Hey all, Brad here.

Way back in 2008, the original GameCritics.com Podcast was an audio project started by some of the earliest members of GC.

Hosted by the incomparable Tim Spaeth, the first episode starred owner and founder Chi Kong Lui, the “Horror Geek” Mike Bracken, and yours truly. Together we launched into the world of podcasting and turned out a good number of shows over the years. It eventually ended for various reasons and So Videogames took its place, but every so often I’ll get a request from a past listener asking where they can catch the original GC pod again.

Not the easiest question to answer!

Several years ago GameCritics changed hosting services, and at the time there was no easy way to bring all of the content over. It got done in a rough sort of way, but there was a ton of manual cleanup to do on the files and many of the pieces we thought were successfully transferred ended up corrupted and unusable.

One of the casualties was the GC pod.

None of the pages listing the shows were functional, but all was not lost — almost all of the files were still there, so I went through and saved as many as I could, and then they sat on a hard drive in my desk for quite some time.

I had always intended to go back and restore functionality to all of the shows, but it was a herculean task to take on by myself in addition to maintaining the day-to-day running of GC and all of the real-life stuff I have going on… Little things like earning a living and being a parent to my child.

But, today’s the day. After getting another request for access to the show, I think the time may be right to finally get it done.

The plan is to post at least a couple every week — no frills, but they’ll be able to be heard again, and all of the fans who want to go back and revisit those golden days will finally be able to do so.

You’ll find them in one central location here at GC, but one potential thing to be aware of is that the audio files themselves will be hosted in the same places where SVG is held. I don’t want to pay for or manage a second channel and this needs to be as easy as possible, so folks who subscribe to SVG via podcast apps and such will see the old GC episodes popping up as well.

I apologize in advance for any inconvenience, but I think it’s a small price to pay to make these shows available to all of the folks who’ve been asking over the years. If you’re not keen on hearing the old stuff, just delete it and a new SVG will be at the top of your list before you know it.

…Or hey, maybe give them a listen and see what we were up to all those years ago! ; )

Last year, publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley sued the Internet Archive for copyright infringement. The publishers alleged that Internet Archive's Open Library project had no right to digitally lend the 127 books named in the suit. Judge John Koeltl ruled in the publisher's favor. — Read the rest

The post Internet Archive forced to remove half a million books appeared first on Boing Boing.

Enlarge (credit: Tim Macpherson | Image Source)

As a result of book publishers successfully suing the Internet Archive (IA) last year, the free online library that strives to keep growing online access to books recently shrank by about 500,000 titles.

IA reported in a blog post this month that publishers abruptly forcing these takedowns triggered a "devastating loss" for readers who depend on IA to access books that are otherwise impossible or difficult to access.

To restore access, IA is now appealing, hoping to reverse the prior court's decision by convincing the US Court of Appeals in the Second Circuit that IA's controlled digital lending of its physical books should be considered fair use under copyright law. An April court filing shows that IA intends to argue that the publishers have no evidence that the e-book market has been harmed by the open library's lending, and copyright law is better served by allowing IA's lending than by preventing it.

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