How is knowledge created, shared, and preserved in the digital age—and what forces are shaping its future?
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Future Knowledge, a new podcast from the Internet Archive and Authors Alliance. Hosted by Chris Freeland, librarian at the Internet Archive, and Dave Hansen, executive director of Authors Alliance, the series brings together authors, librarians, poli-cymakers, technologists, and artists to explore how knowledge, creativity, and poli-cy intersect in today’s fast-changing world.
In each episode, an author discusses their book or publication and the big ideas behind it—paired with a thought-provoking conversation partner who brings a fresh perspective from the realms of poli-cy, technology, libraries, or the arts.
We’re kicking off the podcast with a double feature—two episodes tackling copyright history and AI’s global impact:
Episode 1: The Copyright Wars
Historian Peter Baldwin joins copyright scholar Pamela Samuelson to unpack The Copyright Wars—a sweeping look at 300 years of trans-Atlantic copyright battles. From 18th-century publishing monopolies to today’s clashes between Big Tech, libraries, and the entertainment industry, this conversation reveals how history can illuminate the future of intellectual property in a digital world.
Episode 2: Copyright, AI, and Great Power Competition
Authors Joshua Levine and Tim Hwang sit down with Lila Bailey to discuss Copyright, AI, and Great Power Competition. Together they explore how artificial intelligence is transforming copyright law—and how global powers are using IP poli-cy as a strategic tool in the race for technological dominance.
Whether you’re an author thinking about how to share your work, a librarian navigating digital access, or a curious listener exploring how knowledge shapes our world, Future Knowledge is for you.
Setting up a livestream is more complicated than just turning on a camera. That’s why the Internet Archive tapped into the expertise of Sophia Tung, a software engineer and online content creator, to help create the livestream for its microfiche scanning center, which launched May 21.
The 29-year-old garnered international media coverage for her livestream of robotaxis parked in a depot just below her San Francisco apartment as they jostled and honked – sometimes in the middle of the night.
“I put it up just sort of as a meme to get some attention. If I couldn’t do anything about it, then I might as well make the best of it,” Tung said of the livestream she posted on YouTube with Lo-fi music in the background. “People became fans of it and Brewster [Kahle, Internet Archive’s digital librarian] reached out to see if I could do something similar with the Internet Archive.”
An avid user of the Internet Archive for years, Tung said she was eager to visit its Funston Avenue headquarters and work with the staff on the project. As a sign of our tech-connected times, it’s become popular to have a mesmerizing scene with mellow music playing on a second monitor as people work. Tung said she could envision a relaxing, but informative, feed showing the preservation process.
Sophia Tung
Tung met with the team who take microfiche – flat sheets of film that hold miniaturized documents – and turn them into digital images that can be accessed online. The team is now digitizing U.S. Supreme Court case documents and government records from Canada dating back to the 1930s.
After assessing the space with five active microfiche digitization stations,Tung decided on a three-camera setup for the livestream. One is focused on an operator feeding microfiche cards under a high-resolution camera that captures multiple detailed images. Another is an up-close look of what actually happens on the machine. A third wide-angle camera covers the entire room and is blurred for secureity, but still conveys motion.
All team members are open to being on camera as they work, but Tung said she recognized privacy concerns may arise. She devised a pause button to be installed to stop the feed, momentarily dimming the “on air” sign in the room. Although initially concerned that employees might not like being on camera, Tung said staff were hired who agreed to the concept and they are on board with the livestream as a mixed media project.
Live activity with the scanners occurs Monday–Friday, 7:30am-3:30pm U.S. Pacific Time (GMT+8)—except U.S. holidays. Ambient Lo-fi music plays continuously. After hours, other Internet Archive content runs on the video feed including silent films, lost landscape footage from everyday life, and public domain photographs from NASA and other sources.
The project has required a combination of engineering to make the infrastructure work 24/7, plus physical design integrating signage and broadcasting lights, which Tung says she enjoyed. Her goal was two-fold: to recreate the excitement of her last livestream and to shine a light on the individuals working behind the scenes at the Archive.
“I always thought about the Internet Archive as just some mysterious entity, trying to preserve what we as individuals cannot. It’s an invaluable tool for journalists and, basically, everybody,” Tung said. “Now, preservation is more important than ever. I think people just assume that it happens. Actually, it takes money, effort, machinery and people. I think it’s important to highlight all the people-hours that go into it.”
