Descentralizar para fortalecer comunidades: DWeb+Coolab Camp Brasil

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Guest blog by Antonia Bustamante from the DWeb Camp Core Organizing team.

Cerca de Ubatuba, a cuatro horas de la inmensa capital del estado de São Paulo, nos recibió en septiembre un paraíso brasilero de montaña y mar donde uno quisiera quedarse para siempre: el Instituto Neos. Allí Coolab (laboratorio cooperativo de redes libres) organizó el primer DWeb+Coolab Camp, versión brasilera del DWeb Camp.

El Instituto Neos está ubicado en un espacio que a principios de la década de 2000 funcionó como centro cultural y de exploración artística para niñxs y adolescentes. Años después fue abandonado y la ávida vegetación tropical comenzó a devorar los edificios vacíos. En 2017 el predio fue rematado y algunas personas, que conforman el colectivo Neos, lo compraron para construir un proyecto de sociobiodiversidad. Este fue el lugar que Coolab eligió para alojar el encuentro, aprovechando además para dejar al Instituto la infraestructura de mejoramiento físico de acceso a Internet construida durante el evento.

Equipos para mejorar la infraestructura de la red de conexión a Internet.

Los días que pasamos allí dormimos en carpas y habitaciones compartidas. Delicias culinarias preparadas por la gente del colectivo con especies animales y vegetales locales nos alimentaron. Todxs nos turnamos las tareas de limpieza y bienestar, y algunxs asistentes trilingües nos hicieron sentir como en casa saltando del portugués al castellano y al inglés sin ningún esfuerzo.

En agosto de 2022 y nuevamente en junio de este año se organizó el DWeb Camp en un bosque de sequoias ubicado unas horas al norte de San Francisco. En este encuentro se convoca anualmente, durante cuatro días, a personas de distintas partes del mundo que trabajan y se interesan por la descentralización de la web, tanto desde el aspecto técnico como desde lógicas colectivas y proyectos de empoderamiento social. 

En medio de ese bosque, el año pasado, un círculo alrededor del fuego invitó a hablar sobre una posible versión brasilera del encuentro. La cosa tomó forma y este año Coolab organizó la primera edición, siguiendo con su labor de abrir espacios de diálogo y cooperación sobre redes comunitarias y tecnologías de descentralización y apropiación tecnológica.

Los contextos naturales de ambos eventos, aunque bellísimos, son radicalmente distintos. También las lógicas de organización y de interacción entre las personas fueron otras. El Sur y el Norte haciendo sus propias versiones de un encuentro en el que tenemos todxs objetivos comunes pero, a la vez, particularidades locales a las que pensamos que es necesario responder con el desarrollo de tecnologías, narrativas y estrategias particulares.

Conversación al aire libre sobre formas cooperativas de trabajo.

Esa fue una de las preguntas que estuvo presente en los días que pasamos juntxs en Brasil: ¿Qué es para nosotrxs la web descentralizada? ¿Cuáles son sus principios?

En el sitio de DWeb pueden leerse los principios propuestos desde el Norte por la organización:

  • Tecnología para la agencia humana
  • Beneficios distribuidos
  • Respeto mutuo
  • Humanidad
  • Conciencia Ecológica

(Estos fueron traducidos al castellano por Sutty aquí: https://dweb.sutty.nl/2023/08/22/principios-de-la-deweb.html)

Un atardecer, sentadxs en la playa, conversamos sobre ellos: ¿Estamos de acuerdo o quisiéramos proponer otros? ¿Entendemos de la misma forma la web, Internet, las redes comunitarias y las tecnologías de comunicación digital? Más que respuestas nos llevamos preguntas e ideas inspiradoras.

Conversación en la playa liderada por Nico Pace de APC.

En diálogo con las posibilidades de descentralización de la web, el encuentro en Brasil se enfocó, en gran parte, en la agroecología. Brasil tiene una larga historia de movimientos políticos relacionados con la tierra y el cultivo. Desde los años 70 del siglo pasado el Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Movimiento de los Trabajadores Rurales sin Tierra – MST), uno de los movimientos sociales más grandes de América Latina, ha luchado por la reforma agraria y por la propiedad productiva de pequeñas y medianas extensiones de tierra por parte de quienes la trabajan. Hoy el movimiento reúne a cerca de 450 mil familias en 24 estados del país.

