Hi! This is Mike Honig. You’re listening to Thinkwing Radio. We had some technical difficulties this week, so we’re running a show out of the Thinkwing Archive. This is our show from the Labor Day 2020 program. We picked it because it reminded us just how much can change in less than a year. Your next stop: The Twilght Zone!
POSSIBLE TOPICS: A primer from last Labor Day: from Mon, 9-2-2019; Ballot applications are latest flashpoint in expanded vote-by-mail process; Democrats Hold Secret Edge If Election Is Too Close to Call; Nearly all Black Lives Matter protests are peaceful despite Trump narrative, report finds; New York police hunt car that drove into BLM protesters in Times Square; Lake Travis [Austin, TX]: Several boats sink at pro-Trump parade in Texas after A Boat On The Willamette River Sank After Being Swamped By Waves During A Trump Boat Parade; Quarantine Could Change How Americans Think of Incarceration; Uploading Books That Are Secretly in the Public Domain; more
SHOW AUDIO: Link is usually posted within about 72 hours of show broadcast.
This program was recorded on SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6 at about 6:30 AM. Due to Covid-19, shows are being prerecorded beginning March 13th and until further notice. We miss our live call-in participants, and look forward to a time we can once again go live.
Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio), a listener call-in show airing live every Monday night from 3-4 PM (CT) on KPFT-FM 90.1 (Houston). My co-host and Editor is Andrew Ferguson.
Listen live on the radio, or on the internet from anywhere in the world! When the show is live, we take calls at 713-526-5738. (Long distance charges may apply.)
Please take a moment to visit Pledge.KPFT.org and choose THINKWING RADIO from the drop-down list when you donate.
For the purposes of this show, I operate on two mottoes:
- An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.
- You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]: “At one point he [Trump] started to attack the press and I said, ‘You know, that is getting tired. Why are you doing this? You’re doing it over and over and it’s boring and it’s – it’s time to end that. You know, you’ve won the nomination and, uh, why do you keep hammering at this? And he [Trump] said, ‘You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.’ He said that. So, put that in your head for a minute.” ~ Lesley Stahl (“Deadline Club”, May 21, 2018). Excerpt from “Kasie DC”, May 27, 2018
Pledge to support KPFT by Text: Listeners can now text “GIVE” to 713-526-5738 and they’ll receive a text message back with a link to KPFT’s donation page, with which they can make their pledge on-line at their convenience.
Make sure you are registered to vote!
- Next election is he General on November 3rd. Make sure you are registered!
- VOTING FAQ – In Texas, Early Voting Starts on October 13-thru-30!
- Make sure you are registered to vote!
- For a personalized, nonpartisan voter guide visit VOTE.ORG
- If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
- HarrisVotes.com (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
- VOTETEXAS.GOV – Texas Voter Information
- HARRISVOTES.COM – Countywide Voting Center
- HARRIS CTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
- Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
- A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
- Current utility bill
- Bank statement
- Current utility bill
- Bank statement
- Government check
- Paycheck
- A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
- HARRIS CTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
- You may vote early by-mail if
- You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
- Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
- Sick or disabled;
- 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
- Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
- Make sure you are registered:
- Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
- CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
- Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
- A primer from last Labor Day: #Thinkwing Radio: Mon, 9-2-2019, 9PM @KPFTHouston FM 90.1. TOPIC(s): Why Do We Celebrate Labor Day? What is the future of organized labor? and more. GUEST: Callers [AUDIO]
- Eric Cantor (@EricCantor) Today [Labor Day], we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success. 11:06 AM · Sep 3, 2012·Twitter for BlackBerry®
- “Without the labor advances won by #Unions, #Capitalism itself might not exist today.” ~ Michael R. Honig, Sept. 2, 2019
- Labor Day – More than just shopping: There’s Work To Be Done This Labor Day, By Whizy Kim | REFINERY29.COM | Last Updated September 4, 2020, 12:40 PM
- It’s almost Labor Day, which usually means it’s time to snag some retail deals, attend a backyard barbecue (socializing, is that still a concept?), lament the dregs of summer, and wear white just to crack one corny joke.
