This year, countless celebrities were threatening to move to Canada should Donald Trump be elected to office. While these promises were broken once America propelled the Orange One into the White House, there are still active threats to move to the Great White North. No, we're not talking about Lena Dunham, Bryan Cranston, or even Snoop Dogg. Heck, we're not even talking about a living and breathing person. In a surprising turn of events, the internet is planning to move to Canada...well, sort of.
Non-profit organization, The Internet Archive, is setting up a mirror site in Canada, where it will store vast amounts of digital information from all over the web. The move was made after the company expressed concern regarding Trump's reign in the the United States. The Internet Archive, which is based in America, says that they're worried about what the GOP leader will do to online freedom, and have been actively working to prepare for the worst-case scenario.
Earlier this week, Internet Archive founder, Brewster Kahle, sat down with CBC Radio to further explain the situation. "We don't know what is going to happen. We can just take the candidate, now president-elect Trump at his word," Kahle told listeners of Radio West. "His statements about privacy and surveillance, net neutrality, freedom of the press, closing up part of the internet — at least we should take him at his word at this point".
During the final weeks of his campaign, Trump made statements in which he pledged to "open up libel laws". These moves would allow public figures like himself, to be able to sue press outlets more easily. This action would also mean that the president-elect would likely modify the first amendment rights of American citizens, saturating freedom of speech in general.
Kahle and his Internet Archive, have spent years setting up an online database with millions of videos, books, music, and more. The library also contains gateways to billions of webpages. Now, the organization is looking to work with Canadian universities to establish their mirror site north of the border, where it's safe from America's potential grip on censorship. While it is unlikely that Trump will eliminate digital freedom, the archivists aren't taking any chances.
