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Minecraft 'loophole' Library Of Banned Journalism It started out as a game in a community forum and turned into the best-selling video game of all time However, now Minecraft is being used for something its creator would not have imagined. The center of free speech has taken the infamous game of putting Lego-like blocks with more than 145,000,000 people each month, and turned into a symbol. To host journalistic articles who were censored online The virtual library was meticulously designed. You can find the work of Jamal Khashoggi (the journalist who was murdered by Saudi agents in 2018) as well as a host of other books in the library. Minecraft has not yet made a comment. The project was created by the non-profit organisation Reporters Without Borders, which is dedicated to defending the freedom of information worldwide, and the Minecraft library was developed by the design studio Blockworks. Christian Mihr, executive director of Reporters Without Borders Germany, told the BBC that Minecraft was good for the project since he believes that it isn't considered a threat by the governments that control their media. "We chose Minecraft because of its global reach," he said. It is accessible in every nation. The game is not subject to censorship as other games suspected to be political. "There are huge communities in every country featured This is why the idea came up as a loophole for censorship." He said the authors were chosen to represent countries in which press was censored, to ensure that people from these communities could access their work. But he said that permissions were sought before publishing in the library. "We didn't put any information in the library without the permission of the authors themselves - provided they are alive. "In the case of Jamal Khashoggi we spoke with family members - in respect for those who have been killed and to ensure the security of 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 the censors but was concerned about the response of the government. He said it was an interesting idea but there were still issues. Governments will know about this as the articles are spreading all over the internet. It's not foolproof against an aggressive enemy. He stated that the strength of the library comes through its use of entanglement to mix the censored content with the video game in the eyes of censors. "By entangling these two things you oblige them to share content," he said. "You can't block this one without the other." Helmi Noman who is a Research Associate at the Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society said that he believed that the library would only have a small population. "The censored content is dynamic diverse and distributed," he said, adding that in his research "the users prefer approaches that don't pre-select or compartmentalise content in certain spaces online. "Any method that doesn't provide an unhindered and secure experience for browsing the entire web including social media, direct messaging apps will likely be unsuccessful." Due to the sheer number of players trying to log in simultaneously the server could not be regularly accessed. Despite this limit on concurrent users, it has been visited by 3,889 players from 75 different countries. It has also been downloaded over 7,000 times. After two hours of attempting, BBC finally visited the virtual library and asked its users what they thought. MINECRAFT SERVERS SoulfulGenie stated that they believe it needs more books, including an area on North Korea. Another user said it was "ingenious" and stated that the library could be downloaded and reuploaded by other users. "It is easy to replicate and therefore difficult to destroy." Meanwhile, other players focused on the look of the library and ReduxPL saying it "looks incredible indeed". Blockworks took 250 hours to design the library which was developed by 24 people from 16 different countries. James Delaney, Managing Director of the design firm, told the BBC that the goal was to create a classic design that was "on the border of fantasy". "It seems plausible as a building," he said, "but is pushing the boundaries of what is possible. "We went for a design in the neoclassical style. It's similar to the British Museum and public libraries in New York." Outside of these influences he stated that Minecraft was improvisational at its core, so the builders were not limited to pre-defined patterns. He explained that when there are a lot of people working on the same task, people can see the work of others and react in real-time. It is a reactive way of working that can change the appearance of the project.
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