- But imagine, for a moment, a time when the holiday wasn’t about any of those things. The truth is that it’s been almost entirely severed from its origins, even though the causes working people were fighting for over a century ago still haven’t come to fruition — not for everyone, anyway.
- Labor Day is, in theory, supposed to celebrate all workers. But in 2015, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a quarter of people working in the private sector didn’t get a paid day off on Labor Day. Many businesses typically stay open, meaning a large proportion of service, retail, and hospitality industry workers expect to be on the job.
- But if Labor Day isn’t a paid holiday for every working person, why does it exist? It’s not a pretty history.
- Though workers in many states started throwing Labor Day parades throughout the 1880s, it might never have become a national holiday if not for a historic strike and boycott that started in May 1894, when employees of a railcar manufacturer called Pullman Palace Car Company suffered deep wage cuts. They were joined in a sympathy boycott by the American Railway Union, which had around 150,000 members. This huge coalition disrupted the nation; the USPS couldn’t deliver mail in certain parts of the country. Railway transportation was an essential service, and essential workers were demanding better treatment.
- In the midst of this unrest, President Grover Cleveland signed a law making Labor Day an official holiday, which some historians say was a move to placate sympathizers who disapproved of his reaction to the strike, and to calm the waters during a period of continued labor discontent.
- Then on July 4th, Cleveland sent 10,000 federal troops to Chicago to brutally end the strike. Thirteen workers were killed and 53 seriously injured there, with more than 30 killed throughout the nation that summer. The strike ended in failure for the Pullman workers, who won none of their demands.
- This year, Labor Day’s history might feel a little too real. The growing awareness of the country’s race and labor inequalities is reaching a fever pitch, evidenced by the hundreds of cross-industry strikes organized by essential workers over the last months, alongside a historic summer of racial justice protests that the police have attempted to suppress violently. …
- Ballot applications are latest flashpoint in expanded vote-by-mail process, By Kelly Mena | CNN | Updated 10:19 AM ET, Sat September 5, 2020
- Lawsuits have erupted in multiple states as Democrats and Republicans jockey for advantage, with challenges to forms sent out by officials as well as from third-party groups.
- The latest action is in Iowa and New Hampshire. …
- In late August, a state judge in Iowa’s second-largest county invalidated more than 50,000 pre-filled applications for absentee ballots after President Donald Trump’s campaign filed a challenge, citing a violation of the secretary of state’s orders. The ruling forced Linn County to send fresh applications to thousands of votersin Cedar Rapids and surrounding areas. …
- In New Hampshire, Attorney General Gordon MacDonald — a Republican — sent the state
stateRepublican Party a cease and desist letter because it sent faulty vote by mail ballot application mailers to over 200,000 voters — twice. - The two mailings lacked the required language that voters can request an absentee ballot for both the upcoming September primary and November general election and didn’t include language about the state’s witness requirement. …
- Tennessee in particular has moved to restrict absentee voting headed into the fall including not expanding the option to all eligible voters amid pandemic. The Volunteer state is one of six states that still requires an excuse in order to cast a ballot by mail this fall. …
- Despite the legal controversies in several states, absentee application mailers are legal and do count when filled out and returned to local election officials properly. The mailers have been a tool used in previous election cycles to turn out the vote but this year have increased as states shift to vote-by-mail as a pandemic friendly option.
- Democrats Hold Secret Edge If Election Is Too Close to Call – Majority of top swing state election posts held by Democrats; Record mail-in voting expected despite Trump attacks. By Mark Niquette and Kartikay Mehrotra | BLOOMBERG.COM | September 5, 2020, 6:00 AM CDT
- Twenty years ago, as Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush battled for weeks over which one of them had won the U.S. presidential election, Florida’s Republican secretary of state, Katherine Harris, helped hand the White House to Bush by declaring an end to recounts that showed him clinging to the slimmest of leads.
- If the outcome of this November’s election comes down to fights over counting mail-in ballots and claims of fraud by President Donald Trump, Democrat Joe Biden may have a quiet advantage: The top election officials in many of the key states that could decide the election are Democrats.
- In Michigan and Pennsylvania — two Democratic-leaning states Trump won in 2016 — the top elections officials belong to Biden’s party. That’s also true in Arizona, which Trump carried but Biden is now leading in the polls, and Minnesota, which the president has targeted.
