ibiblio launches torrents, but loses sight of the goal

ibiblio, the famous Internet library and archive, recently launched a project to distribute content via bittorrent, a protocol which is very efficient at distributing large files over the Internet. Unfortunately, ibiblio missed an opportunity to set themselves apart from the many who use bittorrent to distribute content of dubious legality, by completely failing to include any kind of licensing information.

A random example is their speaker series, containing a raft of people I know to be both excellent speakers and supporters good licensing practise. Their presentations are being distributed with "License(s): None", which presumably translates into "we believe we have a (perhaps implicit) licence to distribute this content, but no record to hand of what that license might be."

Don't get me wrong, there is no doubt in my mind that ibiblio have a licence to distribute this content, it is just a shame to see them not taking this sterling opportunity to take the high moral and legal ground on this.