12 ms·
Activists create a 12.5M block library in Minecraft to bypass censorship
- Krasnol 7y agoSo I've seen this popping up in the recent days and what I don't understand: what would stop restrictive governments to block access to Minecraft because of that? I mean, surely those semi restrictive governments won't do it but in those countries you can probably get those books elsewhere but in societies like China, Russia or Iran expanding the wall to Minecraft shouldn't be a problem. Wouldn't that alienate the audience to the material because of that in the end?
- pm90 7y agoThe goal of censorship isn't to get 100% lock down on information; its to make it hard for most of the populace. So governments don't really give a fuck until this becomes very popular and a lot of their citizens start using it at which point they will clamp down hard on it.
- eloisius 7y agoYou wouldn't even have to ban Minecraft, they can just DNS ban visit.uncensoredlibrary.com. I really don't understand the hype of this whole thing.
- kick 7y agoYou can rehost it anywhere, so while it isn't a silver bullet of a solution, they thought it out more than you're making it out to be. "I hear you're doing X! Have you considered [basic and trivial thing to consider that took me five seconds to think of]? Ha! Try again next time!" It's such a ridiculous thing to me when people do this on the internet. People put thousands of hours of effort into this; do you really think they wouldn't have thought of such a basic thing? It even says in the original link, but it's not like anyone who said the same thing in that thread had looked at the link, either: https://uncensoredlibrary.com/ https://uncensoredlibrary.com/ The entire point is that individual game maps are incredibly difficult to censor, especially when they're maps for the most popular game in the world; one server gets blocked, two more get thrown up.
- im3w1l 7y agoI think the questions "what does minecraft add to the equation beyond hype" is legitimate, and deserves better than to be dismissed as ridiculous. The only benefit I can think of is that if Russia has a system that automatically blocks websites based on content, it wouldn't work with minecraft.
- jedieaston 7y agoThere isn't any way to merge Minecraft maps, I don't believe, so if you want to get the other books without copying them over by hand, you'll have to overwrite the books that someone wrote on your copy.
- beering 7y agoThere exist tools to merge Minecraft maps. There's some trickiness around making sure entities get merged properly, but it's a somewhat common need to take a section out of one world and plop it into another world.
- cycloptic 7y ago>The entire point is that individual game maps are incredibly difficult to censor, especially when they're maps for the most popular game in the world; one server gets blocked, two more get thrown up. I don't see how that's any different than putting text files in a git repository which can then be cloned and hosted anywhere. In some ways, it's worse, because it depends on Minecraft which is a closed source product owned by Microsoft, and its map format is proprietary. Is this format done simply because it appeals to young activists? Or is it because the appearance of playing a game gives better cover to journalists? Both those could be good reasons, but they are notably not technical reasons and would not make the maps more difficult to censor. In any case it would seem a little less suspect if these were instead importable into a FOSS replacement like Minetest [0]. [0]: https://www.minetest.net/ https://www.minetest.net/
- imtringued 7y agoI'd say obscurity is a core part behind the idea of using Minecraft for this. Unless someone builds a tool to search books in Minecraft worlds there is no way to automatically verify if the world contains government critical information. You'd have to go inside the virtual library and read every single book. Compared to that a wikipedia mirror would just be instantly blocked because a government crawler is searching for keywords and blocking DNS access to the crawled sites.
- wutwutwutwut 7y agoIt will be blocked in China if enough people access it. Would probably take some guy 2 minutes to add the IP address to their blacklist.
- lihaciudaniel 7y agoThe minecraft server: visit.uncensoredlibrary.com
- wutwutwutwut 7y agoWonder how long this will be accessible from China.
- judge2020 7y agoThis was brought up last time, it most likely doesn't work for China https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22569524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22569524.
- wyclif 7y agoThank you, this is the first time I've seen anybody mention the specific server. The article oddly avoids specifying the Minecraft server, instead linking to the offsite map.
- qubex 7y agoPrevious conversation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22569178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22569178
- saagarjha 7y agoHow do you read the books? Or is this just a structure?
- goda90 7y agoMinecraft has books that you can type into and read later.
- DonHopkins 7y agoUnfortunately the font and the amount of text per page leaves something to be desired.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bigdict 7y agoAs a Russian, it’s puzzling to me that grani.ru was thought to be worthy of commemoration. The website is a hysterical tabloid offering predictable, biased hot takes on Russian politics. Its only questionable merit is that it was illegally blocked by the authorities.
- jnz666 7y agoAn odd choice, I agree. They should've archived https://putinism.wordpress.com/ https://putinism.wordpress.com/ instead.
- gowld 7y agoLetting authoriries bann "bad" content makes it easier to ban you when they decide you are bad.
- bigdict 7y agoNo one "let" them do it, they just did it, illegally.
- 6510 7y agoMaybe that is the idea? To serve as a warning.
- badrabbit 7y agoCan they host it on ipfs,that can help with censorhsip a bit
- duskwuff 7y agoNo. IPFS cannot replace real-time network protocols like the Minecraft client/server protocol.
