9 ms·

MTV news website goes dark, archives pulled offline

243 points by anigbrowl 2y ago

Sabinus 2y ago
The Internet Archive should receive significant government funding. It's insane we let cultural treasures disappear into the wind when we can preserve them for negligible costs.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - maxbond 2y ago
    Not sure what they did to upset you, but they are absolutely archivists. Off the top of my head, they've preserved flash games and animations and written an interpreter to get them working in modern browsers; they've scanned books and made them borrowable from the browser, which I've personally used for archival research. I'm guessing what you're referring to is their lawsuit with the publishing industry, where they attempted to lend digital copies of books without backing them with hard copies on a shelf. That was probably ill advised, and I suppose you could view it as political activism, but it's pretty obviously in furtherance of their mission as archivists - preserving content means little if it can't be accessed. (This was also in the context of the early pandemic, where access to physical libraries was extremely limited.)
    - Dalewyn 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - maxbond 2y ago
        I'm far less interested in how they measure up to some legal definition of an archive than I am in all the good work they do to archive things. If you think the former is more important, I would suggest the confusion is on your part.
        Dalewyn 2y ago
        An archive very clearly means something very specific, and it's certainly not the "We want free-as-in-beer content!" thing a lot of people here and elsewhere scream about. If you cannot or will not consider what an archive is legally defined as, you cannot discuss in good faith about archives, archivists, or the act of archiving.
        maxbond 2y ago
        I'm not going to quote a definition to you, the only winning move in that game is not to play, but there are certainly more interpretations of "archive" than just the one. I certainly didn't assume you meant the narrow legal meaning in your original comment, and if you were only willing to entertain a single definition it would have been nice to know that upfront.
        seventyone 2y ago
        Words have meanings other than what the government says they are
        22c 2y ago
        Even by OPs own link, they are wrong. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108 > it is *not an infringement of copyright* for a library or archives Emphasis is mine here. The OPs link does not define what an archive is or isn't, it defines constraints on an archive or library such that it doesn't infringe on copyright according to US law. To conclude that the IA is not operating an archive because they might be infringing on some copyrights according to US law is fallacious thinking.
        Dalewyn 2y ago
        You have it backwards. It is not an infringement of copyright if an archive or library reproduces and redistributes according to the exceptions set forth. The Internet Archive quite clearly does not abide by those exceptions, and as such they are infringing copyright and not an archive protected by these laws. If the Internet Archive (or anyone and anything for that matter) wants to spend my tax dollars, they can start by first abiding by the laws and regulations of the legal jurisdiction they reside in, in this case the USA's.
      - lightedman 2y ago
        "An archive may not be available directly to the public" Well, then, most files that call themselves archives can't be legal under that definition. Wipe your computer of every archive you've downloaded, that would also include Linux ISO files.
        mcmcmc 2y ago
        Deliberate stupidity is not helpful. You know very well this discussion is regarding archival institutions, not a file format.
        lightedman 2y ago
        Many of those formats are made by archival institutions, and also follow rules like ISO certifications. Even librarians (my husband being head librarian for a city library) shake their head at this, and they're trained in databases and archives and related materials as a matter of profession, some to a higher degree than some CS students.
        Dalewyn 2y ago
        Are you (or your husband) really trying to tell me something like this[1] is an archive or a library? That is one of the more, if not most, flagrant demonstrations of the Internet Archive not understanding what an archive is. There's more where that came from, including stuff like their one:many digital book lending program. The law stipulates what an archive/library is and how they are protected from certain copyright prosecutions. The Internet Archive does not abide them, and thus I would absolutely not want my tax dollars sent their way. If they want to engage in flagrant piracy and political activism, they can do so on their own dime. [1]: https://archive.org/details/cdromsoftware https://archive.org/details/cdromsoftware
        lightedman 2y ago
        I see a lot of legal things there and I see a lot of illegal things there. Good archives grab everything, period. What's that adage? If you don't want it on the internet, don't put it there? The internet is basically one giant interconnected archive.
      - hipadev23 2y ago
        Citing a law on what copyright permissions are granted to libraries and archives does not define what an archive is nor what archiving entails.
- t_mann 2y ago