Al DWeb+Coolab Camp fue gente que trabaja la tierra, en la tierra, que nunca antes había salido de sus pueblos. Llegaron planteando problemas técnicos particulares y localizados. Fueron también personas que viven en la periferia de las ciudades brasileras y tienen proyectos de educación popular y uso de tecnologías digitales. Niñxs, adolescentes y adultxs llegamos desde el Sur y el Norte de América, y desde Europa. Yo me fasciné una vez más por la fuerza, el amor y la cooperación que une a esta comunidad y por la calidez del Brasil y su gente, que destila cariño y simpatía cada vez que canta, baila, ríe o habla en serio.

Uno de los invitados brasileros contándonos que nunca antes había salido del lugar en el que vive.

Los temas de las actividades propuestas por lxs asistentes (talleres, charlas, juegos, círculos de conversación…) fueron amplios. Desde las posibilidades o soluciones técnicas que ofrecen herramientas y desarrollos ya existentes, hasta preguntas humanas sobre el trabajo cooperativo, las formas de la atención, la relación con otrxs, la creación colectiva y la improvisación. Resalto entre los aprendizajes la importancia de vivir y comprender a fondo las problemáticas localizadas, las particularidades, el territorio, la temporalidad, el contexto, antes de proponer soluciones tecnológicas desde la abstracción de una pantalla o la distancia de las ciudades. Cada comunidad o grupo humano tiene sus lógicas de trabajo, de comunicación, sus ritmos, sus prioridades, sus formas, y es de esto que debemos partir para el desarrollo técnico. Lo contrario es a menudo violento o inútil.

Hiure (Coolab) hablando sobre el evento en el anfiteatro

En la comunidad de la web descentralizada (DWeb) aprovechamos Internet, que nos une, y trabajamos por la construcción de redes que faciliten y extiendan el acceso al conocimiento, pero sabemos que una red es mucho más que un conjunto de aparatos, cables y señales eléctricas. Una red es sobre todo la gente que construye, que enseña y aprende, que dialoga y sostiene. Larga vida a Coolab y al DWeb Camp y ojalá que en cada encuentro el movimiento se fortalezca cada vez más y halle nuevas razones e impulsos para existir y resistir.

Antonia Bustamante nació en Bogotá, Colombia. Se interesa por las relaciones entre el código, las tecnologías, las artes y los medios, especialmente en el ámbito digital. Trabaja como programadora e investigadora en el laboratorio EnFlujo (https://enflujo.com/) de la Universidad de Los Andes y como ingeniera de sonido en vivo con distintos grupos musicales. En su tercera vida cursa una maestría en Filosofía y cuida gatos.

Antonia Bustamante was born in Bogotá, Colombia. She is interested in the intersection between code, technologies, arts and media, especially in the digital realm. She works as a programmer and researcher in the EnFlujo laboratory (https://enflujo.com/) at Los Andes University and as a live sound engineer with different musical groups. In her third life she is pursuing a master’s degree in Philosophy and takes care of cats.

Democracy’s Library Leads a Workshop at International GovTech Conference

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Internet Archive Canada’s Executive Director, Andrea Mills, and Jamie Joyce from Internet Archive discuss unlocking gov docs using AI at FWD50 2023

FWD50 is an international govtech conference which, since 2017, has been bringing together global leaders working to innovate government from the inside and out. This year’s gathering in Ottawa featured Jennifer Pahlka (founder of Code for America), the Honourable Anita Anand (President of the Treasury Board for the Government of Canada), his Excellency Saeed Al Mulla (from the Department of Government Enablement in Abu Dhabi), and dozens more – including the Andrea Mills and Jamie Joyce from Internet Archive Canada and Internet Archive.

In their 90 minute workshop, Andrea and Jamie demonstrated the power of using AI not only to make each government document more accessible by improving metadata and the output of digitization efforts, but they also walked government officials through the possibilities of using AI to perform higher order government functions, like modeling deliberation, structuring policy, and creating more robust representations of constituent’s sentiments on policy issues.

“My humility and imagination about what AI can do tripled watching your presentation.”

– Workshop Attendee

Because the conference was occurring at the same time as OpenAI’s DevDay, the workshop also included an overview of OpenAI’s new offerings, including the new possibilities with GPT4 Turbo. By showing off these new capabilities, both those recently announced by OpenAI and capabilities currently deployed at the Internet Archive and Internet Archive Canada, Andrea and Jamie invited participants to think big about how AI can transform their work in government.

