15 ms·

The New York Times has requested that I shut the archive down

233 points by Santosh83 5y ago

mlindner 5y ago
I've never heard of Wordle, why is this interesting and why should I care about an archive of it being shut down?
- e12e 5y ago
  It's a popular, simple solo word guessing game that started as a hobby project and met with great success. Might not mean that you should care. But it does make one wonder a bit about the Internet Archive - and it's future ability to archive static (if interactive) web sites.
- mkl 5y ago
  It was massively popular earlier this year, and there have been lots of big HN threads about it: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=wordle https://hn.algolia.com/?q=wordle You can find a lot of information there, but "why should I care" is something only you can answer, as many people have no reason to care about this - ultimately it's just a little internet game.
naoqj 5y ago
What right do they have to request something like that? Are words copyrightable, or what did this website do? (I've never played wordle)
- progbits 5y ago
  I would also love to hear the justification. At best they could force a name change as presumably they own Wordle trademark.
  - tlholaday 5y ago
    > I would also love to hear the justification. Here's a link to the Wikipedia editors' terse description on curated lists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_in_lists#Selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_in_lists#S... A fact you may not know is that the creator and his partner curated the two lists of words-accepted-as-guesses and words-eligible-to-be-daily-targets to remove so-called "Scrabble gibberish."
- maratc 5y ago
  Words aren't, but their specific selection can be. As it was in this case. (Not a lawyer.) Some mapping companies "invent" non-existing streets on their maps to prove copying.
  - zinekeller 5y ago
    There's a nuance there though, in Europe while there's probably no copyright on the words per se, they have a separate but related database rights (which exactly sounds what you think). The design and feel of the site is probably unarguably copyrighted though. While other clones could argue that Wordle is actually a derivation from a much older game, it won't probably help if the design, feel, "dress" and colours are one-to-one to the original thing.
- phh 5y ago
  Well yes ordered list of words are often copyrightable under the name of "books". I'm not saying it is applicable here, but presenting things to a simplistic form isn't really correct either.
  - samatman 5y ago
    "order" doesn't mean "one follows the other" it means sorted or grouped in some fashion. Whether they're subject to copyright is practically speaking case-by-case: "World cities by population", no, "curated list of the best five-letter words for a game like Wordle"? Eh. Wouldn't want to fight NYT over it.
- robbrown451 5y ago
  The game is copyrightable, of course. (and words, well, of course. Books are words, right?)
  - shp0ngle 5y ago
    Game rules in general are not copyrightable. There were some lawsuits about Tetris. You can make a game with the rules like Tetris. But you cannot name it Tetris, and you cannot make it look too much like Tetris.
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      The game mechanics aren't copyrightable, but this word-for-word copy of the game rules is copyrightable. The HTML, CSS and JavaScript layout out the page is also copyrightable, and the taken-down site is a direct copy of this
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Are words copyrightable Have you literally never heard of text being copyright?
  - scambier 5y ago
    I think there's a little more work involved into writing a book than into randomly shuffling a list of words.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      How do you think people copyright crosswords and word searches?
      - diffeomorphism 5y ago
        First guess: they shouldn't be able to? For life plus 70 years, really? Second guess: crosswords have sufficient creative work involved. A list of random English words with 5 characters?
        chrisseaton 5y ago
        Seems to be very successful and valuable for something without ‘sufficient creative work involved’? That’s what the courts would look at.
        diffeomorphism 5y ago
        The wordle game is successful. The list of words is an entirely separate question.
- mattbrewsbytes 5y ago
  From watching a mathematical breakdown of playing, there are like 13k 5 letter words in english and wordle uses about 2400. There are some really bizzare words that people wouldn't know so the wordle list is narrowed down to common words. I think the only likely thing that might be illegal is using the same name. Game concepts are copied all the time, from what I understand. I'm not a lawyer. Kudos to the guy that wrote it and sold it. I don't see how NYT can monetize it - if they put up a paywall usage goes to 0 real quick.
  - frosted-flakes 5y ago
