Googled
The Internet may have started as the fervent brainchild of
DARPA, the US defence agency - but it quickly evolved into
a network of computers at the service of a community. Academics
around the world used it to communicate, compare results,
compute, interact and flame each other. The ethos of the community
as content-creator, source of information, fount of emotional
sustenance, peer group, and social substitute is well embedded
in the very fabric of the Net. Millions of members in free,
advertising or subscription financed, mega-sites such as Geocities,
AOL, Yahoo and Tripod generate more bits and bytes than the
rest of the Internet combined. This traffic emanates from
discussion groups, announcement (mailing) lists, newsgroups,
and content sites (such as Suite101 and Webseed). Even the
occasional visitor can find priceless gems of knowledge and
opinion in the mound of trash and frivolity that these parts
of the web have become.
The emergence of search engines and directories which cater
only to this (sizeable) market segment was to be expected.
By far the most comprehensive (and, thus, less discriminating)
was Deja. It spidered and took in the exploding newsgroups
(Usenet) scene with its tens of thousands of daily messages.
When it was taken over by Google, its archives contained more
than 500 million messages, cross-indexed every which way and
pertaining to every possible (and many impossible) a topic.
Google is by far the most popular search engine yet, having
surpassed the more veteran Northern Lights, Fast, and Alta
Vista. Its mind defying database (more than 1.3 billion web
pages), its caching technology (making it, in effect, one
of the biggest libraries on earth) and its site ranking (by
popularity and links-over) have rendered it unbeatable. Yet,
its efforts to integrate the treasure trove that is Deja and
adapt it to the Google search interface have hitherto been
spectacularly unsuccessful (though it finally made it two
and a half months after the purchase). So much so, that it
gave birth to a protest movement.
http://groups.google.com/
http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce.html
Bickering and bad tempered flaming (often bordering on the
deranged, the racial, or the stalking) are the more repulsive
aspects of the Usenet groups. But at the heart of the debate
this time is no ordinary sadistic venting. The issue is: who
owns content generated by the public at large on computers
funded by tax dollars? Can a commercial enterprise own and
monopolize the fruits of the collective effort of millions
of individuals from all over the world? Or should such intellectual
property remain in the public domain, perhaps maintained by
public institutions (such as the Library of Congress)? Should
open source movements gain access to Deja's source code in
order to launch Deja II? And who owns the copyright to all
these messages (theoretically, the authors)? Google, as Deja
before it, is offering compilations of this content, the copyright
to which it does not and cannot own. The very legal concept
of intellectual property is at the crux of this virtual conflict.
Google was, thus, compelled to offer free access to the CONTENT
of the Deja archives to alternative (non-Google) archiving
systems. But it remains mum on the search programming code
and the user interface. Already one such open source group
(called Dela News) is coalescing, although it is not clear
who will bear the costs of the gigantic storage and processing
such a project would require. Dela wants to have a physical
copy of the archive deposited in trust with a dot org.
This raises a host of no less fascinating subjects. The Deja
Usenet search technology, programming code, and systems are
inextricable and almost indistinguishable from the Usenet
archive itself. Without these elements - structural as well
as dynamic - there will be no archive and no way to extract
meaningful information from the chaotic bedlam that is the
Usenet environment. In this case, the information lies in
the ordering and classification of raw data and not in the
content itself. This is why the open source proponents demand
that Google share both content and the tools to access it.
Google's hasty and improvised unplugging of Deja in February
only served to aggravate the die-hard fans of erstwhile Deja.
The Usenet is not only the refuge of pedophiles and neo-Nazis.
It includes thousands of academically rigorous and research
inclined discussion groups which morph with intellectual trends
and fashionable subjects. More than twenty years of wisdom
and erudition are buried in servers all over the world. Scholars
often visit Usenet in their pursuit of complementary knowledge
or expert advice. The Usenet is also the documentation of
Western intellectual history in the last three decades. In
it invaluable. Google's decision to abandon the internal links
between Deja messages means the disintegration of the hyperlinked
fabric of this resource - unless Google comes up with an alternative
(and expensive) solution.
Google is offering a better, faster, more multi-layered and
multi-faceted access to the entire archive. But its brush
with the more abrasive side of the open source movement brought
to the surface long suppressed issues. This may be the single
most important contribution of this otherwise not so opportune
transaction.
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