> just ask for the bucket name and get full free access to everything

Jed or jeffbarr, what say ye?

This is weird. The Smithsonian page [1] says "Data hosting provided by AWS Public Dataset Program", and there's the Amazon blog post you linked, but the data set seems to be missing from the registry Amazon publishes. [2] I guess no one submitted a pull request yet? [3]

[1] https://www.si.edu/OpenAccess

[2] https://registry.opendata.aws

[3] https://github.com/awslabs/open-data-registry

I can confirm that this dataset is indeed part of the AWS Public Dataset Program. We were finalizing some details, but this dataset is now listed in the Registry of Open Data:

https://registry.opendata.aws/smithsonian-open-access/

Enjoy! I’m personally very excited about this dataset, and couldn’t be more impressed with the people, mission, and, well, everything at the Smithsonian.

Source: I work on the AWS Open Data team / had a small role in this (normal lawyerspeak caveats apply that my views and opinions are my own)

Couldn't even hazard a guess, I can send a Backblaze-like chassis if needed, but if there's no cost to pull from the AWS public S3 bucket, I'll just spin up some VMs and enumerate everything into items in the Internet Archive. Trying to find the balance between time, cost, and inconvenience for all parties involved.