
wanted to say thank you all for for
moving ethereum to proof of stake I mean
what an enormous achievement and thank
you very much and I actually moved all
of my personal Bitcoin to ethereum
because of this just in the last while
so thank you all
um it's really wonderful to see this
whole ecosystem take steps forward in
the way that uh you guys have have
brought it Forward okay
um Publishers denial of digital
ownership versus uh the decentralized
web which is the work the internet
archive has been doing so what does it
mean when the mega Publishers for Mega
Publishers sued the internet archive
about trying to have digital ownership
of scanned books and this is I say a
widespread
precursor of things you'll see in other
areas so in the nation they wrote it up
as actually above just the internet
archive it's taking the internet to
court that the concept of what it means
to have files be able to Archive them be
able to have use of them be able to have
them on your hard drives is coming under
attack from these extremely large
organizations and they're doing it in
the guise of a lawsuit against the
internet archive so who who are these
people
um it's orchestrated by the AAP
um but it's the uh four of the very
largest uh Publishers in the world one
owned by Rupert Murdoch there's other uh
large monopolies multi-billion dollar
corporations that are coming after the
internet archive for fundamentally what
we've been trying to do is buy
electronic books buy electronic books in
the same sense we used to buy books in
the past so we'd buy an electric book
and then we'd be able to preserve it and
lend it out to one reader at a time
right that's kind of what it used to be
in the physical world why not in the
digital world they would not allow us or
any library to buy an electric book
They're not available at all so you
can't own them so that's a a puzzle so
we said okay let's go back and scan the
books that we do physically own have one
copy and lend it one reader at a time
and doing this for 10 years it's been
going great hundreds of libraries do it
and in the beginning of the pandemic
these Publishers sued us to try to stop
this practice across the board so it's a
bigger issue than just a little Library
sort of the lawsuit as I will try to
suggest like for instance if you want us
get into the mind of what these big
Publishers are doing Pearson which is a
major Textbook Company is starting to
invest in nfts as a mechanism of of
killing off the secondary textbook
market so even though if you've paid
them for a textbook in the electronic
world you can't go and sell it to
somebody else or give it to somebody
else or actually own it in any real
sense so where the uh wonder of the
blockchain was to have
an artificial scarcity
in the digital world we've now allowed
also mechanisms of holding on to things
are passed when it was normally released
based on being paid in the uh in the
world of books and we're starting to see
that in movies for instance or music if
you think about the music you've
probably listened to in the last week
you probably don't actually have the
mp3s of those you're just listening to
them off of some streaming service that
can change at any time so what does that
world look like it's really problematic
and at least we have some friends so
there was a recent uh letter signed by
300 over 300 authors it's now up to 850
authors and Neil Gaiman uh a bunch of
other very famous authors to basically
say that this lawsuit against the
internet archive and libraries in
general is a problem but the I is this
is not again restricted to just a
library uh issue so digital ownership is
what's at issue and it's what's been
informed now and this community can
really help if we work together to try
to understand what does this mean how
much role can people have on an ever
going basis forever to be able to say
what it is you can do and how much can
they retract at the end of the day so
let me just say a little bit about the
internet archive I'm going to just flash
through a bunch of big numbers to just
say gosh isn't it impressive but to give
you kind of an idea of the what the
internet archive is which you may only
know as the Wayback machine but it's a
bunch of other things too we have 790
000 software titles many of which are
are
emulatable so you can go and do your old
Oregon Trail uh days or whatever it is
your favorite video games on Old
platforms uh out there we have over 5
million moving images that people have
uploaded this isn't even counting
television
um that are available lectures and and
the like on archive.org a non-profit
live Library audio recordings 14 million
of them including uh 280 000 concert
recordings
from bands that agreed to share sort of
in that non-commercial uh kind of
Creative Commons ways uh so the internet
archive has lots of these and people are
uploading more all the time
um we have about two million hours of
television news so you can search what
people said which has been very
important we're it's not just United
States television news we also now have
Russian Ukrainian news that's being
useful to find out what the uh what
different populations are getting fed by
uh the large media companies
um and we have about six million books
that we've digitized one page at a time
that are available for free for Lending
and a lot of web pages we're probably
best known for the Wayback machine but
we've got over 99
petabytes of data I just love this
number because it's just kind of
ridiculously large
and so we're going to break through 100
100 petabytes and have a party so we've
also been pioneering this idea of these
decentralized web by going and promoting
values oriented Next Generation web
where it's a peer-to-peer back end on
the web that the file coin the storage
uh
are are sort of parts of this that we're
trying to build build a better uh better
internet best known for the Wayback
machine we've got 700 billion web pages
and a lot but what happens when
corporations license rather than selling
digital things and we've got troubles
with the right to repair we have you
know people that own tractors they can't
repair them because they're under a
license agreement
um you know what does it mean to own
anything in this Digital World what
happens when corporations license and
sell things
um well they get to hold on to them
forever so they get to basically be able
to reach onto your device and pull it
back I guess the most dramatic of these
is when Amazon came out with the Kindle
why would you call a book reader
something that has to do with fire but
anyway
um the book uh their book reader they
bundled 1984 onto it and distributed it
well the family of George Orwell
objected and so Amazon went on to
everybody's Kindles and took it off I
mean 1984 happened to 1984.
