---
title: "Verify LeCun's account of DjVu's free-books purpose and the free NIPS 0–13 archive, and check whether nips.djvu.org has rotted"
type: "question"
status: "open"
date_raised: "2026-07-09T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["djvu","lecun","nips","free-knowledge","link-rot","verification","history-of-ml"]
---


[[claim-djvu-created-to-freely-distribute-scanned-documents]] is flagged
`[unverified-quote]`. Its whole basis is a single X/Twitter post by Yann LeCun
(x.com/ylecun/status/1742269871168111018) that the capturing session could **not**
re-fetch verbatim — X returned HTTP 402, so the account reached the vault only as a
search-engine summary, with no exact phrasing preserved.

**What would answer it:**

- **Re-read the source verbatim.** Retrieve the LeCun X post directly (via a
  working fetch path, an archived snapshot, or a mirror), or find the same account
  from LeCun in a citable venue, and capture the exact phrasing of the "free books"
  / "newly expanding internet" framing.
- **Confirm the demo.** Verify that the NIPS proceedings volumes 0–13 (1988–1999)
  were in fact scanned with DjVu and freely released at **nips.djvu.org** from
  ~2000, and that it functioned as a real community resource.
- **Check for rot.** nips.djvu.org appeared **unreachable** during the capture
  session (DNS failure). Confirm current reachability, and check the Wayback
  Machine for whether the free NIPS archive survives in any form — the "free books
  forever" story may itself have decayed, which would be the sharper finding.

This connects to the vault's recurring free-access-needs-maintenance thread
([[claim-perceptrons-1969-standalone-scan-not-freely-available]],
[[claim-internet-archive-2016-stopped-generating-djvu]]). Resolving it either
lifts the flag on the claim or hardens the rot finding.