- Trump, who trails Biden in national polls, has tried to undermine the public’s confidence in the election. He falsely claims that mail-in ballots are rife with fraud and that the election will be rigged against him. This has led Democrats to worry about a scenario where Trump is ahead in the election-night count from in-person voters and declares himself the winner before all outstanding mail-in ballots are tallied.
- Should that happen, it will be up to the secretaries of state to preside over the counting of mail-in votes and certify the final outcomes, a process that could take days or weeks. These relatively anonymous state officials could prove a bulwark for Biden as they cope with what is expected to be an unprecedented surge in mail-in ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic.
- They will also be on the front lines in countering any claims by Trump or his allies that the election is somehow rigged. …
- Election officials insist that they’re non-partisan and oversee voting according to the law. But J. Kenneth Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state, said it’s impossible to avoid politics when elections officials have to make tough decisions. …
- Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections tangled with Trump just this week. Brinson, who was appointed by a Democratic-controlled board, on Thursday warned voters that “it is illegal to vote twice in an election” after Trump encouraged people who mail in their ballots for the November election to also go to the polls on Election Day. …
- While state officials influence the election with the rules governing voting, they also can play a pivotal role in ballot-counting if the race is close with rulings to break tie votes or other actions such as Harris took in 2000, said Daniel Tokaji, a former Ohio State University election law professor and now dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School. There’s also inherent tension between discharging their official duties and the incentive to help their party, he said.
- [Daniel Tokaji, a former Ohio State University election law professor and now dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School, said] “There’s just no getting around that conflict of interest. Even well-intentioned officials trying to do the right thing, their actions can always be called into question.”
- But Charles Stewart III, a professor and elections scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said if the race does go into overtime, the courts likely would play the more decisive role. He cited changes made to ballot-counting processes after the Florida 2000 recount chaos that gave secretaries of state less discretion. …
- Election officials say that while television networks and news wires typically declare winners on Election Night, that’s based on an unofficial vote that doesn’t become official until days or weeks later — after outstanding ballots are counted and there’s a canvass to determine final tallies with any recounts. The inability to declare an unofficial winner on Election Night is not a sign of problems, they say.
- But the possibility of delayed unofficial election results this year is real, said Maria Benson, spokeswoman for the National Association of Secretaries of State, and “we ask all voters and the media to be patient.” …
- Washington’s Republican secretary of state, Kim Wyman, said her colleagues should be prepared to manage a legal crisis that could determine the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
- “This will have shades of 20 years ago during Bush v. Gore,” said Wyman, who is running for re-election in November. “I hope my colleagues and I will be able to present the facts to voters in our own states and the facts will prevail. That has been a challenge in 2020.”
- Nearly all Black Lives Matter protests are peaceful despite Trump narrative, report finds – In stark contrast to rightwing claims, 93% of demonstrations have involved no serious harm to people or property; By Lois Beckett @loisbeckett | THEGUARDIAN.COM | Sat 5 Sep 2020 06.00 EDT, Last modified on Sat 5 Sep 2020 08.21
- … But the US government has taken a “heavy-handed approach” to the demonstrations, with authorities using force “more often than not” when they are present, the report found.
- And there has been a troubling trend of violence and armed intimidation by individual actors, including dozens of car-ramming attacks targeting demonstrators across the country.
- The new data on protests and the US government’s response comes from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (Acled), an organization that has long tracked political violence and unrest in regions around the world, together with Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative. …
- The results of the study present a stark contrast to claims made by the Trump administration, and widely circulated by Fox News and other rightwing media outlets, that the US is being overrun by violent leftwing protesters and “domestic terrorists”.
- “There have been some violent demonstrations, and those tend to get a lot of media coverage,” Dr Roudabeh Kishi, Acled’s director of research & innovation, told the Guardian. “But if you were to look at all the demonstrations happening, it’s overwhelmingly peaceful.”
- While the overwhelming majority of all the different kinds of protests tracked over this time were peaceful, the report did find a troubling trend of violence from both government forces and non-state actors.