    I doubt they'll ever monetize Wordle directly, but the links it displays when you solve a puzzle and in the menu definitely drive traffic to their puzzles that they do monetize. I tried them, and seriously considered subscribing so I could keep playing Spelling Bee (I ultimately decided against it).
- e12e 5y ago
  In general lists of words (without definitions etc) are not subject to copyright. But there was a lot of controversy around the scrabble word list - I don't recall how that turned out in the end: https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/09/scrabble-copyright-dispute-hasbro-says-it-owns-the-scrabble-dictionary-players-beg-to-differ.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/09/scrabble-copyright-...
- qiskit 5y ago
  They are a state backed corporation with a harem of slimey lawyers. They can "request" whatever they want. I doubt devang has the time and financial means to deal with months of litigation so he is easy prey for the NYTimes. All he can do is "thank" them for the "request" and move on with his life.
op00to 5y ago
I believe the wordle archive copied the look and feel of the game as well as the daily word list. Maybe it’s that combination of look and feel AND word list that made NYT upset?
- contravariant 5y ago
  I think it's the look and feel that upset NYT, but it's probably the list of words that they used to shut it down. A random list of words is still part of the copyright (even if you reorder them, I think). I don't think there's much NYT can do about someone creating a functionally identical game with a slightly different list of words.
interblag 5y ago
For anyone wondering what this was ... looking at the last Archive.org link here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220401002723/https://www.devangthakkar.com/wordle_archive/?284 https://web.archive.org/web/20220401002723/https://www.devan... ...it looks like this might have had playable versions of daily Wordle puzzles going back to the start of the game? (Which would be pretty trivial since IIRC Wordle is entirely client-side and they just update the JS each day with the new word?) If so then his statement - "to be honest, I was wondering what took them so long" - would sort of make sense. EDIT - Github repo before NYT-inspired deletion: https://github.com/DevangThakkar/wordle_archive/tree/23cfba6a97cd61cc6b01ed8a399eb6df90dad88d https://github.com/DevangThakkar/wordle_archive/tree/23cfba6...
- brian_herman 5y ago
  Thank you for the insightful comment.
- femto 5y ago
  > ...update the JS each day with the new word Even more hands off than that. The script contained the entire list of words and each day it just moved to the next entry in the list. It makes sense, in that originating as a fun personal project the author wouldn't want to be burdened with a daily update task. Edit: Out of curiosity I had a look at the Wordle on the NYT site, and it's still the same script.
  - mattbuilds 5y ago
    That’s a perfect example of solving for the problem you have and not over engineering.
    - chme 5y ago
      But if that is the case, then that would not apply to the wordle archive, right? If the list of words for every day is encoded into a static code, why does the wordle archive need to crawl the site each day, or set the system time to different days, just to get the words for different days... Seems to be a bit over engineered to me...
donohoe 5y ago
As someone who has worked for the NYT and has also been requested to takedown data later on (I scraped crossword data for fun), I do get why they did this. It’s sucks, but I get why. Kudos if it was a ‘request’ and hadn’t gone too deep into lawyer mode.
- alan-hn 5y ago
  'Compel' sounds awful lawyery to me Edit: down voting because you disagree? I'm more than open to hearing other viewpoints on the verbiage. >compel kəm-pĕl′ transitive verb To force (a person) to do something; drive or constrain: synonym: force. To necessitate or require, as by force of circumstance; demand. To exert a strong, irresistible force on; sway. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=compel+definition&ia=definition https://duckduckgo.com/?q=compel+definition&ia=definition
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Why do they do it? I don’t get it at all? Do they lose anything from someone playing an old wordle on this site?
  - robbrown451 5y ago
    They could offer an archive themselves if they thought that was a positive. They don't, and to me the fact that you can only do one a day is a brilliant yet counterintuitive strategy that helped get Wordle popular. But that strategy is defeated if others offer what they choose not to. I really like the idea of them being able to say "don't worry, you can't get overly addicted because we only offer one a day and don't let you binge." And as owners of the IP, they do have that right.
    - n4r9 5y ago
