The Crates
"The Crates" are what we call the portions of the internet that need to be carried off in event of sudden negative change.
In 1931, the Empire of Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China in reaction to the Mukden Incident, instigated by their own agents in Manchuria.
With no hope in winning a single battle, Chiang Kai-Shek and his band of merry Nationalists could only run away as their country slipped right out of their hands. Even worse, with chaos afoot, the imperial treasures accumlated over millenia by this ancient culture might just find itself in the hands of uncultured and materialistic raiders. To prevent disaster, Chiang Kai-Shek ordered the most valuable pieces to be moved out in an impressive feat of human will.
But it wasn't the action of a ruthless dictator that saved the treasures. It was the work of all the Chinese who, instead of stealing these jewels for their own gain, worked hard to keep it safe for another generation that would truly realize it's glory. More than 13,000 boxes were carted off by train, horse, and foot across the highest mountains and longest rivers as the Japanese advanced further inland.
The Japanese were soon replaced by the rebellion of the Chinese Communists, tired of Chiang's arbitrary dictatorship. And this time, they won. Chiang Kai-Shek and his forces could only move to the former Japanese colony of Taiwan. Along with them came the last 3,000 crates that had yet to fall, to one day be placed in a proper museum. At the very least, a bit of the greatest legacies of human civilization were safe, away from a future Cultural Revolution on the mainland.
Why do I tell this story? Because when it comes to the treasures of the internet, there happen to be strong parallels. Hostilities have long been exchanged between the internet and old corporate empires, but now our Mukden Incident has begun.
SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, the raid on Megaupload, all of these hint to a future where people are no longer given the freedom to enjoy these treasures. There could be multiple excuses; supposed copyright infringement, a witch-hunt against child pornography, and ever more stringent restrictions in the interest of "national security". Neither do we have a bunch of crates to carry off when disaster strikes.
Even before that, even the most popular webpages and communities of the past had already been forgotten. Websites are born and deleted every day, without detailed knowledge of what that data contained. It's too naive to believe that we will always be able to see such data whenever we want.
Crate 1: The Bibliotheca Anonoma
The Bibliotheca Anonoma is a project to contain and organize the best content from the internet into a portable wiki. It contains interesting data that users would be unlikely to find anywhere else, such as stories from across the internet, collections, guides, and other books.
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia viewable and maintained by anyone.
Thankfully, Wikipedia is backed by a large community that makes and saves database dumps and puts them publicly. The dumps are quite big when it comes to text (and that's without the history), but do not include images.
Some videos may be needed from the internet. On the Bibliotheca Anonoma we've made a list of what needs to be saved from Youtube and the like. Perhaps this crate could be placed in a torrent.
On these code repositories could