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