      The brilliance of the strategy is that there's a "today's word". Like how a newspaper has a daily crossword. You feel like you completed today's challenge, and can compare like for like with your friends and family. Having the archive doesn't affect that. I used the wordle archive so that I could go back to days I missed. That way I can still share the experience with my family even if I've had a really busy day. It's undeniably a positive and I'm upset that I can't do this anymore. Several of the variants e.g. Quordle have an unlimited play variant, but I've never felt a desire to use it.
jfoster 5y ago
I'm always surprised by how confused people get about various types of "intellectual property" because they're actually quite different. I'm not a lawyer and I'm sure it varies from one part of the world to another, but generally... Copyright applies to works & derivative works. Think: movies, music, books, etc. Patents apply to inventions. Think: methods of doing something to achieve a particular application. Trademarks apply to things associated with a brand or product. Think: logos, "the Intel sound", the pattern of colours used in the Google logo, the brand name used, particular characters, etc. I think there can be a little bit of overlap between these, in that a logo might be trademark and also might be a copyrighted work, but generally the distinctions are fairly clear.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- convery 5y ago
  I mean, it's literally the 70's game "Mastermind" but with letters instead of colours, so any patents are out the window and copyright is dubious at best..
  - papandada 5y ago
    Patent a car? 'Tis but a carriage with engine!
    - thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
      Cars famous for being produced by a single company.
      - papandada 5y ago
        Cars or whatever, I claim that's a significant "but"
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    I believe they would have only been able to copyright the actual sequence of words, not the mechanics of the game.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bspammer 5y ago
Someone made an IPFS mirror of Wordle before it got acquired: https://bafybeic4blel5vf4il73n3nzt6vw7npsov6or3cp3myjms4npiihxgjut4.ipfs.dweb.link/wordle/ https://bafybeic4blel5vf4il73n3nzt6vw7npsov6or3cp3myjms4npii... This link (theoretically) can't be taken down.
- capableweb 5y ago
  dweb.link points to a IP address owned by Protocol Labs, presumably they own the domain as well. Being a US company, they need to adhere to US law. A take-down request can very well happen, especially since NYT is also a US company. Protocol Labs also seems to have responded to take-down requests before on their gateways. That link can be "taken down", blocked or limited in other ways. What can't happen, is that the content it is pointing to, can't be "scrubbed" from the internet. As long as you have the CID (essentially a hash), you'll be able to get it (probably) from some node out there in the world.
  - nybble41 5y ago
    If you have the IPFS Companion[0] browser extension installed (or use Brave, which includes it natively) then the dweb.link URL will be translated automatically into an ipfs:// URL and resolved locally. Blocking the CID at the public gateway, or even taking down the gateway, would have no effect. [0] https://docs.ipfs.io/install/ipfs-companion/ https://docs.ipfs.io/install/ipfs-companion/
- Someone 5y ago
  I would think the copyright holder to the source code (could be the original writer, the NYT, …) would win any case on that. It’s essentially the same as if someone made an IPFS mirror of the Microsoft Windows source code.
  - metagame 5y ago
    Microsoft's been agitated that the Windows source gets put in a torrent every few years. They haven't been able to rid the planet of that, yet. IPFS is a less-efficient DHT, basically. They might "win" a case legally, but they won't actually be able to take anything down. The value of that sort of technology isn't actually the hosting (very easy to keep something available even over traditional HTTP), but a stable URL/URI (less easy to do, but still solved by BitTorrent years ago).
dgb23 5y ago
A lame waste of time and money in order to bully people and introduce fake scarcity of something that is in of itself incredibly simple and recreational to boot. Ridiculous! It’s so easy to punch down, not easy to adapt and be creative.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
failrate 5y ago
At this point, given the ease of duplication and the number of variants, it is almost as if Wordle has become a modern folk game.
teeray 5y ago
Wordle is, for all intents and purposes, a sequence of randomly chosen five-letter words. Given that you can’t copyright machine-generated works[0], I feel like there would be a good legal argument to be made here. Sadly, this probably comes down to whoever has the most money wins in court. [0] https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/a-recent-entrance-to-paradise.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/...
Giorgi 5y ago
How would I host it? If I was living in the country that is not US? Asking for a friend