  I actually disagree. Archiving is a complex issue that touches on the interests not only of the general public but also those who produced or are covered in the materials to be archived, and the ways in which it might affect their interests might not even have been clear at the time of publication (think about LLM training as just one example), or their interests might not have been heard at the time. I think a public institution would be better placed than a private organization to deal with weighing the - evolving - legitimate interests of all parties concerned by the decisions of whether and how to archive something.
  - wizardforhire 2y ago
    Came to initially disagree but realized I was making the same point. Archiving is in the matter of public interest which defaults to government. Resolving the conflict, the internet archive should be absorbed into the library congress. It would be a win-win, the internet archive would have the backing it needs both financially and legally and the library of congress will be able to modernize and expand it’s already daunting mandate allowing them to gain further public awareness and legitimacy.
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      The Internet Archive works with the federal government currently, and while they receive benefits and incentives as a bonafide library, it is better (imho) they are distinct from the government to remain segregated from potential political influence and interference. This doesn’t prevent a federal agency tasked with preservation from kicking off archiving operations and operating a replicated copy of the Internet Archive (or a subset of the corpus). In the current operating environment, it is important to optimize for optionality. (No affiliation with the Internet Archive, just a concerned citizen)
  - nox101 2y ago
    In today's political climate I can imagine one side or the other demanding that all material that espouses position X must be expunged from the archive as "wrong think"
- al_borland 2y ago
  It seems like the Library of Congress should be making an effort to archive, in the same way archive.org is. People are constantly worried about archive.org shutting down. Having another source would be a good thing. The LoC seems to have some web archiving going on, but it’s very selective. I don’t know how any good archivist can think they will know what will be important in the future. I did a search for MTV and only got 3 results, and only 1 is actually from MTV. For the cultural significance MTV had, I find this hard to believe. https://www.loc.gov/web-archives/?q=MTV https://www.loc.gov/web-archives/?q=MTV I can’t figure out how to actually view the archived page, which is also an issue. What good is an archive if it can’t be accessed. Either way, it seems like if the government was going to put more money behind internet archiving, they’d fund their own service to make it better.
- animanoir 2y ago
  I do believe Archive.org is, ironically, "too big to fail"... I would be INCREDIBLY surprised if it ever goes offline.
  - ladidahh 2y ago
    they are under fire for their hourly lending policy for books, who knows, I don't think too big to fail applies here
  - metadat 2y ago
    Far from it. Archive.org is a passion project funded and run by a moderately wealthy guy (Brewster Kahle). Or at least, he had a few millions when he started it, and I'm certain the org has been a money pit for him. Hopefully some kind of foundation exists to keep it going after he passes, but it's not a certainty. Don't take it for granted.
    - animanoir 2y ago
      whish I could help more... already donated some times.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - suzzer99 2y ago
    Or it gets bought and shut down by someone who doesn't like what's in it.
  - rnd0 2y ago
    It's inevitable that they go dark. They piss off too many people regarding IP rights, and people hate to have proof out in the wild of what they said or did in the past. Plus a ton of other reasons; more people have an interest in it disappearing than have an interest in it surviving. I mean, when it dies it will be a greater tragedy than the burning of the library of Alexandria (at least many of the books there were copied elsewhere), it will be a tremendous blow to our collective knowlege and memory. But it's inevitable that it will go away.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- basch 2y ago
  I mentioned above in the thread, perma.cc is a service, that collects government, institution, and library money and archives on their behalf. I think its a fair way to have some check and balance between a centralized library doing all the archiving, and a million libraries each with their own archival system.
- Xeyz0r 2y ago
  Preserve cultural heritage, promote access to knowledge
- brisketbbq 2y ago
  Or small groups of people interested in the community could archive it themselves and host it. I don't know if MTV news had a serious following or not, maybe that part of the reason the archive was taken down - nobody really cared to keep ~20 year old articles.
neilv 2y ago
I wonder whether that data has more value to the owner if it's not online -- make AI companies pay for it if they want it. And maybe take legal action against those who've already used it, for training and knowledge bases, without licensing it. That'd be different than a company simply not wanting to incur the small costs of keeping it online. (Still sounds crappy, but it's not "for nothing".)
- yamazakiwi 2y ago
  This was my reaction; additionally, they believe few people will notice or complain.
Jaauthor 2y ago
The thing is, I don't know that MTV news was much of a resource and I don't know that losing it is going to change life for anyone.
- jccalhoun 2y ago
  It had a ton of music news and youth culture reporting over the decades.
  - lmm 2y ago
    Was the reporting any good? Were people reading it? I'd be concerned if the archives of, say, Kerrang! looked at risk of being lost. Or even back episodes of Pimp My Ride or Celebrity Deathmatch. But I didn't even know MTV had a news.