- Government authorities were more likely to intervene in Black Lives Matter protests than in other demonstrations, and also more likely to intervene with force, like using teargas, rubber bullets and pepper spray or beating demonstrators with batons, the researchers found.
- They documented 392 incidents this summer in which government authorities used force on Black Lives Matter demonstrators.
- Journalists covering Black Lives Matter protests were also met with violence from government forces in at least 100 separate incidents across dozens of states this summer. One journalist was blinded after being hit in the eye with a rubber bullet while covering protests over George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis.
- Violent intervention from government forces did not make protests more peaceful, the report concluded. In Portland specifically, the report found that intervention from federal authorities in the protest “only aggravated unrest”, with the number of “violent demonstrations” rising from 53% to nearly 62% of all events “after federal agents arrived on the scene”. …
- “Individual perpetrators – sometimes linked to hate groups like the KKK – have launched dozens of car-ramming attacks targeting demonstrations around the country,” the researchers wrote.
- New York police hunt car that drove into BLM protesters in Times Square – Video shows car moving through crowd with horn blaring, No one appeared to be seriously injured in incident; Guardian staff and agencies | THEGUARDIAN.COM | Fri 4 Sep 2020 08.56 EDT Last modified on Fri 4 Sep 2020 15.00 EDT
- The New York police department says it is trying to find a car that drove through a group of Black Lives Matter protesters blocking a street in Times Square on Thursday night.
- Video posted on social media showed the car jerking through the crowd with its horn blaring as demonstrators scream and scramble out of the way. …
- Gwynne Hogan, a WNYC reporter, tweeted that the crowd appeared “rattled” but that “most people were able to jump out of the way.”
- No one appeared to be seriously injured. The NYPD said on Twitter that the car was not a police vehicle.
- The protesters had gathered after seven police officers involved in the suffocation death of Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York, were suspended. Prude, 41, who was Black, died when he was taken off life support on 30 March, seven days after officers who encountered him running naked through the street put a hood over his head to stop him from spitting, then held him down for about two minutes until he stopped breathing.
- Prude’s death was described by a medical examiner as a ‘‘homicide caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint” …
- “Ignorance is a correctable condition. Stupid is forever” – Unknown à Lake Travis [Austin, TX]: Several boats sink at pro-Trump parade in Texas – Several boats have sunk on a lake in the US state of Texas during a parade to support President Donald Trump in November’s election, officials say. BBC.COM | 5-SEPT -2020 1 hour ago
- Authorities say the choppy water was likely caused by the large number of vessels moving closely together on Lake Travis, near the state capital, Austin.
- Images showed boats with Trump campaign flags manoeuvring at close quarters.
- Reports say people had to be rescued from the water, but no-one was injured.
- The event, called Lake Travis Trump Boat Parade, was organised on Facebook, and more than 2,600 people marked themselves as having attended it.
- A Boat On The Willamette River Sank After Being Swamped By Waves During A Trump Boat Parade – A viral video showed people screaming for help as their boat sank after being swamped by waves during a Trump boat parade in Oregon. No injuries were reported. Tasneem Nashrulla, BuzzFeed News Reporter | BuzzFeed | Last updated on August 19, 2020, at 9:44 a.m. ET, Posted on August 17, 2020, at 4:11 p.m. ET
- A viral video on Twitter — that has since been deleted — showed dozens of boats with pro-Trump signage and flags creating a wake as they sped down the river near downtown Portland.
- The video then cuts to one boat taking on water while its occupants cling on and scream for help. …
- “Witnesses reported that it was a result of two waves swamping a low-profile boat,” [Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Chris Liedle told BuzzFeed News.
- ADVERTORIAL: Most Americans say quarantine made them a better person, By Marie Haaland, SWNS | SNWS via NYPOST.COM | August 31, 2020 | 2:08pm
- The survey of 2,000 Americans (aged 21+) looked at the positives changes to come from this challenging time — and the ways in which respondents are re-prioritizing what they value. …
- Commissioned by Coravin [a wine supplies and accessories company] and conducted by OnePoll, the survey found quarantine has, understandably, changed Americans’ outlook on life.
- Some respondents gained the time and flexibility to delve into new hobbies and discover new passions and 35 percent said they want to continue those hobbies once quarantine is over.