233 points by Santosh83 5y ago

mlindner 5y ago

I've never heard of Wordle, why is this interesting and why should I care about an archive of it being shut down?

e12e 5y ago
It's a popular, simple solo word guessing game that started as a hobby project and met with great success. Might not mean that you should care. But it does make one wonder a bit about the Internet Archive - and it's future ability to archive static (if interactive) web sites.
mkl 5y ago
It was massively popular earlier this year, and there have been lots of big HN threads about it: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=wordle https://hn.algolia.com/?q=wordle You can find a lot of information there, but "why should I care" is something only you can answer, as many people have no reason to care about this - ultimately it's just a little internet game.

naoqj 5y ago

What right do they have to request something like that? Are words copyrightable, or what did this website do? (I've never played wordle)

progbits 5y ago
I would also love to hear the justification. At best they could force a name change as presumably they own Wordle trademark.
- tlholaday 5y ago
  > I would also love to hear the justification. Here's a link to the Wikipedia editors' terse description on curated lists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_in_lists#Selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_in_lists#S... A fact you may not know is that the creator and his partner curated the two lists of words-accepted-as-guesses and words-eligible-to-be-daily-targets to remove so-called "Scrabble gibberish."
maratc 5y ago
Words aren't, but their specific selection can be. As it was in this case. (Not a lawyer.) Some mapping companies "invent" non-existing streets on their maps to prove copying.
- zinekeller 5y ago
  There's a nuance there though, in Europe while there's probably no copyright on the words per se, they have a separate but related database rights (which exactly sounds what you think). The design and feel of the site is probably unarguably copyrighted though. While other clones could argue that Wordle is actually a derivation from a much older game, it won't probably help if the design, feel, "dress" and colours are one-to-one to the original thing.
phh 5y ago
Well yes ordered list of words are often copyrightable under the name of "books". I'm not saying it is applicable here, but presenting things to a simplistic form isn't really correct either.
- samatman 5y ago
  "order" doesn't mean "one follows the other" it means sorted or grouped in some fashion. Whether they're subject to copyright is practically speaking case-by-case: "World cities by population", no, "curated list of the best five-letter words for a game like Wordle"? Eh. Wouldn't want to fight NYT over it.
robbrown451 5y ago
The game is copyrightable, of course. (and words, well, of course. Books are words, right?)
- shp0ngle 5y ago
  Game rules in general are not copyrightable. There were some lawsuits about Tetris. You can make a game with the rules like Tetris. But you cannot name it Tetris, and you cannot make it look too much like Tetris.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    The game mechanics aren't copyrightable, but this word-for-word copy of the game rules is copyrightable. The HTML, CSS and JavaScript layout out the page is also copyrightable, and the taken-down site is a direct copy of this
chrisseaton 5y ago
> Are words copyrightable Have you literally never heard of text being copyright?
- scambier 5y ago
  I think there's a little more work involved into writing a book than into randomly shuffling a list of words.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    How do you think people copyright crosswords and word searches?
    - diffeomorphism 5y ago
      First guess: they shouldn't be able to? For life plus 70 years, really? Second guess: crosswords have sufficient creative work involved. A list of random English words with 5 characters?
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        Seems to be very successful and valuable for something without ‘sufficient creative work involved’? That’s what the courts would look at.
        diffeomorphism 5y ago
        The wordle game is successful. The list of words is an entirely separate question.
mattbrewsbytes 5y ago
From watching a mathematical breakdown of playing, there are like 13k 5 letter words in english and wordle uses about 2400. There are some really bizzare words that people wouldn't know so the wordle list is narrowed down to common words. I think the only likely thing that might be illegal is using the same name. Game concepts are copied all the time, from what I understand. I'm not a lawyer. Kudos to the guy that wrote it and sold it. I don't see how NYT can monetize it - if they put up a paywall usage goes to 0 real quick.
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  I doubt they'll ever monetize Wordle directly, but the links it displays when you solve a puzzle and in the menu definitely drive traffic to their puzzles that they do monetize. I tried them, and seriously considered subscribing so I could keep playing Spelling Bee (I ultimately decided against it).
e12e 5y ago
In general lists of words (without definitions etc) are not subject to copyright. But there was a lot of controversy around the scrabble word list - I don't recall how that turned out in the end: https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/09/scrabble-copyright-dispute-hasbro-says-it-owns-the-scrabble-dictionary-players-beg-to-differ.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/09/scrabble-copyright-...
qiskit 5y ago
They are a state backed corporation with a harem of slimey lawyers. They can "request" whatever they want. I doubt devang has the time and financial means to deal with months of litigation so he is easy prey for the NYTimes. All he can do is "thank" them for the "request" and move on with his life.