um so is this happening yes
um it it is happening so they get to
hold on things forever they can decide
what can be done with it
and these issues forever they can say
who can get access to what when and they
can change anything about uh what it is
that you can see they can take it away
um and uh this is this is happening
thing
what if you can't buy one and only lease
digital books then every reading event
is permissioned so anytime you turn a
page
somebody is controlling what it is you
see and whether you can see it and it
can be completely individualized so the
pages can be tracked they can change the
books at any time they can deliver
different books to different people and
you might not ever know it and
corporations and governments can change
history they can just make things
go away
no amount of digital currency magic or
changes to copyright law will stop this
it's the magic of licenses it over steps
all of that the Publishers have
manipulated copyright law to last way
too long and cover all sorts of things
but at least it was under rule of law
but when you're under a rule of
contract they can go and set whatever
terms they want and there will be fewer
and fewer Publishers which is happening
they're consolidating and becoming
platforms so they're not interested in
protocols they're interested in
platforms so where we have a typically
Now sort of we're trained to go and say
oh bad Google bad uh Twitter bad
Facebook
um
it's true those are those organizations
should uh reform but there are there's
these organizations that are behind the
curtains owned by some of the very
richest people in the in the world that
control not a lot of what it is we see
what gets published and that structure
and they are getting stronger and bigger
uh all the time
so
is it happening I mean you know we hear
a lot of scare things about you know
this isn't that and the answer is well
uh yes
um and will it continue to happen I
would suggest yes unless we win our
lawsuit so our books disappearing so
just two weeks ago Wiley which is a
major educational publisher that had
been selling these database products or
remember you can't actually buy the
ebooks you can just rent them if you're
a library
um and then uh they were being assigned
in classrooms and then they took down 1
200 of them and just made them go go
away right so yes can they go and take
books away on scale yes are they yes
um
are they watching every page yes
um in fact they're proud of it so Amazon
is proud of being able to count all of
the pages that you might read in some
particular book and go and change how
they compensate people Upstream the
author's Guild which is a trade
Association very closely allied with the
Publishers as opposed to authors has
been pressured and they were very proud
that they pressured Amazon to spy even
more on users such that if you flipped
too many pages in a book that you had
bought that you couldn't return it for
money with Amazon that they thought this
was a huge Victory to spy more on
readers
um so we've got some uh incentives
um not not going right but I'm just
trying to demonstrate yes there are real
problems going on our this book Banning
going on yes at scale I mean there seems
to be a competition in the United States
between the states that go and say how
much Banning can they do you and that's
as a pride in one of the parties in the
uh uh in the United States to go and go
and uh surface and and constrict more
um of what people can see in the library
system so there's libraries can't buy
things they can't uh and they're
starting to get Rules by governments to
take them out what libraries do is they
buy preserve and lend they buy books
from Publishers and it compensates
authors this way they preserve them long
term and they make them available and
then they also um lend them one reader
at a time what the Publishers are saying
is you not allowed to buy you're not
allowed to preserve and you're not
allowed to lend in the electronic world
this Con makes a a shifting sand that's
kind of supposed to be the antithetical
to what we've been building in the
decentralized world where you actually
know that you actually have those coins
or whatever
but we're seeing some of these contracts
being able to be used for exactly the
flip opposite right I it's a little Deja
Vu for me I'm an old guy that did a lot
in the early internet internet Hall of
Fame the system uh publishing before the
uh before the web called Waze I I so
I've seen a lot of this go through I've
seen a lot of the promises go through
I've seen a lot of the dreams get
Twisted by extremely powerful players to
play against exactly the things we set
out to do in the first place so think
about it hard
um as we're building some of these
systems because it's going on now so
what should we do what what's sort of
the you know okay that's a little Doom
and Gloom Brewster
um I got any suggestions well yeah let's
go and get the Next Generation
Publishers let's get let's buy books
from them and let's publish your books
