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

13 March 2020

It started out as a concept in a community forum 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 thought of.

The hub of free speech has taken on the legendary game, which involved placing Lego-like blocks in the same space with more than 145,000,000 players every month, and transformed it into an icon.

A virtual library was meticulously created to host articles written by journalists which were later censored online.

You can find the work of Jamal Khashoggi (the journalist who was killed by Saudi agents in 2018), among many other books in the library.

Minecraft has not yet made a comment.

The Minecraft project was initiated 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 the design studio Blockworks.

Christian Mihr, the executive director of Reporters Without Borders Germany, said that Minecraft was a worthy project because he doesn't believe it is a threat to governments that control their media.

He stated that Minecraft was chosen due to its accessibility. "It is available in every country. The game is not subject to censorship as other games that are believed to be political.

"There are large communities in each of the countries featured and that's the reason the idea was born - it is a loophole for censorship."

He explained that the authors were selected to represent countries where press was censored in order that people from these communities could access their work.

However, he clarified that permissions were sought prior to republishing in the library.

"We did not put any material into the library without the consent of the authors involved in the event that they're still alive.

"In the Jamal Khashoggi case we spoke with family members - in regard of those who have passed away, and the safety their families."

Nick Feamster, Neubauer Professor of Computer Science, at the University of Chicago, stated to the BBC that the library was able to beat censors, but was concerned about the reaction of governments.

He said it was an interesting idea however, there were some issues. Governments will be aware and the articles are being circulated across the internet. It's not foolproof against an aggressive enemy.

He stated that the strength of the library was due to its use of entanglement mixing up the censored material with the video game in the eyes of censors.

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

Meanwhile Helmi Noman who is a Research Affiliate of the Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society said that he believed that the library would be likely to have an audience that is limited.

He said that "censored content is constantly changing and diverse" and that people prefer strategies that don't require preselection or separate content into specific areas on the internet.

"Any strategy that doesn't offer a seamless and safe browsing experience across entire web, social media and direct messaging applications will most likely fail."

The server, which hosts a maximum of 100 players at once, was regularly inaccessible due to how many players were trying to log on at once. Despite this limit on concurrent users, it has been visited by 3,889 players from 75 different countries and downloaded over 7,000 times.

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

SoulfulGenie stated that they believed "it requires more books as well as a new section on North Korea" and another user called it "ingenious in many ways", adding that, since the library can be downloaded and reuploaded by others, "it is easy to replicate and therefore hard to kill".

ReduxPL said that the library "looks amazing indeed".

Blockworks took 250 hours to design the library which was completed by 24 people from 16 countries.

James Delaney, Managing Director of the design firm, told the BBC that the aim was to create a classic design that was "on the border of fantasy".

He said it was plausible as a building, but is pushing the limits of possible.

"We decided to design the library that is in the neoclassical style. It's very similar to the British Museum or New York's public libraries.

He said that Minecraft was improvisational in its foundation, meaning that builders were not restricted to following a specific design.

"With many people working on the same project," he said, "people see each others' work and must respond in real time. It's a reactive way of working, and it can alter the appearance of the project.

"The style is chosen to represent authority and power - we wanted to turn that on its head.
minecraft-servers.site

"It's not a symbol of the power of either the regime or the government. It's representing freedom of expression."

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