    - TheBlight 2y ago
      MTV News was pre-celebrity deathmatch or PMR. That's how us gen Xers found out Kurt Cobain died.
      - owlninja 2y ago
        For many of a certain generation, Kurt Loder delivered some heavy news about artists in the 90s.
        TheBlight 2y ago
        RIP B.I.G.
    - ladidahh 2y ago
      Kurt Loder broke a lot of really big news, but to be fair the example that comes to mind first is the death of Kurt Cobain and Biggie Smalls
    - Ekaros 2y ago
      At some point such source comes as good enough source for collection of very likely true facts. Like when something was released, some dates of tours and so on. Things which they have no point to lie. Or time points when something was reported. This information is also elsewhere, but collection from one source on topic would still be valuable.
Shank 2y ago
I think more broadly, a problem that needs to be solved for journalists is archival rights or something for their work. In the past, you could just buy newspapers or keep copies of your works after they were published. You can still do that now, but it's not as important until it goes down. It would be better to negotiate into contracts something like archival rights to writing, or at least a permanent credit/record. Journalism is unique in that it's almost always public in some form. It should be a reasonable expectation that it stays in its original medium, or is accessible in archives if that medium vanishes. Major newspapers often offer reprints or back issues. NYT offers the "Times Machine" [0] with basically everything they've ever run digitally. This should be the standard, not the exception. [0]: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  If you're your own rightsholder, obviously you can do whatever you want. The NYT archive is one such example. In the more common case where you are not, though, the law already provides exceptions to copyright for archiving and redistributing materials that are no longer available. This generally only applies to content that isn't audio/video/graphical, but a wider exception is provided specifically for "news" (journalism). If you want to negotiate a contract making such archival exceptions explicit within the contract itself, that's probably not a bad idea. Even if not though, the law provides for archival protections already. Further reading: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108
- basch 2y ago
  there is perma.cc which gets around the archive.today and waybackmachine gray area by only allowing link archival through affiliate libraries. It's as close as you get to the government archiving journalism/culture, besides the loc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perma.cc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perma.cc https://perma.cc/ https://perma.cc/
  - sambazi 2y ago
    interesting. the sing-up friction and overall restrictiveness clearly demonstrate why the grey area is necessary
beej71 2y ago
Waaay overdue to roll back copyright to it's original limits. There's a lot of history that's just wiped out and it's a great loss to humanity.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Is this even a copyright issue? If no one archives something and it goes down, the policy for reproduction doesn't matter.
  - beej71 2y ago
    It's true that if no one archives it, it's gone. But there are people willing to archive things like this, and copyright makes it illegal to do so. Edit: it's not the archiving that's illegal (probably)--it's the sharing of the archive that is. And sure they can share it after the copyright term runs out, but that's so far in the future the odds of an unmirrored archive surviving are slim.
    - throwaway290 2y ago
      Copyright does not make it illegal to archive. There should be a better exception about how to make accessible archives in case the source goes down I agree. But it should be nothing to do with copyright term.
- throwaway290 2y ago
  Fair use and archival where copyright doesn't come into play. Copyright utterly needs strengthening, not weakening.
  - rany_ 2y ago
    Really? It takes a ridiculously long time for anything to enter the public domain. The original intention of copyright was to incentivize authors. It was not intended as a means of passive income for corporations, profiting off works that were made long after the death of the original creators and their immediate descendants.
jshchnz 2y ago
the thing that stood out the most to me here was that apparently Paramount has 3 co-CEOs...
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Paramount re-merged/organized with Viacom in 2019. I imagine the co-owners are a result of that huge re-org, where no one wanted to truly step down (but I'm sure the answer is out there for someone who takes more than 3 minutes to research like I did. Take with a grain of salt)
jccalhoun 2y ago
MTV did a ton of documenting mainstream music and youth culture over the decades. It is a shame it is largely inaccessible.
- ethagnawl 2y ago
  I haven't watched it yet but, apparently, the documentary about Lollapalooza that was just released was largely based on content from their archive. I don't know the details but MTV was somehow involved in the production. So, that's all to say that their archives are undoubtedly a treasure trove of historically, culturally significant media. It's a shame only the select few get access to such a resource.
  - portaouflop 2y ago
    The same is true for so many archives and collections. I think one of the worst crimes of modernity is to lock away knowledge and art for the sake of „protecting and sustaining it“ - copyright is broken and needs reform, the current system does not serve it’s intended purposes and we need to come up with something better.
    - sirspacey 2y ago
