The Democracy’s Library project has announced that more than one petabyte of material has been uploaded to the Filecoin network, including information collected by the Internet Archive in a 16-year-old project, called the “End of Term Crawl” that captures and saves U.S. government websites at the end of presidential administrations.
To put one petabyte (PB) in perspective, a single PB could store 500 billion pages of standard printed text, 223,101 DVD-quality movies or 3.4 years of 24/7 Full HD video recordings.
Uploading these materials to the Filecoin network, where it is replicated multiple times, helps ensure that government data collections are preserved for the long term and remain accessible to the public. Storing these collections on Filecoin instead of traditional web2 storage services like AWS and Google Cloud ensures that humanity’s most important information is preserved into the future.
The Democracy’s Library project kicked off in October 2022, when Filecoin Foundation (FF) and Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW) announced a collaboration with the Internet Archive to support the Archive’s latest initiative. Democracy’s Library is a free, open collection of government data that ensures that government research and publications from around the world remain permanently accessible to the public.
“Our goal is to empower citizens to access public data and information – uncovering and unlocking this information is vital for democracy and an engaged society,” said Brewster Kahle, Digital Librarian and founder of the Internet Archive. “It’s been a joy collaborating with FF and FFDW to protect and make accessible these archival documents to help bring the vision of Democracy’s Library to life.”
The Internet Archive continues to copy selective collections into Filecoin Network as it is working with researchers and developers to extend the utility of this approach to preservation and access.
"We are so thrilled to work with the Archive on this critical work preserving humanity's most important information on the Filecoin network,” said Marta Belcher, president of FF and FFDW.
You can explore the full archive and share your feedback on the project.
More About the Internet Archive
For several years, the Internet Archive has held summits, monthly meetups, and camps to help bring together thousands of people from around the world to explore and experiment in a myriad of technologies and services that embrace and build on decentralized principles and practices.
For the past 27 years, the Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library, has been collecting, digitizing, preserving, organizing, and lending material. More than 100 petabytes so far, adding many more petabytes each year. Much of this material is collected in the Wayback Machine or uploaded by Patrons to archive.org, such as 250,000 live concerts.