The Truth Is Paywalled and the Lies Are Free: Brewster Kahle on the Internet of Forgetting

“The truth is paywalled, and the lies are free.” — Current Affairs editor, quoted by Brewster Kahle

The internet, we were promised, would remember everything. Rather than memory, however, it is now most distinguished by its digital forgetfulness. That’s the warning in Vanishing Culture, a new series of essays published by the San Francisco-based Internet Archive. In its concluding essay by Brewster Kahle — founder of the Internet Archive, member of the Internet Hall of Fame, and the closest thing the web has to an official librarian — he makes the case for preserving the online library system.

“Our evolving digital age can be our next Carnegie moment or it can be a Library of Alexandria moment. It is up to us.”

Today’s internet library system, Kahle argues, is worse than the analogue one he grew up with. It’s faster, he acknowledges, but shallower. The 1976 Copyright Act means that rather than buying digital books, libraries can only rent access in surveillance environments controlled by a handful of corporations. Sixty percent of news organisations now have paywalls. Academic publishing is controlled by three conglomerates. So an entire generation is growing up without access to the published works of the twentieth century.

“The truth is paywalled, and the lies are free,” as the editor of Current Affairs put it. That is today’s internet. No laughter. Only forgetting.

Five Takeaways

•       Carnegie Moment or Alexandria Moment: The Internet Archive’s pamphlet Vanishing Culture opens with a choice. Andrew Carnegie invested in public libraries during the early twentieth century: every town in America got one, and by the time the US was thrust onto the world stage after World War II, an educated public was ready. The Library of Alexandria burned. Kahle’s argument: we are at the same fork in the road. The digital transition can be a Carnegie moment — everyone with access to all human knowledge — or it can be an Alexandria moment. Sixty percent of news organisations now have paywalls. Academic publishing is controlled by three conglomerates. The library system we have is worse, not better, than the one Kahle grew up with.

•       The 1976 Copyright Act as Original Sin: Copyright used to be opt-in: you had to put a ‘c’ on your work and register it. The 1976 Act made it opt-out: everything is copyrighted by default, forever, with terms that keep being extended. The consequences: Wikipedia had to be written from scratch because the encyclopedias already written couldn’t be shared openly. Academic papers are walled inside publisher systems, which is why arXiv exists. Libraries can no longer buy digital books — only rent access in surveillance environments. The bargain between publishers, libraries, authors, and the public that functioned for centuries has been dissolved by lobbyists writing copyright law.

•       The Truth Is Paywalled and the Lies Are Free: Kahle’s most quotable line belongs to someone else — the editor of Current Affairs. But Kahle endorses it fully. An entire generation is now growing up without access to the published works of the twentieth century. People are genuinely confused about whether the Holocaust happened — not because the information doesn’t exist, but because it’s behind a paywall. What is free on the internet is what serves the interests of the platforms: viral, emotional, algorithmically optimised, frequently false. The deep, sourced, accurate record costs money to access. That inversion is not an accident. It is the business model.