with them
um so when you're trying to go and get
it your next book uh out there go with
one of these presses they sell the
libraries and um and vitalik's book
um the proof of stake book it's on seven
stories press and I visited them and
they gave me a a pre-print before it was
published a edition of it which is just
great but these um are some of the Indie
Publishers I would say Indie Publishers
should be independent of the big
behemoths and they should just like in
the Indie music world go and do
something differently of supporting the
authors more and supporting libraries
more so these at least are are ones that
are are selling
support any trust
um the the idea that these organizations
can get so large it can make it so it
doesn't even matter
um if uh There are anti-censorship rules
if a few only a few book publishers get
to go and say who gets compensated to
make books available at all or who's on
the major television news channels like
Fox then you can bend the discussion
just from that so let's keep the
organization small Quarry doctoral and
Rachel have been uh very cogent on this
point and something to do and support
the internet archive and other libraries
that own collections that should be
something that you're conscious of
hopefully out of this it's just digital
ownership is something that really needs
to be protected not just for libraries
but the internet as a library as we're
going into the decentralized web if we
cannot make copies and put them in
different places we are sunk the way
that the world worked before the web is
Publishers
writ large all sorts of Publishers would
go and sell things it would be bought by
individuals and libraries and they would
go and hold on to it and make it
available and even if one Library burned
down it would still be available if the
publisher went away
um it would still be available if it
went out of print which they do all the
time it would still be available this is
not the way the web works it's on one
server and if it's changed on that one
server by that one organization they
assert the right to go and change it
forever and for always this doesn't make
any sense so the decentralized web was
to try to bring a peer-to-peer back back
end back to the information ecology
to make a
uh healthier uh uh world so that's the
uh uh the uh the hope and and um please
engineer some of your systems
um into building uh uh a better web
thank you very much
I think we have time for a few questions
if at all otherwise you get some more
time back
if you stand up it might help the
volunteers get you a mic quicker
so I read about an effort uh the
internet archive was making to curate
um the Wayback machine and curate
snapshots of websites to include
um you know some flags for fake news or
misinformation
um can you talk more about that or yes
so the internet archive collects lots
and lots of web pages and tries to get
everything that's publicly available but
not all of it uh sort of belongs in a
library in lots of different ways for
instance we get people coming back to us
with from their blogs and going and
saying look you know that was a blog
when I was married to somebody else and
I kind of like to not have that be
available so a lot of those get removed
from the from the Wayback machine
um unless they're a famous person so for
instance there are some people that are
now running for uh for political office
we will put those uh back in in in play
there are other things that people have
use the internet archive as a publishing
platform and we're not a very good thing
for that they might upload a movie to go
and promote their recruiting of uh
adherence and having close-up violence
uh in recruiting of of certain soldiers
in their War
um we want to have copies of these but
we don't want to be a publishing
platform so we put some speed bumps in
the way of making so it's not just a
Twitter click away YouTube and and those
sorts of things are publishing platforms
we are a library there's also some uh
things that are not just uh
um uh calls for of violence but their
ongoing harassment
um so these are people will write to us
and try to have things that are uh being
used as harassment and we will often put
in a speed bump or put some context
around it if it's been been debunked to
try to give some context to people I
think the the uh sort of something we've
been trying out is the answer to bad
speech is more context so to give it so
that when people see something they kind
of know what's going on they think of it
as the card catalog function of the of a
libraries not just to have everything on
the Shelf uh blanket uh is to go and
have things such that you know what it
is you're looking at and some things in
the short term
um actually are are used for
harassing people to the point of death
um and so we're trying to make the
balances of these to such that we don't
take things completely away we might
just make it so that it's less visible
or less visible for a time to try to
make it so that