By the end of the workshop, attendees wrote out descriptions of their daily professional work, detailed how they currently use AI, identified their pain points, and dreamt up new services they want to exist to make their work more efficient and impactful.

Andrea and Jamie brought these learnings back from the conference, hoping to inform potential services that Democracy’s Library, and its partners, may be able to provide to help bring democracy more so into the digital age.

We thank FWD50 for the invitation to present and participate in this fabulous event! It’s truly an honor to be among so many passionate and incredible innovators and public servants.

Using the Wayback Machine to Understand the Cultural Roots of New Technologies

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As an academic librarian helping connect students and faculty with the research materials they need, Sanjeet Mann has turned to the Internet Archive many times.

“I really value having the Wayback Machine as an additional tool in my librarian’s toolbox,” Mann said. “Information preservation is an essential, but often overlooked, part of the infrastructure for teaching and learning.”

Mann, currently working as the Systems & Discovery Librarian at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB), said he first learned about the value of the Internet Archive in 2006 during his library science master’s program.

Over his career, Mann has worked at various libraries, tapping into the Archive on the job.

Assisting budding writers, composers and artists as Arts Librarian at University of Redlands, Mann found that the vast amount of free information online, including biographies, can shape students’ projects.

“We can draw on the Archive whenever we need inspiration for creative work, or when we need to understand how current scholarship and the issues that we’re facing now aren’t completely new—they’re based on this history of work by scholars, by politicians, by citizens active in the public interest,” he said. “These issues tend to recur over time. As a society, we need to know where we have been in order to meet the challenges of the future.”

At CSUSB, Mann also helps computer science and business students use the Archive’s collections to better understand the cultural roots of new technologies—the historical context for their innovations.

“It is the only entity I’m aware of that preserves the Internet’s scholarly and historical record at this scale,” Mann said.

“I really value having the Wayback Machine as an additional tool in my librarian’s toolbox.”

Sanjeet Mann, librarian

On a practical note, Mann leveraged information through the Wayback Machine when he was researching how to set up a campus laptop loaner program for University of Redlands. This can be an essential service that libraries provide students who have trouble with their computers.

Mann wanted to understand policies at other universities, such as how they handled the return of damaged laptops. Looking at archived versions of university library websites through the Wayback Machine, Mann was able to learn about other approaches and find contacts to follow up for additional details.

The Internet Archive is a source to verify information that is no longer listed on websites, he said.

“Companies themselves don’t have any incentive to archive the history of their website. New products get launched. The platform gets migrated from one platform to another,” Mann said. “An organization like the Internet Archive, being a library, is uniquely positioned to meet the need in society of ensuring some kind of continuity of memory and having a public record. Especially with the government being very partisan these days, I think there’s value in the Internet Archive being an independent, not-for-profit that operates in the public interest.”

Mann added: “Without the Archive, we would lose decades of information about our society at a crucial turning point in its development, eroding trust in online systems and requiring educators, students and researchers to reconsider the way we do our work and share it with others.”

Internet Archive Submits Comments on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence

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On Monday the Internet Archive joined thousands of others in submitting comments to the US Copyright Office as part of its study on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence.

Our high level view is that copyright law has been adapting to disruptive technologies since its earliest days and our existing copyright law is adequate to meet the disruptions of today. In particular, copyright’s flexible fair use provision deals well with the fact-specific nature of new technologies, and has already addressed earlier innovations in machine learning and text-and-data mining. So while Generative AI presents a host of policy challenges that may prompt different kinds of legislative reform, we do not see that new copyright laws are needed to respond to Generative AI today.

Our comments are guided by three core principles.


First, regulation of Artificial Intelligence should be considered holistically–not solely through the isolated lens of copyright law. As explained in the Library Copyright Alliance Principles for Artificial Intelligence and Copyright, “AI has the potential to disrupt many professions, not just individual creators. The response to this disruption (e.g., support for worker retraining through institutions such as community colleges and public libraries) should be developed on an economy-wide basis, and copyright law should not be treated as a means for addressing these broader societal challenges.” Going down a typical copyright path of creating new rights and licensing markets could, for AI, serve to worsen social problems like inequality, surveillance and monopolistic behavior of Big Tech and Big Media.