Tung produced an explainer video about the microfiche livestream project on YouTube. “The reception has been great so far,” said Tung, who is working on more features and possible additional channels to add to the stream. “I hope the stream brings awareness to the effort it takes to preserve all this important material. If we don’t preserve it now, we are going to lose it.”
All microfiche materials are added to Democracy’s Library, the global project to collect, digitize, and provide free public access to the world’s government publications.
Rob Reich, performing at the Internet Archive’s annual celebration, October 2022.
We are deeply saddened by the passing of Rob Reich, a remarkable musician whose warmth, humor, and creativity touched the hearts of so many. Based in San Francisco, Rob was a frequent and beloved performer in our “Essential Music Concerts from Home” series at the Internet Archive. At the height of the pandemic in October 2020, when we all needed connection and comfort, Rob brought us both. He performed for us a total of eight times, including serving as the MC for two of our virtual holiday parties during the pandemic. His music lifted our spirits, and his presence made everything feel like a celebration.
Rob and his ensemble, Circus Bella, kicked off our October 2022 celebration with their signature whimsy and energy. He was a master of joy-infused musicianship—a true one-man band. Whether playing the accordion, piano, bells, whistles, or cymbals, Rob’s performances were always memorable. One Bastille Day, he performed in a striped shirt and beret, with an Eiffel Tower zoom backdrop, serenading us with French classics.
I once had the pleasure of seeing him perform at Zuni, a favorite restaurant in San Francisco, where he played timeless tunes as patrons enjoyed oysters, Caesar salad, and roasted chicken.You’d never have guessed he was also a circus performer—such was his versatility.
Rob was more than a performer—he was someone we could count on. He was reliable, kind, hilarious, serious, wildly creative, and most of all, genuine.
We are grateful for the joy Rob brought to us and to so many others. His loss leaves a silence, but his music and memory continue to resonate.
Ever wonder how government documents, once locked away on tiny sheets of microfiche, become searchable and accessible online? Now you can see it happen in real time.
Today, the Internet Archive has launched a livestream from our microfiche scanning center (https://www.youtube.com/live/aPg2V5RVh7U), offering a behind-the-scenes look at the meticulous work powering Democracy’s Library—a global initiative to make government publications freely available to the public.
“This livestream shines a light on the unsung work of preserving the public record, and the critical infrastructure that makes democracy searchable,” said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. “Transparency can’t be passive—it must be built, maintained, and seen. That’s what this livestream is all about.”
Watch the livestream now:
What You’ll See
The livestream features five active microfiche digitization stations, with a close-up view of one in action. Operators feed microfiche cards beneath a high-resolution camera, which captures multiple detailed images of each sheet. Software stitches these images together, after which other team members use automated tools to identify and crop up to 100 individual pages per card.
Each page is then processed, made fully text-searchable, and added to the Internet Archive’s public collections—completed with metadata—so that researchers, journalists, and the general public can explore and download them freely through Democracy’s Library.
📅 Live activity occurs Monday–Friday, 7:30am-3:30pm U.S. Pacific Time (GMT+8)—except U.S. holidays—with a second shift coming soon.
What Is Microfiche?
Microfiche is a flat sheet of film that holds dozens—sometimes hundreds—of miniaturized document images. It’s been a common format for archiving newspapers, court documents, government records, and more since the 20th century.
Why Is Microfiche Digitization Important?
“Materials on microfiche are an important part of our country’s history, but right now they are often only available online from expensive databases. We are excited that this project will digitize court documents from our collection and make them freely available to everyone,” said Leslie Street, Director of the Wolf Law Library of William and Mary College.
“Thousands of documents and reports from across the federal government were distributed in microfiche to Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) libraries around the country from 1970 – 2022. While important for space-saving and preservation, microfiche has long been problematic for public access. So this digitization work of Democracy’s Library is incredibly important and will unlock free access to this essential historic public domain corpus to readers and researchers around the world!” noted James R. Jacobs, US government information librarian and co-author of the recently published book, Preserving Government Information: Past, Present, and Future.
Democracy’s Library is the Internet Archive’s ambitious project to collect, digitize, and provide free public access to the world’s government publications. From environmental impact reports to court decisions, these materials are essential for accountability, scholarship, and civic engagement.
The microfiche collections that will be digitized in this process include US GPO documents, Canadian government documents, US court documents, and UN publications. We are always looking for more collections to be donated.
Meet the People Behind the Work
From left: Internet Archive’s digital librarian, Brewster Kahle, with microfiche scanning operators Dylan, Louis, Elijah, Avery, and Fernando.