um I don't know the bad behavior is not
multiplied based on our
um our efforts where we're uh we're here
for the public good we try to stay out
with that with that uh North Star it
doesn't mean that everybody agrees with
what it is uh we do but we try to be
transparent non-commercial uh about sort
of what our decision-making processes in
general if not exactly in every specific
uh specific case
as
yes so uh I hear you when you're talking
about we need to decentralize more
content distribution to have a more
peers of your web but as you put it
yourself incentive works and right now
there is not a strong incentive for the
distribution of content uh like user
even as you returned before I suppose
and very famous I'm having a little hard
time understanding oh sorry too fast so
I suppose everyone in here has used
torrents before right and Torrance comes
with a problem of seed versus leech
ratio and if you want to propose a more
decentralized web for distribution of
contents there need to be an incentive
for the cedar to provide data to the
leader independently of the content of
the data and what blockchain does
currently in cryptocurrencies is the
incentivize block production but not
necessarily content distribution to the
user and how would you solve in the
decentralized fashion the
incentivization of content distribution
right now it's centralized by lawyers
and this big operations like oh you're
not allowed to distribute my contents
but at the end of the day there only
have as much power as the loan and if
you have someone that don't respect this
low like no like someone in Russia does
not really respect Western Law let's say
and you could have content that is
banned in the west being distributed by
a Russian node and but right now in
Torrance there is no incentive of this
Russia not to give you this data so how
would you go around incentivizing data
distribution in a decentralized fashion
which means rewarding data distribution
regardless of the content of the data I
could only understand a small amount of
that let me see if I I'm going to say
something back to see if it's basically
right how do you incentivize people to
go and do content production in a world
where things can be pirated endlessly no
no so I think the question was how do
you incentivize uh content distribution
am I correct contract correct Anonymous
content distribution regardless of the
data right now there is no incentive to
see the data to other people outside of
Goodwill you're not getting paid to give
you to give someone data regardless of a
data like in just peer-to-peer internet
you have no incentive you have a cedar
to give data to other people
how would you solve that
so it's more like how do you solve the
incentivization like structure in order
to have like more incentivization for
people to
um give the data like give the right so
there's there there's been a long bit of
work to try to get open access to work
basically writer pays you know
government uh created materials which is
great but it doesn't uh solve everything
so how do we get people paid by going
and making materials and then
Distributing on the internet without
getting lawyers involved yes so you'd
below the consequence of the lows have
been centralization by big platforms so
this means you need a protocol solution
to get a round below like Bitcoin did
not wait for the US government to create
digital money and you need the same kind
of thing to happen to have your internet
of people content
so they're saying that the lawyers
actually present like a point of
centralization then and so how do you
incentivize it without the lawyers
involved something like a peer-to-peer
structure not everything is solved let's
start with that so it's there's open
questions especially in the digital
arrangement I like looking at history as
sort of when did things work well and
there were periods of time when
basically there was royalty structure
for large-scale production distribution
sales
um of say books or music in the physical
form a lot of that has not translated
forward
um some better for worse we've seen a
lot more centralization I think that we
can have a many to many to many protocol
system as you point out not a platform
uh system we are attempting to do such a
thing with book server
um by going and making it so you can
sell and lend books over the internet
and be able to actually buy them could
there be piracy apps absolutely but
let's make a system that actually works
for people and fortunately there's
enough money around the in the United
States is 12 billion dollars a year just
spent on the library system three or
four billion of that goes to Publishers
products it's about 20 percent of all
the trade books Let's go and spend that
money as well as we can to build a
system that works for more than just a
few big Publishers and so do we have the
Solutions in the digital world no not
yet and since this uh hence this talk
awesome thank you so much Brewster
um thank you very much so
um
[Applause]