      I’d love to see copyright as stewardship. If you preserve it, provide access and have the ownership rights, you keep it. If you don’t, you lose it.
- fidotron 2y ago
  I've known people working on archiving at big old media organizations, and one thing that is underestimated is the extent to which now inconvenient things are painted out of the archives. For example, there was a large classic cartoon archive which had a whole team of retouchers painting out all the smoking.
  - toyg 2y ago
    Stalin's administration would be so proud!
animanoir 2y ago
[flagged]
mankypro 2y ago
Probably selling rights to someone to train models...
bastien2 2y ago
Exactly why piracy is and always has been at the core of historical preservation
- ladidahh 2y ago
  This is really interesting to me, can you expand on what you mean with examples?
  - kobalsky 2y ago
    The only way to watch the Star Wars: Episode IV's theatrical release version is through some dedicated fans and pirates [1]. You can't buy it. Same goes for series that have been altered to avoid music royalties [2]. Pirated version will remain as released. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmy%27s_Despecialized_Edition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmy%27s_Despecialized_Editio... [2] https://www.fastcompany.com/91109690/why-streaming-platforms-are-scrubbing-the-soundtracks-from-your-favorite-shows https://www.fastcompany.com/91109690/why-streaming-platforms...
    - rchaud 2y ago
      The '90s MTV animated show Daria suffered from a re-release without the original music. All the MTV-era specific music was replaced with stock instrumentals, which frankly takes a lot away from the atmosphere of the show.
    - IncreasePosts 2y ago
      Is it not the case that you can buy the theatrical release, but only used, and on VHS? Or was the theatrical release never actually put on tape and sold to the public?
  - onlypassingthru 2y ago
    Han shot first. If you want to see it, you'll have to track down a very early VHS release (from 1984?) or from pirates. Every other official release has been revised for Lucas's change of heart.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ChipperShredder 2y ago
This is happening everywhere, use of archive.org is now mandatory when looking at my bookmarks folder.
- wyclif 2y ago
  I've been saying this for years, but whoever solves the linkrot issue is going to make a fortune.
  - devoutsalsa 2y ago
    Blockchain!
  - pacifika 2y ago
    Wouldn’t they get sued to bits? Technically torrents have solved it
  - rchaud 2y ago
    Trying to shoehorn "business opportunity" into everything is a big part of why things are the way they are.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      Good point. We wouldn't be talking if there were no mutual exchange of value to be had.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Internet Archive solved it. Your bookmark action should kick off an archival job, and link to the Internet Archive link, with whatever bookmarking tool you're using acting as a database of Internet Archive links.
crystaln 2y ago
You’d think they’d want the mtv brand associated with the history of music and being a good custodian of culture. If not then what is the brand?
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  you (fortunately) haven't watched the last 20 years of MTV. It's one of the biggest jokes in the medium that MTV was ever about Music Television. They are clearly fine associating the brand with the most bottom bog reality shows as long as the views come in and the budget is non-existant. Wouldn't be the first brand Viacom/Paramount gutted.
  - decremental 2y ago
    [dead]
- rchaud 2y ago
  The last time this was true was a quarter of a century ago.
- dehrmann 2y ago
  Jackass, The Real World, Jersey Shore. And I'm 15 years behind.
  - tomwheeler 2y ago
    You describe a diversity of programming far beyond what they now offer, which seems to be one long block of a show called Ridiculousness.
onion2k 2y ago
This really only tells us that there's nothing special about digital archives. They can come and go just like physical archives. If you want something to be available for longer than it's commercial lifespan you need to put it in a library or an archive that's designed and funded with the specific goal of preserving things.
- eclecticfrank 2y ago
  Agreed, for MTV the (archival) content might have just served to generate search hits, eyeballs and ad-serving space. A library has a different set of goals with the same content.
- LVB 2y ago
  When I’m in a library, or perhaps a Goodwill store, and see some woefully out-of-date volume (that 1991 copy of “Let’s Go: Chicago”), I think about how it survives because it takes work to remove it. Multiply this by the number of physical copies that can be scattered about, and it just seems more intrinsically stable than a purely digital work. Sure, we could be making infinite digital copies, but it seems like so far we’re cool with 2 (the original, and internet archive)
chiefalchemist 2y ago
There's also content being "lost" to paywalls / sign-up walls. A couple of days ago I went to access an article I've shared to others a couple of times a year for close to 20 years. Not now! "Must sign up and sign in to view content". We were promised 21st Century jetpacks and all we get are same old dated mindsets, dated biz models, etc. p.s. While we're on the subject, anyone want to recommend a Firefox extension that does full page capture (read: not a screen shot)? And then a simple in-browser DB for saving / cataloguing with tags or similar?
- nradov 2y ago
  Someone has to pay the content creators or else very little content will be created. What new business model would you propose as an alternative to pay walls? I do pay subscription fees for high quality journalism but most of what's out there is just low-effort slop, churned out to drive tiny bits of advertising revenue.