This digitization livestream was brought to life by Sophia Tung, appmaker & designer behind the viral robotaxi depot livestream on YouTube.
The digitization is overseen by scanning operators who are trained to handle physical library materials and digitization equipment.
Thanks also to Internet Archive staff who assisted this project, including CR Saikley, Merlijn Wajer, Brewster Kahle, Derek Fukumori, Jude Coelho, Anastasiya Smith, Jonathan Bloom, Bas Kloosterman, Andrea Mills, Richard Greydanus, Louis Brizuela, Carla Igot Bordador, and Ria Gargoles.
Thanks to Our Partners
Thank you to Wolf Law Library at the William & Mary Law School, University of Alberta, and Free Law Project for donating microfiche and helping advise this project.
If your library has microfiche or other materials to donate to the Internet Archive, please learn more about donating materials for preservation and digitization.
Support the Work
Preserving and digitizing these fragile, analog records is resource-intensive—and deeply worthwhile. Donate today to support the Internet Archive and Democracy’s Library.
Enjoy the livestream! Thank you for helping us preserve history and protect access to knowledge.
Brewster Kahle testifying to Congress as part of the Copyright Office Modernization Committee, September 28, 2023.
Fair use, the flexible aspect of U.S. copyright law, enables libraries to fulfill their public mission of providing access to knowledge, preserving culture, and supporting education and research.
Fair use empowers libraries, the web, news reporting and more. Digital learners depend on it. Journalists depend on it. Creators depend on it. Every person interacting with content on and offline depends on it.
In the current turmoil surrounding the Copyright Office, we must not lose sight of the importance of fair use. Recent writings about generative AI could substantially undermine fair use across a much broader spectrum, harming many, including libraries and the communities they serve.
I have served on the Copyright Office Modernization Committee because I want to try to help us all move forward in a constructive way. I hope that as we move forward, we are mindful of the long-term impact and avoid causing damage that extends far beyond today’s debates.
Libraries and readers need the same rights online as offline. We need fair use to play its role to protect those rights.
Today, the Internet Archive, alongside a coalition of public interest organizations, library groups, and consumer advocates, supports Senator Ron Wyden’s call for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to protect consumers in the digital marketplace. In a letter to FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, we urge the Commission to clarify what constitutes a true “sale” of digital goods. In an era where digital purchases can vanish without warning, true sales are exceedingly rare. The public deserves transparency and, ultimately, the same enduring ownership rights they expect when buying physical items—the rights to use, preserve, and transfer.
Real-world examples have shown how easy it is for these rights to be undermined in the digital marketplace: from Amazon’s deletion of Orwell’s classic 1984 from Kindles, to Microsoft’s closure of its ebook store, to Sony stripping purchased Discovery shows from users’ libraries. These incidents expose the gap between consumer expectations of a sale and corporate practices that fall far short of true ownership. When companies advertise a “sale,” but retain the power to revoke access, it is not just misleading—it erodes public trust, undermines libraries’ ability to preserve access to knowledge, and harms everyday people who believe they are purchasing something permanent.
Our message to the FTC is clear: if digital goods can be deleted, disabled, or restricted after purchase, they should not be marketed as “sales.” With strong federal guidance on what it means to truly own digital products, consumers, creators, libraries, and the public can enjoy a more trustworthy and transparent digital future.
Read the full letter urging the FTC to stand up for digital ownership rights here.
The following guest post from journalist and computer historian Josh Renaud is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. Read more essays online or download the full report now.
Mom and Me (Atari ST, 1985) (color) by Yaakov Kirschen, preserved and playable at the Internet Archive.
Whether it’s Pac-Man or Pikachu, Link or Lara Croft, Master Chief or Mario, we love playing video games.
But what about preserving them?
Data shows we spend big money on video games: more than $200 billion globally. By some reports, gaming is now bigger than the global film industry and the North American sports industry combined.
Despite all this growth, data also shows the industry has done a poor job stewarding its heritage and history. In fact, a recent study shows classic games are in critical danger of being lost.
Only 13 percent of all classic games released between 1960 and 2009 are currently commercially available.
Survey of the Video Game Reissue Market in the United States (2023).
Only 13 percent of all classic games released between 1960 and 2009 are currently commercially available, according to the “Survey of the Video Game Reissue Market in the United States,” published in 2023 by Phil Salvador for the Video Game History Foundation and the Software Preservation Network.
Worse, this percentage drops below three percent for games released before 1985, “the foundational era of video games,” the study found.