op00to 5y ago

I believe the wordle archive copied the look and feel of the game as well as the daily word list. Maybe it’s that combination of look and feel AND word list that made NYT upset?

contravariant 5y ago
I think it's the look and feel that upset NYT, but it's probably the list of words that they used to shut it down. A random list of words is still part of the copyright (even if you reorder them, I think). I don't think there's much NYT can do about someone creating a functionally identical game with a slightly different list of words.

interblag 5y ago

For anyone wondering what this was ... looking at the last Archive.org link here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220401002723/https://www.devangthakkar.com/wordle_archive/?284 https://web.archive.org/web/20220401002723/https://www.devan... ...it looks like this might have had playable versions of daily Wordle puzzles going back to the start of the game? (Which would be pretty trivial since IIRC Wordle is entirely client-side and they just update the JS each day with the new word?) If so then his statement - "to be honest, I was wondering what took them so long" - would sort of make sense. EDIT - Github repo before NYT-inspired deletion: https://github.com/DevangThakkar/wordle_archive/tree/23cfba6a97cd61cc6b01ed8a399eb6df90dad88d https://github.com/DevangThakkar/wordle_archive/tree/23cfba6...

brian_herman 5y ago
Thank you for the insightful comment.
femto 5y ago
> ...update the JS each day with the new word Even more hands off than that. The script contained the entire list of words and each day it just moved to the next entry in the list. It makes sense, in that originating as a fun personal project the author wouldn't want to be burdened with a daily update task. Edit: Out of curiosity I had a look at the Wordle on the NYT site, and it's still the same script.
- mattbuilds 5y ago
  That’s a perfect example of solving for the problem you have and not over engineering.
  - chme 5y ago
    But if that is the case, then that would not apply to the wordle archive, right? If the list of words for every day is encoded into a static code, why does the wordle archive need to crawl the site each day, or set the system time to different days, just to get the words for different days... Seems to be a bit over engineered to me...

donohoe 5y ago

As someone who has worked for the NYT and has also been requested to takedown data later on (I scraped crossword data for fun), I do get why they did this. It’s sucks, but I get why. Kudos if it was a ‘request’ and hadn’t gone too deep into lawyer mode.

alan-hn 5y ago
'Compel' sounds awful lawyery to me Edit: down voting because you disagree? I'm more than open to hearing other viewpoints on the verbiage. >compel kəm-pĕl′ transitive verb To force (a person) to do something; drive or constrain: synonym: force. To necessitate or require, as by force of circumstance; demand. To exert a strong, irresistible force on; sway. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=compel+definition&ia=definition https://duckduckgo.com/?q=compel+definition&ia=definition
Aeolun 5y ago
Why do they do it? I don’t get it at all? Do they lose anything from someone playing an old wordle on this site?
- robbrown451 5y ago
  They could offer an archive themselves if they thought that was a positive. They don't, and to me the fact that you can only do one a day is a brilliant yet counterintuitive strategy that helped get Wordle popular. But that strategy is defeated if others offer what they choose not to. I really like the idea of them being able to say "don't worry, you can't get overly addicted because we only offer one a day and don't let you binge." And as owners of the IP, they do have that right.
  - n4r9 5y ago
    The brilliance of the strategy is that there's a "today's word". Like how a newspaper has a daily crossword. You feel like you completed today's challenge, and can compare like for like with your friends and family. Having the archive doesn't affect that. I used the wordle archive so that I could go back to days I missed. That way I can still share the experience with my family even if I've had a really busy day. It's undeniably a positive and I'm upset that I can't do this anymore. Several of the variants e.g. Quordle have an unlimited play variant, but I've never felt a desire to use it.

