# Can all information be found online? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 27, 2017, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884 "2017-11-27T18:50:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2017, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/61 "2017-11-30T23:04:56Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > My apologies to Google if they tried to do a good thing but got their arm twisted through no fault of their own. Is there anything they could have done in advance to avoid such problems, or anything they can do now to resolve them? Didn’t notice this before. [There are tons of articles about it on-line](https://www.google.com/search?ei=S40gWtvNLIrijwTWgpLYBw&q=Authors+Guild+v.+Google). The Wikipedia page gives a good summary. [Here](https://www.authorsguild.org/where-we-stand/authors-guild-v-google/) is the hissy fitter’s POV. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2017, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/62 "2017-11-30T23:09:55Z")
The key phrase is “An arrangement between private parties that would affect the status of so many books, he observed, would be more properly made by Congress.” That’s the end of the case. Congress has to declare that google doing this is legal and define the restrictions better. ---
**Author:** ![excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e8c25b/32.png) [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/excavating_for_a_mind)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2017, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/63 "2017-11-30T23:36:34Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > I was talking with an old friend of mine from Texas last night about Texas music. He asked me if I remembered the song, “Blah Blah Blah”. I’d heard it before so this morning I tried googling it. I found this thread: [Where's this song (or 'Things you can't Google') - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=588560) from 2010. I tried find a way to buy it online but didn’t have any more luck that the OP. So the internet doesn’t have that… > > ETA: It’s this one: [Blah, Blah, Blah Chords — Sam Oaks | CowboyLyrics.com](https://www.cowboylyrics.com/tabs/sam-oaks/blah-blah-blah-27335.html) > > Other searcher: [https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060620231445AAYmOK6](https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060620231445AAYmOK6) There is a song by Skip James called Illinois Blues, recorded back in the 1930’s, that has the line “If you go to Banglin’, tell all my boys about the time I had in Illinois”. The only reason I know about this is that it was covered by Peter Keane (among others) and is on a CD I listen to fairly often (well, it’s in my library of music and it gets played from time to time). Just listening to the song, I couldn’t tell if it was “England” or what, so I looked it up online. I found recordings of the song and printed lyrics, but noting to indicate where “Banglin’” was, what it was, or even if it was a real place. I searched and googled and bing’d (or whatever you call it). Best I could do was find some lyrics that had a footnote by the word "Banglin’ ", but the transcribed lyrics had no footnote. Eventually I found out what it was, but it was a bit difficult and I suspect that bit of information is about to be lost to the world simply because these automatic transcription services didn’t keep up with the footnotes. > [@Slash1972](#): > > My PIN is 4 digits. There is no difference between storing the PIN or storing the hash. > > What about that “k of p in a dpb” or whatever it was? That doesn’t seem to be online. In the hope that someone will finally find an answer, the real puzzle is “14 K of G on a F P D” . Maybe someone will eventually figure it out, then I can die. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2017, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/64 "2017-12-01T02:23:05Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Don’t blame Google for all that information not being available to the public–blame the Writer’s Guild of America for throwing a hissy fit to stop them. I happen to think that the court decision in this case was a pretty good one, but maybe you can clear up your position here. Are you contending that it would be reasonable to allow Google not only to scan, in full, works still protected by copyright, but to make the totality of those works available to anyone who wants them? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2017, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/65 "2017-12-01T11:39:42Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > Are you contending that it would be reasonable to allow Google not only to scan, in full, works still protected by copyright, but to make the totality of those works available to anyone who wants them? It sure as hell would be reasonable to have more than just the “snippet view.” Many in-copyright books let you see a sample of several full pages from the book (while leaving most of them hidden.) The option of just showing a sentence or two from the whole book is just idiotic. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2017, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/66 "2017-12-01T16:26:50Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > Are you contending that it would be reasonable to allow Google not only to scan, in full, works still protected by copyright, but to make the totality of those works available to anyone who wants them? I think the public good would be served by google in some way allowing users to : a. Search every published book in their language and get some indication as to what the book contains relevant to their topic of interest. Maybe, to avoid the issue of showing whole pages that might tell users all they actually need to know, it could be an AI agent that tells them data derived from the book’s text. b. License that book for a reasonable fee so they can read it in it’s entirety. Including out of print books. ---
**Author:** ![Washoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ecae2f/32.png) [@Washoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Washoe)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2017, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/67 "2017-12-02T01:53:45Z")
> [@erysichthon](#): > > Oh, and don’t get me started on the people who claim to have a USB drive containing “every song ever written.” They do. It’s a [Gordon Lightfoot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utp2XYEPnYY) compilation. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2017, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/68 "2017-12-02T03:43:32Z")
I have also been unable to find a decent map, or any decent information about the names of features on the far side of the moon. Didn’t Azamov write an article on the subject? I get nada. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2017, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/69 "2017-12-02T03:53:56Z")