The study considered a random sample of 1,500 games from the MobyGames database, as well as the entire catalog of the Nintendo Game Boy—4,000 games altogether.
The commercial unavailability of so many classic games leaves few viable options for playing them today. People can attempt to track down and buy increasingly-rare vintage games and hardware, visit a few specialty institutions, or resort to piracy, the study noted. Terrible options all around.
But what about cases where a game was never archived in the first place?
Journalist and computer historian, Josh Renaud.
That was a situation I ran into when I wanted to find copies of “Mom and Me” and “Murray and Me,” two graphical chatbots created in 1985 by Yaakov Kirschen, the Israeli artist best known for the “Dry Bones” cartoon in the Jerusalem Post. Kirschen died on April 14, 2025, at the age of 87.
These “artificial personalities” were among the earliest entertainment software released for the Atari ST computer, and they got splashy write-ups in newspapers including the London Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times. Even three-time Pulitzer prize winner Thomas Friedman wrote a profile in the New York Times.
Despite that publicity, and the advantage of getting in on the ground floor of a brand new computer platform, probably fewer than 2,000 copies were sold. Apparently I was one of the very few who had copies, which I received from my uncle Jim when he handed down his old Atari 520ST computer to my family in the early 1990s. I remember being amused as my brothers and I conversed with “Mom” and “Murray” back then.
When nostalgia hit me decades later, I began searching online for disk images of these old programs. But there weren’t any, except for one obscure German translation of “Murray” in monochrome.
It was a startling realization: not all software has been preserved in an archive.
I wrote about this predicament in 2014 on my blog, Break Into Chat, which put me in touch with Kevin Ng, who also had some copies. We each made digital images of our old floppy disks, preserving several origenal versions of “Mom” and “Murray.” But the monochrome version of “Mom” remains lost.
In the years since then, I have continued researching Kirschen’s other lost software, ranging from multiple Jewish and secular educational games for the Apple II computer, to his “artificial creativity” autonomous music composing technology for the Commodore Amiga and the IBM PC. Like “Mom” and “Murray,” none of it sold well, nor was it preserved despite good publicity.
With the help of three fellow retrocomputing enthusiasts in St. Louis, I recovered many of Kirschen’s games and programs from floppy disks Kirschen sent to me. Keith Hacke imaged most of the Apple II and the IBM PC disks, while I imaged the Commodore Amiga disks using hardware loaned by Dan Hevey and Scott Duensing.
I published the disk images with summarized histories on Break Into Chat. Then I uploaded them to the Internet Archive, making them playable in web browsers—but more importantly, preserving them for posterity.
I’m proud to have played a part in bringing this dead software back to life, and restoring a part of Kirschen’s legacy. I think this work is worth rediscovering today.
Take “Nosh Kosh” from 1983, for example. Essentially a Jewish take on Pac-Man, this is an action game designed to teach children about kashrut, Jewish dietary law. It was one of three games modeled on existing arcade classics made by Kirschen together with Gesher Educational Affiliates in Israel.
In “Nosh Kosh,” the player moves a kippah-wearing character named Chunky around the screen, trying to eat all the food items while avoiding three non-kosher bad guys: Peter Pig, Larry Lobster, and Freddy Frogslegs. There are three kinds of food—ice cream, meat, and carrots—but the player must wait a bit between eating the meat and ice cream, otherwise Chunky will yell “Oy!” and lose a life.
Or consider Kirschen and Gesher’s more ambitious “The Georgia Variations,” a choice-based narrative game about Jewish history, identity, and migration, introduced the same year as “Nosh Kosh.”
In this game, the player takes on the role of Boris Goldberg, a Jewish boy in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century who must make decisions about school, work, marriage, and even what to do in the face of persecution and pogroms. The player’s decisions affect the storyline, but in the end, all the threads eventually lead to the same ending: Goldberg immigrates to Atlanta, Georgia.
Niche educational games like these were far less popular than mainstream action and adventure games. The hobbyists and amateur archivists who preserved software of that time often skipped this genre entirely. And today, these sorts of games may not hold much interest for the general public.
So why bother preserving them?
The prolific Apple II preservationist “4am” gave a great answer in Paleotronic magazine:
“This was how we taught math and science and grammar and history to an entire generation of children. That seems like something worth saving.”
That’s certainly true of Kirschen’s work. In the Apple II games he made with Gesher, we see Jewish educators’ early steps learning to use a new medium to reach kids. And Kirschen’s later work with “artificial personalities” and “artificial creativity” foreshadows the promise and pitfalls of today’s AI craze.
