29 ms·

If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

1790 points by raybb 4y ago

jonesnc 4y ago
So, how do we create an Internet Archive Archive?
- lkbm 4y ago
  There are people working on this, but "IA preserved as it was when it was killed in 2023" is nowhere near as valuable as IA as it would be in 2033 if it survives. IA is constantly adding new content. ("New" meaning "not-yet-archived stuff from the past century", in addition to up-to-date web snapshots.)
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    What people need to be working on is to create a peer/successor organization that can take a copy of its archive and carry on its core functions, not just a static archive on a server somewhere.
  - Aachen 4y ago
    I'd rather have "IA preserved as it was in 2023" than no IA at all. If we have a gap in the collection between tomorrow and when someone sets up a new IA in a few years, that's very different than losing most things collected about the inception of the Internet.
- doublerabbit 4y ago
  WebServer + Scraper + Storage in essence. The main issues are storage, centrialisation, moderation and copyright; that if you wished, rebel and ignore these with a distrbuted model like BitTorrent, or IPFS. If an library burns to the ground you loose everything, so you will have to decentrialise. That then causes moderation issues as if you were to truely go decentrialised; what's stopping a bad actor uploading icky stuff? It would resolve the take-down from copyright, as they couldn't kill all nodes. But all sounds like a lot of work for a very little return.
tambourine_man 4y ago
https://archive.org/donate/ https://archive.org/donate/
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  Every dollar donated here will end up going to the book publishers.
jawns 4y ago
I know the government has viewed certain companies as "too big to fail," because of the negative financial impact we would experience if they were to do so. I wonder if there needs to be a cultural equivalent, where a repository of digital or physical artifacts is "too big to fail" because of the negative cultural impact their failure would have. In the absence of that, anyone who sees high cultural value to the preservation of these digital artifacts should, counterintuitively, not treat the Internet Archive as having some special status, but should treat it as a liability. It has become the custodian of too much, and too much is on the line if it fails. Rather than trying to constantly shore up the IA so it can't fail financially, we should be looking at ways to preserve those artifacts redundantly, so that even if the IA fails, it's not a calamity.
- bruce511 4y ago
  >> I wonder if there needs to be a cultural equivalent, where a repository of digital or physical artifacts is "too big to fail" because of the negative cultural impact their failure would have. You can wonder all you like, and call me a cynic, but the US runs on money not culture. The American identity is built on money and wealth and excess, not on anything you might describe as "culture". The IA would not "fail" if it was just left alone, but business never saw a nickel they didn't want to grab, so the law suits are not exactly surprising. And I expect the courts to lean towards the publishers.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    > US runs on money not culture fortunately, someone saying that does not make it real. Think of a "soup" and of "experiment" and you will get more detail. Resolving an entire nation to a 1 or 0 classification is not defensible, right?
    - lanternfish 4y ago
      In this case though, the question is what underlying motivator dominates. The claim doesn't need to be as strong as 'the us is money, no culture' and can just be 'in the US, money accounts for more willpower and political capital than culture in a head to head'
rashkov 4y ago
This is pretty confusing... is the Internet Archive at risk from this legal decision?
- hirako2000 4y ago
  It's at least at risk of being blocked by ISPs in the us and pressured/shutdown if hosting is by a provider in the US.
  - nequo 4y ago
    Even after complying with the court's decision and shutting down unlimited digital lending?
    - Mindwipe 4y ago
      That's not really going to be the issue anyway. The issue is if the liabilities of having done this result in the organisation going bankrupt. Note that the plaintiffs have already stated that is not their aim. Even then, the likelihood is more that someone else would take it over (though I imagine that the plaintiffs would, if they waived some proportion of their damages, that nobody currently involved in the current leadership and board was allowed anywhere near it).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
jsnell 4y ago
The title implies that losing this lawsuit is threatening the existence of the Internet Archive. Is that really the case? If it is true, then maybe IA should be run by somebody with better judgement. This was a project with a massive chance of failure (how could anyone think that this wasn't just blatantly infringing?) and a low payoff. If it's also an existential risk, then wtf are they doing running it?
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  Yeah everyone pretty much said when they announced the National Emergency Library, they were risking everything. Sure enough, that's what happened. Giving money to the current Internet Archive is pretty much just giving money to the book publishers. Instead we should be funding someone new to buy the assets off in the auction, and keep the previous decisionmakers far from the new entity.
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
  I use IA all the time and love the website and most of what they do. But some of the stuff that they do that risks getting it all shut down is why I stopped donating.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    if you like the product, you can't pick and choose the traits of the origin.. source-- rock and roll biz
    - zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
      Nah, why would I give them money when they do blatantly illegal stuff?
      - bee_rider 4y ago
        It seems like a reasonably thing, to stop giving the Internet Archive money if you think they might be a bad steward of it. The comparison to rockstars is kind of interesting though, they often engaged in behavior that was criminal, and sometime pretty odious. We gave them money because we liked their cultural output, and they wouldn’t give it away for free. The Internet Archive doesn’t demand money, produces stuff with much arguably greater social value, and doesn’t really do anything odious (just illegal). In the end I have a streaming subscription and don’t give money to charities (maybe when I get a good job I will). Funny to think about, though.
hirako2000 4y ago
ipfs?
- bethecloud 4y ago
  storj
- lkbm 4y ago
  ipfs might be a hosting solution, but that's a small part of the challenge. You also have to source the data. I recently used some online periodical archive access from my local library to find sources about 1940s musicians protesting recorded music...couldn't find anything. Then I tried IA, and boom, they've got it[0] — someone had to source and scan all these. I recently wanted to revisit some 1980s-era computer games from when I was a kid. Internet Archive. How'd they get there? Someone there pulled them from 5.25" floppies. A few weeks ago, I remembered 3-2-1 Contact magazine, which I enjoyed as a kid. No problem: IA has source and scanned them. I could store all the DOS games in the world on my hard drive without noticing the space usage at all, but step one is acquiring copies of them. When it comes to the long tail of obscure 1940s periodicals or 1980s advertisements[0]. [0] https://twitter.com/lkbm/status/1608480435691995137 https://twitter.com/lkbm/status/1608480435691995137 [1] https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1643781181568327681 https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1643781181568327681
  - hirako2000 4y ago
    I agree the sourcing isn't something ipfs is magically solving. It is specifically to reduce the weakness of more centralised data store/serving which are easier targets. Even in term of resilience ipfs isn't bullet proof. Decentralising helps. Pinning needs to exist somewhere as a hard rive and a network connection, ideally with multiple replication, and held with serving as such for extended periods, across every single file.
- hirako2000 4y ago
  Also, I'm mentioning ipfs as a rescue solution more so than the internet archive served by ipfs necessarily, that's probably a longer line away from feasible I would guess, operationally etc.
iLoveOncall 4y ago
The article is extremely misleading. It makes it seem like the 4 publishers are against Internet Archive as a whole, when all they sued for was for the unrestricted publication of copyrighted books during the start of the pandemic.
- phmqk76 4y ago
  This is a college newspaper, I’m surprised it made it here. I cut them some slack, they’re still learning.
- lkbm 4y ago
  It was prompted by the unrestricted lending, but it's pretty clear that the fight is now about lending at all.[0] That may still only be the OpenLibrary, but it's not just the unrestricted lending, and I wouldn't be surprised it it also has a chilling effect on other scans. I'm curious how letting people view scans of obscure 1940s magazines is legal if doing it for books is not. They're not even restricted to one "borrower" at a time per physical copy with periodicals. [0] https://authorsguild.org/news/ag-celebrates-resounding-win-in-internet-archive-infringement-lawsuit/ https://authorsguild.org/news/ag-celebrates-resounding-win-i...
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Pretty much "everything" (other than public domain) on the IA is on shaky ground. It's been mostly OK because very few people object to the archiving of their public web pages (especially given the IA respects robots.txt even retroactively) and, as you say, old magazines that basically have zero commercial value.
    - kwo 4y ago
      IA stopped respecting robots.txt in 2017. I had to issue a DCMA takedown to get my sites delisted. They are arrogant and think themselves above normal netiquette. They deserve to lose. https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-search-engines-dont-work-well-for-web-archives/ https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-sea...
Apreche 4y ago
We already have laws for historical landmarks. These laws ensure the protection of things of societal significance, even to the point of restricting the rights of their private owners. We need such laws for the digital realm. If we had them we wouldn't have to worry about Internet Archive, dpreview, etc. Imagine if we had such laws in place long ago. We could be living in a world where Geocities and MySpace still existed, even if only in a read-only form.
- TylerE 4y ago
  Why should tax dollars be used for this?
  - i_k_k 4y ago
    Because government, and the tax dollars that support it, are how we, as a society, take collective action?
    - TylerE 4y ago
      Why is an archive of DPTeview something that is more important than covering basic things like health care (especially mental) that we do terribly at? Why can’t those who care about or undertake the effort? Thousands of nonprofit private historical societies exist.
      - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
        interesting questions, but since there's no mutual exclusivity in real life, they aren't relevant to the real question, whether taxpayers believe there is value there after all, congress could decide to cover this AND healthcare, they just don't want to do either
  - digging 4y ago
    > Why should tax dollars be used for this? Because: > We already have laws for historical landmarks. These laws ensure the protection of things of societal significance
causi 4y ago
which made copyrighted books available for free during the COVID-19 pandemic. The publishers behind the lawsuit alleged that this entailed copyright infringement. Along with everybody with two brain cells to rub together. We all screamed "Hey, you idiots are going to ruin everything if you act like the pandemic has magically nullified the concept of copyright" and they fucking did it anyway, and now exactly what we said would happen is happening. It's like you found a landmine in your front yard and your buddy said "That landmine shouldn't be there so I'm gonna go step on it" and you told him not to and then had to watch him throw himself onto it while declaring it would be morally wrong for it to blow his stupid ass up. Controlled digital lending had a chance of getting off the ground. The IA's Emergency Library's unlimited digital lending burned it to the ground and stomped on the ashes.
- Xelynega 4y ago
  They're not in court for the emergency library. They're in court for the 1-1 CDL lending they did. I'm tired of seeing this "well IA shouldn't have done the emergency library" line. Do you honestly believe the only reason publishers went after IA is the emergency library? I think this would have happened eventually, so pointing to the emergency library does nothing but tell everyone that you were right all along. They operate in a country where precedent is set in a court of law, how did you expect CDL to "get off the ground" if not challenged in a court of law?
  - Mindwipe 4y ago
    > They're not in court for the emergency library. They are in court for the "emergency library". The emergency library is a key part of the case. It's just inevitable that the lawsuit would also hinge on if 1 - 1 CDL is legally permissible and the case will inevitably have to rule on that. And yes, timing wise, and from the letters the publishes sent to the IA, they are explicitly about the "emergency library".
    - thebooktocome 4y ago
      I read the opinion. The emergency library appears once, only insofar as CDL being found not fair use entails that emergency lending was also not fair use. It’s an entirely severable part of the decision. The publishers legally had a case against CDL without it.
xhkkffbf 4y ago
I agree. And I told my friends at the IA from the beginning that their plan was very, very foolish. People can look the other way at copyright infringement of web sites when it's just used for archival work. But when you're directly destroying an artist's livelihood by undercutting their income stream, well, you shouldn't be surprised if they'll be upset.
- boucher 4y ago
  Are they really "directly destroying" anyone's livelihood? Are authors actually upset? [1][2] [1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/author-coalition-blasts-publishers-legal-fight-with-internet-archive-2022-09-29/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/author-coalition-bl... [2] https://www.authorsalliance.org/2021/08/17/library-lending-author-incomes-and-controlled-digital-lending/ https://www.authorsalliance.org/2021/08/17/library-lending-a...
  - xhkkffbf 4y ago
