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The critical window of shadow libraries

How can we claim to preserve our collections in perpetuity, when they are already approaching 1 PB?

“The lost cannot be recovered; but let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use, in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1791 Since Anna’s Archive uniquely focus on activities that are illegal in many places around the world, we don’t bother with widely available collections, such as public domain books. We are on the eve of a revolution in preservation, but “the lost cannot be recovered.” We have a critical window of about 5-10 years during which it’s still fairly expensive to operate a shadow library and create many mirrors around the world, and during which access has not been completely shut down yet.

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