- agumonkey 7y ago1) applause for idea and realization 2) slight scepticism, how is this information curated ? can someone infect the pool by injecting bogus news ? 3) the idea of video game players crawling through virtual worlds to acquire real knowledge.. is the most poetic idea in game I heard in 10 years
- teekert 7y agoYeah, so cool, it's like Ready Player 1 meets Greg Egan's Truth Mines [0] [0] https://everything2.com/title/Truth+Mines https://everything2.com/title/Truth+Mines
- sooheon 7y agoGreg Egan's short stories have been just the right dosage of mind-blowing for me, I'm a little intimidated by his more esoteric books, to be honest.
- zamadatix 7y ago#2 is impossible to satisfy, even moreso without ruining the states goal of the project.
- Ghjklov 7y ago>2) slight scepticism, how is this information curated ? can someone infect the pool by injecting bogus news ? I think your skepticism is genuine but it just makes me think about how long it will be until this library get's banned, cancelled, and censored because they found some small percentage of fake information that could've been planted by literally anyone for fun or by state actors who have the incentive. This library was created for a reason.
- mrguyorama 7y agoMinecraft servers can prevent visitors from modifying anything.
- oefrha 7y ago> the idea of video game players crawling through virtual worlds to acquire real knowledge.. is the most poetic idea in game I heard in 10 years Poetic, sure. There’s also the way more mundane yet infinitely more effective method of just using a goddamn VPN, which gives you access to the whole internet instead of a random collection curated by activists. The architecture is amazing, though.
- catalogia 7y agoI find this library rather hard to navigate. The in-game space the minecraft library building occupies is enormous, larger than some real life cities I think. The mods are teleporting people around the map on request, but I think there are ways to automate that.
- Melting_Harps 7y ago> Minecraft has books that you can type into and read later. That's pretty amazing, its like a modern, digital version of The Library of Alexandria.
- jfkebwjsbx 7y agoI don't know, it was already in very old, popular massive-multiplayer games like Ultima Online.
- Zitrax 7y agoThey are limited in length though, max 12800 characters per book.
- xhkkffbf 7y agoThis is nice. The architecture is gorgeous. Has anyone talked about adding the US authors who are being canceled? Like Charles Murray? Woody Allen? Harvey Weinstein (if he ever writes anything)? All headed for the memory hole.
- ColanR 7y agoI don't know what those people have written, but I agree. It's important to save the work of authors we disagree with, just as much the work of authors we approve of. Otherwise we are just as guilty of censorship. And recall, a moral justification for censorship is still censorship. I'm reminded of the apocryphal quote of Voltaire, "I may not agree with what you say, but I with defend to the death your right to say it."
- jrochkind1 7y agoI believe they are all still easily readable both on the internet and at physical libraries, no? My local library has many copies of every Woody Allen book, for instance.
- xhkkffbf 7y agoOh no. Not everyone. He can't even get a publisher for his newest. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/woody-allen-gets-canceled-again/ https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/woody-allen-gets-cance...
- _jal 7y agoHe can publish on Minecraft.
- HenryBemis 7y agoAlthough I am in favour of them printing what they want, let's keep their poison away from children, unless Minecraft has age restrictions in their library.
- 7y ago
- zem 7y agopeople who play minecraft, how do you actually add a document to a map? and how do players read it? i.e. what is the physical experience of doing this, from both the upload and the reading end.
- mceachen 7y agoYou can create paper, books, and signposts with the crafting table. Books contain text that can be viewed and edited. Edit: FWIW, MC books display a tiny amount of text at a time, and it's pretty laborious to read even a couple sentences. This really isn't an effort to provide access to censored content as much as it is a beautiful MC build.
- aquova 7y agoThere are books that can be placed on pedestals and read. Unless something has changed, the upload still requires manual entry, and according to the Minecraft wiki, you are limited to 12,800 characters (still quite a lot). As for reading, everyone is reading the same "page" at a time, so if someone turns the page, everyone is forced to change the page (pages being about 300 characters).
- dmix 7y agoThat sounds like a less than ideal UI, to put it politely. It obviously wasn’t designed for this sort of thing so I’m not pointing at Minecraft or expect them to support downloading random ebooks in a game interface. I’m also guessing this is hosted on a 3rd party server? Could the hosts be individually blocked?
- aquova 7y agoIt's not ideal. I looked around on this server a few days ago, and almost always had to share a book with someone else who was flipping through pages. The server was limited to 100 users at a time, so it wasn't chaos, but I do think downloading the map and reading the documents offline is definitely ideal if you're just there for the content (although it does lose some of the appeal of being a "library" this way).
- mikelyons 7y agoTo join the minecraft server: visit.uncensoredlibrary.com
- warent 7y agoNot to be "that guy" but I've always felt like Minecraft is largely a waste of creative energy and time that could be spent toward more tangible artistic creations like music or real life sculpting. Anyway, the point here being that I'm really blown away by this project and it has definitely given me a completely new way of looking at Minecraft to revise my old opinions.