    I am. I'm an author. And you're a fool if you think that free copies at the IA don't cut into sales. Oh sure, some percentage of the people wouldn't have picked up a copy in the first place if they had to pay, but there's going to be some that skipped paying. It's the author and publisher's decision to give things away for free. Not anyone else's. Here's a challenge to you: tell your boss that you think your company should let a free version of your service be available online. A free version with no restrictions. Now, perhaps you work at a fully open source company and your boss would say, "Great." But you probably don't because those are going out of business. How's MariaDB working out these days?
hermannj314 4y ago
Is the premise of this opinion that if something is good, then courts should invent interpretations of laws to pretend the good thing is legal? The birthplace of the national park system took place through preservation acts passed by Congress, not wishful thinking. If IA is so amazing, why don't we codify and protect its existence through new law and not hope that a judge will squint favorably at copyright law?
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  [flagged]
_hfu3 4y ago
Maybe they shouldn't have done something that moronic? If people wanted free books they could always pirate them, openly infringing by hosting copyrighted books for a few people to slightly more easily read them for free... How could they possibly think that was a good idea?
- ernopp 4y ago
  The case for doing what they did is that it helped a lot of people access books (eg school curriculum ones) in the middle of Covid (not everyone knows how to pirate things). Not saying it was the right move but you can see where they're coming from, they wanted to help people.
  - emmp 4y ago
    Yes I love the idea and I want it to be legal. Perhaps it is even worth someone testing the law here intentionally to get the courts to rule. The Internet Archive's mission, imo, should be to protect and steward their archives and ability to continue to maintain them above all though. Putting that at risk for a morally righteous additional cause is not worth it. This was a leadership failure
  - ejb999 4y ago
    what if they did it with all of netflix's movies instead of books? would you feel differently? (I am sure netflix would).
    - Ekaros 4y ago
      Or maybe if they distributed newest version of software with certain parts removed. Maybe even non saas-software made by startups...
EamonnMR 4y ago
The internet archive served two distinct but important functions: one as a backup of the web which was important for accountability and history, and the other as a repository for archiving the world's non-web digital information. I personally scanned a whole bunch of ephemera and IA was the obvious place to put it. Why jeopardize those functions to do something brick and mortar libraries already did better, and legally? Other libraries do virtual lending.
- ajdude 4y ago
  This right here! The Internet archive had a really good thing going, I've been donating, digitizing, and uploading to IA for years. They were playing with fire, we all this coming, and I'm very frustrated with them over this.
- sp332 4y ago
  None of those things are on the line. We will continue our work as a library. This case does not challenge many of the services we provide with digitized books including interlibrary loan, citation linking, access for the print-disabled, text and data mining, purchasing ebooks, and ongoing donation and preservation of books. http://blog.archive.org/2023/03/25/the-fight-continues/ http://blog.archive.org/2023/03/25/the-fight-continues/
  - EamonnMR 4y ago
    It doesn't legally challenge those activities, but I'm worried about a situation where they get their proverbial pants sued off.
noNothing 4y ago
Ignoring fair use and countries other than the US we see that Copyright in the COnstitution said to promote science and useful arts, works should have protection for a limited time. Shortly after COngress defined "limited" as 14 years plus a renewal for 14. Then it was 28. plus a renewal and after more lobbying it reached today's time of the Authors lifetime plus 70 years. And since Mickey Mouse protection expires next year, we will probably see another extension. How life of the author plus 70 can be considered "limited time" just shows how the courts have trampled our Constitution.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Indeed so. It's only limited if you subtract out the human experience from policymaking. Given that the average lifespan in the US is 77 years, the reality is that you have to wait until you're almost at the end of your life for legally unrestricted access and use of material by someone who died the same year you were born. The cake is a lie.
phmqk76 4y ago
College newspaper from the burbs. Kudos to them getting some visibility, but I cut them some slack as young people still learning.
mrfinn 4y ago
F copyright, specially perpetual copyright used by big corporations as a weapon against poor people. Tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.
tristor 4y ago
Frankly, what the IA did here is absolutely the right thing. Copyright in the US is horribly fundamentally broken, and the idea that factual information about our history and world should not be referenceable and accessible for free is a pretty heinous one. Information wants to be free, and the work that IA did for "digital lending" during the pandemic was an essential move in the direction of ensuring that people can access this information regardless of their physical proximity and access to the base source material. I don't understand the backlash in the comments here, it seems to all come from a perspective of people being so downtrodden they just accept the current status quo crafted by MAFIAA lawyers, rather than looking at it holistically from first-principles.
- misnome 4y ago
  IA losing and getting shut down because "information wants to be free, man" is completely detrimental to trying to move that agenda forwards. "First principles" means jack shit if your company to build that world gets wiped off the map because you did something incredibly obviously stupidly illegal and handed the "MAFIAA lawyers" your own ass on a silver platter.
  - tristor 4y ago
    Maybe my viewpoint on this is informed by long-standing desire to basically start something like IA but in a way which is protected from the acts of nation-states. The fundamental problem with human society is that the power structures are always co-opted by elites for their own purposes rather than the purposes of society as a whole, it doesn't matter what the system of those power structures is, in all cases they get co-opted. The fact that a corporate entity is allowed to take action against the IA in this case and be supported by the government in doing so is a symptom of our broken system, it's not evidence that the IA did anything wrong in any moral or social sense. The fact our society is held hostage, and that information is imprisoned, by entities like the MAFIAA is not a justification for this outcome.
    - misnome 4y ago
      > it's not evidence that the IA did anything wrong in any moral or social sense. The fact our society is held hostage, and that information is imprisoned, by entities like the MAFIAA is not a justification for this outcome I don't think that IA's position was morally or ethically wrong; I would wager a lot of people here would feel the same way. Unfortunately, for this case, morality and ethicality aren't the law. And the law was extremely known, and predictable in which side it would fall on here. This outcome was very, very predictable. IA gambled; possibly their existence; on astronomical odds that they could force a confrontation against the backdrop of the pandemic, and win. Maybe this was the best chance that they would ever get, in which case it was worth trying. But I don't think the anti-copyright revolution was ever going to be triggered by IA giving out free books.
NotYourLawyer 4y ago
None of the hand wringing about covid is the least bit relevant to the question of whether the emergency library is copyright infringement. If Congress wants to set aside copyright during pandemics, that’s fine (and maybe a decent idea frankly). But in the absence of something like that, this is all just a smoke screen. What a poorly written article.
throwitaway222 4y ago
We are? I'm more worried about having a roof over my head in the next year.
- digging 4y ago
  Both can be true.
49erfangoniners 4y ago
Well be aight
- anononaut 4y ago
  We'll be stuck in Plato's cave
breck 4y ago
I'd extend this to say, if we don't abolish (c)opywrong, we're screwed. Does anyone want to go back to the closed source software development model of the 1990's? Then why do we not push for the open source model not only in software, but across news, academia, music, film, databases, et cetera? How many of your hard earned tax dollars go to pay for Microsoft's and Oracle's technical debt? How much of your tax dollars go pay for Elsevier's and Random House's and Wiley's closed source databases of publications? Why do we allow this inferior model of treating ideas to exist, when we now have solid data that the open way is far superior "for the progress of arts and sciences?". Write your representatives. Organize your communities. It's time to pass a new Amendment to the Constitution: Section 1. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of this Constitution is hereby repealed. Section 2. Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people to publish ideas.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > I'd extend this to say, if we don't abolish (c)opywrong, we're screwed. Then consider us "screwed," because what you propose has a snowball's chance in hell of actually happening. Also, too many software engineers overreact to some reformable problems with the IP system with burn-it-all down radicalism. I think your proposals would cause more harm than good. They'd likely stop most media creation that you're used to*, and what's left with either be cheap (think fanfiction) or under tighter lockdown than any DRM you've ever seen. * Tell me, who's going to invest 10-200 million dollars to make a movies or TV shows on a regular basis, without copyright?
  - breck 4y ago
    > * Tell me, who's going to invest 10-200 million dollars to make a movies or TV shows on a regular basis, without copyright? We can have a world where: - Every child has access to humanity's best information - We cure cancer - 90% of American's media is controlled by 6,000, not 6, corporations - College tuition costs drop dramatically - Lower taxes - More income equality - No more opioid pandemics - Making the world resilient against AI domination Or a world where: - We make sure that we don't risk disrupting new Game of Thrones spinoffs I know what I choose.
YeezyMode 4y ago
Assuming the scenario where ISPs end up blocking access to the archive, the fact that this is happening alongside rapid advances in LLMs is pretty insane. Comparisons with historical snapshots of the web is probably one of the best ways to combat disinformation and misinformation generated using AIs. There are of course other risks and dangers that people have talked about re: restricted access to knowledge and precedents for future publications, but this one in particular seems very dangerous in a timely manner - almost like a setup for very clear and obvious disasters surrounding propaganda, memes, and social chaos.
skee8383 4y ago
We're already screwed because the internet is dying. Everyone is just using phones now, all the forums are shutting down. IRC is dead. Matrix is dead. Discord lives because it's a gamer/trans rights echo chamber. but that's it. The late 90s and early 2000s was the golden era of the internet. we're living in the detritus now.
- Arathorn 4y ago
  matrix is far from dead! just hit 94M addressable users and all time high of 2M MAU on the matrix.org server (doubled in last year)
  - skee8383 4y ago
    it has tons of bots and dead accounts. i run a few channels with hundreds of "users". they get maybe 3 posts per month.
jmull 4y ago
AI was foolish and irresponsible. Republishing books without limitations would almost surely provoke a law suit that they would almost surely lose. Not only is it a waste of resources, but now that they are in court they could very easily receive a judgement that curtails access they used to provide before the rollout of the "emergency library". It's fine (and right, IMO) if you don't agree with the current copyright law but just ignoring them was foolish.
- beej71 4y ago
  I say it's fine if you think it's foolish, but we really need to save the fool.
  - ineedasername 4y ago
    I think this is the right approach to take. Unless the IA went into their decision with their eyes open and knowing the huge risk they were taking with the existence of their organization. That would at least make it no more foolish than anyone else knowingly taking a huge risk. But yes, the IA is both culturally important and significantly beneficial in everyday practical matters. I'm not sure what we can do to help IA come out of this intact though. "Write your congressman" is these days a somewhat laughable suggestion in the face of any problem, the desperate act of last resort that no one expects to actually succeed.
- Aachen 4y ago
  IA autocorrect?
  - jmull 4y ago
    lol, it could've be me, I have AI on the brain lately.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
user3939382 4y ago
I don't know how their finances are structured but the way you solve this problem is with a big endowment.
RGamma 4y ago
We need an IA backup project right now :/
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  How many PB is their entire site? I assume they could enable native read-only rsyncd easily enough on some caching nodes. Anyone re-publishing their library would be at legal risk but private mirrors should be safe.
  - RGamma 4y ago
    According to https://archive.org/web/petabox.php https://archive.org/web/petabox.php it's 99 PB unique data and 212 PB total storage on 28k HDDs as of Dec. 2021 (3.2M USD at 15 USD/TB for the 212 PB, not sure if the price is realistic). It's quite something for a private initiative...
nmstoker 4y ago
Are there any efforts to boycott the publishers pushing this? I happen to think they're technically correct with the IA in the wrong here, but even so I think they should back down - they can take a big picture view that it's hardly dealt them a serious blow, it was the pandemic and the IA serves a useful purpose for society (though I suspect many publishers besides more enlightened ones would disagree with that due to self-interest!)
samstave 4y ago
We need a few many copies of the IA in the Seed Vault and have it constantly uploaded... We should also have a perma-satellite in LEO that can be streamed to... AND, while we are thinking out space, get a digital/physical seed vault on the moon - and can anything survive in the current Mars atmosphere? Send seed bombs to Mars and see what sticks? I mean, we appear to be hell-bent on terra farming Mars, so we may as well just throw seeds at it. https://scienceagri.com/16-most-important-plant-species-in-the-world/ https://scienceagri.com/16-most-important-plant-species-in-t... I would add bamboo to that list, though.
emmp 4y ago
I think leadership at Internet Archive was deeply irresponsible for deciding a short term stunt was worth potentially existentially threatening legal exposure. The entire leadership there and anyone who signed off on the decision should be replaced. I am a donor but I'm pissed. They should have known better.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