  - chiefalchemist 2y ago
    A universal pay as you consume. That is, one "wallet" with "credits" but many / all sites would be something new. Or even credits at a solo site level. It's not about time but articles reads (i.e., actual usage). Also, ending my subscription shouldn't end my access, just access to new content (i.e., content I did not pay for). And maybe the older content gets ads as a supplemental. My beef with the 20 yr old article is... it's been openly available... and it's 20 yrs old. Now I need to sign in to see it? That's not a paywall. At this point, that's just stupid.
    - nradov 2y ago
      People have been proposing "pay as you consume" systems for decades but no one has ever figured out a sustainable business model. The overhead of accepting and distributing small payments appears to be too high, especially after dealing with fraud and chargebacks. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/
Xeyz0r 2y ago
A valuable resource documenting decades of cultural and musical history is lost. This can hinder future research... And nostalgic exploration. Such a pity!
rchaud 2y ago
I encourage everybody to check out your local magazine rack. Many music publications (Rolling Stone, Uncut, others) are putting out "book-a-zines" or "Ultimate Guide to Band X" style compilations containing original photos, interviews and reviews from the magazines ' archives. In a world where anything online is link-rotting or pay walled, or copyrighted by Getty images, these are a way to build your own collection of non-404'ing information. I have a few of these: Nirvana, Joy Division, Pink Floyd, Uncut Guide to Shoegaze. For $15 or so each, it's not a bad deal, about the cost of a CD. Full-size colour pictures look way better than the low res images found online too.
bobbob1921 2y ago
Can someone explain why wayback machine and the other archive services aren’t filling in this gap/working in this case? (I.e., the article seems to say all archives are gone , I understand why mtvnews.com is now in-accessible, but why would the wayback machines archives be gone also ,just because the parent/ source website was shut down?) tks
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- toyg 2y ago
  > but according to Hiatt older MTV News articles do not show up via Wayback Machine. So not all, only "older" articles are not available. Wayback Machine only works after someone submits the site for archival; the old site might have used something that made it hard to archive content; and I expect MTV pre-dates the Internet Archive. Any of those factors might result in WM missing stuff. It's not magic.
- entrepy123 2y ago
  > why would the wayback machines archives be gone also I don't know for sure, but, as a hypothetical example, in this case, MTV could have requested that IA take down the archives from that time period. (That is, if MTV can prove they owned the domain during the archive period [probably pretty easy]), and if they still hold the copyright to that work [probably], then they could essentially issue a DMCA takedown request [by email], with which IA would most likely comply [there are some HN and IA forum posts about this I think].) > just because the parent/ source website was shut down The "just because" part is not a well-founded assumption AFAICT. For all we know, there could have been a request like above. > why wayback machine and the other archive services aren’t filling in this gap/working in this case? I see no evidence that IA isn't working in this case, if working is defined as including having a process for handling valid takedown requests that must be acted on according to the rules they follow. I hope that helps. Again I don't know if this is what happened, it's all hypothetical.
  - archagon 2y ago
subsubzero 2y ago
This sets a scary precedent regarding reporting and the capture of history in general. If all of a few decades worth of music history disappears due to a companies financial health(no company is around forever). We basically lose that data forever and history is wiped out. With most news data now being online this could happen to any news going forward and a great loss to society. Internet Archive does a good job(they are a very small outfit) but there should be a organization (non-profit that all news/media sites could pay into) that would archive everything ever created online so as to have this content available for future generations.
- superidiot1932 2y ago
  Blockchain solves this, it is possible to fund immutable data archival and ordering using a blockchain cryptocurrency.
  - janalsncm 2y ago
    Unless you’re referring to storing all of this information on-chain (and not a reference to it), no it does not.
    - superidiot1932 2y ago
      Yes that is the idea, there already are successful blockchains such as arweave that functions like this.
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        There's potential there. You only need to store part of the chain and there's an incentive to keep rare blocks. But the mining is optimized for storing as big of a fraction of the chain as possible, so I worry that the future of it devolves into a few big nodes and everyone else dropping out.
  - snapcaster 2y ago
    No it doesn't you're misinformed good luck avoiding scammers out there
nbzso 2y ago
The moment media went digital, journalism died. Coincidence?
TheDudeMan 2y ago
Is this stuff not in the Internet Archive? Why not? I'm not disparaging; I'm just asking what the reason is. What causes something to be in the Internet Archive in the first place?
nektro 2y ago
was this done with no announcement? with no chance for external groups to archive?

