Full transcript: Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle on Recode Decode

A lot of what’s built the World Wide Web in the open information infrastructure that we understand is just actually embedded in a few laws that basically make it so it can be user originated content that can be then hosted on other companies’ websites without having them have liability. As long as, “Hey, we’re in copyright infringement,” if they to... See more

We’ve seen Wikipedia, Mozilla, Internet Archive, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Library of Science. These are infrastructure-type companies, but they’re not-for-profits.

I really kind of like the American project. The experiment of, “Hey, let’s go try out a bunch of different things and allow people to build things that they would like to have built.” Why don’t we enable and empower more people in that way? Fortunately the technologies can work that way, but we need people to think ethically. As Larry Lessig put it... See more

With all the stuff going on, it’s all going on on social media now. A lot of the information.

A lot of it’s there. We’re trying to adapt as best we can to these platforms. That’s a big shift of how the internet ... We thought it was going to be a very ...

Easy thing.

Easy, democratic. Anybody can go and be a player. Now we have these large platforms... See more

What does it really mean to be a good citizen?” Being a good citizen participating in the corporate world.

If we allow those who control the present to control the past then they control the future. That’s George Orwell. We need to know what came before. Because the web flips on and off, actually most of the best of the web is already off the web.

The United States, as you point out, has been actually freer than most in terms of offering access to information. It doesn’t have to be this way. Openness is not the default in terms of how if you look back in time, or even around the world. We need to show how openness works better. That you end up with companies that thrive better. That you have... See more

Maybe we should be spending more time and effort within academia, within government, within our general lives to go and invest in things that aren’t going to end up putting us in a cage that we’re going to regret later. Is that a bit of a plea and a cry? Yes, it is. But Wikipedia is the No. 5 most popular website of all websites. That’s pretty stun... See more

We have a real change in what’s going on. We have at least a fire drill to go and say, “What kind of world do we want to live in?” In a world that’s got a lot of different points of view going on