lenocinor 4y ago
I appreciate the metaphor with the Library of Alexandria, but TIL that it may not have burned catastrophically and may have been rebuilt after: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria “Despite the widespread modern belief that the Library of Alexandria was burned once and cataclysmically destroyed, the Library actually declined gradually over the course of several centuries. This decline began with the purging of intellectuals from Alexandria in 145 BC during the reign of Ptolemy VIII Physcon, which resulted in Aristarchus of Samothrace, the head librarian, resigning from his position and exiling himself to Cyprus...The Library, or part of its collection, was accidentally burned by Julius Caesar during his civil war in 48 BC, but it is unclear how much was actually destroyed and it seems to have either survived or been rebuilt shortly thereafter; the geographer Strabo mentions having visited the Mouseion in around 20 BC and the prodigious scholarly output of Didymus Chalcenterus in Alexandria from this period indicates that he had access to at least some of the Library's resources.”
- Kim_Bruning 4y ago
  It's not just a metaphor, btw. IA actually partners with the modern Bibliotheca Alexandrina. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Alexandrina#Internet_Archive_partnership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Alexandrina#Intern...
  - hansoolo 4y ago
    Wow, this is really cool!
- theli0nheart 4y ago
  Came here to write this. That Julius Caesar burned the library seems to be a common misconception.
- legitimayzer 4y ago
  the roman catholics burned it so to make their mythical "jesus" figure stick. with the info destroyed in that fire we became 'disconnected' from the real historical jesus; thereby enabling the rise of the mythical figure tweaked to allow easier control of the masses. "what would jesus do?"
boomboomsubban 4y ago
So if I'm reading the law[1] right, which I'm probably not, the damages for the 127 books should be around $3.8 million, with ~$20 million the absolute max? Neither of those amounts seem high enough to destroy the IA. [1]https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/504 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/504
- alephnerd 4y ago
  Their operating expenses in 2020 hit almost $20mil [0] and they only raise around $21mil in donations. In addition they only have $9mil in assets. That means they could potentially shut down if a hardline litigation strategy is persued. In addition, this opens the gate to additional litigation to any other potential claimant (eg. Warez copyright owners or video copyright owners - there is a lot of pirated material hosted on IA). [0] - https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/internet-archive,943242767/ https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/internet-archive,94324...
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    The revenue on Wikipedia was from 2019, when for some reason they got double their usual revenue, so I may have overestimated their cash reserves. Still seems like something they could recover from. >In addition, this opens the gate to additional litigation to any other potential claimant (eg. Warez copyright owners or video copyright owners - there is a lot of pirated material hosted on IA). I don't see how. This ruling is specifically about CDL, something the rest of their archived content doesn't follow, and all those warez and video copyright holders already have the option to DMCA claim any content on the IA. I do worry this could allow other publishers to sue over past CDL practices.
k__ 4y ago
Could they mirror it to Filecoin or Arweave?
- Alifatisk 4y ago
  Filecoin & siaskynet have not been reliabile to me
  - k__ 4y ago
    How come?
    - Alifatisk 4y ago
      When I visited the file I had uploaded a week later or month, the url was not accessible anymore. Especially with Skynet.
FreeCodeFreak 4y ago
It contains a lot of copyrighted content, especially ebooks and software. This could be avoided if they would just follow the rules like everyone else.
- 0xcde4c3db 4y ago
  Nearly every large service that allows user uploads contains a lot of copyrighted content, hence DMCA safe harbor. IA seems to operate in a gray area with stuff like the Console Living Room (which doesn't allow downloads), but as far as I've heard they are responsive to valid DMCA notifications. A lot of supposed "DMCA notifications" are bullshit, though (don't contain the required elements, not sent to the registered DMCA agent).
butz 4y ago
I bet some folks from datahoarding subreddit have at least a few copies of the Internet Archive.
beej71 4y ago
So they were foolish and now we're here. But I hope we can all agree that IA still needs saving, and losing it is a disaster for all real people.
- EamonnMR 4y ago
  Here here.
bastardoperator 4y ago
We need a new internet archive archive just to stay safe is what I'm hearing.
- doublerabbit 4y ago
  > We need a new internet I totally agree.
frandroid 4y ago
> Hatchette v. Internet Archive Freudian typo...
icameron 4y ago
Is there any chance this we would loose the Way Back Machine or the Live Music Archive because of this?
- criddell 4y ago
  Does the IA own hardware? If so, I would guess the court could force the sale or transfer of those assets. In another comment somebody posted that the maximum damages could be something like $20 million which seems survivable.
gcanyon 4y ago
Copyright law needs to change. Back in the day, a copyright measured in decades made sense, because it took that long to promote and distribute a work and derive reasonable profit from it. Today that process takes days, maybe months (apart from the rare work that languishes, only to be "discovered" later). Copyright should be much shorter -- a couple years at most -- with renewal available if the creator really believes the work has yet to find its audience. The standard for abandoned works still protected under the existing system should default against the (potential) holder of the original copyright as long as a good-faith effort was made to reach them, and damages should amount to some sort of split of the profits.
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  I don't think I agree with this. Novels can take years to write, and to have their copyright expire after only a few years may not be enough for the author to write another book. What would be the motivation to write a series if the series isn't worth printing after only a few books? It goes doubly if the novel might be up for a movie or a TV adaptation: the game of thrones tv adaptation didn't happen until much later after the first book... does this mean George R R Martin should be paid 0 while HBO makes a killing on the first few seasons? How would any artist retire ever if they cannot make money off their existing body of work?
  - 0xfffafaCrash 4y ago
    I’d argue that copyright and intellectual property more broadly shouldn’t exist. That wouldn’t lead to the end of culture but a cultural explosion as people became able to remix and propagate ideas more freely without the fear of punishment for violating artificial state-enforced monopolies. No one is obligated to create a work and no one is obligated to share their created works with others. There’s no inherent right to anything once you put an idea out there and the legal constructs are just novel artificial ways to keep the have-nots from competing with the haves. Culture existed well before notions of intellectual property and if anything today we have far better means of both producing works ourselves and collectively funding works that might not exist without compensation. Rewarding the top 0.0001% of lucky creators with huge compensation isn’t worth the broad societal damage that is done by preventing people from sharing or making use of ideas.
marwis 4y ago
Amazing how reckless IA is with their library program while at the same time being extremely cautions with Wayback Archive to the point of retroactively applying robots.txt and removing website archives because "they can't afford even the smallest risk of being sued".
- Vecr 4y ago
  I don't think they do that because they might get sued. I think they do it because they might get canceled.
cwilby 4y ago
I recently (in the last 2 weeks) used Wayback Machine to miraculously restore an old static site where the backups had also been lost. https://github.com/alessandropellegrini/WebsiteRecovery https://github.com/alessandropellegrini/WebsiteRecovery
phendrenad2 4y ago
Someone needs to start a competing Internet Archive, which only archives, you know, THE INTERNET, and not xbox games, warez, movies, music, books, etc. The overreach at IA is much bigger than it looks on the surface. Go look at the things people are uploading there.
- oefrha 4y ago
  > Someone needs to start a competing Internet Archive, which only archives, you know, THE INTERNET And a faster, more reliable (in terms of percentage of 5XX responses) one would be nice. Right now Wayback Machine performance leaves a lot to be desired. I end up using archive.is whenever possible. Yes, I donate to Internet Archive, don’t chastise me.
  - phendrenad2 4y ago
    I'm surprised there isn't a paid alternative to Wayback Machine. I'd pay for fewer 5xx errors (which are often rate limiting, I.E. "You clicked more than 10 times in 10 minutes, that's WAY TOO FAST bro")
throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
> When Julius Caesar burned the Library of Alexandria, it was harder to imagine a greater destruction of scholarship. Dude. We're not talking about losing secret ancient knowledge. We're talking about losing pictures of cats. There is nothing on the internet that's so valuable that we couldn't live without it. Real research, real knowledge, makes its way out of the internet. And besides, most of the internet that we can actually discover is cached in search engines.
- DanTheManPR 4y ago
  >Dude. We're not talking about losing secret ancient knowledge. We're talking about losing pictures of cats. But we're literally talking about book lending, and preserving the old knowledge of the early internet. However lofty and pretensions the analogy may seem, comparing it to the burning of the library of Alexandria actually does seem like a better analogy than "we're just losing pictures of cats"
- Mike_12345 4y ago
  Internet Archive stores much more than pictures of cats. Books, magazines, technical manuals, documents, software, movies, music, images, documentaries, concerts, etc. These are files that users upload. The web crawler is just one part of it. You will find the most obscure things that practically cannot be found anywhere else. Stuff that would otherwise be permanently lost. https://archive.org/ https://archive.org/ "Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more." "As of January 1, 2023, the Internet Archive holds over 36 million books and texts, 11.6 million movies, videos and TV shows and clips, 950 thousand software programs, 15 million audio files, 4.5 million images, 251 thousand concerts, and 780 billion web pages in its Wayback Machine."
wslh 4y ago
Could (or is) the Internet Archive be decentralized shared (e.g. BitTorrent)?
navierstokess 4y ago
Could we partially back up the Internet Archive to Filecoin? According to https://file.app/ https://file.app/ storing 1PB of data to Filecoin for a year would cost $2,336, that's an amount that could be crowdfunded. Of course, IA has much more than a petabyte of data, but it wouldn't be impractical to save the most important ( however you decide that ) parts of it.
micromacrofoot 4y ago
I'm always surprised by how many people will come out of the woodwork to shame IA for defying some of the most idiotic laws conceived. I have great faith that even if by some legal disaster this destroyed the IA, it would invigorate the people that work and support it... because they're right.
VonGuard 4y ago
Honest question: what is stopping Brewster from filing for bankruptcy and transferring all assets to another non-profit. CA law specifically states that dissolved non-profits have to donate everything to another non-profit. All the hardware and data would be considered their core product. They could donate all of that to a new non-profit, and leave some token staff and office equipment behind for the bankruptcy to chop up and distribute. Happens all the time with for profit businesses.... Also, thumbs fucking down for society punishing Archive for doing something to help Americans during an extreme time of crisis. I feel like if an apocalypse ever happens, 10 years later, everyone left alive will be in court being sued for helping each other. America is so stupid and short sighted about EVERYTHING.
- MagicMoonlight 4y ago
  I’d imagine there are laws preventing that kind of behaviour. If a court is ordering you to pay something and you then hide all your assets to avoid paying then that’s pretty serious. Would you be happy if a chemical plant donated its facility to a new company “Chemical Plant 2” in order to avoid paying compensation for chemical spills?
  - VonGuard 4y ago
    Happy? No. But if they do it before the verdict, it's all in the clear. Happens ALL the time. Businesses constantly sell their assets to other shell companies to avoid liability. Alex Jones is doing this right now AFTER the verdict.
kornhole 4y ago
A rally is planned on Saturday at 11 in SF. https://actionnetwork.org/events/dont-delete-our-books-rally-in-san-francisco https://actionnetwork.org/events/dont-delete-our-books-rally...
majormajor 4y ago
> This is fundamentally a strike against taxpayer-funded public services by corporations and private individuals. Wait what? That's not how the Internet Archive is paid for. And because it's private, it could have private replacements/competitors. If another group were to clone all the stuff the Internet Archive doesn't get into hot water for, and not make the obviously hugely risky move that got them in trouble here, does that solve the problem? Are there potential issues re: the Internet Archive suing a second archive that copied them or such? Seems like an opportunity for some rich folks to make a big philanthropic gesture in support of archiving information and making it available.
- teh_klev 4y ago
  I think the notion here is that the corporations will be coming for the public lending libraries next, and it's not beyond the realms of imagination.
GenericDev 4y ago