243 points by anigbrowl 2y ago

The Internet Archive should receive significant government funding. It's insane we let cultural treasures disappear into the wind when we can preserve them for negligible costs.

Dalewyn 2y ago
[flagged]
- maxbond 2y ago
  Not sure what they did to upset you, but they are absolutely archivists. Off the top of my head, they've preserved flash games and animations and written an interpreter to get them working in modern browsers; they've scanned books and made them borrowable from the browser, which I've personally used for archival research. I'm guessing what you're referring to is their lawsuit with the publishing industry, where they attempted to lend digital copies of books without backing them with hard copies on a shelf. That was probably ill advised, and I suppose you could view it as political activism, but it's pretty obviously in furtherance of their mission as archivists - preserving content means little if it can't be accessed. (This was also in the context of the early pandemic, where access to physical libraries was extremely limited.)
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - maxbond 2y ago
      I'm far less interested in how they measure up to some legal definition of an archive than I am in all the good work they do to archive things. If you think the former is more important, I would suggest the confusion is on your part.
      - Dalewyn 2y ago
        An archive very clearly means something very specific, and it's certainly not the "We want free-as-in-beer content!" thing a lot of people here and elsewhere scream about. If you cannot or will not consider what an archive is legally defined as, you cannot discuss in good faith about archives, archivists, or the act of archiving.
        maxbond 2y ago
        I'm not going to quote a definition to you, the only winning move in that game is not to play, but there are certainly more interpretations of "archive" than just the one. I certainly didn't assume you meant the narrow legal meaning in your original comment, and if you were only willing to entertain a single definition it would have been nice to know that upfront.
        seventyone 2y ago
        Words have meanings other than what the government says they are
        22c 2y ago
        Even by OPs own link, they are wrong. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108 > it is *not an infringement of copyright* for a library or archives Emphasis is mine here. The OPs link does not define what an archive is or isn't, it defines constraints on an archive or library such that it doesn't infringe on copyright according to US law. To conclude that the IA is not operating an archive because they might be infringing on some copyrights according to US law is fallacious thinking.
        Dalewyn 2y ago
        You have it backwards. It is not an infringement of copyright if an archive or library reproduces and redistributes according to the exceptions set forth. The Internet Archive quite clearly does not abide by those exceptions, and as such they are infringing copyright and not an archive protected by these laws. If the Internet Archive (or anyone and anything for that matter) wants to spend my tax dollars, they can start by first abiding by the laws and regulations of the legal jurisdiction they reside in, in this case the USA's.
    - lightedman 2y ago
      "An archive may not be available directly to the public" Well, then, most files that call themselves archives can't be legal under that definition. Wipe your computer of every archive you've downloaded, that would also include Linux ISO files.
      - mcmcmc 2y ago
        Deliberate stupidity is not helpful. You know very well this discussion is regarding archival institutions, not a file format.
        lightedman 2y ago
        Many of those formats are made by archival institutions, and also follow rules like ISO certifications. Even librarians (my husband being head librarian for a city library) shake their head at this, and they're trained in databases and archives and related materials as a matter of profession, some to a higher degree than some CS students.
        Dalewyn 2y ago
        Are you (or your husband) really trying to tell me something like this[1] is an archive or a library? That is one of the more, if not most, flagrant demonstrations of the Internet Archive not understanding what an archive is. There's more where that came from, including stuff like their one:many digital book lending program. The law stipulates what an archive/library is and how they are protected from certain copyright prosecutions. The Internet Archive does not abide them, and thus I would absolutely not want my tax dollars sent their way. If they want to engage in flagrant piracy and political activism, they can do so on their own dime. [1]: https://archive.org/details/cdromsoftware https://archive.org/details/cdromsoftware
        lightedman 2y ago
        I see a lot of legal things there and I see a lot of illegal things there. Good archives grab everything, period. What's that adage? If you don't want it on the internet, don't put it there? The internet is basically one giant interconnected archive.
    - hipadev23 2y ago
      Citing a law on what copyright permissions are granted to libraries and archives does not define what an archive is nor what archiving entails.
t_mann 2y ago
I actually disagree. Archiving is a complex issue that touches on the interests not only of the general public but also those who produced or are covered in the materials to be archived, and the ways in which it might affect their interests might not even have been clear at the time of publication (think about LLM training as just one example), or their interests might not have been heard at the time. I think a public institution would be better placed than a private organization to deal with weighing the - evolving - legitimate interests of all parties concerned by the decisions of whether and how to archive something.
- wizardforhire 2y ago
  Came to initially disagree but realized I was making the same point. Archiving is in the matter of public interest which defaults to government. Resolving the conflict, the internet archive should be absorbed into the library congress. It would be a win-win, the internet archive would have the backing it needs both financially and legally and the library of congress will be able to modernize and expand it’s already daunting mandate allowing them to gain further public awareness and legitimacy.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    The Internet Archive works with the federal government currently, and while they receive benefits and incentives as a bonafide library, it is better (imho) they are distinct from the government to remain segregated from potential political influence and interference. This doesn’t prevent a federal agency tasked with preservation from kicking off archiving operations and operating a replicated copy of the Internet Archive (or a subset of the corpus). In the current operating environment, it is important to optimize for optionality. (No affiliation with the Internet Archive, just a concerned citizen)
- nox101 2y ago
  In today's political climate I can imagine one side or the other demanding that all material that espouses position X must be expunged from the archive as "wrong think"
al_borland 2y ago
It seems like the Library of Congress should be making an effort to archive, in the same way archive.org is. People are constantly worried about archive.org shutting down. Having another source would be a good thing. The LoC seems to have some web archiving going on, but it’s very selective. I don’t know how any good archivist can think they will know what will be important in the future. I did a search for MTV and only got 3 results, and only 1 is actually from MTV. For the cultural significance MTV had, I find this hard to believe. https://www.loc.gov/web-archives/?q=MTV https://www.loc.gov/web-archives/?q=MTV I can’t figure out how to actually view the archived page, which is also an issue. What good is an archive if it can’t be accessed. Either way, it seems like if the government was going to put more money behind internet archiving, they’d fund their own service to make it better.
animanoir 2y ago
I do believe Archive.org is, ironically, "too big to fail"... I would be INCREDIBLY surprised if it ever goes offline.
- ladidahh 2y ago
  they are under fire for their hourly lending policy for books, who knows, I don't think too big to fail applies here
- metadat 2y ago
  Far from it. Archive.org is a passion project funded and run by a moderately wealthy guy (Brewster Kahle). Or at least, he had a few millions when he started it, and I'm certain the org has been a money pit for him. Hopefully some kind of foundation exists to keep it going after he passes, but it's not a certainty. Don't take it for granted.
  - animanoir 2y ago
    whish I could help more... already donated some times.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- suzzer99 2y ago
  Or it gets bought and shut down by someone who doesn't like what's in it.
- rnd0 2y ago
  It's inevitable that they go dark. They piss off too many people regarding IP rights, and people hate to have proof out in the wild of what they said or did in the past. Plus a ton of other reasons; more people have an interest in it disappearing than have an interest in it surviving. I mean, when it dies it will be a greater tragedy than the burning of the library of Alexandria (at least many of the books there were copied elsewhere), it will be a tremendous blow to our collective knowlege and memory. But it's inevitable that it will go away.
deleted 2y ago
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basch 2y ago
I mentioned above in the thread, perma.cc is a service, that collects government, institution, and library money and archives on their behalf. I think its a fair way to have some check and balance between a centralized library doing all the archiving, and a million libraries each with their own archival system.
Xeyz0r 2y ago
Preserve cultural heritage, promote access to knowledge
brisketbbq 2y ago
Or small groups of people interested in the community could archive it themselves and host it. I don't know if MTV news had a serious following or not, maybe that part of the reason the archive was taken down - nobody really cared to keep ~20 year old articles.