Second, any new copyright regulation of AI should not negatively impact the public’s right and ability to access information, knowledge, and culture. A primary purpose of copyright is to expand access to knowledge. See Authors Guild v. Google, 804 F.3d 202, 212 (2d Cir. 2015) (“Thus, while authors are undoubtedly important intended beneficiaries of copyright, the ultimate, primary intended beneficiary is the public, whose access to knowledge copyright seeks to advance  . . . .”). Proposals to amend the Copyright Act to address AI should be evaluated by the impact such new regulations would have on the public’s access to information, knowledge, and culture. In cases where proposals would have the effect of reducing public access, they should be rejected or balanced out with appropriate exceptions and limitations.

Third, universities, libraries, and other publicly-oriented institutions must be able to continue to ensure the public’s access to high quality, verifiable sources of news, scientific research and other information essential to their participation in our democratic society. Strong libraries and educational institutions can help mitigate some of the challenges to our information ecosystem, including those posed by AI. Libraries should be empowered to provide access to educational resources of all sorts– including the powerful Generative AI tools now being developed.

Read our full comments here.

In Memoriam of Python 2

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Generated by Bing Image Creator

Today, on the Day of the Dead 2023, we at the Internet Archive honor the death of Python 2. Having mostly emerged from one of the greatest software upgrade SNAFU’s in history—the migration from Python 2 to Python 3—we now shed a tear for that old version that served us so well.

When Python 3 was launched in 2008, it contained a number of significant improvements which nevertheless broke compatibility with the previous version of Python at the syntax, string-handling, and library level. As terrible as this sounds, breaking changes are fairly normal for a major software upgrade.

Rather, the chaos that followed was rooted in the fact that unlike most software transitions of this sort, it could not be done incrementally. Instead of being offered a way to gradually upgrade, remaining compatible with both versions and spreading the incremental costs over time, developers were given a risky all-or-nothing choice. The result has been a reluctant, glacial, expensive migration that continues to plague the world.

At the Internet Archive, we did not begin our migration in earnest until 2021, starting with Open Library and then this year focusing on Archive.org and its underlying services. However, we are now happy to declare migration of our core storage service, S3, which underlies all of the millions of items stored in the Archive, complete. We are grateful for the intensive efforts over many months by Chris Clauss, Scott Barnes, Tracey Jaquith, and Sam Stoller, and everyone who supported them!

There are just a few more projects to go, but we are nearly there. And come our next OS upgrade, Python 2 will be but the whisper of a memory, preserved in the Archive and honored on a day like today. Rest in peace, Python 2. And please stay dead.

Moving Getty.edu “404-ward” With Help From The Internet Archive API

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This is a guest post from Teresa Soleau (Digital Preservation Manager), Anders Pollack (Software Engineer), and Neal Johnson (Senior IT Project Manager) from the J. Paul Getty Trust.

Project Background

Getty pursues its mission in Los Angeles and around the world through the work of its constituent programs—Getty Conservation Institute, Getty Foundation, J. Paul Getty Museum, and Getty Research Institute—serving the general interested public and a wide range of professional communities to promote a vital civil society through an understanding of the visual arts. 

In 2019, Getty began a website redesign project, changing the technology stack and updating the way we interact with our communities online. The legacy website contained more than 19,000 web pages and we knew many were no longer useful or relevant and should be retired, possibly after being archived. This led us to leverage the content we’d captured using the Internet Archive’s Archive-It service.

We’d been crawling our site since 2017, but had treated the results more as a record of institutional change over time than as an archival resource to be consulted after deletion of a page. We needed to direct traffic to our Wayback Machine captures thus ensuring deleted pages remain accessible when a user requests a deprecated URL. We decided to dynamically display a link to the archived page from our site’s 404 error “Page not found” page.

Getty.edy 404 page
Getty.edu 404 error “Page not found” message including the dynamically generated instructions and Internet Archive page link.

The project to audit all existing pages required us to educate content owners across the institution about web archiving practices and purpose. We developed processes for completing human reviews of large amounts of captured content. This work is described in more detail in a 2021 Digital Preservation Coalition blog post that mentions the Web Archives Collecting Policy we developed.

In this blog post we’ll discuss the work required to use the Internet Archive’s data API to add the necessary link on our 404 pages pointing to the most recent Wayback Machine capture of a deleted page.