I'm so sick of modern businesses and their vampire approach on creativity and intelligent property. I see a lot of comments in this thread with what about-isms or "I don't care, we wouldn't miss anything", but these people are short-sighted. And to be honest the hacker news community is frequently the community I loathe to engage in these topics with. Because they are always looking forward with very little respect for the past as well as very little respect for domains outside of technology. The internet archive is a huge boon in intangible value for communities and the world. It represents a huge cultural fountain that is accessible for anyone so long as they have the ability to access a computer. A great example of this is that the Internet Archive was the ONLY place where I could enjoy a completely random piece of lost media from a children's television show called Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. There was a lost episode where OJ Simpson was in it and it never aired because of obvious issues. BUT there was a book published from the production called "White Rabbits Can't Jump" https://archive.org/details/whiterabbitscant00varl https://archive.org/details/whiterabbitscant00varl I can't imagine being able to go to any publisher or paid streaming service or god forbid Amazon to find this book, and I sure as shit don't believe in this community to help create ecosystems to support finding things like this. I am so sick and tired of the copyright laws that play counter to productive creation and stymying efforts to preserve anything. The fact that I have to wait until people die until copyright is up is god awful. And the fact that I have to read people in this community who sound like boot-lickers for corporate oligarchs and their shitty value adds to the world drives me so fucking insane. I'm only commenting here because I feel it's important to articulate that there are people out there who care, and that the vocal a-holes on this site really miss the point and the intangible value of what the internet archive provides.
- disqard 4y ago
  Thank you so much for speaking up! You're not alone in thinking this way. And kudos for investing the Time to write this up -- the sophists are all-too-often over-represented here, and I'm never really sure that they're always arguing in Good Faith, or if they are, they're often being so short-sighted that it's simultaneously funny and sad.
- int_19h 4y ago
  I really wish we ditched the name "copyright" altogether because of its unfortunate implications. It's not actually a right - it's a privilege. The system is entirely artificial and wouldn't exist without active social and legal enforcement. And if the privilege is abused in ways that don't benefit society, then it can and should be curtailed or even revoked.
moffkalast 4y ago
> If you’ve ever researched anything online, you’ve probably used the Internet Archive (IA). Wow, pretentious much. The Wayback machine is an interesting passing curiosity that with great luck sometimes saves a webpage that isn't completely broken. The average person has never heard of its existence. Sure it's fun looking at how web pages used to look like and laugh at terrible designs but it's not exactly part of anyone's real workflow and surely violates right to delete and a bunch of other copyright laws. You've stolen and rehosted the world's content and now you're surprised people are suing you? Do these people hear themselves? Did they not see pirating sites being fought tooth and nail in the past decades? I'm frankly surprised that the FBI hasn't sized their domains years ago.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ineedasername 4y ago
  You've almost definitely used the IA if you have spent any amount of time browsing articles on Wikipedia. Appropriately sourcing information is a fundamental (and imperfect) part of Wikipedia, and doing so relies extensively on the creation of static IA snapshots to preserve the cited information.
- cobertos 4y ago
  How is that pretentious? It has so much truth to it. The attention span of our information stewards (large corporations, large universities) is so small that within 10 years you will have trouble finding information they once deemed critical and published. I've used IA to research things I would not have been able to any other way, the information is _no where_ else! * Finding missing YouTube videos from playlists. It's usually enough to get the title as YouTube doesnt care to show you the title of what's been deleted, privated, etc. * A large university deleted all their "website builder" pages including a lot of research and news about certain projects. I used IA to find information on a building I bought from them. * Looking at the origins/roots of companies like Unity3D. Have you seen their website in 1999? It's pretty cool! * Old tutorials on websites that don't exist anymore. There is so much use to IA when those that store our information would gladly pull it out from under us to save a few dollars.
ineedasername 4y ago
A Most Sensible Proposal for the Absolute Perpetuation of Copyright Laws: It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great Internet of ours when they behold the countless instances of piracy and blatant disregard for the sanctity of copyright laws. The noble and ever-vigilant lawmakers, in their infinite wisdom, have blessed us with these righteous statutes, designed to protect the creative genius of the chosen few and ensure their perpetual enrichment. I shall now humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection, for the enhancement of copyright laws and the merciless suppression of those who would dare to infringe upon them. I have been assured by a very knowing academic of my acquaintance that copyright infringement is a scourge upon our society, depriving deserving creators of their rightful earnings and perpetuating anarchy in the realm of intellectual property. It is of the utmost importance that we reinforce the importance of copyright, extending its reign to the furthest reaches of human creativity, even unto the most mundane and trivial expressions. In order to accomplish this most necessary task, I propose that all human utterances, expressions, and gestures, be they written, spoken, or signed, be henceforth copyrighted, requiring the payment of a modest fee for their use. This fee shall be directed to the original creator, or their heirs, who shall retain control of their intellectual property for a period not less than one thousand years. This, I am confident, will provide ample incentive for the continuation of human creativity and innovation. Furthermore, to prevent the heinous crime of piracy, it is imperative that all infants be implanted with a small monitoring device, connected to the great and mighty copyright database. This device shall track each individual's every expression, ensuring prompt and accurate payment to the appropriate copyright holder. Should any attempt be made to remove this device, or should an individual be found in violation of copyright laws, they shall be immediately and publicly flogged, that others may learn from their example. For those who might object that this proposal would stifle creativity and hinder the sharing of knowledge and ideas, I say that such fears are baseless and utterly without merit. After all, it is only through the tireless efforts of our most esteemed creators that we, the unworthy masses, are granted access to the wisdom and brilliance of human thought. Surely, it is a small price to pay for the privilege of partaking in such exalted company. I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, the advancement of the arts, and the salvation of mankind from the hideous specter of copyright infringement. Let us embrace these changes, for only through the eternal protection of copyright can we ensure the continued flourishing of human creativity and the preservation of our most treasured works for generations to come.
bloppe 4y ago
I agree with the title and general sentiment, but the article comes across as a diatribe and the author does not seem to be arguing completely in good faith ("There’s no evidence the borrowing program scooped up any independent writers’ income" relies entirely on the impossibility of proving a counterfactual). I want more information about the nitty gritty details of the case; the implications of the ruling on the CDL and books besides the 133 involved in the suit. It's seems like a pretty narrow case; not an existential threat to the IA itself.
isopede 4y ago
I've been reflecting a bit on how nature of the internet has changed, and how niche communities that I used to rely on all had specialty forums, mailing lists, etc, with history often stretching back years. It seems like more and more of these old-school discussion forums are disappearing, and their modern equivalents (discord? subreddits?) just don't seem to have the same feel. DPReview is probably the most recent example, but I occasionally I will still visit specialty forums like eevblog.com for EE, or VW forums for my car. It's hard to imagine finding the same sort of expertise and years-long knowledge base on current discussion platforms. Where do we go next? What happens when these communities are lost? Where are we to go if, for example, HN were to disappear?
yeeeeeee 4y ago
I'd argue we lost the Internet Archive when they started to remove archives of domains based on public backlash.
yeeeeeee 4y ago
I'd argue we lost the Internet Archive when they started to remove archives of websites because of public backlash.
groby_b 4y ago
We're going to at some point talk about the fact that the IA decided to do the absolutely most stupid thing they could possibly do to ensure they'd create the setup for the most devastating ruling possible, yes? Yes, our current copyright system is fucked up. This is, however, not a new fact. And the IA should've spent about 5 minutes talking to their lawyers to figure out why the idea as implemented was the worst thing they could possibly do. With pretty much no upside for them or the public. It's the utter boneheaded waste of resources here that's just hard to comprehend. You know you work in a hostile environment. Behave accordingly. (This does not change that Hachette et.al are positively disastrous for the public good and should, frankly, be looked at as a cartel. And treated accordingly.)
faeranne 4y ago
Wanna throw in a small, but hopefully important story here. About 5 years ago, IA managed to recover a nearly decade long lost card game. It wasn't a huge deal, and the original creator had assumed it permanently lost when his website crashed. It wasn't even a great game tbh. The author was focused mostly on webcomics, so it was considered an inconvenience. Thing is, this was a game he made back in high school, so while it wasn't a huge financial loss, it was an emotional loss for him. He had even partially used IA to try and recover it. Turned out there were multiple steps needed to navigate to the right page, since the link IA had actually grabbed was different from the link the page it pointed to had. I received an incredibly heartfelt message from him talking about years of nostalgia I had unlocked by returning that page to the public. Mind you, this was a web comic artist, so he would have fully been within his right to tell IA to purge all his copyrighted content, but had he done that, this card game would be gone. forever. So, there's a clear balance that could be struck. Or... you could look at it the way he did: "I distribute my content in a way that makes advertisers happy. IA makes sure if I fuck up it's not gone forever. No one is using IA to read my comics unless my site is down. If it's down... well, I'm not making any money off of them anyways." So... yeah, there are right ways to do things, and the thing is, IA is not a place people generally point to for piracy. Its a place to point to when the worst happens. When the original creator isn't making money on something anyways. Or when they've ensured a group of people can't pay them for something.
_the_inflator 4y ago
Internet Archive is hugely important for me. I found a lot of antic books regarding technical specifications from vintage computers like Commodores VC 20, C64, C128, Amiga series as well as Atari ST and 286/386. Manuals, magazines, construction plans, whatever you want to search for. A lot of software references for long gone C compilers, Turbo Pascal whatever was popular during the 80th - if you cannot find it in the IA, it didn't happen, so to paraphrase. I love the IA for its effort, to deliver high quality material in a digitized format. While I understand, that there might be copyright, I opt against a right to be forgotten. To me these books are classics, like any other literature. Preserve this heritage. You can donate to IA.
HNlurker777 4y ago
https://www.battleforlibraries.com/ https://www.battleforlibraries.com/
geysersam 4y ago
The problem is our economic system doesn't support these kind of large scale extremely beneficial projects. (See Wikipedia etc.) How much value does Wikipedia or the IA bring compared to your average unicorn startup? There's a problem there we need to figure out how to solve...
35208654 4y ago
Beginning with the RIAA suing college kids and culminating the French police raiding what.cd, I have become anti-copyright. Not reformist, not 'but it's good for...'. Totally anti-copyright. Burn it all down. Share music. Scan books and upload them to libgen. The shared cultural history of humanity depends on it.
weare138 4y ago
This is just the start. Libraries are next.
textfiles 4y ago
Thanks to everyone speaking up about the Internet Archive. Regardless of forum posts, the work stands before us and the love pours in.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
totetsu 4y ago
We lost a lot when live-leak went away too to be honest.. 99% of it is things I would never want to watch again, but the one that sticks out in my mind is the video footage from the phones of the korean highschool students who waited to drown to death on the instructions of the captain of the Sinking Sewol ferry.
spit2wind 4y ago
This essay in copyright by RMS is relevant and was eye-opening to me. It introduced me to the concept of "the copyright bargain": > the government spends the public's natural rights, on the public's behalf, as part of a deal to bring the public more published works. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.htm...
dzonga 4y ago
if there was ever a time I advocated for tax : it's for public libraries and access to knowledge at free / reduced cost whether books, journals etc. authors gotta make a living. but then they can make living via speaking engagements. e.g speak at a public library say at 50k. paid via benefactors and tax.
vmilner 4y ago
What’s the current best guess for when access to IA (or at least the contested parts) will disappear?
rldjbpin 4y ago
regardless of how you feel about IA's actions, they are the only ones doing digital archiving at their scale. i hope there are attempts made to replicate the non-infringing parts of the platform for the worst case scenario.
garfieldnate 4y ago
So how do we actually take action on this point? It's not something we can vote on, or call our representatives about.
slackfan 4y ago
The hilarious bit is that what kicked off this particular shitshow was Chuck Wendig who I personally regard as a two-bit hack "writer", perhaps best known for his god-awful Star Wars books. So glad to see nerd culture basically beating itself in the nads with a baseball bat over, frankly, petty bullshit. Although he has spent a lot of time backtracking, it's his whining that kicked this charade off initially, so I hold him personally accountable for it.
franz68 4y ago
Hatchette or Hachette ?? Please proof read before publishing
davidgiven 4y ago
I've donated as much as I could to Internet Archive. I really hope it helps them work through this case, and I urge everyone else to pitch in what they can, money or not, I'm sure anything could help at this point.