neilv 2y ago

I wonder whether that data has more value to the owner if it's not online -- make AI companies pay for it if they want it. And maybe take legal action against those who've already used it, for training and knowledge bases, without licensing it. That'd be different than a company simply not wanting to incur the small costs of keeping it online. (Still sounds crappy, but it's not "for nothing".)

yamazakiwi 2y ago
This was my reaction; additionally, they believe few people will notice or complain.

Jaauthor 2y ago

The thing is, I don't know that MTV news was much of a resource and I don't know that losing it is going to change life for anyone.

jccalhoun 2y ago
It had a ton of music news and youth culture reporting over the decades.
- lmm 2y ago
  Was the reporting any good? Were people reading it? I'd be concerned if the archives of, say, Kerrang! looked at risk of being lost. Or even back episodes of Pimp My Ride or Celebrity Deathmatch. But I didn't even know MTV had a news.
  - TheBlight 2y ago
    MTV News was pre-celebrity deathmatch or PMR. That's how us gen Xers found out Kurt Cobain died.
    - owlninja 2y ago
      For many of a certain generation, Kurt Loder delivered some heavy news about artists in the 90s.
      - TheBlight 2y ago
        RIP B.I.G.
  - ladidahh 2y ago
    Kurt Loder broke a lot of really big news, but to be fair the example that comes to mind first is the death of Kurt Cobain and Biggie Smalls
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    At some point such source comes as good enough source for collection of very likely true facts. Like when something was released, some dates of tours and so on. Things which they have no point to lie. Or time points when something was reported. This information is also elsewhere, but collection from one source on topic would still be valuable.

Shank 2y ago

I think more broadly, a problem that needs to be solved for journalists is archival rights or something for their work. In the past, you could just buy newspapers or keep copies of your works after they were published. You can still do that now, but it's not as important until it goes down. It would be better to negotiate into contracts something like archival rights to writing, or at least a permanent credit/record. Journalism is unique in that it's almost always public in some form. It should be a reasonable expectation that it stays in its original medium, or is accessible in archives if that medium vanishes. Major newspapers often offer reprints or back issues. NYT offers the "Times Machine" [0] with basically everything they've ever run digitally. This should be the standard, not the exception. [0]: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser

Dalewyn 2y ago
If you're your own rightsholder, obviously you can do whatever you want. The NYT archive is one such example. In the more common case where you are not, though, the law already provides exceptions to copyright for archiving and redistributing materials that are no longer available. This generally only applies to content that isn't audio/video/graphical, but a wider exception is provided specifically for "news" (journalism). If you want to negotiate a contract making such archival exceptions explicit within the contract itself, that's probably not a bad idea. Even if not though, the law provides for archival protections already. Further reading: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108
basch 2y ago
there is perma.cc which gets around the archive.today and waybackmachine gray area by only allowing link archival through affiliate libraries. It's as close as you get to the government archiving journalism/culture, besides the loc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perma.cc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perma.cc https://perma.cc/ https://perma.cc/
- sambazi 2y ago
  interesting. the sing-up friction and overall restrictiveness clearly demonstrate why the grey area is necessary

beej71 2y ago

Waaay overdue to roll back copyright to it's original limits. There's a lot of history that's just wiped out and it's a great loss to humanity.