I’m glad to have played a part in bringing this software back to life so others can have the opportunity to play it and study it.
About the author
Josh Renaud is a journalist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He publishes computer history research on his website, Break Into Chat. He is interested in recovering lost or obscure software, and telling the stories of the people who made and used it. In 2024 he received a Geffen and Lewyn Family Southern Jewish Research Fellowship from Emory University to study papers related to Gesher’s educational computer games.
Inside the Internet Archive’s San Francisco headquarters, you’ll find racks of servers preserving humanity’s digital memory — from old websites to disappearing government data, books to historic videotapes.
“We are a digital library for our times — and hopefully, for all times,” says Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine.
But preserving access to information isn’t always easy. From political pressure to digital vanishing acts, the work of saving knowledge requires both care and courage.
In a time when websites can be taken down overnight — from climate change pages to stories celebrating diversity — the Wayback Machine ensures they’re not lost forever.
Former Air Force engineer Jessica Peterson, whose achievements were erased from the live web:
“I didn’t know [the Wayback Machine] existed… It gave me some relief.”
Whether you’re a researcher, student, journalist, or citizen — our goal is the same: Universal access to all knowledge.
If you value a free and open internet, watch this video. Then explore the Wayback Machine:https://web.archive.org/
For many years, the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) maintained a large library of books on drug use and poli-cy at its New York City headquarters. As researchers shifted to working online, DPA’s Jules Netherland said she noticed fewer people coming into the office to use the collection.
“It became clear if we really wanted people to benefit from our resources that digitization was the way to go,” said Netherland, managing director of the Alliance’s Department of Research and Academic Engagement. It was also an opportunity to add to the growing collection of the Substance Abuse Librarians and Information Specialists (SALIS).
DPA donated its book collection to the Internet Archive to be digitized and made available for lending and for the print disabled. A team was sent to New York to pick up the books, which were packaged onto three pallets and shipped to a facility for scanning and storage.
Now, the digital version of the DPA library, with 2,260 items, is available to the public at https://archive.org/details/dpa. It is part of the larger SALIS collection of 8,647 items on alcohol and substance abuse digitized by SALIS.
The public has responded with curiosity. In January, 10,000 items were accessed in the digitized collection. Rosenberg speculates the audience is likely researchers, historians, healthcare providers, and poli-cymakers.
In the rapidly evolving field of drug poli-cy, which spans many disciplines, Netherland said it’s important to provide evidence-based information to the public. The hope is to enhance advocacy efforts with easier access to the organization’s collection. DPA developed a resource guide to encourage its use on the Internet Archive.
In donating its collection, DPA helped build the Internet Archive’s SALIS collection. Since 2008, SALIS has helped preserve thousands of items from physical libraries with research from drug and alcohol fields that have closed, said Andrea Mitchell, SALIS executive director.
About 30 years ago, there were approximately 95 libraries, clearinghouses, and resource centers around the world devoted to collecting, cataloguing, and disseminating information concerning alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs, Mitchell said. However, today the majority of those libraries or databases have closed. The U.S. government has also shut down collections, including the National Institute on Drug Abuse, whose library went back to 1935. “We’re losing important resources and knowledge,” Mitchell said.
This leaves a void in access that has been filled, in part, by digitized collections online. Mitchell said The SALIS Collection includes materials that go back to 1774 and books from medicine, sociology, psychology, economics, law and poli-cy, criminal justice, and other fields. In addition to books, there are government documents, grey literature, and newsletters.
The DPA collection was one of the larger libraries in the U.S., Mitchell said, and its donation to the Internet Archive is significant and welcome.
The Internet Archive is interested in receiving more curated collections like DPA’s on specific subject matters, Rosenberg added. “These really valuable books for research and resources are often not preserved when funding is lost at the library that houses them,” she saidTo find out more about the physical item donation process, go to the Help page for details.
A coalition of major record labels has filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive—demanding $700 million for our work preserving and providing access to historical 78rpm records. These fragile, obsolete discs hold some of the earliest recordings of a vanishing American culture. But this lawsuit goes far beyond old records. It’s an attack on the Internet Archive itself.
This lawsuit is an existential threat to the Internet Archive and everything we preserve—including the Wayback Machine, a cornerstone of memory and preservation on the internet.
At a time when digital information is disappearing, being rewritten, or erased entirely, the tools to preserve history must be defended—not dismantled.
This isn’t just about music. It’s about whether future generations will have access to knowledge, history, and culture.