jfoster 5y ago

I'm always surprised by how confused people get about various types of "intellectual property" because they're actually quite different. I'm not a lawyer and I'm sure it varies from one part of the world to another, but generally... Copyright applies to works & derivative works. Think: movies, music, books, etc. Patents apply to inventions. Think: methods of doing something to achieve a particular application. Trademarks apply to things associated with a brand or product. Think: logos, "the Intel sound", the pattern of colours used in the Google logo, the brand name used, particular characters, etc. I think there can be a little bit of overlap between these, in that a logo might be trademark and also might be a copyrighted work, but generally the distinctions are fairly clear.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
convery 5y ago
I mean, it's literally the 70's game "Mastermind" but with letters instead of colours, so any patents are out the window and copyright is dubious at best..
- papandada 5y ago
  Patent a car? 'Tis but a carriage with engine!
  - thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
    Cars famous for being produced by a single company.
    - papandada 5y ago
      Cars or whatever, I claim that's a significant "but"
- ModernMech 5y ago
  I believe they would have only been able to copyright the actual sequence of words, not the mechanics of the game.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bspammer 5y ago

Someone made an IPFS mirror of Wordle before it got acquired: https://bafybeic4blel5vf4il73n3nzt6vw7npsov6or3cp3myjms4npiihxgjut4.ipfs.dweb.link/wordle/ https://bafybeic4blel5vf4il73n3nzt6vw7npsov6or3cp3myjms4npii... This link (theoretically) can't be taken down.

capableweb 5y ago
dweb.link points to a IP address owned by Protocol Labs, presumably they own the domain as well. Being a US company, they need to adhere to US law. A take-down request can very well happen, especially since NYT is also a US company. Protocol Labs also seems to have responded to take-down requests before on their gateways. That link can be "taken down", blocked or limited in other ways. What can't happen, is that the content it is pointing to, can't be "scrubbed" from the internet. As long as you have the CID (essentially a hash), you'll be able to get it (probably) from some node out there in the world.
- nybble41 5y ago
  If you have the IPFS Companion[0] browser extension installed (or use Brave, which includes it natively) then the dweb.link URL will be translated automatically into an ipfs:// URL and resolved locally. Blocking the CID at the public gateway, or even taking down the gateway, would have no effect. [0] https://docs.ipfs.io/install/ipfs-companion/ https://docs.ipfs.io/install/ipfs-companion/
Someone 5y ago
I would think the copyright holder to the source code (could be the original writer, the NYT, …) would win any case on that. It’s essentially the same as if someone made an IPFS mirror of the Microsoft Windows source code.
- metagame 5y ago
  Microsoft's been agitated that the Windows source gets put in a torrent every few years. They haven't been able to rid the planet of that, yet. IPFS is a less-efficient DHT, basically. They might "win" a case legally, but they won't actually be able to take anything down. The value of that sort of technology isn't actually the hosting (very easy to keep something available even over traditional HTTP), but a stable URL/URI (less easy to do, but still solved by BitTorrent years ago).

dgb23 5y ago

A lame waste of time and money in order to bully people and introduce fake scarcity of something that is in of itself incredibly simple and recreational to boot. Ridiculous! It’s so easy to punch down, not easy to adapt and be creative.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

failrate 5y ago

At this point, given the ease of duplication and the number of variants, it is almost as if Wordle has become a modern folk game.

teeray 5y ago

Wordle is, for all intents and purposes, a sequence of randomly chosen five-letter words. Given that you can’t copyright machine-generated works[0], I feel like there would be a good legal argument to be made here. Sadly, this probably comes down to whoever has the most money wins in court. [0] https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/a-recent-entrance-to-paradise.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/...

Giorgi 5y ago

How would I host it? If I was living in the country that is not US? Asking for a friend