Technical Underpinnings

getty workflow

Implementation of our Wayback Machine integration was very straightforward from a technical point of view. The first example provided in the Wayback Machine APIs documentation page provided the technical guidance needed for our use case to display a link to the most recent capture of any page deleted from our website. With no requirements for authentication or management of keys or platform-specific software development kit (SDK) dependencies, our development process was simplified. We chose to incorporate the Wayback API using Nuxt.js, the web framework used to build the new Getty.edu site.

Since the Wayback Machine API is highly performant for simple queries, with a typical response delay in milliseconds, we are able to query the API before rendering the page using a Nuxt route middleware module. API error handling and a request timeout were added to ensure that edge cases such as API failures or network timeouts do not block rendering of the 404 response page.

The only Internet Archive API feature missing for our initial list of requirements was access to snapshot page thumbnails in the JSON data payload received from the API. Access to these images would allow us to enhance our 404 page with a visual cue of archived page content.

Results and Next Steps

Our ability to include a link to an archived version of a deleted web page on our 404 response page helped ease the tough decisions content stakeholders were obliged to make about what content to archive and then delete from the website. We could guarantee availability of content in perpetuity without incurring the long term cost of maintaining the information ourselves.

The API brings back the most recent Wayback Machine capture by default which is sometimes not created by us and hasn’t necessarily passed through our archive quality assurance process. We intend to develop our application further so that we privilege the display of Getty’s own page captures. This will ensure we’re delivering the highest quality capture to users.

Google Analytics has been configured to report on traffic to our 404 pages and will track clicks on links pointing to Internet Archive pages, providing useful feedback on what portion of archived page traffic is referred from our 404 error page.

To work around the challenge of providing navigational affordances to legacy content and ensure web page titles of old content remains accessible to search engines, we intend to provide an up-to-date index of all archived getty.edu pages.

As we continue to retire obsolete website pages and complete this monumental content archiving and retirement effort, we’re grateful for the Internet Archive API which supports our goal of making archived content accessible in perpetuity.

The Library of Congress plays a critical role in preservation and providing public access to cultural heritage materials

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This post is co-authored by Lila Bailey (Internet Archive) and Brandon Butler (Software Preservation Network)

Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. by Ron Cogswell. CC-BY 2.0.

The Internet Archive and the Software Preservation Network (SPN) support proposed revisions to the US Copyright Office electronic deposit rules as an important bulwark against vanishing culture.


The Library of Congress (the “Library”) is the world’s most comprehensive record of human creativity and knowledge. Deposits of published works made by creators when they register for copyright protection make up the core of the Library’s national collection, ensuring the long term preservation and public access of our collective cultural heritage. For decades, the number of creative works published in electronic formats has grown exponentially, but the Copyright Office and the Library did not have the policy or technical infrastructure to collect and preserve materials in these formats. Presently, the US Copyright Office is modernizing its systems, rules, and processes to ensure it can fulfill its important role in the copyright system, including providing copies of deposited works for inclusion in the Library’s collections. In the latest rulemaking on electronic deposits, the copyright industry lobby raised concerns about the Office’s proposal to expand the Library’s access to electronically-deposited works; as we explain below, those concerns are unfounded.


Under 37 Code of Federal Regulations § 202.18, the Library may provide limited on-site access to groups of newspapers electronically submitted for registration, as well as electronic serials and books submitted for mandatory deposit. The Copyright Office has proposed expanding the categories of electronic deposits covered by the regulation with the same limitations on access as are currently in place. Specifically, the works may only be accessed under the supervision of Library staff through computer terminals in the Library’s reading rooms. These terminals are not connected to the Internet and the input/output connections (USB, etc.) are disabled. Libraries support expanding on-site access rules to new categories of deposits to ensure that over time, the public can continue to access works in the Library’s collection.

During a public comment period for this proposed rule, groups representing rightsholders surfaced concerns about infringement, and urged the Office to heighten security and protection of electronic deposit copies before instituting its proposed rule. As SPN observes in its reply comments, there is no serious basis for these concerns, as the security measures in place already render electronic materials less accessible and less susceptible to misuse than traditional print formats.


Rightsholder groups also suggest that licenses are necessary when the Copyright Office transfers deposits to the Library, and when the Library provides digital access to works. The Internet Archive notes that a licensing regime is not necessary to permit access to the Library’s collections, explaining that “the Copyright Act has always allowed libraries to preserve and provide access to works in their collection without permission or authorization from rightsholders.” Indeed, “Congress has never required the Library of Congress, or any other library, to pay licensing fees to preserve or lend items in their collections.”


