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Donate to the Internet Archive
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Thorentis 5y agoHow is this different to the Internet Archive?
- throw0101a 5y agoFixed. Thanks.
- CA0DA 5y agoI used to donate to Wikipedia but then they got bloated/political. I felt bad about my donations and wished I could take them back. Will the Internet Archive avoid this fate?
- sp332 5y agoWell, probably not as long as it's still run by its founder, Brewster Kahle.
- oenetan 5y agoKahle is a very nice guy. It was a pleasure to interact with him.
- Rebelgecko 5y agoI think the IA does a lot of great stuff but they've also gone out of their way to get involved in dumb lawsuits. It's probably not a huge fraction of their overall budget but it was enough to sour me on them a bit.
- junon 5y agoGenuinely curious, can you expand/link/whatever? I'd like to read up.
- Rebelgecko 5y agoIn the past, digital copies books at the internet archive that were still under copyright were treated somewhat like real physical books. IA would let people "check out" an ebook for a limited time period. The number of checkouts was limited by the number of physical copies of the book that IA or IA-affiliates (or I think even just individuals who pinky promised that they owned a copy of the book whose PDF they were uploading) had in their possession. At the beginning of COVID, they started doing what they called the "National Emergency Library" (this is probably the best term to look up to find more articles and different takes on the topic), where they just let everyone download copies of Harry_Potter.epub. IMO this was a needless provocation and not surprisingly book publishers claim that this is copyright infringement. They're going a bit scorched earth in response- the lawsuit isn't limited to just the "uncontrolled lending" aspect of the program.
- gego 5y agoJust to clarify... it was less Hardy_Potter.epub and more textbooks and stuff for parents s who had to home school their children while losing their jobs and income... and public libraries closed, publishers not... supporting... any digital lending infrastructure before and during the lockdown (like mp3 and music industry, the industry was dragged kicking and screaming into the 21. century even when making a profit), they decided they need to compensate for the closed libraries by letting people lend freely...
- matkoniecz 5y agoAFAIK everything was included - yes, also Hardy_Potter.epub
- gego 5y ago
- sinyug 5y ago> Will the Internet Archive avoid this fate? No. The borg will come for IA eventually once the old guard retires. Kahle might be left/progressive but he is not insane. You can't say that for whoever replaces him in the future. Always remember Robert Conquest's Second Law of Politics: "Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing."
- oenetan 5y agoDon't forget archive.is. IIRC webcitation is still taking donations as well
- AnonHP 5y agoEvery time I visit an archive.is link, the first thing I see is a CAPCTHA page that doesn’t have the CAPTCHA challenge. I never browse without ad and tracker blockers, and even when ReCaptcha and hCaptcha work fine, this one doesn’t. I haven’t looked at why, because the links I’ve seen aren’t that important that I must read them
- AnonHP 5y agoThis comment is probably going to hit a nerve. Why should I donate to the Internet Archive? The very rare times that I use it, it’s extremely slow (as slow as or slower than TOR). The interface looks like it’s from two decades ago. The site trawls through and tries to captures everything from a website without providing an easy way to be excluded from archiving (it long ignored any robots.txt directives) and doesn’t provide an easy way for content removal (need to email, wait, go back and forth about ownership, etc.). From others, I’ve heard some good things about the library containing books and other media, but formatting of the books may not be great (unlike standardebooks.org, which is more limited though). Since everybody has a budget of sorts for donations, I personally see a lot more value donating to other organizations and not donating to this one for the above reasons.
- marderfarker2 5y agoYou may not see the value now until you need it. Just like the photos in your phone.
- solarkraft 5y ago- It archives important things (you will be aware of this reason) - A donation hopefully frees resources to work on these things (I also find the UI terrible and think a lot of value could be freed through some curation)
- hellbannedguy 5y agoIt's worth donating too. There are a few things I would like them to do: 1. No more stupid mistakes, like that Free for All Covid fiasco. (Don't blatantly irritate copywrite owners.) 2. Offer all their material (non copy written) to anyone in the USA. Let anyone house the data if they want. 3. Put all salaries, and assets, on your front page, or very easily found. I looked up their administrative salaries (CEO, BOD, etc.) a few years ago on Waystar (back then--salaries of founders seemed reasonable.) The founder was using the nonprofit CC for questionable purchases, but I don't even think he is around anymore. Oh yea, when looking up 1040's on Waystar it's free information, but the website makes it look like you need to pay for free government information, or used too? There are many websites that offer free 1040's now though.) I would like to see every 501c3 in the USA list the highest salaries of everyone in the charity, the number of volunteers, and the average pay of paid employees. I see way to many people blindly giving money to charities. Many are great like this nonprofit, but so many are overfunded, or just set up to support one, or two people. In my county, many nonprofits are considered just a business move with a sympathetic name. Too many are run by a husband, and wife, and are just a way to live a comfortable life. Every year it seems to be getting worse. Obama knew what was going on in a lot of 501c3's, and was about to take action, but backed away. I don't know why, but he took it off his agenda very quickly.