1790 points by raybb 4y ago

jonesnc 4y ago

So, how do we create an Internet Archive Archive?

lkbm 4y ago
There are people working on this, but "IA preserved as it was when it was killed in 2023" is nowhere near as valuable as IA as it would be in 2033 if it survives. IA is constantly adding new content. ("New" meaning "not-yet-archived stuff from the past century", in addition to up-to-date web snapshots.)
- tablespoon 4y ago
  What people need to be working on is to create a peer/successor organization that can take a copy of its archive and carry on its core functions, not just a static archive on a server somewhere.
- Aachen 4y ago
  I'd rather have "IA preserved as it was in 2023" than no IA at all. If we have a gap in the collection between tomorrow and when someone sets up a new IA in a few years, that's very different than losing most things collected about the inception of the Internet.
doublerabbit 4y ago
WebServer + Scraper + Storage in essence. The main issues are storage, centrialisation, moderation and copyright; that if you wished, rebel and ignore these with a distrbuted model like BitTorrent, or IPFS. If an library burns to the ground you loose everything, so you will have to decentrialise. That then causes moderation issues as if you were to truely go decentrialised; what's stopping a bad actor uploading icky stuff? It would resolve the take-down from copyright, as they couldn't kill all nodes. But all sounds like a lot of work for a very little return.

tambourine_man 4y ago

https://archive.org/donate/ https://archive.org/donate/

ocdtrekkie 4y ago
Every dollar donated here will end up going to the book publishers.

jawns 4y ago

I know the government has viewed certain companies as "too big to fail," because of the negative financial impact we would experience if they were to do so. I wonder if there needs to be a cultural equivalent, where a repository of digital or physical artifacts is "too big to fail" because of the negative cultural impact their failure would have. In the absence of that, anyone who sees high cultural value to the preservation of these digital artifacts should, counterintuitively, not treat the Internet Archive as having some special status, but should treat it as a liability. It has become the custodian of too much, and too much is on the line if it fails. Rather than trying to constantly shore up the IA so it can't fail financially, we should be looking at ways to preserve those artifacts redundantly, so that even if the IA fails, it's not a calamity.

bruce511 4y ago
>> I wonder if there needs to be a cultural equivalent, where a repository of digital or physical artifacts is "too big to fail" because of the negative cultural impact their failure would have. You can wonder all you like, and call me a cynic, but the US runs on money not culture. The American identity is built on money and wealth and excess, not on anything you might describe as "culture". The IA would not "fail" if it was just left alone, but business never saw a nickel they didn't want to grab, so the law suits are not exactly surprising. And I expect the courts to lean towards the publishers.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  > US runs on money not culture fortunately, someone saying that does not make it real. Think of a "soup" and of "experiment" and you will get more detail. Resolving an entire nation to a 1 or 0 classification is not defensible, right?
  - lanternfish 4y ago
    In this case though, the question is what underlying motivator dominates. The claim doesn't need to be as strong as 'the us is money, no culture' and can just be 'in the US, money accounts for more willpower and political capital than culture in a head to head'

rashkov 4y ago

This is pretty confusing... is the Internet Archive at risk from this legal decision?

hirako2000 4y ago
It's at least at risk of being blocked by ISPs in the us and pressured/shutdown if hosting is by a provider in the US.
- nequo 4y ago
  Even after complying with the court's decision and shutting down unlimited digital lending?
  - Mindwipe 4y ago
    That's not really going to be the issue anyway. The issue is if the liabilities of having done this result in the organisation going bankrupt. Note that the plaintiffs have already stated that is not their aim. Even then, the likelihood is more that someone else would take it over (though I imagine that the plaintiffs would, if they waived some proportion of their damages, that nobody currently involved in the current leadership and board was allowed anywhere near it).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

jsnell 4y ago

The title implies that losing this lawsuit is threatening the existence of the Internet Archive. Is that really the case? If it is true, then maybe IA should be run by somebody with better judgement. This was a project with a massive chance of failure (how could anyone think that this wasn't just blatantly infringing?) and a low payoff. If it's also an existential risk, then wtf are they doing running it?

ocdtrekkie 4y ago
Yeah everyone pretty much said when they announced the National Emergency Library, they were risking everything. Sure enough, that's what happened. Giving money to the current Internet Archive is pretty much just giving money to the book publishers. Instead we should be funding someone new to buy the assets off in the auction, and keep the previous decisionmakers far from the new entity.
zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
I use IA all the time and love the website and most of what they do. But some of the stuff that they do that risks getting it all shut down is why I stopped donating.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  if you like the product, you can't pick and choose the traits of the origin.. source-- rock and roll biz
  - zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
    Nah, why would I give them money when they do blatantly illegal stuff?
    - bee_rider 4y ago
      It seems like a reasonably thing, to stop giving the Internet Archive money if you think they might be a bad steward of it. The comparison to rockstars is kind of interesting though, they often engaged in behavior that was criminal, and sometime pretty odious. We gave them money because we liked their cultural output, and they wouldn’t give it away for free. The Internet Archive doesn’t demand money, produces stuff with much arguably greater social value, and doesn’t really do anything odious (just illegal). In the end I have a streaming subscription and don’t give money to charities (maybe when I get a good job I will). Funny to think about, though.

hirako2000 4y ago

ipfs?

bethecloud 4y ago
storj
lkbm 4y ago
ipfs might be a hosting solution, but that's a small part of the challenge. You also have to source the data. I recently used some online periodical archive access from my local library to find sources about 1940s musicians protesting recorded music...couldn't find anything. Then I tried IA, and boom, they've got it[0] — someone had to source and scan all these. I recently wanted to revisit some 1980s-era computer games from when I was a kid. Internet Archive. How'd they get there? Someone there pulled them from 5.25" floppies. A few weeks ago, I remembered 3-2-1 Contact magazine, which I enjoyed as a kid. No problem: IA has source and scanned them. I could store all the DOS games in the world on my hard drive without noticing the space usage at all, but step one is acquiring copies of them. When it comes to the long tail of obscure 1940s periodicals or 1980s advertisements[0]. [0] https://twitter.com/lkbm/status/1608480435691995137 https://twitter.com/lkbm/status/1608480435691995137 [1] https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1643781181568327681 https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1643781181568327681
- hirako2000 4y ago
  I agree the sourcing isn't something ipfs is magically solving. It is specifically to reduce the weakness of more centralised data store/serving which are easier targets. Even in term of resilience ipfs isn't bullet proof. Decentralising helps. Pinning needs to exist somewhere as a hard rive and a network connection, ideally with multiple replication, and held with serving as such for extended periods, across every single file.
hirako2000 4y ago
Also, I'm mentioning ipfs as a rescue solution more so than the internet archive served by ipfs necessarily, that's probably a longer line away from feasible I would guess, operationally etc.

iLoveOncall 4y ago

The article is extremely misleading. It makes it seem like the 4 publishers are against Internet Archive as a whole, when all they sued for was for the unrestricted publication of copyrighted books during the start of the pandemic.

phmqk76 4y ago
This is a college newspaper, I’m surprised it made it here. I cut them some slack, they’re still learning.
lkbm 4y ago
It was prompted by the unrestricted lending, but it's pretty clear that the fight is now about lending at all.[0] That may still only be the OpenLibrary, but it's not just the unrestricted lending, and I wouldn't be surprised it it also has a chilling effect on other scans. I'm curious how letting people view scans of obscure 1940s magazines is legal if doing it for books is not. They're not even restricted to one "borrower" at a time per physical copy with periodicals. [0] https://authorsguild.org/news/ag-celebrates-resounding-win-in-internet-archive-infringement-lawsuit/ https://authorsguild.org/news/ag-celebrates-resounding-win-i...
- ghaff 4y ago
  Pretty much "everything" (other than public domain) on the IA is on shaky ground. It's been mostly OK because very few people object to the archiving of their public web pages (especially given the IA respects robots.txt even retroactively) and, as you say, old magazines that basically have zero commercial value.
  - kwo 4y ago
    IA stopped respecting robots.txt in 2017. I had to issue a DCMA takedown to get my sites delisted. They are arrogant and think themselves above normal netiquette. They deserve to lose. https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-search-engines-dont-work-well-for-web-archives/ https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-sea...

Apreche 4y ago

We already have laws for historical landmarks. These laws ensure the protection of things of societal significance, even to the point of restricting the rights of their private owners. We need such laws for the digital realm. If we had them we wouldn't have to worry about Internet Archive, dpreview, etc. Imagine if we had such laws in place long ago. We could be living in a world where Geocities and MySpace still existed, even if only in a read-only form.

TylerE 4y ago
Why should tax dollars be used for this?
- i_k_k 4y ago
  Because government, and the tax dollars that support it, are how we, as a society, take collective action?
  - TylerE 4y ago
    Why is an archive of DPTeview something that is more important than covering basic things like health care (especially mental) that we do terribly at? Why can’t those who care about or undertake the effort? Thousands of nonprofit private historical societies exist.
    - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
      interesting questions, but since there's no mutual exclusivity in real life, they aren't relevant to the real question, whether taxpayers believe there is value there after all, congress could decide to cover this AND healthcare, they just don't want to do either
- digging 4y ago
  > Why should tax dollars be used for this? Because: > We already have laws for historical landmarks. These laws ensure the protection of things of societal significance

causi 4y ago

which made copyrighted books available for free during the COVID-19 pandemic. The publishers behind the lawsuit alleged that this entailed copyright infringement. Along with everybody with two brain cells to rub together. We all screamed "Hey, you idiots are going to ruin everything if you act like the pandemic has magically nullified the concept of copyright" and they fucking did it anyway, and now exactly what we said would happen is happening. It's like you found a landmine in your front yard and your buddy said "That landmine shouldn't be there so I'm gonna go step on it" and you told him not to and then had to watch him throw himself onto it while declaring it would be morally wrong for it to blow his stupid ass up. Controlled digital lending had a chance of getting off the ground. The IA's Emergency Library's unlimited digital lending burned it to the ground and stomped on the ashes.

Xelynega 4y ago
They're not in court for the emergency library. They're in court for the 1-1 CDL lending they did. I'm tired of seeing this "well IA shouldn't have done the emergency library" line. Do you honestly believe the only reason publishers went after IA is the emergency library? I think this would have happened eventually, so pointing to the emergency library does nothing but tell everyone that you were right all along. They operate in a country where precedent is set in a court of law, how did you expect CDL to "get off the ground" if not challenged in a court of law?
- Mindwipe 4y ago
  > They're not in court for the emergency library. They are in court for the "emergency library". The emergency library is a key part of the case. It's just inevitable that the lawsuit would also hinge on if 1 - 1 CDL is legally permissible and the case will inevitably have to rule on that. And yes, timing wise, and from the letters the publishes sent to the IA, they are explicitly about the "emergency library".
  - thebooktocome 4y ago
    I read the opinion. The emergency library appears once, only insofar as CDL being found not fair use entails that emergency lending was also not fair use. It’s an entirely severable part of the decision. The publishers legally had a case against CDL without it.

xhkkffbf 4y ago

I agree. And I told my friends at the IA from the beginning that their plan was very, very foolish. People can look the other way at copyright infringement of web sites when it's just used for archival work. But when you're directly destroying an artist's livelihood by undercutting their income stream, well, you shouldn't be surprised if they'll be upset.

boucher 4y ago
Are they really "directly destroying" anyone's livelihood? Are authors actually upset? [1][2] [1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/author-coalition-blasts-publishers-legal-fight-with-internet-archive-2022-09-29/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/author-coalition-bl... [2] https://www.authorsalliance.org/2021/08/17/library-lending-author-incomes-and-controlled-digital-lending/ https://www.authorsalliance.org/2021/08/17/library-lending-a...
- xhkkffbf 4y ago
  I am. I'm an author. And you're a fool if you think that free copies at the IA don't cut into sales. Oh sure, some percentage of the people wouldn't have picked up a copy in the first place if they had to pay, but there's going to be some that skipped paying. It's the author and publisher's decision to give things away for free. Not anyone else's. Here's a challenge to you: tell your boss that you think your company should let a free version of your service be available online. A free version with no restrictions. Now, perhaps you work at a fully open source company and your boss would say, "Great." But you probably don't because those are going out of business. How's MariaDB working out these days?

hermannj314 4y ago

Is the premise of this opinion that if something is good, then courts should invent interpretations of laws to pretend the good thing is legal? The birthplace of the national park system took place through preservation acts passed by Congress, not wishful thinking. If IA is so amazing, why don't we codify and protect its existence through new law and not hope that a judge will squint favorably at copyright law?

anigbrowl 4y ago
[flagged]

_hfu3 4y ago

Maybe they shouldn't have done something that moronic? If people wanted free books they could always pirate them, openly infringing by hosting copyrighted books for a few people to slightly more easily read them for free... How could they possibly think that was a good idea?

ernopp 4y ago
The case for doing what they did is that it helped a lot of people access books (eg school curriculum ones) in the middle of Covid (not everyone knows how to pirate things). Not saying it was the right move but you can see where they're coming from, they wanted to help people.
- emmp 4y ago
  Yes I love the idea and I want it to be legal. Perhaps it is even worth someone testing the law here intentionally to get the courts to rule. The Internet Archive's mission, imo, should be to protect and steward their archives and ability to continue to maintain them above all though. Putting that at risk for a morally righteous additional cause is not worth it. This was a leadership failure
- ejb999 4y ago
  what if they did it with all of netflix's movies instead of books? would you feel differently? (I am sure netflix would).
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    Or maybe if they distributed newest version of software with certain parts removed. Maybe even non saas-software made by startups...

