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Wouldn’t someone with better judgement have shut down the wayback machine as too much of a risk of a copyright infringement lawsuit?

ghaff 4y ago
It's a reasonable question. I don't get to call myself an archive or museum and assemble a website of what I consider "culturally important" cartoons or comic strips or whatever. The Wayback Machine basically operates in the zone of most people don't care that they do this.
- ncallaway 4y ago
  I mean, they were sued for copyright infringement and settled out of court at least once, so it’s not a negligible risk. I guess my question is largely “Does someone with ‘better judgement’ even start the internet archive?” I don’t have the answer, but I think it’s at least plausible that the answer is “no”.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I assume any competent IP lawyer would have told them that there was no law allowing them to do what they wanted to do. (IANAL) On the other hand, to the degree that you can operate in a zone that involves poking as few sleeping lions as you can (and deal with the odd copyright infringement suit or complaint), that's maybe OK. The problem I see here is that the IA seems to have incrementally tried "ooching" more and more things some of which were almost certainly less central to their mission and harder lion pokes.
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    Ultimately, the Internet Archive is the Man in the Arena. Everyone else didn't choose the right position on what copyright infringement is okay and what isn't. They didn't choose a position at all until post facto they choose the position that was right up against the margin of being sued - which they would never had known if the IA hadn't done the work. As always, HN commenters would have picked the perfect trade-off every time in the past and yet they somehow never pick the right one in the future. You're being overly kind to everyone here since it's obvious what the truth is: this is wholesale armchair quarterbacking from a bunch of people who would never have built this.
bombcar 4y ago
The wayback machine has much MUCH better arguments (it's copies of public content at a point in time by definition), even the DMCA has carve outs for preservation and scholarly works, many use it for real things and not just piracy, etc. The wayback machine arguments are good enough that they could receive a Supreme Court decision along the lines of "technically this is illegal, but the law is wrong" type.

ghaff 4y ago

It's a reasonable question. I don't get to call myself an archive or museum and assemble a website of what I consider "culturally important" cartoons or comic strips or whatever. The Wayback Machine basically operates in the zone of most people don't care that they do this.

ncallaway 4y ago
I mean, they were sued for copyright infringement and settled out of court at least once, so it’s not a negligible risk. I guess my question is largely “Does someone with ‘better judgement’ even start the internet archive?” I don’t have the answer, but I think it’s at least plausible that the answer is “no”.
- ghaff 4y ago
  I assume any competent IP lawyer would have told them that there was no law allowing them to do what they wanted to do. (IANAL) On the other hand, to the degree that you can operate in a zone that involves poking as few sleeping lions as you can (and deal with the odd copyright infringement suit or complaint), that's maybe OK. The problem I see here is that the IA seems to have incrementally tried "ooching" more and more things some of which were almost certainly less central to their mission and harder lion pokes.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Ultimately, the Internet Archive is the Man in the Arena. Everyone else didn't choose the right position on what copyright infringement is okay and what isn't. They didn't choose a position at all until post facto they choose the position that was right up against the margin of being sued - which they would never had known if the IA hadn't done the work. As always, HN commenters would have picked the perfect trade-off every time in the past and yet they somehow never pick the right one in the future. You're being overly kind to everyone here since it's obvious what the truth is: this is wholesale armchair quarterbacking from a bunch of people who would never have built this.

bombcar 4y ago

The wayback machine has much MUCH better arguments (it's copies of public content at a point in time by definition), even the DMCA has carve outs for preservation and scholarly works, many use it for real things and not just piracy, etc. The wayback machine arguments are good enough that they could receive a Supreme Court decision along the lines of "technically this is illegal, but the law is wrong" type.