- EvanDotPro 5y agoI've long felt that what the IA does is extremely important and as most people here are surely aware, they archive a heck of a lot more than just webpages. I currently have them set as my Amazon Smile charity — perhaps something to consider for anyone not feeling up to a one off donation.
- solarkraft 5y agoI find that small recurring donations great for soothing the “wait do you really want to spend all that money” voice and projects seem to be happier about them as well.
- junon 5y agoFor anyone curious, directly before you click the "Checkout" button, change the URL from `amazon.(com|de|es|w/e)` to `smile.amazon.(com|de|es|w/e)`. You can choose a bunch of charities, apparently IA is one of them. A small portion of your total payment goes to the charity, at no extra cost to you. No hooks or anything, just something Amazon does.
- MentallyRetired 5y agoThere are also browser extensions that will auto-redirect you to amazon smile, lest you forget whilst browsing.
- MildlySerious 5y agoFor Duckduckgo users: !as instead of !a
- junon 5y agoCan't edit but wanted to add: If you're not able to select IA for some reason, and don't know who to choose, might I suggest researching a bit on the "Sea Shepherds" project. They're real life pirates protecting the ocean - total badasses, and they're also available on Amazon Smile.
- marklyon 5y ago
- solarkraft 5y agoNote that even fairly small donations feel pretty good. Go ahead, try it! On one hand it they’re probably going into archiving more stuff, but I wish they invested some resources into polishing up the UI. Besides not being great to look at, the snapshot selection calendar thing everyone has to go through is a joke. Also, not sure if it’s just me, but I’m proud of donating to them and would be happy about some ways of showing it. I’d probably buy merch. Besides a small to medium UI overhaul I’d like to see some improvements in search, listings and perhaps curation. There are some amazing things in the archive, but I find them to be not that easy to discover. Some more explorability might mean more enthusiasm.
- homedepotdave 5y ago+1 for improved search functionality. Was just looking for information today and would have killed for this
- tkgally 5y agoIn addition to financial donations, I would encourage people who are familiar with particular areas of the Archive to share the interesting resources they have found through their own bibliographies, playlists, indexes, etc. The Archive’s resources all have permanent URLs, so lists hosted on other sites will not suffer from link rot. I’ve created two such lists myself, one of books by British and American visitors to Japan in the 19th and early 20th centuries [1] and the other of forgotten novels of the 19th century [2]. I’m now thinking of compiling a list of direct links to writings from the 18th and 19th century about slavery in the United States. I would love to be able to listen to other people’s playlists of songs from the 78rpm and LP record collection on the Archive. [1] http://gally.net/jatsi/about/sources.html http://gally.net/jatsi/about/sources.html [2] https://blog.archive.org/2021/07/14/forgotten-novels-of-the-19th-century/ https://blog.archive.org/2021/07/14/forgotten-novels-of-the-...
- qnxub 5y agoI definitely think that the Internet Archive serves a valuable purpose. However, they will not see any money from me until they crack down on all of the porn hosted on their site.
- generationP 5y agoBeen using the Archive for some 10 years now, both browsing the Wayback Machine and archiving sites onto it (and sometimes using the collections too). This is the first time I'm hearing of any porn on the site. Maybe I should check it out one day when I have too much time; would be interesting to see how it has changed over the last century.
- DoingIsLearning 5y agoIt is an archive, IA is not just the wayback machine, the project archives websites, books, magazines, sound, video, software applications, and anything else people feel is worth archiving. The project carries no Morality and that is a good thing. It will always archive content you agree with and content you disagree with and that is a good thing. Adult content is clearly tagged. Copyright is clearly managed. Genuine question, if we were to sanitize all archives of porn, do you believe that 80 years from now, we would have a representative idea of how people experience sexuality right now?
