dive into mark

Aaron Swartz: Mr. Swartz Goes to Washington.

Unlike most Bookmobiles (of which they saw many at a Bookmobile conference on their trip), this one didn’t contain any physical books. Instead, it connects to the Internet Archive’s servers in the Presidio to download them. Then the high-speed printer prints out the pages. The chopper cuts them in half so you can fold them together to make a normal-sized book, and the binding machine heats up the glue-smeared cover to hold it all together. The whole process takes about fifteen minutes. …

People have a hard time understanding the public domain, Brewster says. It’s an abstract concept; it’s hard to grasp. The bookmobile changes that. He picks up one of the books he’s made. This is the public domain! The public domain means giving books to children. You want to extend copyright? You want to steal books from children? No one wants to steal books from children.

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