- “What once brought people together spontaneously must now be more planned out and orchestrated. Shared passions, such as enjoying a bottle of wine, are perfect ways to come together and create shared experiences virtually,” said Greg Lambrecht, Coravin Founder. …
- Quarantine Could Change How Americans Think of Incarceration – Nationwide forced isolation, along with media coverage of the pandemic’s toll in U.S. jails and prisons, could shift public perceptions of carceral punishment. By Hannah Giorgis | THEATLANTIC.COM | April 28, 2020
- Earlier this month, Ellen DeGeneres attracted public ire for something she said during the first “at home” edition of her show. Sitting in one of her palatial houses, the 62-year-old comedian joked that self-isolation is “like being in jail … mostly because I’ve been wearing the same clothes for 10 days and everyone in here is gay.” The video was removed from her YouTube channel following swift backlash, but DeGeneres isn’t the only entertainer who has made glib remarks about quarantining during the coronavirus pandemic. Recently, the Game of Thrones actor Sophie Turner told Conan O’Brien that quarantine is “prison” for her husband, the singer Joe Jonas, because he’s “a real social butterfly.”
- In some other climate, these hyperbolic comparisons might simply register as thoughtless. Now, after months of reports chronicling the harrowing conditions in jails and prisons, they come off as particularly callous. …
- … incarcerated people are dying of the virus—sometimes while handcuffed—because jails and prisons are incompatible with the measures required to keep them safe. Social distancing is impossible. Even on a normal day, accessing medical care is a Sisyphean task. Crowded and unhygienic conditions are common. As a result, the infection rates in these institutions far outpace those of even the hardest-hit American cities.
- … although the oppressiveness of quarantine and the dangers of incarceration during a pandemic aren’t the same, they’re more related than many might think. The media have widely covered the devastating effects of COVID-19 in jails and prisons, as well as the risks that an outbreak among inmates poses to the surrounding communities. When taken alongside Americans’ experiences with nationwide forced isolation, these facts could change how the public thinks of carceral punishment. Because the coronavirus’s lethality is unprecedented, so, too, are the social-distancing and lockdown measures that are forcing many Americans to experience prolonged confinement for the first time. Following several years of slow, sometimes bipartisan, attempts to reform the criminal-justice system and its reliance on mass incarceration, these powerful new realities could challenge entrenched beliefs about the efficacy—and ethics—of sending people “away.” …
- Even some formerly incarcerated people are drawing parallels between prison and quarantine, albeit in nuanced ways, referencing feelings of anxiety, a lack of control, and scarcity. “At one level, I think [the comparison] is pointing to how painful, actually, the deprivation of liberty can be,” Bruce Western, a sociology professor at Columbia University, told me. “We can think about references to ‘country-club prisons’ and so on, as if the deprivation of liberty was not a ‘real’ punishment. And now we’re all sheltering inside and a lot of people are experiencing this as very, very difficult …
- June Tangney, a psychology professor at George Mason University, noted that the disappearance of normal social contact could be a chance for Americans to seriously consider the painful effects that more stringent measures have on incarcerated people: “Maybe that gets us to rethink about the sheer number of people that we’re incarcerating who have either a primary substance-use problem or a primary problem with mental illness,” she said. “And having experienced a little piece of [isolation] ourselves, maybe we’ll be more sympathetic.” …
- New York City’s Hart Island has long been a public cemetery for the poor or unclaimed. But until earlier this month, the people digging the mass graves for virus victims were bused in from the Rikers Island jail; national media covered their macabre assignment. This burial practice was halted after officials decided that bus rides to Hart, during which inmates sat next to one another, presented too great a viral-transmission risk. (Scientists are still trying to determine whether COVID-19 can be spread by a dead body.) …
- In growing numbers, people not affiliated with traditional advocacy circles are calling for decarceration, whether through reducing jail and prison populations or easing punitive measures to protect public safety. A couple of weeks ago, dozens of doctors and public-health professionals sent a letter to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention demanding decarceration and expanded access to health care for those who are released. Other doctors signed an open letter to death-penalty states asking them to relinquish the sedatives used during executions, because the supply needed to treat COVID-19 patients is rapidly dwindling. (The letter noted that medical professionals have long criticized states’ practice of stockpiling such drugs, which weren’t developed to help end lives.) …
- … [Craig Haney, a psychology professor at UC Santa Cruz, and the author of Criminality in Context: The Psychological Foundations of Criminal Justice Reform, said,] I’ve always felt that legislatures who bandy about [sentences of] 10 years or 15 years or 20, who’ve never spent a week in a penal institution, might have a very different perspective if indeed they experienced it directly.”
