The Public Domain
 
 
Storing The Public Domain
Given the immense value of each of these cultural and intellectual properties, it seems apparent that we would preserve and protect every bit of this common heritage for both our use and the use of future generations.
“So where DO we keep it?”
Well... at the moment the answer is embarrassingly trivial. We keep it wherever it was last. Whoever had a copy when the work went into the public domain might still have it. Unless they tossed it away.
Theoretically the Library of Congress has two copies that were deposited when the work was first copyrighted. However, if they are still around they are very likely in the “rare media” collections. Better than the trash bin of course, but yet another case of government possessing something for me, in order to protect it for me by protecting it from me.
More recently organizations organizations like Project Gutenberg, LibriVox and Verbum Vanum have begun working to translate and host our public domain works for us. Yet even with fellow altruists, we must heed the repository maxim: “He who hosts the repository, controls the repository.”
While this has made sense for libraries that own their contents, it makes no sense in relation to content that is owned by each of us. Our access to our Public Domain must never hinge on the favor, inclination or ability of any third party.
“So where SHOULD we keep it?”
A much more interesting question indeed!
A while back, the same folks who developed the anonymizing proxy Tor, began research on a possible solution.
The Free Haven Project aims to deploy a system for distributed, anonymous, persistent data storage which is robust against attempts by powerful adversaries to find and destroy any stored data. This model of decentralized system has been classified as peer-to-peer by recent popular media.
Unfortunately, their research never developed into a practical system. However, they did establish a useful list of goals that we can build upon.
 
Adapted for public domain use, Free Haven’s gives us:
  1. •Distribution: The repository should be individually owned and collectively operated by the public. Thus allaying the repository maxim above.
  2. •Anonymity: For all parties. The publishers that insert documents, the readers that retrieve documents, and the servers that store documents.
  3. •Accountability: Without sacrificing anonymity. This limits the damage done by misbehaving peers.
  4. •Persistence: Documents must be stored perpetually. Their lifetime must not be determined by operators of the peers that make up the repository.
  5. •Flexibility: The system functions smoothly as peers dynamically join or leave.
To their goals we also add:
  1. •Consistency: Documents must be accessible using perpetual URLs that function regardless of how and where the repository is accessed.
  2. •Efficiency: Given the number of properties that make up The Public Domain the repository must scale through the petabyte range without bottlenecks.
  3. •Legality: User must be able to run repository peers without accusation of copyright infringement or inducement.
Given a system that supported all of these features, we could rest assured that The Public Domain would be safe and secure for all of us, in perpetuity. Not surprisingly, considering the point of this paper, we have just been given one.