Looking forward to talking at re:publica in Berlin next week. Come and join me discussing pirate libraries Wednesday from 3pm!
RuNet, the Russian segment of the internet is now the home of the most comprehensive scientific pirate libraries on the net. These sites offer free access to millions of books and tens of millions of journal articles. What factors led to the development of these sites? What are the social, cultural and legal conditions that enable them to operate under hostile legal and political conditions? We dig deep into the history to trace how Soviet censorship, samizdat and book black markets shaped the latest generation of Russian pirate librarians, and analyze their achievements. What is in these archives? Who uses them? How does knowledge flow around the globe due to these peer produced, distributed archives? And how do these low cost operations force to change the publishing industry and the multi-million dollar libraries?
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