EamonnMR 4y ago

The internet archive served two distinct but important functions: one as a backup of the web which was important for accountability and history, and the other as a repository for archiving the world's non-web digital information. I personally scanned a whole bunch of ephemera and IA was the obvious place to put it. Why jeopardize those functions to do something brick and mortar libraries already did better, and legally? Other libraries do virtual lending.

ajdude 4y ago
This right here! The Internet archive had a really good thing going, I've been donating, digitizing, and uploading to IA for years. They were playing with fire, we all this coming, and I'm very frustrated with them over this.
sp332 4y ago
None of those things are on the line. We will continue our work as a library. This case does not challenge many of the services we provide with digitized books including interlibrary loan, citation linking, access for the print-disabled, text and data mining, purchasing ebooks, and ongoing donation and preservation of books. http://blog.archive.org/2023/03/25/the-fight-continues/ http://blog.archive.org/2023/03/25/the-fight-continues/
- EamonnMR 4y ago
  It doesn't legally challenge those activities, but I'm worried about a situation where they get their proverbial pants sued off.

noNothing 4y ago

Ignoring fair use and countries other than the US we see that Copyright in the COnstitution said to promote science and useful arts, works should have protection for a limited time. Shortly after COngress defined "limited" as 14 years plus a renewal for 14. Then it was 28. plus a renewal and after more lobbying it reached today's time of the Authors lifetime plus 70 years. And since Mickey Mouse protection expires next year, we will probably see another extension. How life of the author plus 70 can be considered "limited time" just shows how the courts have trampled our Constitution.

anigbrowl 4y ago
Indeed so. It's only limited if you subtract out the human experience from policymaking. Given that the average lifespan in the US is 77 years, the reality is that you have to wait until you're almost at the end of your life for legally unrestricted access and use of material by someone who died the same year you were born. The cake is a lie.

phmqk76 4y ago

College newspaper from the burbs. Kudos to them getting some visibility, but I cut them some slack as young people still learning.

mrfinn 4y ago

F copyright, specially perpetual copyright used by big corporations as a weapon against poor people. Tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.

tristor 4y ago

Frankly, what the IA did here is absolutely the right thing. Copyright in the US is horribly fundamentally broken, and the idea that factual information about our history and world should not be referenceable and accessible for free is a pretty heinous one. Information wants to be free, and the work that IA did for "digital lending" during the pandemic was an essential move in the direction of ensuring that people can access this information regardless of their physical proximity and access to the base source material. I don't understand the backlash in the comments here, it seems to all come from a perspective of people being so downtrodden they just accept the current status quo crafted by MAFIAA lawyers, rather than looking at it holistically from first-principles.

misnome 4y ago
IA losing and getting shut down because "information wants to be free, man" is completely detrimental to trying to move that agenda forwards. "First principles" means jack shit if your company to build that world gets wiped off the map because you did something incredibly obviously stupidly illegal and handed the "MAFIAA lawyers" your own ass on a silver platter.
- tristor 4y ago
  Maybe my viewpoint on this is informed by long-standing desire to basically start something like IA but in a way which is protected from the acts of nation-states. The fundamental problem with human society is that the power structures are always co-opted by elites for their own purposes rather than the purposes of society as a whole, it doesn't matter what the system of those power structures is, in all cases they get co-opted. The fact that a corporate entity is allowed to take action against the IA in this case and be supported by the government in doing so is a symptom of our broken system, it's not evidence that the IA did anything wrong in any moral or social sense. The fact our society is held hostage, and that information is imprisoned, by entities like the MAFIAA is not a justification for this outcome.
  - misnome 4y ago
    > it's not evidence that the IA did anything wrong in any moral or social sense. The fact our society is held hostage, and that information is imprisoned, by entities like the MAFIAA is not a justification for this outcome I don't think that IA's position was morally or ethically wrong; I would wager a lot of people here would feel the same way. Unfortunately, for this case, morality and ethicality aren't the law. And the law was extremely known, and predictable in which side it would fall on here. This outcome was very, very predictable. IA gambled; possibly their existence; on astronomical odds that they could force a confrontation against the backdrop of the pandemic, and win. Maybe this was the best chance that they would ever get, in which case it was worth trying. But I don't think the anti-copyright revolution was ever going to be triggered by IA giving out free books.

NotYourLawyer 4y ago

None of the hand wringing about covid is the least bit relevant to the question of whether the emergency library is copyright infringement. If Congress wants to set aside copyright during pandemics, that’s fine (and maybe a decent idea frankly). But in the absence of something like that, this is all just a smoke screen. What a poorly written article.

throwitaway222 4y ago

We are? I'm more worried about having a roof over my head in the next year.

digging 4y ago
Both can be true.

49erfangoniners 4y ago

Well be aight

anononaut 4y ago
We'll be stuck in Plato's cave

breck 4y ago

I'd extend this to say, if we don't abolish (c)opywrong, we're screwed. Does anyone want to go back to the closed source software development model of the 1990's? Then why do we not push for the open source model not only in software, but across news, academia, music, film, databases, et cetera? How many of your hard earned tax dollars go to pay for Microsoft's and Oracle's technical debt? How much of your tax dollars go pay for Elsevier's and Random House's and Wiley's closed source databases of publications? Why do we allow this inferior model of treating ideas to exist, when we now have solid data that the open way is far superior "for the progress of arts and sciences?". Write your representatives. Organize your communities. It's time to pass a new Amendment to the Constitution: Section 1. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of this Constitution is hereby repealed. Section 2. Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people to publish ideas.

tablespoon 4y ago
> I'd extend this to say, if we don't abolish (c)opywrong, we're screwed. Then consider us "screwed," because what you propose has a snowball's chance in hell of actually happening. Also, too many software engineers overreact to some reformable problems with the IP system with burn-it-all down radicalism. I think your proposals would cause more harm than good. They'd likely stop most media creation that you're used to*, and what's left with either be cheap (think fanfiction) or under tighter lockdown than any DRM you've ever seen. * Tell me, who's going to invest 10-200 million dollars to make a movies or TV shows on a regular basis, without copyright?
- breck 4y ago
  > * Tell me, who's going to invest 10-200 million dollars to make a movies or TV shows on a regular basis, without copyright? We can have a world where: - Every child has access to humanity's best information - We cure cancer - 90% of American's media is controlled by 6,000, not 6, corporations - College tuition costs drop dramatically - Lower taxes - More income equality - No more opioid pandemics - Making the world resilient against AI domination Or a world where: - We make sure that we don't risk disrupting new Game of Thrones spinoffs I know what I choose.

YeezyMode 4y ago

Assuming the scenario where ISPs end up blocking access to the archive, the fact that this is happening alongside rapid advances in LLMs is pretty insane. Comparisons with historical snapshots of the web is probably one of the best ways to combat disinformation and misinformation generated using AIs. There are of course other risks and dangers that people have talked about re: restricted access to knowledge and precedents for future publications, but this one in particular seems very dangerous in a timely manner - almost like a setup for very clear and obvious disasters surrounding propaganda, memes, and social chaos.

skee8383 4y ago

We're already screwed because the internet is dying. Everyone is just using phones now, all the forums are shutting down. IRC is dead. Matrix is dead. Discord lives because it's a gamer/trans rights echo chamber. but that's it. The late 90s and early 2000s was the golden era of the internet. we're living in the detritus now.

Arathorn 4y ago
matrix is far from dead! just hit 94M addressable users and all time high of 2M MAU on the matrix.org server (doubled in last year)
- skee8383 4y ago
  it has tons of bots and dead accounts. i run a few channels with hundreds of "users". they get maybe 3 posts per month.

jmull 4y ago

AI was foolish and irresponsible. Republishing books without limitations would almost surely provoke a law suit that they would almost surely lose. Not only is it a waste of resources, but now that they are in court they could very easily receive a judgement that curtails access they used to provide before the rollout of the "emergency library". It's fine (and right, IMO) if you don't agree with the current copyright law but just ignoring them was foolish.

beej71 4y ago
I say it's fine if you think it's foolish, but we really need to save the fool.
- ineedasername 4y ago
  I think this is the right approach to take. Unless the IA went into their decision with their eyes open and knowing the huge risk they were taking with the existence of their organization. That would at least make it no more foolish than anyone else knowingly taking a huge risk. But yes, the IA is both culturally important and significantly beneficial in everyday practical matters. I'm not sure what we can do to help IA come out of this intact though. "Write your congressman" is these days a somewhat laughable suggestion in the face of any problem, the desperate act of last resort that no one expects to actually succeed.
Aachen 4y ago
IA autocorrect?
- jmull 4y ago
  lol, it could've be me, I have AI on the brain lately.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

user3939382 4y ago

I don't know how their finances are structured but the way you solve this problem is with a big endowment.

RGamma 4y ago

We need an IA backup project right now :/

LinuxBender 4y ago
How many PB is their entire site? I assume they could enable native read-only rsyncd easily enough on some caching nodes. Anyone re-publishing their library would be at legal risk but private mirrors should be safe.
- RGamma 4y ago
  According to https://archive.org/web/petabox.php https://archive.org/web/petabox.php it's 99 PB unique data and 212 PB total storage on 28k HDDs as of Dec. 2021 (3.2M USD at 15 USD/TB for the 212 PB, not sure if the price is realistic). It's quite something for a private initiative...

nmstoker 4y ago

Are there any efforts to boycott the publishers pushing this? I happen to think they're technically correct with the IA in the wrong here, but even so I think they should back down - they can take a big picture view that it's hardly dealt them a serious blow, it was the pandemic and the IA serves a useful purpose for society (though I suspect many publishers besides more enlightened ones would disagree with that due to self-interest!)

samstave 4y ago

We need a few many copies of the IA in the Seed Vault and have it constantly uploaded... We should also have a perma-satellite in LEO that can be streamed to... AND, while we are thinking out space, get a digital/physical seed vault on the moon - and can anything survive in the current Mars atmosphere? Send seed bombs to Mars and see what sticks? I mean, we appear to be hell-bent on terra farming Mars, so we may as well just throw seeds at it. https://scienceagri.com/16-most-important-plant-species-in-the-world/ https://scienceagri.com/16-most-important-plant-species-in-t... I would add bamboo to that list, though.

emmp 4y ago

I think leadership at Internet Archive was deeply irresponsible for deciding a short term stunt was worth potentially existentially threatening legal exposure. The entire leadership there and anyone who signed off on the decision should be replaced. I am a donor but I'm pissed. They should have known better.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

lenocinor 4y ago

I appreciate the metaphor with the Library of Alexandria, but TIL that it may not have burned catastrophically and may have been rebuilt after: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria “Despite the widespread modern belief that the Library of Alexandria was burned once and cataclysmically destroyed, the Library actually declined gradually over the course of several centuries. This decline began with the purging of intellectuals from Alexandria in 145 BC during the reign of Ptolemy VIII Physcon, which resulted in Aristarchus of Samothrace, the head librarian, resigning from his position and exiling himself to Cyprus...The Library, or part of its collection, was accidentally burned by Julius Caesar during his civil war in 48 BC, but it is unclear how much was actually destroyed and it seems to have either survived or been rebuilt shortly thereafter; the geographer Strabo mentions having visited the Mouseion in around 20 BC and the prodigious scholarly output of Didymus Chalcenterus in Alexandria from this period indicates that he had access to at least some of the Library's resources.”