> [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](#): > > I have also been unable to find a decent map, or any decent information about the names of features on the far side of the moon. [Here you go](https://www.google.com/moon/). ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2017, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/70 "2017-12-02T03:57:43Z")
Not the far side. Further, I was hoping for something I could site to help the poor, sad Wiki-page on the subject. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2017, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/71 "2017-12-02T04:01:49Z")
> [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](#): > > Not the far side. Yes, it is. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2017, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/72 "2017-12-02T04:24:44Z")
And if you don’t want Google Moon, there is [this](https://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/mapcatalog/LMP/lmp2/300dpi.jpg) and [this](https://the-moon.wikispaces.com/Maurice+Collins'+Farside+Map) and [this](http://www.fullmoonatlas.com/sections/farside.shtml) and really [no shortage of material](https://www.google.com/search?q=lunar+far+side+maps). ---
**Author:** ![Ispolkom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e47774/32.png) [@Ispolkom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ispolkom)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2017, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/73 "2017-12-03T22:23:03Z")
> [@sbunny8](#): > > There was an episode of Law & Order where a young lawyer complained about having to search, by hand, printed law books published prior to 1990. The second lawyer commented that no one wanted the job of taking all that old information and typing it into a computer. Optical Character Recognition, my boy, or girl. The funny thing is that the original source matters, and the older sources are better. In a recent project, we found that 19th century law texts (that were Linotyped, I assume) were much better read by OCR than 1980s offset published texts. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2017, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/74 "2017-12-04T13:05:31Z")
> [@erysichthon](#): > > Oh, and don’t get me started on the people who claim to have a USB drive containing “every song ever written.” A friend of mine ran a computer store for a while and had a customer come in wanting him to put “the Internet” on his 3.5 inch floppy. He referred the guy to ICANN. This was in 1997 so I imagine the ratio of information available to storage capacity would have been higher then than today’s, even with thumb drives. > [@Ispolkom](#): > > Optical Character Recognition, my boy, or girl. The funny thing is that the original source matters, and the older sources are better. In a recent project, we found that 19th century law texts (that were Linotyped, I assume) were much better read by OCR than 1980s offset published texts. If only it was that easy. Distributed Proofreaders takes the OCR-derived files from Project Gutenberg and turns them into the final product. There are [seven steps](https://www.pgdp.net/d/walkthrough/01_Hub.htm) in the process and the first three are just proofreading – comparing the text file with the scanned page image. Despite all that, there are still errors. While easier than typing, I doubt you’re going to find volunteers to do all that for lawyers. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2017, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/75 "2017-12-04T13:19:54Z")
Answer is uncertain: [http://bfy.tw/FNVm](http://bfy.tw/FNVm) ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/76 "2017-12-07T00:30:42Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/77 "2017-12-07T10:52:17Z")
One that cannot be found online is populations of US cities and towns from previous censuses. I had a 1950s Road Atlas with a population gazetteer from the 1950 census, a treasury of information I could not find anywhere on line, except a few isolated figures that somebody thought to include in the town’s Wiki page. For towns of over 5,000, these population figures can be found in any old World Almanac in the past century. However, populations for counties can be found in this site: [http://data.nber.org/census/pop/1900-90.txt](http://data.nber.org/census/pop/1900-90.txt) ---
**Author:** ![catkabrick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@catkabrick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/catkabrick)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2017, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/78 "2017-12-09T03:35:50Z")
There’s a lot of interesting stuff here, but I’d like to address the OP from a different direction: some things simply cannot be translated into internet terms, making it inherently impossible to put _everything_ on the internet. You can read all you want–and watch the videos–but no instruction on pottery making, puppy training, or skiing can take the place of wedging clay, prying a dead toad out of fido’s back teeth, or falling down a run until you have snow up your sleeves, down your neck, and creeping up your butt. ---
**Author:** ![alindallas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f17d59/32.png) [@alindallas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alindallas)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2017, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/79 "2017-12-11T04:16:09Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#): > > What have I got in my pocket? Its handses? ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2017, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884/80 "2017-12-12T01:17:11Z")
There’s an insane amount of stuff that’s not online - not just stuff from about pre-1990, but even recent stuff. A lot of community newspapers aren’t online (or if they are, the actual newspapers aren’t), and even if it’s stored electronically it can be so poorly indexed as to be impossible to find. One of the newspapers I used to work at many years ago has been through so many editorial staff in the interim that no-one knows how to find the file jpegs of photos published in the paper from that era; they’ve got the actual papers in hardcopy but the digital files of the photos used in the stories are lost somewhere in a tangled, convoluted system and have effectively vanished into the ether as they’ll probably never be found. There’s quite a bit of a gap in the period from the early 1930s to late 1980s as well, as that stuff is still technically under copyright and in some cases no-one knows who to ask to get the OK to put it up online, or the hassle involved in digitising a library worth of old books just isn’t seen to be worth it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-all-information-be-found-online/802884.md?page=5)