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This won't be a popular statement, but archivers don't have a legal right to reproduce websites, either. I imagine archive.today is on even shakier ground via b
by cirno 6y ago
This won't be a popular statement, but archivers don't have a legal right to reproduce websites, either. I imagine archive.today is on even shakier ground via bypassing newspaper paywalls. archive.org operates under an opt-out policy which is not how copyright works, and archive.today operates under a "f### you" policy. It's just that website operators haven't chosen to take legal action against this practice.
I understand the innate desire of people to have a "better to ask forgiveness than permission" view of saving old web content (because we all enjoy finding out the thing we thought we lost forever by not backing up ourselves was in fact recoverable), but either copyright law exists or it doesn't. If you want a secure future, make archivers opt-in via a meta tag on pages to indicate the content is under a permissible share-alike license.
- ghaff 6y agoThe problem is that it basically doesn't work on an opt-in basis. So archive.org has worked by making it easier to opt-out than actually taking legal action.
- cirno 6y agoUnfortunately, a lot of things are more troublesome when you follow the law.
- judge2020 6y ago> archive.today operates under a "f### you" policy. They are initiating a save on behalf of the user(a "user agent"), and thus are not a robot, so they don't need to respect robots.txt.
- cirno 6y ago> so they don't need to respect robots.txt You mean they don't need to respect copyright law? So it would seem. If a user wants a legal copy, they can choose File -> Save Page As. The copying isn't the problem, the reproduction without ads or paywalls or respect to the owner's copyright is.