More on manuals plus rescue

[Brent Hilpert]

On 2015-Aug-18, at 6:58 PM, Guy Sotomayor wrote:
> On 8/18/15 6:35 PM, Shoppa, Tim wrote:
>>> IA saturates the channel. Jason and IA are deliberately working to redirect all search
>>> traffic to IA from the original mirrors by constantly creating useless 'new' content that
>>> Google thinks is real.
>>> 
>>> I have watched over time as the volume of Google top search hits have migrated to IA hosted
>>> content from the mirrors.
>> I have occasionally stumbled into the bitsavers stuff on IA and was just confused and perplexed about what the IA guys are trying to do. Bitsavers has a perfectly obvious and navigable layout; IA makes no sense at all.
>> 
>> 
> I just went to IA to see what all of the fuss was about.
> 
> I can sum up what I saw in one word.  Yech!
> 
> I agree with Tim, what IA is doing makes no sense.
> 
> ...

Similarly, having gone and looked at IA, I can understand why Al is peeved.

While the IA pages do mention and give some attribution to bitsavers it none-the-less comes across as a Jason Scott / IA effort.
The documents are prominently labeled as "uploaded by Jason Scott". Yes, it's good in an archive to document who did what when, but "uploaded" ? . . No. They were copied from bitsavers by Jason Scott. It's not the same thing.
On the IA web pages and in JS's blog, one is left with the impression that while bitsavers has been doing the scanning, these documents are generously being made available to you the net user thanks to the efforts of Jason Scott / IA. In reality, all JS/IA are doing is presenting an alternative interface to a copy of a pre-existing and already-net-accessible archive (and apparently without the consent of the people who went to the effort of creating that archive). 

As I see it, JS/IA are absconding with someone else's efforts.

In regards to someone else's message on this topic, the 'copies' that JS/IA are making by copying over the net are not comparable to the 'copies' that AK/CHM are making in collecting, scanning paper documents, and doing media recovery of old digital media.

Perhaps a second form of interface to bitsavers is something to be considered, however from a functional perspective at this time, I'll be sticking with the bitsavers interface.

If JS wishes to proceed with this, and is sincere in his open message on the list to Al, he should take the IA interface down and get Al's consent and agreement as to attribution and presentation before putting anything back up. If he doesn't get that consent, too bad - there are plenty of other backup/mirror archives of bitsavers, the material is not in danger of being lost.