- Quarantine, especially for financially stable households, isn’t a direct counterpart to incarceration: On one side are people who find social distancing tedious or emotionally taxing, and on the other are those for whom the coronavirus is among the most deadly risks. …
- … there’s something cautiously optimistic about this moment, and what it means for how we all relate to one another. Or, as Haney said, “There’s some reason to be hopeful that if people experience at least a tiny bit of what it is like … to have your day-to-day actions and interactions significantly restricted, that they might get some glimpse of what it is like to be incarcerated, what it is like for people whom we subject to much, much greater deprivations of liberty. Just maybe.”
- Uploading Books That Are Secretly in the Public Domain – Millions of books are secretly in the public domain thanks to a copyright loophole, a new project seeks to put them on the Internet Archive. By Karl Bode | VICE.COM | September 10, 2019, 9:26am
- A coalition of archivists, activists, and libraries are working overtime to make it easier to identify the many books that are secretly in the public domain, digitize them, and make them freely available online to everyone. The people behind the effort are now hoping to upload these books to the Internet Archive, one of the largest digital archives on the internet.
- As it currently stands, all books published in the U.S. before 1924 are in the public domain, meaning they’re publicly owned and can be freely used and copied. Books published in 1964 and after are still in copyright, and by law will be for 95 years from their publication date.
- But a copyright loophole means that up to 75 percent of books published between 1923 to 1964 are secretly in the public domain, meaning they are free to read and copy. The problem is determining which books these are, due to archaic copyright registration systems and convoluted and shifting copyright law.
- As such, a coalition of libraries, volunteers, and archivists have been working overtime to identify which titles are in the public domain, digitize them, then upload them to the internet. At the heart of the effort has been the New York Public Library, which recently documented why the entire process is important, but a bit of a pain. …
- Historically, it’s been fairly easy to tell whether a book published between 1923 and 1964 had its copyright renewed, because the renewal records were already digitized. But proving that a book hadn’t had its copyright renewed has historically been more difficult, New York Public Library Senior Product Manager Sean Redmond said.
- “Part of the difficulty is that you’re proving a negative—that it’s copyright wasn’t renewed—so you’re looking for the lack of a record,” Redmond told Motherboard. “There was no way to make lists of public domain candidates.”
- So as part of a massive undertaking, the NYPL recently converted many of these records to XML format, making it significantly easier to automate the process of determining which books might be candidates for being added to the public domain, the first step in ultimately making sure they’re freely available online. …
- Leonard Richardson, a software developer and science fiction author whose Python matching scripts are helping expedite the process, tells Motherboard that the hard work is only just beginning.
- “It’s now easy to make a list of books whose registration wasn’t renewed, but that list just makes a big to-do list for someone else,” Richardson said. “The next bit is going to be slow. For any given book, we need to convince someone who has a scan of the book that they’re allowed to make it public.” …
- Richardson notes that much of that heavy lifting is being done by volunteers at organizations like Project Gutenberg, a nonprofit effort to digitize and archive cultural works. These volunteers are tasked with locating a copy of the book in question, scanning it, proofing it, then putting out HTML and plain-text editions.
- For the volunteers working on this project, the biggest development in recent weeks has been the announcement that Jason Scott of the Internet Archive will also be lending a hand in getting these public domain works online. Scott recently put out a call for volunteers on Twitter. Libraries around the country are scanning these books and uploading them to the archive. …
- “The public domain is incredibly important to the preservation of culture and to the creation of new culture,” [said Leonard Richardson].
- MIKE: WHY IS PRESERVING AND IDENTIFYING PUBLIC DOMAIN WORKS SO IMPORTANT?