- LeoTinnitus 7y agoIt's really just modern day Legos. Personally I hate when people say time could've been better spent elsewhere. Universally people agree, however universally people equally would rather have fun than work.
- DonHopkins 7y agoExactly! Minecraft saves huge amounts of time pawing through legos to find just the right block in just the right color, so it's a net win! ;) Plus you can's accidentally step on Minecraft blocks in your bare feet.
- em-bee 7y agoi rather have my kids play minecraft/minetest than just watch TV
- gowld 7y agoMinecraft isn't real life? Are players off in some imaginary astral plane? Why is music or sculpture inherently better?
- Kaze404 7y agoI'm glad you're open to changing your mind. I'm no artist myself, but Minecraft definitely lets me express some of my creative aspect that capitalism reprehends.
- 6510 7y agoI too had a million monkeys with typewriters type of experience looking at this
- black_puppydog 7y agoReal men choose a random seed that already contains the library!
- aquova 7y agoI went and looked around on the Minecraft map for a while. As a censorship bypassing tool, I think it leaves a little to be desired. The library has a main atrium discussing censorship levels in each country and how freedoms are being curtailed in each. There are also 6 halls (one for Vietnam, Russia, Egypt, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia, as well as one for the Uncensored Library) that actually contain censored documents in those countries, but each only had two or three, both in their native language and in English. There really wasn't much content. Instead, the library serves more like a digital art exhibit, showcasing some of the struggles around the world. The architecture is really something, I would almost argue it's too grandiose, the main atrium is too large for the game to render at once, even on the furthest render settings, unless you actually stop to let it all pop in for about a minute. I was impressed by it, and if they continue to add additional documents I think it would really be impactful and useful.
- techslave 7y agoso, just the message itself isn’t impactful and helpful? i’d say it is.
- a1369209993 7y agoNo. No it is not. Impactful and helpful, in the context of censorship, means that it causes censorship to not work. Eg by giving victims access to copies of the censored works.
- ardy42 7y ago> There are also 6 halls (one for Vietnam, Russia, Egypt, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia, as well as one for the Uncensored Library) that actually contain censored documents in those countries I'm surprised by the omission of China, because it's probably the poster child for modern day political censorship. Is Minecraft censored there or something?
- chipperyman573 7y agoYes https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Minecraft_China https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Minecraft_China
- anderspitman 7y agoMinecraft is essentially a coarse CAD tool with an approachable UX.
- TheDesolate0 7y agoand all this media attention is going to kill it.
- jccooper 7y agoIt's an awareness project, so I think it's really the opposite.
- smitty1e 7y agoOh, I thought they were embedding stories in blocks.
- DonHopkins 7y agoBooks are just another kind of block, with some text data, so effectively they are. The architecture, the dome, the world map, and the flags, all made out of regular colored blocks, speak louder than words.
- dang 7y agoIt was posted a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22569178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22569178
- dorkwood 7y agoCan someone who is more familiar with Minecraft explain how the physical structure of something like this gets built? Is it by placing blocks one by one, or using some third-party program and then importing it into the game?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pirocks 7y agoMcedit is a popular program for large scale building. Additionally a lot of players use various mods which provide things like mirrored modes(so if your structure has symmetry you do an order of magnitude less work). A lot of massive structures are built by hand though. It's not as bad as it looks to build something massive by hand if you have a lot of detail in what you are building(the best builds always have lots of detail). Stuff like westeroscraft is mostly built by hand with some mods.
- lainga 7y agoHasn't MCEdit not been updated since the Aqua update?
- pirocks 7y agoI don't use it so it may have become out of date without me realising.
- saddestcatever 7y agoCorrect, MCEdit is an amazing tool, but hasn't worked for a few versions ever since they updated the way in which blocks were stored....
- dreary_dugong 7y agoIt depends. In most cases it's definitely one by one, but external tools do exist. Tools like World Painter, MCedit, and the server side mod World Edit especially are used in large scale projects. https://www.worldpainter.net/ https://www.worldpainter.net/ https://www.mcedit.net/ https://www.mcedit.net/ https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/worldedit https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/worldedit
- joejohnson 7y agoWhat’s in the US wing?
- dreary_dugong 7y agoIt's important to note that this will not easily benefit the people of China. China has its own edition of Minecraft which is not compatible with servers running the mainstream edition. https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Minecraft_China https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Minecraft_China Earlier Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22569178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22569178
- 867-5309 7y agoI think the only reason the Chinese edition exists is because most Chinese people aren't bothered by censorship. the main reason they might want to tunnel outside the Great Firewall is if they are bothered by censorship. any Chinese person who can read English and use a VPN is "free" to download and use the official Minecraft. but doing so labels them an activist, spy, traitor, etc. it's like trying to play games on a school computer, if there's a will there's a way. I appreciate the effort but if you want to learn anonymously, it would be much easier to use Tor and Wikipedia
- brian_herman 7y agoI thought they encoded actual banned books into the map. This is cool though it looks really nice.
- liquidify 7y agoIsn't this the kind of thing that will inevitably cause Minecraft to get banned in certain countries?