As we celebrate Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, we are reminded of all the ways these flexible copyright exceptions enable libraries to preserve materials and meet the needs of the communities they serve. Indeed, fair use is essential to the functioning of libraries, and underlies many of the ordinary library practices that we all take for granted. In this blog post, we wanted to describe a few of the ways the fair use doctrine has helped us build our library. Fair use in action: Web Archives and the Wayback Machine The Internet Archive has been archiving the web since the mid-1990’s. Our web col ..read more

In his intergenerational graphic memoir, renowned video game designer Jordan Mechner traces his family’s journey through war, Nazi occupation, and everyday marital strife. Book Talk: REPLAY March 27 @ 10am PT / 1pm ET Register now for the virtual event! 1914. A teenage romantic heads to the enlistment ofice when his idyllic life in a Jewish enclave of the Austro-Hungarian Empire is shattered by World War I. 1938. A seven-year-old refugee begins a desperate odyssey through France, struggling to outrun the rapidly expanding Nazi regime and reunite with his family on the other side of the Atlant ..read more

How data surveillance, digital forensics, and generative AI pose new long-term threats and opportunities—and how we can use them to make better decisions in the face of technological uncertainty. Book Talk: The Secret Life of Data April 18 @ 10am PT / 1pm ET ONLINE Register now! “I have been waiting a long time for a clearly written book that cuts through the hype and describes how data—big and small, old and new—actually operate in our lives. Neither utopian nor dystopian, The Secret Life of Data just tells it like it is.”    —Siva Vaidhyanathan, Professor of Media Studies, Th ..read more

Join us for a VIRTUAL book talk with author Joanne McNeil about her latest book, WRONG WAY, which examines the treacherous gaps between the working and middle classes wrought by the age of AI. McNeil will be in conversation with author Sarah Jaffe. February 29 @ 10am PT / 1pm ET VIRTUAL REGISTER NOW WRONG WAY was named one of the best books of 2023 by the New Yorker and Esquire. It was the Endless Bookshelf Book of the Year and named one of the best tech books by the LA Times. “Wrong Way is a chilling portrait of economic precarity, and a disturbing reminder of how attempts to optimize life a ..read more

Hundreds of people from all over the world gathered together on January 25 to honor the thousands of movies, plays, books, poems and songs that recently entered the U.S. public domain. Steamboat Willie, Walt Disney’s 1928 animated film featuring Mickey Mouse, had top billing at the virtual event. Literature now free from restriction for reuse includes Orlando by Virginia Woolf and Tarzan Lord of the Jungle by Edgar R. Burroughs. Sound recordings from 1923 (released on a different schedule) joined the public domain such as ”Down Hearted Blues” by Bessie Smith and ”Who’s Sorry Now” by Isham Jon ..read more

When Zeau Modig began as the graduate school librarian at the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) nearly a decade ago, many of the students lived nearby. They came to the Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, campus to check out some of the library’s 1,500 print books and make photocopies. Zeau Modig, librarian Today, the majority of students live elsewhere in a dozen different countries from Brazil to Hungary—and instruction has moved online. This is driving up demand for e-books. Modig has found resources on the Internet Archive to fill the gap between what her physical library can p ..read more

Last week, Mickey Mouse and Elon Musk helped raise the visibility of library preservation and the Internet Archive’s mission across social media in an unexpected convergence of the public domain, popular culture and the publishers’ lawsuit against our library. It started less than an hour into the new year. At 12:36am, we posted a 45 second clip from Steamboat Willie to X (formerly Twitter) with the iconic introduction of Mickey Mouse. By the next morning, the video had reached hundreds of thousands of views; by the end of the day, views had climbed into the millions. To date, the clip (abov ..read more

This year we are welcoming many works from 1928 into the U.S. public domain (books, movies, images, etc.), as well as recorded sound from 1923. Some of the big events from 1928 include the first machine sliced and wrapped loaf of bread being sold, the fatal Okeechobee hurricane, the failure of the St. Francis Dam in Los Angeles, the discovery of a moldy petri dish that would lead to the creation of penicillin, Amelia Earheart flying across the Atlantic, and a certain mouse making his public debut. Movies Everybody’s talking about Mickey. On November 18th, 1928 Steamboat Willie was published, t ..read more

Internet Archive drew more than 2,000 attendees to its popular book talk series in 2023, held in collaboration with Authors Alliance. The books and authors represented in this year’s series covered topics as varied as digital copyright, the persistence of history and culture through preservation, early personal computing history, and the harms of political control and corporate surveillance. Browse the full collection. WATCH NOW: January 12, 2023 – Ben Tarnoff, “Internet for the People“ March 9, 2023 – Jason Steinhauer, “History, Disrupted“ March 28, 2023 – Peter Baldwin, “Athena Unbound“ Apr ..read more

In tracing her family history, Taneya Koonce discovered stories about her African American ancestors in records going back to the late 1700s. Many were enslaved. She followed the path of some descendants from North Carolina to New York in the Great Migration.  Taneya Koonce The Internet Archive is among the many sources that Koonce has relied on in her research. From her home in Tampa, Florida, she regularly accesses the collection’s online yearbooks, newspapers, location histories, and government records to piece together her family’s story—and has also contributed material in hopes of h ..read more