Press Release

Global Consortium Forms Open Content Alliance to Bring Additional Content Online and Make it Searchable

San Francisco, CA – October 3, 2005 – The Internet Archive, Yahoo! Inc., Adobe Systems Inc., the European Archive, HP Labs, the National Archives (UK), O'Reilly Media Inc., Prelinger Archives, the University of California, and the University of Toronto, today announced the formation of the Open Content Alliance (OCA) http://opencontentalliance.org, a global consortium focused on providing open access to content while respecting the rights of copyright holders. The OCA will provide a wide range of material including cultural, historical and technological digitized print and multimedia content from libraries, archives and publishers. Content will be hosted in a single, permanent repository and complete works will be searchable and downloadable for free by anyone.

Governed by its contributors, the OCA is designed to be a growing association that agrees to a set of openness principles. Initial content will be provided to the OCA by founding members including the University of California, the University of Toronto, the National Archives (UK), O'Reilly Media, Inc., and the European Archive. Adobe Systems Inc., HP Labs, and Yahoo! Inc., also founding members, will make technical and in certain cases financial contributions to allow content to be contributed, placed online and accessed by anyone. The OCA will include content ranging from historical works of fiction to children's books to highly specialized engineering whitepapers. In addition to hosting content and playing an administrative role, the Internet Archive will provide the OCA with material from its collections and it will also digitize content from contributors.

"Bringing the treasures of our libraries and archives to a worldwide readership is in the interest of many organizations," said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. "The Internet Archive along with the other founding members of the OCA invite interested organizations to join the effort and help fulfill this digital dream."

Yahoo! will power the search engine on the OCA website and all OCA content will be made available through Yahoo! Search, further bolstering the comprehensiveness of its index. Once content is available through the OCA, any search engine will be able to index it. This takes a significant step in expanding the deep web, the millions of Web sites containing content that search engines typically cannot access, as well as advances the global sharing of knowledge.

In order to respect the rights of copyright holders, content under copyright will be made available through the OCA only with the copyright holders' authorization. At the option of the copyright holder, copyrighted content may be distributed through a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons is a non-profit organization whose licensing encourages personal use, reuse and repurposing of digital content. Content that is made available on the OCA website will be available in PDF and other widely adopted formats. This approach enables mass media and independent publishers to expand their reach by submitting content that spans categories, file formats and languages while retaining their copyrights.

"We are honored to participate in a program that helps further our vision of expanding all human knowledge by working with content creators to make their content available to a growing online audience," said David Mandelbrot, vice president of search content, Yahoo! Inc.

"We welcome the launch of the OCA because its approach respects the rights of publishers and other copyright owners," said Sally Morris, chief executive of the association of learned and professional society publishers (ALPSP, http://www.alpsp.org). "Many publishers already make some of their book and journal content freely available online and the OCA's model of allowing rights holders to control which of their works are opened up, when, and where they are hosted may encourage others to do so."

"HP has a long history of leadership in digital imaging," said Dick Lampman, senior vice president of HP research, and director, HP Labs. "In partnering with OCA, we are using our expertise to process documents and images in a way that enhances ease of use and provides a richer experience for growing numbers of users who are seeking to access digital content."

The OCA will be funded by its contributors and will also accept donations from global institutions including governments, commercial entities and philanthropies. Like-minded entities interested in making open content widely available are encouraged to join the OCA. To learn more and/or contribute content, go to www.opencontentalliance.org

About the Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is a 501^©(3) non-profit that was founded to build an 'Internet library,' with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996 and located in the Presidio of San Francisco, the Archive has collected billions of works (books, music, moving images, web pages, and software programs) and serves millions of users every year.

Media Contacts:
Yahoo!
Aaron Ferstman
408-349-4902
aaronf@yahoo-inc.com

Fleishman Hillard for Yahoo!
Cyndi Schott
415-318-4143
schottc@fleishman.com

Quote Addendum:

Adobe Systems Incorporated

"As a founding member of the new Open Content Alliance, we are honored that the Internet Archive has recognized the value of Adobe's digital imaging and PDF technologies for such an important project," said Kurt Garbe, vice president of platform, Adobe Systems Incorporated. "We are pleased to be contributing toward the development of an innovative workflow system to efficiently acquire and archive high quality digital content."

University of California

"The OCA is a great example of how, with innovative technology and strategic partnerships, we can enable broad access to our nation's scholarly and cultural record," said M.R.C. Greenwood, provost and senior vice president, , University of California. "The consortium will create a world-class, world-access library. We are delighted to be part of it and look forward to contributions from other universities and cultural institutions worldwide."