Notes

Minecraft 'loophole' Library Of Banned Journalism

Minecraft 'loophole' library of banned journalism Tom Gerken BBC News, Washington DC



13 March 2020



It started as a project on a forum online and then became the top-selling video game of all time However, now Minecraft is being used for something even its creator would not have imagined.



The heart of free speech has taken the infamous game, which involved placing Lego-like blocks with more than 145,000,000 people every month, and transformed it into a symbol.



A virtual library has been carefully designed to host articles written by journalists which were later censored online.



Work by Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist who was murdered by Saudi agents in 2018, can be found among the myriad of books in the library.



Minecraft declined to make a comment.



The project was developed by a non-profit organization called Reporters Without Borders, which seeks to defend the right to information in all countries, and the Minecraft library itself was created by design studio Blockworks.



Christian Mihr, executive director of Reporters Without Borders Germany, told the BBC that Minecraft was good for the project because he believes that it isn't considered an enemy by governments that censor their media.



"We have chosen Minecraft because of its reach," he said. It is available in every country. The game is not subject to censorship like some other games which are suspected of being political.



"There are large communities in all the countries included, which is why it was suggested - it's a way to circumvent the practice of censorship."



He stated that the authors were chosen to represent countries where press freedom was restricted to ensure that these communities could be able to access their work.



He also explained that permissions were sought prior republishing in the library.



"We have not uploaded any content into the library without the consent of the respective authors If they're still alive.



"In the case of Jamal Khashoggi, we spoke to family members - regarding the safety of people who have died and the safety of their families."
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Nick Feamster, Neubauer Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago He told the BBC that the library could be effective in getting past the censors, however, Feamster was concerned about how governments might react.



"It's an interesting idea," he said, "But I believe there are still some issues. Governments will know about this - the articles are going across the internet. It's not foolproof against an armed adversary.



He explained that the library's strength was due to the use of Entanglement which is the mix of the censored material and the video game in the censors' eyes.



"By linking these two things you force them to share content," he said. "You cannot censor this one without the other."



In the meantime, Helmi Noman, a Research Affiliate of the Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society, said he felt the library would likely to have only a small audience.



"The content that is censored is dynamic, diverse and distributed," he said, noting that in his research "the users prefer approaches that don't pre-select or categorize content in specific spaces online.



"Any method that doesn't provide an unhindered and secure browsing experience of the entire internet as well as social media, direct messaging apps will likely have limited success."



Due to the sheer number of players trying to log in at the same time the server was unable be accessed regularly. Despite this limit on concurrent users, it has been visited by 3,889 people from 75 different countries. It has also been downloaded more than 7,000 times.



After two hours of trying, BBC finally visited the virtual library and asked its users what they thought of it.



SoulfulGenie said that they thought "it needs more books as well as a new section on North Korea" and another user called it "ingenious in many ways", adding that, as the library may be downloaded and reuploaded by other users, "it is easy to duplicate and, consequently, difficult to destroy".



ReduxPL stated that the library "looks amazing indeed".



The design of the library developed by Blockworks was no easy feat that took a team of 24 people from 16 different countries for 250 hours to construct.



James Delaney, Managing Director of the design company, told the BBC that the company's goal was to create a classical design which was "on the border of fantasy".



"It is kind of plausible as a real building," he said, "but is pushing the boundaries of what is possible.



"We went for a design in the neoclassical style. It's very like the British Museum or New York's public libraries.



He said that Minecraft was improvisational in its foundation, meaning that builders weren't confined to following a specific design.



He said that when there are a lot of people working on the same project, "people can see each other's work and must respond in real-time." So it is a very reactive way of working, and that can change the look of the project.



"The style is chosen to represent the power and authority of the wearer We wanted to turn this on its head.



"Instead of representing the power of the government or the regime instead, it's representing the free press."



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