- throaway46546 5y agolol who cares
- suyash 5y agoJust donated, keep up the great work IA - WayBackMachine is invaluable resource :)
- gego 5y agoThe archive is the user's revenge for bad business, politics and actions ;) An archive is seldom appreciated until you desperately need it, much as libraries... so you have to be a certain good kind of crazy to do this and preserve digital information like an archeologist instead of paywalling stuff... it preserves our digital history and we should support it in any form we can as noone else is doing it (looking at you national libraries)
- gego 5y agoRelation to libraries and archives is always an interesting metric for a political system. Free access to archives was one of the demands of the french revolution and for good reason. It is also the reason, why in theory national libraries should archive the net (in Germany the national library is even allowed to crack copy protection for this purpose) - and they don't get the funds to do it. Ask yourself why that is and then think if you want to donate :) it is always the first step to control archives If you want to control information (think of climate data under Trump) - and at the moment the IA is a single point of failure...
- echelon 5y agoThis is a much, much better donation than Wikipedia. https://www.theregister.com/2012/12/20/cash_rich_wikipedia_chugging/ https://www.theregister.com/2012/12/20/cash_rich_wikipedia_c... Don't give money to Wikipedia. Give it to Internet Archive.
- beardyw 5y agoThe link is 9 years old. Do you have anything more recent?
- 93po 5y agoi continue to be amazed, year after year, how wikipedia makes their donation banners more intrusive. surely this is the worst it will get, right? pretty sure the next step is a flashing full screen popup that plays sad music
- nexuist 5y agoin the arms of a digital angel...
- earthbee 5y agoAny news about their lawsuit and what the chances are that they're going to get sued into oblivion some time in the next couple of years?
- nicolas_t 5y agoI've donated quite often in the past few years but have usually waited for the matching donation drives so that my donation would count more. Problem of course with that is when there's no matching donation drive, I end up forgetting to donate
- cowshit 5y agoI would donate if I wasn't making epic poverty income. However, the new site design waste tons of CPU cycles and bandwidth hitting the back button after clicking on a collection is a major penalty, (cached page is force-redrawn/ RE-downloaded and re-rendered) why are they so anal on tracking users with google analytics and PHP cookies that break modern caching. If they did it right, they could get probably 50% less cache-negative hits per session
- cowshit 5y agooh you already banned me over notthing FUCK HACKER NEWS FUCK HACKER NEWS FUCK YOU FUCK YOU
- cowshit 5y agobunch of faggot mods in here
- DominikD 5y agoIn case you're wondering, their infrastructure expenses are around $2mil/month. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943242767 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943...
- IanSanders 5y agoI don't mean to diverge from the subject too much but wonder if we could improve resilience and longevity by offloading a portion of the functionality to the users. For example by implementing some sort of distributed selective PTP solution, where everyone hosts what's important to them personally, hopefully still under IA "branding". I do it with httrack but it's offline and not sustainable.
- Popegaf 5y agoI'm a little split on it because they don't use IPFS. It would be great if they had a button to "mirror" or "contribute bandwidth", because that I would do. I have a few VPSs contributing bandwidth to other smaller projects + a fiber connection at home with aging disks lying around. A simple docker-compose.yml with an IPFS service and a coordinator to pin the least replicated or most wanted items would be great. Cloudfare also has an IPFS pinning service + gateway, so they could offload some traffic to them as well.
- jonathantf2 5y agoI'd love to but their entire website is just so god-damn slow.
- kwo 5y agoI will not be donating, not now, or ever. They do not respect robots.txt and force companies to use the DCMA to remove their sites from the archive. They are self-righteous pests.
- markx2 5y agoSome months ago I contacted them and requested they remove a domain I owned. I was ignored. Hunting around I found someone who said to send a DMCA formatted in a certain way. That was ignored. I sent another DMCA. They replied and wanted a list of every url to be removed. I got back to them saying it was .example.com/ They said they would get to it. Two or three weeks passed, nothing changed. I got in touch asking why. They said my request was scheduled and would be completed soon. More time passed, no result. I then sent them an email which listed their upstream provider. I said I felt they had adequate time but had failed to act in accordance with my request. I told them they had 7 days and then I would go upstream. Then they deleted what I had asked for. This very much soured how I feel about IA.
- whereistimbo 5y agoNot in the case of me. I emailed them a request to remove my github pages and they responded with instruction. I fulfilled the instruction and got my pages removed later.
- butz 5y agoI see the accept cryptocurrency. Could we possibly use NFTs for a good cause here?