Here’s a big promise: a new Kickstarter campaign aims to usher in the “return of the human Internet.”
That’s the slogan of a crowdfunding campaign for The Phoenix Project, an initiative from online culture and commentary magazine Flaming Hydra. If you support the Phoenix Project, you’re supporting three things: a unique print magazine designed to celebrate “the values and fun of the early Internet,” a new e-book service for libraries, and a newsletter subscription/archiving program also designed for libraries.
For Maria Bustillos, editor-in-chief of Flaming Hydra, these disparate projects are “fundamentally one thing,” linked by the goal of “protecting freedom of information” and fulfilling the “promise of the early Internet, where information is accessible to as many people as possible, while protecting the right of artists and authors to make a living.”
Bustillos told me that these problems were highlighted on Flaming Hydra itself, for example when Tal Levin wrote about finding countless AI-generated clones of his book on Amazon. By “creating an ecosystem based on people working together, offering their products in a controlled context and not allowing” others to create and sell AI-generated clones, Bustillos said Flaming Hydra “is part of the human project.”
“AI is not this unstoppable force,” she added. “If people just set up publishing pipelines and networks and organizations dedicated to the human Internet, people who wanted to read content could access it, and it would actually be completely isolated from any mechanical interference.”
The Phoenix Project supports this vision by making the work of human writers more accessible to libraries.
In 2020, Bustillos wrote about e-book systems dominating libraries and schools. For example, instead of just purchasing a book, a school had to pay $27 per student per year to continue access to copies of “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
This is symptomatic of a broader system that views true ownership of e-books and other digital media as a thing of the past. Instead, we “license” these eBooks from their publishers, and they may be changed or removed at any time.
“E-books are books,” Bustillos said. “They’re not anything else. They’re books, and people should be able to own them, and libraries should be able to own them, and media should be able to be owned. All digital media should be able to be owned.”
Ownership, she says, comes down to a simple question: “If you’re at the mercy of someone who can close the book, you don’t own it.” »
So, beyond the issue of ongoing payments, there are also examples of e-books being altered or removed from readers’ devices long after purchase. Bustillos acknowledged that for individual media outlets, this distinction may not seem like a big deal, “but if it’s all textbooks for everyone, if it’s all books,” then it’s a real problem.
Flaming Hydra and The Phoenix Project seek to solve this problem by allowing libraries to actually purchase and own e-books. They can then lend these e-books to their customers through a new open source “library in a box” system called Lenny for Libraries.
The Phoenix Project begins by offering five new e-books from Flaming Hydra writers, including collections of writings from The Awl and essays from Tom Scocca and Bustillos herself. That may seem like a relatively modest start, but Bustillos said she’s talking with library consortia and author groups, and the goal here is to “change the conversation” around e-books, digital archiving and lending. The Phoenix Project could therefore pave the way for other initiatives that follow a similar model.
Likewise, The Phoenix Foundry Archive is designed to make paid newsletter content available to libraries. Bustillos noted that “much of the best journalism, criticism, and essays” are now published in paid newsletters inaccessible to libraries (as well as Internet archives).
With Phoenix, newsletter writers (starting with those using Ghost, with support for additional newsletter platforms coming) will be able to offer subscriptions to libraries, in the same way that libraries can subscribe to newspapers and magazines. Once configured, Phoenix will automatically convert the author’s desired newsletter articles into EPUB documents, which will then be sent to libraries for digital loan.
Flaming Hydra worked on all of this before even launching the Kickstarter, and Bustillos said she was grateful for the financial support from backers like Anand Raganathan, Brewster Kahle and Paul Ford. But by turning to crowdfunding, Bustillos said Flaming Hydra can better protect the work, ensuring it remains sustainable and independent.
“We should not be at the mercy of anyone and this also protects editorial independence,” she said. “These things go hand in hand.”
Flaming Hydra is looking to raise $30,000 for Project Phoenix, with the campaign ending November 27.
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