‘We need real information to combat misinformation’: Carl Malamud

In the early 1990s, Carl Malamud bought a US Securities and Exchange Commission database and published it online, free to view.

In a world fixated on profit and proprietary control, American technologist Carl Malamud is fighting to keep knowledge free and accessible through the Internet.

In the early 1990s, Malamud bought a US Securities and Exchange Commission database and published it online, free to view. Information that once cost $30 and was considered too technical for the public was widely accessed by students, journalists, and senior citizen investment clubs. His mission: to make public information truly public, freeing it from red tape, copyright, paywalls, colonisation even. Not everyone is on board though. The state of Georgia sued him for putting its annotated laws online.

Malamud remains at it, unlocking everything from building standards, fire safety norms, and sewer system protocols to design specs for helmets, toys, and playground slides. Also court rulings and patent filings. And research papers, tourism brochures, films, and books funded by taxpayers’ money.

Malamud is an American technologist, author, and public domain activist. He founded Public.Resource.Org, a US nonprofit that publishes government information. He contributes to the Internet Archive (archive.org), a digital library of books, films, software, and more. Alongside Omshivaprakash, Sushant Sinha, and Lawrence Liang, he is a core member of Servants of Knowledge, an Indian initiative digitising library collections at a rate of 15 lakh pages per month.

Malamud was in Bengaluru last week, exploring new digitisation opportunities and handing over completed projects with his team. Excerpts: 

Are governments cagey about public information?

It is partly inertia—‘It’s the way we have always done it’, and partly the ‘This is our stuff’ mindset. I have also heard the argument that bad things can happen if they let the information out in the wild, especially with regard to the collective works of Mahatma Gandhi. There is a fear that people will cherry-pick a page and use it out of context. My answer: that’s all the more reason to collect the works of Gandhi on an authoritative site (they have a Hind Swaraj collection on Internet Archive) where people, when unsure of a quote, can search and check it. It becomes a tool to combat misinformation spread by political parties or ChatGPT. It also becomes a credible research tool. Look up the quote ‘Be the change you wish to see’ in our collection. You won’t find it, because Gandhi never said it!

So is the reluctance mostly due to the status quo?

It’s also about ‘We are not sure how this technology works.’ Even when they do, some civil servants want to enter into public-private partnerships and monetise public resources. They think they are looking out for their agency’s interests, but it is not good at the societal level... Gandhi strongly felt that you can’t have government by the people unless the people are educated. At the Phoenix Ashram (in South Africa), typesetting was the daily bread labour. He brought the lesson of how they won Satyagraha in South Africa to India—by educating everyone about their situation through printing, speaking, and spreading (information). So public safety standards aren’t just about safety. They represent the best knowledge available on issues like pesticide use in agriculture. If you believe in ‘Make in India’, you should also believe in a ‘Safe India’. Civil engineers, architecture students, and farmers—they all need access to such information.

How has it been working in India?

The hard part is finding the books (to scan and archive). They are buried in libraries and disintegrating. A lot of our time goes into meeting librarians and vice chancellors and saying, ‘Hi, we’d like to scan your books and give you a digital copy in return. Would that not be great?’ Some, like the Lalbagh official, found it ‘remarkable’. Others offer us money but want exclusive rights in return. While public-private partnerships can help because digitisation is expensive, they also end up locking a lot of public domain material. Lawrence calls it the ‘Licence Raj’’.

There was a court trouble with the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS).

We had filed a PIL. They didn’t sue us, but they were not happy. We were clear: whether or not there’s a copyright, many of these standards are used in legislation, and others were developed at public expense by government officials—they should be freely available. [Now over 10,000 BIS codes are free to download. Earlier, a building code could cost Rs 14,000.]

How do you negotiate copyrighted material?

Copyright is a balance between the author and the public, and there are exceptions (to the law). Blind people can make copies for themselves. If a class needs a journal article for instruction, students can be given access. Another exception is research for personal use.

You say the movement for universal access to knowledge should begin in India.

It’s the largest democracy, and I believe that in a democracy is where you are more likely to get governments to say, ‘Access to information is crucial to the functioning of our society’. You need to ‘educate in India’ so you can ‘make in India’. The right to profession is enshrined in the Indian constitution. If you want to be a goldsmith, you should have access to the tools to increase your economic status.

Can the Right to Information (RTI) be a part of this movement?

No, RTI is a focused law. But India could consider a people’s licence for anything that the government publishes.

How many Indian texts have been digitised?

We have done over 50,000 books in Sanskrit, 20,000 in Kannada, and 12,000 in Telugu and have a huge Tamil collection. Building the Hind Swaraj collection was a labour of love. [Kannada works span research journals, PhD and MPhil theses from Hampi University, books by Pa Vem Acharya, Gourish Kaikini, and G T Narayana Rao, editions of Tayi Nadu, one of the first Kannada newspapers, and decades-old magazine issues, such as Kasturi, Shudra, Veera Mathe, Ondaane Maale, and Hosa Manushya.]

Tell us about the impact.

At a university, ‘Indian knowledge’ professors told us, ‘We use your archives all the time’. We have made the Gazettes of India searchable, and lawyers and government officials access it. Since Indian standards became available, students have become fans of our work. Sanskrit scholars and scientists use our resources. Out of the top 100 books on the Internet Archive by access, 30 are from our collection.