Kim_Bruning 4y ago
It's not just a metaphor, btw. IA actually partners with the modern Bibliotheca Alexandrina. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Alexandrina#Internet_Archive_partnership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Alexandrina#Intern...
- hansoolo 4y ago
  Wow, this is really cool!
theli0nheart 4y ago
Came here to write this. That Julius Caesar burned the library seems to be a common misconception.
legitimayzer 4y ago
the roman catholics burned it so to make their mythical "jesus" figure stick. with the info destroyed in that fire we became 'disconnected' from the real historical jesus; thereby enabling the rise of the mythical figure tweaked to allow easier control of the masses. "what would jesus do?"

boomboomsubban 4y ago

So if I'm reading the law[1] right, which I'm probably not, the damages for the 127 books should be around $3.8 million, with ~$20 million the absolute max? Neither of those amounts seem high enough to destroy the IA. [1]https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/504 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/504

alephnerd 4y ago
Their operating expenses in 2020 hit almost $20mil [0] and they only raise around $21mil in donations. In addition they only have $9mil in assets. That means they could potentially shut down if a hardline litigation strategy is persued. In addition, this opens the gate to additional litigation to any other potential claimant (eg. Warez copyright owners or video copyright owners - there is a lot of pirated material hosted on IA). [0] - https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/internet-archive,943242767/ https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/internet-archive,94324...
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  The revenue on Wikipedia was from 2019, when for some reason they got double their usual revenue, so I may have overestimated their cash reserves. Still seems like something they could recover from. >In addition, this opens the gate to additional litigation to any other potential claimant (eg. Warez copyright owners or video copyright owners - there is a lot of pirated material hosted on IA). I don't see how. This ruling is specifically about CDL, something the rest of their archived content doesn't follow, and all those warez and video copyright holders already have the option to DMCA claim any content on the IA. I do worry this could allow other publishers to sue over past CDL practices.

k__ 4y ago

Could they mirror it to Filecoin or Arweave?

Alifatisk 4y ago
Filecoin & siaskynet have not been reliabile to me
- k__ 4y ago
  How come?
  - Alifatisk 4y ago
    When I visited the file I had uploaded a week later or month, the url was not accessible anymore. Especially with Skynet.

FreeCodeFreak 4y ago

It contains a lot of copyrighted content, especially ebooks and software. This could be avoided if they would just follow the rules like everyone else.

0xcde4c3db 4y ago
Nearly every large service that allows user uploads contains a lot of copyrighted content, hence DMCA safe harbor. IA seems to operate in a gray area with stuff like the Console Living Room (which doesn't allow downloads), but as far as I've heard they are responsive to valid DMCA notifications. A lot of supposed "DMCA notifications" are bullshit, though (don't contain the required elements, not sent to the registered DMCA agent).

butz 4y ago

I bet some folks from datahoarding subreddit have at least a few copies of the Internet Archive.

beej71 4y ago

So they were foolish and now we're here. But I hope we can all agree that IA still needs saving, and losing it is a disaster for all real people.

EamonnMR 4y ago
Here here.

bastardoperator 4y ago

We need a new internet archive archive just to stay safe is what I'm hearing.

doublerabbit 4y ago
> We need a new internet I totally agree.

frandroid 4y ago

> Hatchette v. Internet Archive Freudian typo...

icameron 4y ago

Is there any chance this we would loose the Way Back Machine or the Live Music Archive because of this?

criddell 4y ago
Does the IA own hardware? If so, I would guess the court could force the sale or transfer of those assets. In another comment somebody posted that the maximum damages could be something like $20 million which seems survivable.

gcanyon 4y ago

Copyright law needs to change. Back in the day, a copyright measured in decades made sense, because it took that long to promote and distribute a work and derive reasonable profit from it. Today that process takes days, maybe months (apart from the rare work that languishes, only to be "discovered" later). Copyright should be much shorter -- a couple years at most -- with renewal available if the creator really believes the work has yet to find its audience. The standard for abandoned works still protected under the existing system should default against the (potential) holder of the original copyright as long as a good-faith effort was made to reach them, and damages should amount to some sort of split of the profits.

PuppyTailWags 4y ago
I don't think I agree with this. Novels can take years to write, and to have their copyright expire after only a few years may not be enough for the author to write another book. What would be the motivation to write a series if the series isn't worth printing after only a few books? It goes doubly if the novel might be up for a movie or a TV adaptation: the game of thrones tv adaptation didn't happen until much later after the first book... does this mean George R R Martin should be paid 0 while HBO makes a killing on the first few seasons? How would any artist retire ever if they cannot make money off their existing body of work?
- 0xfffafaCrash 4y ago
  I’d argue that copyright and intellectual property more broadly shouldn’t exist. That wouldn’t lead to the end of culture but a cultural explosion as people became able to remix and propagate ideas more freely without the fear of punishment for violating artificial state-enforced monopolies. No one is obligated to create a work and no one is obligated to share their created works with others. There’s no inherent right to anything once you put an idea out there and the legal constructs are just novel artificial ways to keep the have-nots from competing with the haves. Culture existed well before notions of intellectual property and if anything today we have far better means of both producing works ourselves and collectively funding works that might not exist without compensation. Rewarding the top 0.0001% of lucky creators with huge compensation isn’t worth the broad societal damage that is done by preventing people from sharing or making use of ideas.

marwis 4y ago

Amazing how reckless IA is with their library program while at the same time being extremely cautions with Wayback Archive to the point of retroactively applying robots.txt and removing website archives because "they can't afford even the smallest risk of being sued".

Vecr 4y ago
I don't think they do that because they might get sued. I think they do it because they might get canceled.

cwilby 4y ago

I recently (in the last 2 weeks) used Wayback Machine to miraculously restore an old static site where the backups had also been lost. https://github.com/alessandropellegrini/WebsiteRecovery https://github.com/alessandropellegrini/WebsiteRecovery

phendrenad2 4y ago

Someone needs to start a competing Internet Archive, which only archives, you know, THE INTERNET, and not xbox games, warez, movies, music, books, etc. The overreach at IA is much bigger than it looks on the surface. Go look at the things people are uploading there.

oefrha 4y ago
> Someone needs to start a competing Internet Archive, which only archives, you know, THE INTERNET And a faster, more reliable (in terms of percentage of 5XX responses) one would be nice. Right now Wayback Machine performance leaves a lot to be desired. I end up using archive.is whenever possible. Yes, I donate to Internet Archive, don’t chastise me.
- phendrenad2 4y ago
  I'm surprised there isn't a paid alternative to Wayback Machine. I'd pay for fewer 5xx errors (which are often rate limiting, I.E. "You clicked more than 10 times in 10 minutes, that's WAY TOO FAST bro")

throwawaaarrgh 4y ago

> When Julius Caesar burned the Library of Alexandria, it was harder to imagine a greater destruction of scholarship. Dude. We're not talking about losing secret ancient knowledge. We're talking about losing pictures of cats. There is nothing on the internet that's so valuable that we couldn't live without it. Real research, real knowledge, makes its way out of the internet. And besides, most of the internet that we can actually discover is cached in search engines.

DanTheManPR 4y ago
>Dude. We're not talking about losing secret ancient knowledge. We're talking about losing pictures of cats. But we're literally talking about book lending, and preserving the old knowledge of the early internet. However lofty and pretensions the analogy may seem, comparing it to the burning of the library of Alexandria actually does seem like a better analogy than "we're just losing pictures of cats"
Mike_12345 4y ago
Internet Archive stores much more than pictures of cats. Books, magazines, technical manuals, documents, software, movies, music, images, documentaries, concerts, etc. These are files that users upload. The web crawler is just one part of it. You will find the most obscure things that practically cannot be found anywhere else. Stuff that would otherwise be permanently lost. https://archive.org/ https://archive.org/ "Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more." "As of January 1, 2023, the Internet Archive holds over 36 million books and texts, 11.6 million movies, videos and TV shows and clips, 950 thousand software programs, 15 million audio files, 4.5 million images, 251 thousand concerts, and 780 billion web pages in its Wayback Machine."

wslh 4y ago

Could (or is) the Internet Archive be decentralized shared (e.g. BitTorrent)?

navierstokess 4y ago

Could we partially back up the Internet Archive to Filecoin? According to https://file.app/ https://file.app/ storing 1PB of data to Filecoin for a year would cost $2,336, that's an amount that could be crowdfunded. Of course, IA has much more than a petabyte of data, but it wouldn't be impractical to save the most important ( however you decide that ) parts of it.

micromacrofoot 4y ago

I'm always surprised by how many people will come out of the woodwork to shame IA for defying some of the most idiotic laws conceived. I have great faith that even if by some legal disaster this destroyed the IA, it would invigorate the people that work and support it... because they're right.

VonGuard 4y ago

Honest question: what is stopping Brewster from filing for bankruptcy and transferring all assets to another non-profit. CA law specifically states that dissolved non-profits have to donate everything to another non-profit. All the hardware and data would be considered their core product. They could donate all of that to a new non-profit, and leave some token staff and office equipment behind for the bankruptcy to chop up and distribute. Happens all the time with for profit businesses.... Also, thumbs fucking down for society punishing Archive for doing something to help Americans during an extreme time of crisis. I feel like if an apocalypse ever happens, 10 years later, everyone left alive will be in court being sued for helping each other. America is so stupid and short sighted about EVERYTHING.

MagicMoonlight 4y ago
I’d imagine there are laws preventing that kind of behaviour. If a court is ordering you to pay something and you then hide all your assets to avoid paying then that’s pretty serious. Would you be happy if a chemical plant donated its facility to a new company “Chemical Plant 2” in order to avoid paying compensation for chemical spills?
- VonGuard 4y ago
  Happy? No. But if they do it before the verdict, it's all in the clear. Happens ALL the time. Businesses constantly sell their assets to other shell companies to avoid liability. Alex Jones is doing this right now AFTER the verdict.

kornhole 4y ago

A rally is planned on Saturday at 11 in SF. https://actionnetwork.org/events/dont-delete-our-books-rally-in-san-francisco https://actionnetwork.org/events/dont-delete-our-books-rally...

majormajor 4y ago

> This is fundamentally a strike against taxpayer-funded public services by corporations and private individuals. Wait what? That's not how the Internet Archive is paid for. And because it's private, it could have private replacements/competitors. If another group were to clone all the stuff the Internet Archive doesn't get into hot water for, and not make the obviously hugely risky move that got them in trouble here, does that solve the problem? Are there potential issues re: the Internet Archive suing a second archive that copied them or such? Seems like an opportunity for some rich folks to make a big philanthropic gesture in support of archiving information and making it available.

teh_klev 4y ago
I think the notion here is that the corporations will be coming for the public lending libraries next, and it's not beyond the realms of imagination.