Not only are these security concerns and licensing proposals meritless, they are a distraction from the Library of Congress’ critical role as collector and preserver of our cultural heritage to benefit the public interest. The Software Preservation Network explains that while books, music, software, and other works are increasingly produced digitally and only available through licenses, “the Library of Congress is the only library in the United States with a statutory right to acquire and own copies that may otherwise be available only subject to a license.” If the Library were to abandon its role as “a collector and preserver consigning itself instead to the role of licensee, it could lead to a digital dark age in our national Library.” If the Library were required to license works, SPN cautions, the record of cultural history in the Library’s collection could be subjected to the whims of the marketplace, which has no incentive to preserve cultural works.


For all the reasons above, libraries strongly support adoption of the proposed rule.


Academic Librarian: End to Controlled Digital Lending Would be ‘Detrimental’ to Community 

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Libraries around the world were forced to shut their doors in the spring of 2020 during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Temple University Libraries was no exception. While the Philadelphia institution’s physical buildings were closed, librarians got creative about how to remain open to students, faculty and staff.

Olivia Given Castello, social science librarian, Temple University

It was all about getting users connected with digital material. Library staff worked together to develop a simple new service—they added a “Get Help Finding a Digital Copy” button to their library catalog. When searching for resources in the library catalog, users can click on the button to request assistance finding a physical item in digital form, which creates a help ticket for library staff to field.

Within the first week of the button launch in April 2020, there were about 350 requests. Since then, the requests have surpassed 9,000.

“Our popular service helps users get access to resources they need quickly without economic hardship, and without having to travel to campus,” said Olivia Given Castello, a social science librarian and unit head in Temple Libraries’ Learning & Research Services department, who helped create the new service.

Temple relies on a variety of sources for its digital requests—including the Internet Archive. “It’s a valuable resource through which we help Temple library users find digital copies of inaccessible or inconveniently accessible items in our physical collection,” Given Castello said of the Internet Archive’s ebooks available through controlled digital lending (CDL).

Charles Library at Temple University

For a large research university, Temple’s library collections’ budget is modest, and it has been challenging to keep up with the rapidly rising costs of journals and monographs given the static library budget in recent years. Additionally, there are ebooks that the libraries are unable to provide. Commercial publishers want to maximize profits gained from ebook sales to individual students, so unlike with print books, there are many ebook titles they refuse to sell to libraries, or refuse to sell with adequate user licensing. Based on past requests, we estimate that just under 20% of the digital items that Temple finds through its new service is in the Internet Archive collection, said Given Castello.

“Our library serves a diverse user community that is socio-economically disadvantaged relative to those at many other R1 U.S. research universities,” she said. The R1 designation indicates a university that grants doctoral degrees and has very high research activity; the list of 146 institutions so designated include the wealthiest private universities in the U.S. “Our users’ ability to access ebooks through the Internet Archive’s controlled digital lending eases financial strain on them.”

“The actions of commercial publishers have put the academic publishing model at risk, pushing the boundaries in ways that prevent libraries from serving the role in society that they need to” Given Castello said. “We’re trying to cope with that. Services like the one we set up, and controlled digital lending for borrowing ebooks from Internet Archive are important in this challenging landscape”

“We can’t let commercial publishers’ short-term shareholder profits take such precedence that they get in the way of equitable access to information.”

Olivia Given Castello, academic librarian

Given Castello wrote about the Temple experience in Supporting Online Learning and Research: Assessing our Virtual Reference Activities and Get help finding a digital copy: A pandemic response becomes the new normal.

“For any university that has a student body with significant economic challenges, organizations like the Internet Archive are just so important in helping make knowledge and information accessible to everyone, regardless of their economic privilege,” Given Castello said. “Libraries exist, in part, so that getting access to the information you need is not dependent on your personal wealth. Inequity of information access is bad for individuals and for society as a whole.”

If legal action were to diminish or shut down CDL, Given Castello said it would be “detrimental” to the university’s service.

She added: “We can’t let commercial publishers’ short-term shareholder profits take such precedence that they get in the way of equitable access to information. Eventually, that will have a long-term negative impact on knowledge creation, which hurts our society, companies, and the economy as well. Sometimes you have to think of the greater good.”

