Carl Malamud - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Carl Malamud (born 1959) is a technologist, author, and public domain advocate, known for his foundation public.resource.org. He was the founder of the Internet Multicasting Service. During his time with this group, he was responsible for creating the first Internet radio station,[1] for putting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's EDGAR database on-line,[2] and for creating the Internet 1996 World Exposition.[3]

Malamud is the author of eight books, including Exploring the Internet and A World's Fair.[4][5] He was a visiting professor at the MIT Media Laboratory and was the former chairman of the Internet Software Consortium. He also was the co-founder of Invisible Worlds, was a fellow at the Center for American Progress, and was a board member of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation.[6][7]

Malamud set up the nonprofit public.resource.org, headquartered in Sebastopol, California, to work for the publication of public domain information from local, state, and federal government agencies.[8] Among his achievements have been digitizing 588 government films for the Internet Archive and YouTube,[9] publishing a 5 million page crawl of the Government Printing Office,[10] and persuading the state of Oregon to not assert copyright over its legislative statutes.[11] He has also been active in challenging the state of California's copyright claims on state laws by publishing copies of the criminal, building, and plumbing codes online.[12]

He has also challenged the information management policy of Smithsonian Networks, convinced C-SPAN to liberalize its video archive access policy, and begun publishing court decisions.[13][14][15][16][17] In 2009 he proposed himself, through the "Yes We Scan" campaign, as the Public Printer of the U.S., the head of the Government Printing Office.[18] He is leading an effort, under the banner of Law.gov, to bring online all primary legal materials (including legal codes and case law) for open public access.

An early Internet pioneer, he is the author of many early books about networking such as Analyzing Novell Networks and DEC Networks and Architectures.[19][20]

1. ^"Internet Talk Radio". museum.media.org. Retrieved 2010-05-30. 
2. ^"Securities and Exchange Commission". public.resource.org. Retrieved 2010-05-30. 
3. ^"Internet 1996 World Exposition". Retrieved 2010-05-30. 
4. ^Malamud, Carl (September 1992). Exploring the Internet: A Technical Travelogue. Prentice Hall. p. 379. ISBN 0-13-296898-3. 
5. ^Malamud, Carl (August 8, 1997). A World's Fair for the Global Village. The MIT Press. p. 304. ISBN 0-262-13338-5. 
6. ^Baker, Mitchell (2006-11-22). "Bob Lisbonne and Carl Malamud Join the Mozilla Foundation Board". The Weblog of Mitchell Baker. Retrieved 2008-05-27. 
7. ^Baker, Mitchell (2007-05-22). "Carl Malamud and Public.Resource.Org". The Weblog of Mitchell Baker. Retrieved 2008-05-27. 
8. ^http://public.resource.org/about/
9. ^http://public.resource.org/ntis.gov/index.html
10. ^http://public.resource.org/gpo.gov/index.html
11. ^http://public.resource.org/oregon.gov/index.html
12. ^Halverson, Nathan. "He's giving you access, one document at a time". The Press Democrat. Retrieved 2008-09-04. 
13. ^O'Reilly, Tim (2006-04-05). "Smithsonian Sunshine". O'Reilly Media, Inc. Retrieved 2008-05-27. 
14. ^Malamud, Carl (2006-05-25). Testimony of Carl Malamud. Hearing on Smithsonian Institution Business Ventures. United States House of Representatives. Retrieved 2008-05-27 
15. ^Fallows, James (2007-03-09). "Another win for Carl Malamud (or: news you won't see in the May 2007 issue of the Atlantic)". The Atlantic.com. Retrieved 2008-05-27. 
16. ^Malamud, Carl (2007-02-27). "Congressional Hearings, Fair Use, and the Public Domain". public.resource.org. Retrieved 2008-05-27. 
17. ^Markoff, John (2007-08-20). "A Quest to Get More Court Rulings Online, and Free". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-05-27. 
18. ^Doctorow, Cory (2009-02-25). "Yes We Scan! Carl Malamud for Public Printer of the USA". 
19. ^Malamud, Carl (July 1992). Analyzing Novell Networks (2nd ed.). Van Nostrand Reinhold. p. 340. ISBN 0-442-01302-7. 
20. ^Malamud, Carl (February 1989). Dec Networks and Architectures. J. Ranade Dec Series. Intertext Publications. p. 472. ISBN 0-07-039822-4.