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They're definitely gonna go after the wayback machine next, because what use is there in controlling social media and deleting what bothers them, if there's freely accessible records of it somewhere else?
The archive needs to be protected at all costs.
AGreed
The archive needs to be decentralized. It must become immortal by ascending into the network itself.
I wonder if and how wanting to protect the Wayback machine is compatible with the overall sentiment (on Lemmy) that people need all necessary means to protect their privacy. Wouldn't people who want that users can protect their privacy also be against the Wayback machine?
You can already ask the Internet Archive to take down a content if you can proof the content is yours (e.g. can't just buy an old domain and demand the internet archive to delete the archived contents put up by the past owners). People also regularly ask them to take down harmful contents as well.
(e.g. can’t just buy an old domain and demand the internet archive to delete the archived contents put up by the past owners)
This is false. My father owned a particular domain that transferred ownership to me. I was able to pull down stuff from prior to my ownership just fine without providing any evidence.
Wait, you just asked the Internet Archive to take down stuff, and they complied without asking for proof of ownership? This seems to run counter with their own guidelines.
No... I took down content from a previous owner. So you can absolutely buy an old domain and demand to take down old content.
I just pulled up the email. The only evidence I gave them is that I emailed them from the "contact webmaster" email address that was posted on the main site page (admin@domain.com).
They removed everything from their archive completely relating to both domains I was inquiring about. One being originally my fathers and that was transferred to me completely.
That's a bummer. Nissan can then buy nissan.com when it's expired (the owner died recently) and erase the old posts from the previous domain owner detailing their legal battle with Nissan for example.
This already happened but it wasn’t the automotive company that took it down, if you look at the page now it’s an advertisement for some “AI-driven” advertising thing
Seems so.
Not at all, because the Wayback machine only archives things that are published.
It's the single most awesome website that exists, and of course people want to take it down. These ghouls will stop at nothing
There's another, but I'm not mentioning the name so they don't go after that one too.
A Second Archive, you say? Out in the unmapped portion of the web?
I just want you to know that somebody appreciates this reference.
Well, how else would companies profit off of works they contributed nothing to? /s
Capitalism needs to die. We need a society that works to better and enrich all, not fuckwads who bleed and exploit others and their work for personal gain.
Not a good idea for three reasons:
A legislative approach that protects what the archive does would be a much more reasonable approach.
Totally agree with you. These things need to be preserved in some way like physical media.
Kinda sounds like we need a decentralized, feterated internet archive for at least each nation and maybe individuals... Or maybe I just want to federate almost everything ^^'
Edit: found a discussion here on that topic in the comments
Yes this is the answer. Split the data into many little chunks and have as many nodes as want to be involved acting as redundancies on the data.
Frequently publish the factor of safety in terms of data redundancy.
Would this be an application for blockchain or some other technology?
who controls the past, controls the future
I think the more relevant bit here is that whoever controls the present, controls the past.
Yeah, and since our government doesn’t work, it’d be better for open source, transparent efforts by the people. That also reminds the assholes in govt that the internet “content” is not owned by those who built machines or the government’s investment in DARPAnet, but by the people. Turn it all into a blockchain or something so there are copies or at least fragments on a ton of computers around the world and is indelible.
What if the internet archives, instead of a single site, was a bunch of federated instances sharing content with each other like fediverse?
I am of course very ignorant to how internet archives actually works, and not very tech savy, but would something like I'm suggesting be theoretically possible?
Yes, for storage, if we coordinated enough. Such technologies already exist. But IA also does tons of archival work that isn't so easily distributed. And their lending system isn't easily legally federated.
Ok, but what if we wanted to each take pieces of that tree of knowledge and help others learn from it. Could we possibly hold onto that information and plant our own little trees with seeds? And the more people who had seeds, the faster the tree would ~~download~~ grow.
^Arrrgh matey^
Their lending system is not part of their core functionality and IMO should be a separate thing.
Yeah that was my first thought too. That seems like a way better idea than just entrusting it to the Library of Congress as the article suggests. For one thing, the internet archive isn't just American stuff. For another, there's no way the government won't just bend over backwards as soon as a big corporation asks it to. Thirdly, it seems like a much better idea to keep it decentralized and to keep the corporations playing whack-a-mole with it than to just keep giving them one big, static target to aim at.
you kinda described ipfs
It's an interesting idea. It would take a lot of infrastructure though.
Even if we just decentralised/federated the Wayback Machine, that would really be great.
It's already working like that, at least on the indexer side. You can create an account and use their app or browser extensions and start snapshotting websites you visit and submit them to the wayback machine. Storage is still centralized in The Internet Archive datacenter though.
This is actually really disturbing to me. I normally don’t get involved in anything, but this seems like a winnable fight and it really bothers me for some reason the idea of the Internet Archive being destroyed.
Copyright infringement strike against the Internet Archive. I’ve saved a lot of Internet Archive links as evidence that something happened or existed. I really don’t like the idea of it going away.
What can I do to help this situation go the right way? Where is this lawsuit being taken? Are there courtroom proceedings going on?
1,000 words just to say "the Library of Congress should acquire the Internet Archive." Not a bad idea, but man. Sometimes your bosses are really pushy about the wordcount, eh, Lance?
I feel ya. I'm not the writer of the article, just a reader that found it interesting.
I also am not the author of this article.
The internet archive has bedn under attack from lawsuites basically since it exists and it's still going strong, I agree that it's a important resource worth lreserving tho!
Is there a Plan B if the fight is lost? Move it to another country, probably in the EU, that has a better legal environment? Or some other answer? Because with the current political climate in the US this is far from guaranteed to be won, and the consequences of losing it are dire
The article uses a slippery slope argument to say that if the Internet Archive loses a case that's basically only after the borrower limit then the entire site will be taken down. And I'm pretty sure they've already lost that lawsuit?
They're doing themselves absolutely no favors by trying to save archived copies of copyrighted media. It's bullshit and they need to stop. It's clearly against the law whether we like the law or not..
That's not illegal, though. (All of us save copies of copyrighted media.) It's the distribution that's in question.
The law is contrary to the interests of The People and needs to change.
Isn't it more unethical to abide unjust laws?
Doesn't matter. We don't get that choice. Abide by the law or be illegal, it's simple. If you opt to be illegal, I would suggest that entertainment media may not be the best line in the sand to draw. It's not like stealing food to not starve to death. Just becuase you're bored and feel entitled to be entertained does not mean that someone elsewhere should have to give up possible profit to do so.
To be clear, I've got no issues sailing the black season, like many of you, but I won't be pretending I didn't know, if I get caught. I recognize what's legal and not. It's part of being in a society.
I recognize what’s legal and not. It’s part of being in a society.
As is recognizing what's ethical and not, is it not?
I agree. Saving bits of published web content is one thing, and saving entire books to lend them out is a different thing.
If the content needs to be lent out, it’s not fit for this kind of thing. Either making a copy and letting a person access it is totally free, or the content is indeed something to be bought and sold.
I.. I don't know that it can be