Regenerating Community in the Rainforest at DWeb+Coolab Camp Brazil

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It’s 10 am and I’ve already been traveling for 20 hours — two planes and a long layover from California on my way to Ubatuba, a town 4-hours northeast of Sao Paulo, Brazil. I feel nervous. I’ve never been to Brazil before but the bus ride is serene. The city buildings give way to lush rainforest along the mountainside. It’s almost silent on the bus, a calm quiet. I take a cue from the locals, close my eyes and try to get some rest. I am on my way to DWeb+Coolab Camp Brazil.

View of buildings at Neos Institute where campers found cover from the elements. Photo by: Bruno Caldas Vianna licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Deed

My phone buzzes. It’s Victor (Coolab) and Dana (Colnodo). They pick me up from the station and we’re off to Neos Institute, where we’ll spend the next five days together. Coolab Camp is a continuing experiment in the DWeb movement — weaving together technologists, dreamers, builders, and organizers in a beautiful outdoor setting, providing food and shelter for the week, then letting the sharing, imagination, and community building fly.

Gathering on the first day to talk about the themes of agriculture and ecology.

I arrive early to help set up parts of the camp, which is being hosted by the Neos Institute for Sociobiodiversity. They are a collective that has spent the last six years rebuilding this once dilapidated cultural center. One of Neos’ goals is to protect and conserve this area, the Brazilian Atlantic forest. Only about 10% of this forest remains in the wake of development. 

This spirit of conservation overlays with the themes of Camp: agriculture, sustainability, and ecology. Coolab is bringing together farmers and organizers from Latin America with DWeb builders and technologists to discover how we can take care of both our digital and physical landscapes. 

My roommate, Bruna, from the Transfeminist Network of Digital Care, shares their work on Pratododia. They use the metaphor of food to explain how we can practice healthier technology habits. For instance, just as we wash our hands before meals, it’s important to check our security and privacy settings online before tasting everything the internet offers us.

Papaya, mango, and watermelon served during our vegetarian meals.

Coolab Camp is more than a conference, it is an experiment in building a pop-up community. We start each day with a general meeting at the Casarão (Big House), where we forge acordos (agreements) about how to take care of the space and each other. 

Alexandre from Coletivo Neos goes over the history of the Neos Institute.

Coolab Camp morning meetings are at once relaxed and energizing. 

These acordos range from simple things: don’t feed the cats and take off your shoes — to strong expressions of our values: no oppression or discrimination of any kind based on class, race, gender, or sexual orientation. At the beginning of every meeting we reiterate these agreements and ask ourselves: do we still agree, does anything need to be changed, does anything need to be added?

This daily gathering is only possible because the event is small, about 80 people over the five days of Camp. That intimacy means we recognize familiar faces and at least exchange a friendly greeting (Bom dia!). There are no janitors to clean up during the event. We wash our own dishes and clean our own bathrooms.

A community member helps setup the mesh network.

Folks also volunteer to be the “olhos (eyes) ” and “ouvidos (ears)” of the community. The Olhos serve to watch out for any misbehavior. The Ouvidos are there to listen if someone has issues they are uncomfortable bringing up to the group. All of this adds to the building of our community.

Marcela and Tomate crafting posters and zines.

How do we communicate at Camp? First, we test some technological solutions like a Mumble server for multiple audio channels, then having AI do live translation. But in the end, the best solution is human: to have another person by our side. 

A lot of the Brazilian campers speak both Portuguese and English, so volunteers translate whispering next to us English-only speakers. It is incredibly humbling to have community members put so much energy into making sure we are included in the conversations and know what is going on. 

Creating our session schedule through unconference.

Next comes the fun part, the sessions and workshops! Sessions are organized through an unconference where everyone proposes sessions, determines their interests, and those garnering the most interest place themselves on the schedule. Workshops range from:

An analog map of the camp site and where routers for the mesh network will go.

Campers gather around the firepit to share experiences working in cooperatives.

Luandro Viera from Digital Democracy shares the Earth Defender’s Toolkit.

One of my favorite sessions is with Ana, a Brazilian farmer and social researcher guiding us through a game called Sanctuaries of Attention. It happens on the last day. It is impromptu and they just ask around for people to join after breakfast.

Ana is able to lead the session in Portuguese, Spanish, and English. We spend two hours sharing stories of how our attention changes in different situations and which situations feel safe for us — ”sanctuaries” that we can rest in. 

