Michael Menna on Protecting Public Knowledge and Why Digital Rights for Libraries Matter to Everyone: A Serious Insights Interview

Today, with endless internet access and fast AI growth, a quiet problem is growing in how we store information. In the past, libraries bought physical books, newspapers, and objects. They kept them safe for everyone, forever. The move from buying physical copies to renting digital access means libraries no longer own their collections. Instead, they are just temporary subscribers.

When online platforms change their rules, remove public records, or take away digital rights, large parts of shared history and knowledge can disappear overnight.

To understand this digital memory loss, I spoke with Michael Menna. Michael earned his law degree at Stanford, clerked for a federal appeals court, and is stepping up to teach future lawyers as a fellow at the University of Michigan Law School. He works with the Internet Archive and co-wrote a paper in The Political Librarian. Menna is also part of Our Future Memory, a project fighting for the digital rights of libraries and archives.

In this interview, we discuss why losing digital records is a major risk, how corporate control threatens trust, and why workplace knowledge managers should use library standards to protect their files.

Top takeaways from the interview:

• Keep Control of Your Own Content: Make sure you own and store your core files yourself, rather than relying solely on third-party software vendors or platforms that can change their terms.
• Focus on Long-Term Keeping, Not Just Short-Term Viewing: Check software contracts carefully to ensure your team can easily save, move, and get back its original data over time.
• Set Clear Standards for Quality: Establish strict rules to verify information before adding it to your systems, rather than blindly trusting automated online sources.
• Prepare Knowledge Systems for AI Tools: To use AI effectively in content processes, organizations must first establish strong content governance and clear workflows. AI tools rely on structured metadata and taxonomy to accurately find, tag, and reuse information across different platforms. Without clear ownership of your data assets and well-defined governance policies, enterprise AI applications risk drawing on incomplete, unverified, or restricted content.

The Michael Menna interview

In your paper in The Political Librarian, you explain that missing history is not just a library problem, but a large public issue. How did this happen?

We face a big contradiction: today’s technology lets us make and share more information than ever, but keeping that information accessible has gotten much harder. In the past, when a library bought a printed book, it owned that copy forever. It could lend it, protect it, and fix it without asking the publisher for permission.

Renting digital access changed all of that. Publishers no longer sell digital files to libraries; they rent short-term passes that expire or can be canceled. This gives companies full power to decide what stays online, who can read it, and for how long. When platforms close, quietly edit files, or wipe out web pages, we lose reliable facts.

You pointed out four main areas where temporary digital access causes real harm. Can you explain them?

Absolutely. The crisis shows up across four major areas:

1. School and Learning Materials: Textbooks are rented under strict rules. For example, publisher Wiley suddenly removed 1,300 e-books right before classes started at George Washington University, leaving students and teachers without their books.

2. News and Accurate Reporting: Digital news can be edited or deleted very easily. When online news sites close down or erase old articles, important historical records vanish.

3. Community Groups and History: Local civic groups rely heavily on social media and web pages. When platforms delete video archives or comments to satisfy companies or governments, community history is lost.

4. Science and Environmental Records: Science depends on saving data over many years. When public databases or environmental tools (like the EPA’s EJScreen) are suddenly taken down, researchers lose the facts they need to do their work.

In your paper, you write that we are moving from owning books to renting access from large corporate groups. How does that affect public trust?

Many digital publishers have shifted from selling books to running locked platforms. They track what people read and turn information into a temporary, monitored product.

This harms trust. However, public libraries remain among the most trusted spaces we have. Even when communities debate library books or programs, that debate shows that people still care about libraries as fair, reliable places for community life.

The Our Future Memory project created the Statement on Digital Rights for Protecting Memory Institutions Online. What are these rights, and why do libraries need them?

The statement sets out four basic rights that libraries always had with physical items and still need online:

1. To Collect: The right to buy and keep digital items, instead of being forced to rent temporary packages.
2. To Preserve: The right to back up, copy, and update file types so data does not break or become unusable over time.
3. To Provide Access: The right to lend digital books safely to people over the internet.
4. To Work Together: The right for libraries to share and lend digital files across networks without restrictive contracts.

These rights are simple and clear. They bring the traditional rules of libraries into the digital age.

Businesses face similar risks with team databases and digital archives. How can corporate technology leaders support these preservation efforts?

The core challenge for businesses is fundamentally the same as it is for public libraries. When companies rely entirely on cloud platforms, third-party software vendors, and rented server space to host their vital data, they expose themselves to severe digital amnesia. Critical corporate memory, internal documentation, and intellectual property can vanish instantly if licensing contracts change, subscription fees rise, or SaaS providers suddenly shut down or alter their terms of service.

It is also important to note that the Statement on Digital Rights extends well beyond public libraries to protect a full spectrum of memory institutions, including museums, historical societies, and archives. The initiative originally emerged from the Internet Archive’s Library Leaders forum. It developed out of a foundational report on e-book access challenges titled “Securing Digital Library Rights,” synthesizing feedback across multiple workshops to address digital preservation issues across all cultural institutions.

Dan Rasmus, founder of Serious Insights, often speaks at events like Comic-Con about saving digital files in relation to web comics, digital art, and pop culture. How does preserving these digital files connect to broader cultural preservation?

When local libraries support digital rights, it shows why they are needed to save all parts of culture. Online art—like web comics, self-published books, and digital drawings—is easy to lose. If a site shuts down, that work can disappear completely. Without digital rights, we risk losing entire generations of digital art.

Technology teams should use these four rights when buying software and planning systems. Before buying a tool, ask: Do we own our data? Can we save and move our files if we change systems? Or are we building our team’s work on rented space?

What can groups do today to make sure our digital records are not lost?

We invite all libraries, archives, museums, and historical groups to sign the Statement on Digital Rights at OurFutureMemory.org. It costs nothing and carries no legal risk, but signing together gives us a stronger voice to ask for better legal protections and fairer terms.

About Michael Menna

Michael Menna is a legal scholar holding a J.D./Ph.D. from Stanford University. He previously clerked for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and is an incoming Visiting Faculty Fellow at the University of Michigan Law School. An active contributor to the Internet Archive, Menna is a key advocate and spokesperson for the Our Future Memory campaign and co-author of the Statement on Digital Rights for Protecting Memory Institutions Online.

Read or download The Political Threats of Vanishing Culture and the Need to Protect Our Future Memory paper co-authored by Michael.

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