GenericDev 4y ago

I'm so sick of modern businesses and their vampire approach on creativity and intelligent property. I see a lot of comments in this thread with what about-isms or "I don't care, we wouldn't miss anything", but these people are short-sighted. And to be honest the hacker news community is frequently the community I loathe to engage in these topics with. Because they are always looking forward with very little respect for the past as well as very little respect for domains outside of technology. The internet archive is a huge boon in intangible value for communities and the world. It represents a huge cultural fountain that is accessible for anyone so long as they have the ability to access a computer. A great example of this is that the Internet Archive was the ONLY place where I could enjoy a completely random piece of lost media from a children's television show called Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. There was a lost episode where OJ Simpson was in it and it never aired because of obvious issues. BUT there was a book published from the production called "White Rabbits Can't Jump" https://archive.org/details/whiterabbitscant00varl https://archive.org/details/whiterabbitscant00varl I can't imagine being able to go to any publisher or paid streaming service or god forbid Amazon to find this book, and I sure as shit don't believe in this community to help create ecosystems to support finding things like this. I am so sick and tired of the copyright laws that play counter to productive creation and stymying efforts to preserve anything. The fact that I have to wait until people die until copyright is up is god awful. And the fact that I have to read people in this community who sound like boot-lickers for corporate oligarchs and their shitty value adds to the world drives me so fucking insane. I'm only commenting here because I feel it's important to articulate that there are people out there who care, and that the vocal a-holes on this site really miss the point and the intangible value of what the internet archive provides.

disqard 4y ago
Thank you so much for speaking up! You're not alone in thinking this way. And kudos for investing the Time to write this up -- the sophists are all-too-often over-represented here, and I'm never really sure that they're always arguing in Good Faith, or if they are, they're often being so short-sighted that it's simultaneously funny and sad.
int_19h 4y ago
I really wish we ditched the name "copyright" altogether because of its unfortunate implications. It's not actually a right - it's a privilege. The system is entirely artificial and wouldn't exist without active social and legal enforcement. And if the privilege is abused in ways that don't benefit society, then it can and should be curtailed or even revoked.

moffkalast 4y ago

> If you’ve ever researched anything online, you’ve probably used the Internet Archive (IA). Wow, pretentious much. The Wayback machine is an interesting passing curiosity that with great luck sometimes saves a webpage that isn't completely broken. The average person has never heard of its existence. Sure it's fun looking at how web pages used to look like and laugh at terrible designs but it's not exactly part of anyone's real workflow and surely violates right to delete and a bunch of other copyright laws. You've stolen and rehosted the world's content and now you're surprised people are suing you? Do these people hear themselves? Did they not see pirating sites being fought tooth and nail in the past decades? I'm frankly surprised that the FBI hasn't sized their domains years ago.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ineedasername 4y ago
You've almost definitely used the IA if you have spent any amount of time browsing articles on Wikipedia. Appropriately sourcing information is a fundamental (and imperfect) part of Wikipedia, and doing so relies extensively on the creation of static IA snapshots to preserve the cited information.
cobertos 4y ago
How is that pretentious? It has so much truth to it. The attention span of our information stewards (large corporations, large universities) is so small that within 10 years you will have trouble finding information they once deemed critical and published. I've used IA to research things I would not have been able to any other way, the information is _no where_ else! * Finding missing YouTube videos from playlists. It's usually enough to get the title as YouTube doesnt care to show you the title of what's been deleted, privated, etc. * A large university deleted all their "website builder" pages including a lot of research and news about certain projects. I used IA to find information on a building I bought from them. * Looking at the origins/roots of companies like Unity3D. Have you seen their website in 1999? It's pretty cool! * Old tutorials on websites that don't exist anymore. There is so much use to IA when those that store our information would gladly pull it out from under us to save a few dollars.

ineedasername 4y ago

A Most Sensible Proposal for the Absolute Perpetuation of Copyright Laws: It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great Internet of ours when they behold the countless instances of piracy and blatant disregard for the sanctity of copyright laws. The noble and ever-vigilant lawmakers, in their infinite wisdom, have blessed us with these righteous statutes, designed to protect the creative genius of the chosen few and ensure their perpetual enrichment. I shall now humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection, for the enhancement of copyright laws and the merciless suppression of those who would dare to infringe upon them. I have been assured by a very knowing academic of my acquaintance that copyright infringement is a scourge upon our society, depriving deserving creators of their rightful earnings and perpetuating anarchy in the realm of intellectual property. It is of the utmost importance that we reinforce the importance of copyright, extending its reign to the furthest reaches of human creativity, even unto the most mundane and trivial expressions. In order to accomplish this most necessary task, I propose that all human utterances, expressions, and gestures, be they written, spoken, or signed, be henceforth copyrighted, requiring the payment of a modest fee for their use. This fee shall be directed to the original creator, or their heirs, who shall retain control of their intellectual property for a period not less than one thousand years. This, I am confident, will provide ample incentive for the continuation of human creativity and innovation. Furthermore, to prevent the heinous crime of piracy, it is imperative that all infants be implanted with a small monitoring device, connected to the great and mighty copyright database. This device shall track each individual's every expression, ensuring prompt and accurate payment to the appropriate copyright holder. Should any attempt be made to remove this device, or should an individual be found in violation of copyright laws, they shall be immediately and publicly flogged, that others may learn from their example. For those who might object that this proposal would stifle creativity and hinder the sharing of knowledge and ideas, I say that such fears are baseless and utterly without merit. After all, it is only through the tireless efforts of our most esteemed creators that we, the unworthy masses, are granted access to the wisdom and brilliance of human thought. Surely, it is a small price to pay for the privilege of partaking in such exalted company. I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, the advancement of the arts, and the salvation of mankind from the hideous specter of copyright infringement. Let us embrace these changes, for only through the eternal protection of copyright can we ensure the continued flourishing of human creativity and the preservation of our most treasured works for generations to come.

bloppe 4y ago

I agree with the title and general sentiment, but the article comes across as a diatribe and the author does not seem to be arguing completely in good faith ("There’s no evidence the borrowing program scooped up any independent writers’ income" relies entirely on the impossibility of proving a counterfactual). I want more information about the nitty gritty details of the case; the implications of the ruling on the CDL and books besides the 133 involved in the suit. It's seems like a pretty narrow case; not an existential threat to the IA itself.

isopede 4y ago

I've been reflecting a bit on how nature of the internet has changed, and how niche communities that I used to rely on all had specialty forums, mailing lists, etc, with history often stretching back years. It seems like more and more of these old-school discussion forums are disappearing, and their modern equivalents (discord? subreddits?) just don't seem to have the same feel. DPReview is probably the most recent example, but I occasionally I will still visit specialty forums like eevblog.com for EE, or VW forums for my car. It's hard to imagine finding the same sort of expertise and years-long knowledge base on current discussion platforms. Where do we go next? What happens when these communities are lost? Where are we to go if, for example, HN were to disappear?

yeeeeeee 4y ago

I'd argue we lost the Internet Archive when they started to remove archives of domains based on public backlash.

yeeeeeee 4y ago

I'd argue we lost the Internet Archive when they started to remove archives of websites because of public backlash.

groby_b 4y ago

We're going to at some point talk about the fact that the IA decided to do the absolutely most stupid thing they could possibly do to ensure they'd create the setup for the most devastating ruling possible, yes? Yes, our current copyright system is fucked up. This is, however, not a new fact. And the IA should've spent about 5 minutes talking to their lawyers to figure out why the idea as implemented was the worst thing they could possibly do. With pretty much no upside for them or the public. It's the utter boneheaded waste of resources here that's just hard to comprehend. You know you work in a hostile environment. Behave accordingly. (This does not change that Hachette et.al are positively disastrous for the public good and should, frankly, be looked at as a cartel. And treated accordingly.)

faeranne 4y ago

Wanna throw in a small, but hopefully important story here. About 5 years ago, IA managed to recover a nearly decade long lost card game. It wasn't a huge deal, and the original creator had assumed it permanently lost when his website crashed. It wasn't even a great game tbh. The author was focused mostly on webcomics, so it was considered an inconvenience. Thing is, this was a game he made back in high school, so while it wasn't a huge financial loss, it was an emotional loss for him. He had even partially used IA to try and recover it. Turned out there were multiple steps needed to navigate to the right page, since the link IA had actually grabbed was different from the link the page it pointed to had. I received an incredibly heartfelt message from him talking about years of nostalgia I had unlocked by returning that page to the public. Mind you, this was a web comic artist, so he would have fully been within his right to tell IA to purge all his copyrighted content, but had he done that, this card game would be gone. forever. So, there's a clear balance that could be struck. Or... you could look at it the way he did: "I distribute my content in a way that makes advertisers happy. IA makes sure if I fuck up it's not gone forever. No one is using IA to read my comics unless my site is down. If it's down... well, I'm not making any money off of them anyways." So... yeah, there are right ways to do things, and the thing is, IA is not a place people generally point to for piracy. Its a place to point to when the worst happens. When the original creator isn't making money on something anyways. Or when they've ensured a group of people can't pay them for something.

_the_inflator 4y ago

Internet Archive is hugely important for me. I found a lot of antic books regarding technical specifications from vintage computers like Commodores VC 20, C64, C128, Amiga series as well as Atari ST and 286/386. Manuals, magazines, construction plans, whatever you want to search for. A lot of software references for long gone C compilers, Turbo Pascal whatever was popular during the 80th - if you cannot find it in the IA, it didn't happen, so to paraphrase. I love the IA for its effort, to deliver high quality material in a digitized format. While I understand, that there might be copyright, I opt against a right to be forgotten. To me these books are classics, like any other literature. Preserve this heritage. You can donate to IA.

HNlurker777 4y ago

https://www.battleforlibraries.com/ https://www.battleforlibraries.com/

geysersam 4y ago

The problem is our economic system doesn't support these kind of large scale extremely beneficial projects. (See Wikipedia etc.) How much value does Wikipedia or the IA bring compared to your average unicorn startup? There's a problem there we need to figure out how to solve...

35208654 4y ago

Beginning with the RIAA suing college kids and culminating the French police raiding what.cd, I have become anti-copyright. Not reformist, not 'but it's good for...'. Totally anti-copyright. Burn it all down. Share music. Scan books and upload them to libgen. The shared cultural history of humanity depends on it.

weare138 4y ago

This is just the start. Libraries are next.

textfiles 4y ago

Thanks to everyone speaking up about the Internet Archive. Regardless of forum posts, the work stands before us and the love pours in.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

totetsu 4y ago

We lost a lot when live-leak went away too to be honest.. 99% of it is things I would never want to watch again, but the one that sticks out in my mind is the video footage from the phones of the korean highschool students who waited to drown to death on the instructions of the captain of the Sinking Sewol ferry.

spit2wind 4y ago

This essay in copyright by RMS is relevant and was eye-opening to me. It introduced me to the concept of "the copyright bargain": > the government spends the public's natural rights, on the public's behalf, as part of a deal to bring the public more published works. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.htm...

dzonga 4y ago

if there was ever a time I advocated for tax : it's for public libraries and access to knowledge at free / reduced cost whether books, journals etc. authors gotta make a living. but then they can make living via speaking engagements. e.g speak at a public library say at 50k. paid via benefactors and tax.

vmilner 4y ago

What’s the current best guess for when access to IA (or at least the contested parts) will disappear?

rldjbpin 4y ago

regardless of how you feel about IA's actions, they are the only ones doing digital archiving at their scale. i hope there are attempts made to replicate the non-infringing parts of the platform for the worst case scenario.

garfieldnate 4y ago

So how do we actually take action on this point? It's not something we can vote on, or call our representatives about.

slackfan 4y ago

The hilarious bit is that what kicked off this particular shitshow was Chuck Wendig who I personally regard as a two-bit hack "writer", perhaps best known for his god-awful Star Wars books. So glad to see nerd culture basically beating itself in the nads with a baseball bat over, frankly, petty bullshit. Although he has spent a lot of time backtracking, it's his whining that kicked this charade off initially, so I hold him personally accountable for it.

franz68 4y ago

Hatchette or Hachette ?? Please proof read before publishing

davidgiven 4y ago

I've donated as much as I could to Internet Archive. I really hope it helps them work through this case, and I urge everyone else to pitch in what they can, money or not, I'm sure anything could help at this point.