The unconference style suits DWeb+Coolab Camp, because it allows the time and space for sessions like these to happen organically, without constraints. 

Ana guides participants through the Sanctuaries of Attention.

Nico teaches programming for beginners using Scratch.

Setting up network equipment for the mesh network on site.

Some sessions are discussions around topics like:

  • Experiences as a cooperative
  • How to organize groups using sociocracy
  • Sharing challenges and workarounds managing a community network
  • Methods for social exchange of common resources

It doesn’t hurt that we can hold some of these discussions at the beach. There are also plenty of casual conversations over meals, on a couch, or lounging in a hammock.

Discussion on the beach about community networks.

One of the things I’ll keep with me from those conversations is a new way of understanding the saying, “The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed yet.” 

Those of us from luckier circumstances fret about the end of the world. Those from different circumstances have already seen it happen. Their economic systems have collapsed or their environment is suffering through the worst of the climate catastrophe. The end of the world is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed yet.

But an end is just a new beginning. Here in Brazil, we meet in the forest with people who are already rebuilding, regenerating from the ruins. The contributions we make will remain. Regeneration is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed yet.

Creating improvised music with Música de Círculo around the campfire.

Peixe (Fish) and Ondas (Waves), the spaces where sessions were held.

Farmers, organizers, designers and technologists at DWeb+Coolab Camp Brazil 2023.

We could have been anywhere, but we got the opportunity to be within the songs of the birds, the whispers of the trees, and the laughter of the sea. Within smiles and greetings, warm embraces and supportive shoulders. To all the people who gathered us together: Tania, Hiure, Marcela, Luandro, Victor, Dana, Bruno, Marcus, Colectivo Neos and anyone else I may have forgotten, thank you for showing us how to regenerate culture, environment and technology through community. Obrigado!

All photos by Melissa Rahal licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Deed unless otherwise stated.

Grad Student Finds Nostalgic ‘Treasure Trove of Goodies’ Through the Internet Archive

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As Elena Rowan researches the ways that activist archivers gather and make sense of data, she often relies on the Internet Archive. She is a graduate student in sociology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, with an interest in the debate around copyright and e-books in public libraries. 

Elena Rowan

“I look at why archives and libraries are important to society and culture as a whole,” said Rowan, who uses materials preserved in the Wayback Machine and the lnternet Archive. “Without the Internet Archive, so much of the knowledge and information on the Internet would be lost, and most of my research would be impossible.”

Rowan is in her second year of her master’s program and works as a research assistant at the Data Justice Hub. It is a collaborative research project that pursues data-related skills development for social activists, critical researchers and the general public, and aims to understand how data activists gather and make sense of data.

The Internet Archive has been valuable, she said, in providing information for the project and its podcast, Data Decoded.  

For a recent class on sociology theory, Rowan said she’s found it useful to search for work by early researchers such as W.E.B. Du Bois in the Internet Archive’s collection. Her university library has a wealth of materials, but she says there are times when she can only find an older book through the Archive and, being digital, it’s easier to locate.

With an event sponsored by the Milieux Institute, which offers programs at the intersection of fine arts, digital culture, and information technology, Rowan leveraged the Internet Archive in another way. She created a one-hour Curating Nostalgia workshop where participants could explore resources in the digital collection to create their own personal nostalgia archive.

Listen to the Data Decoded podcast

Logging into the Internet Archive, Rowan taught people how to search for historical documents and pop culture items. For example, she found a beloved video game that came in a cereal box from her childhood, as well as an audio walking tour of her neighborhood from a decade earlier before gentrification changed the landscape. Other workshop participants found books they read as kids, Club Penguin memorabilia and a Nancy Drew game. 

“For scholarly work and nostalgia researchers, it’s a treasure trove of goodies,” Rowan says of the Internet Archive.

In her personal life, Rowan said she’s enjoyed perusing old magazines and obscure cookbooks. She’s found recipes for ambitious cakes, sewing patterns and vintage designs that give her ideas for how to pull together her eclectic mix of old furniture. 

“The colors, writing and patterns of the past offer infinite inspiration for creative hobbies and help cultivate domestic bliss,” she said. “I am grateful to everyone at the Internet Archive for creating, maintaining and continuing to expand and fight for this truly amazing public resource!”