johnnyanmac 2y ago
Is this even a copyright issue? If no one archives something and it goes down, the policy for reproduction doesn't matter.
- beej71 2y ago
  It's true that if no one archives it, it's gone. But there are people willing to archive things like this, and copyright makes it illegal to do so. Edit: it's not the archiving that's illegal (probably)--it's the sharing of the archive that is. And sure they can share it after the copyright term runs out, but that's so far in the future the odds of an unmirrored archive surviving are slim.
  - throwaway290 2y ago
    Copyright does not make it illegal to archive. There should be a better exception about how to make accessible archives in case the source goes down I agree. But it should be nothing to do with copyright term.
throwaway290 2y ago
Fair use and archival where copyright doesn't come into play. Copyright utterly needs strengthening, not weakening.
- rany_ 2y ago
  Really? It takes a ridiculously long time for anything to enter the public domain. The original intention of copyright was to incentivize authors. It was not intended as a means of passive income for corporations, profiting off works that were made long after the death of the original creators and their immediate descendants.

jshchnz 2y ago

the thing that stood out the most to me here was that apparently Paramount has 3 co-CEOs...

johnnyanmac 2y ago
Paramount re-merged/organized with Viacom in 2019. I imagine the co-owners are a result of that huge re-org, where no one wanted to truly step down (but I'm sure the answer is out there for someone who takes more than 3 minutes to research like I did. Take with a grain of salt)

jccalhoun 2y ago

MTV did a ton of documenting mainstream music and youth culture over the decades. It is a shame it is largely inaccessible.

ethagnawl 2y ago
I haven't watched it yet but, apparently, the documentary about Lollapalooza that was just released was largely based on content from their archive. I don't know the details but MTV was somehow involved in the production. So, that's all to say that their archives are undoubtedly a treasure trove of historically, culturally significant media. It's a shame only the select few get access to such a resource.
- portaouflop 2y ago
  The same is true for so many archives and collections. I think one of the worst crimes of modernity is to lock away knowledge and art for the sake of „protecting and sustaining it“ - copyright is broken and needs reform, the current system does not serve it’s intended purposes and we need to come up with something better.
  - sirspacey 2y ago
    I’d love to see copyright as stewardship. If you preserve it, provide access and have the ownership rights, you keep it. If you don’t, you lose it.
fidotron 2y ago
I've known people working on archiving at big old media organizations, and one thing that is underestimated is the extent to which now inconvenient things are painted out of the archives. For example, there was a large classic cartoon archive which had a whole team of retouchers painting out all the smoking.
- toyg 2y ago
  Stalin's administration would be so proud!

animanoir 2y ago

[flagged]

mankypro 2y ago

Probably selling rights to someone to train models...

bastien2 2y ago

Exactly why piracy is and always has been at the core of historical preservation

ladidahh 2y ago
This is really interesting to me, can you expand on what you mean with examples?
- kobalsky 2y ago
  The only way to watch the Star Wars: Episode IV's theatrical release version is through some dedicated fans and pirates [1]. You can't buy it. Same goes for series that have been altered to avoid music royalties [2]. Pirated version will remain as released. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmy%27s_Despecialized_Edition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmy%27s_Despecialized_Editio... [2] https://www.fastcompany.com/91109690/why-streaming-platforms-are-scrubbing-the-soundtracks-from-your-favorite-shows https://www.fastcompany.com/91109690/why-streaming-platforms...
  - rchaud 2y ago
    The '90s MTV animated show Daria suffered from a re-release without the original music. All the MTV-era specific music was replaced with stock instrumentals, which frankly takes a lot away from the atmosphere of the show.
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    Is it not the case that you can buy the theatrical release, but only used, and on VHS? Or was the theatrical release never actually put on tape and sold to the public?
- onlypassingthru 2y ago
  Han shot first. If you want to see it, you'll have to track down a very early VHS release (from 1984?) or from pirates. Every other official release has been revised for Lucas's change of heart.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ChipperShredder 2y ago

This is happening everywhere, use of archive.org is now mandatory when looking at my bookmarks folder.

wyclif 2y ago
I've been saying this for years, but whoever solves the linkrot issue is going to make a fortune.
- devoutsalsa 2y ago
  Blockchain!
- pacifika 2y ago
  Wouldn’t they get sued to bits? Technically torrents have solved it
- rchaud 2y ago
  Trying to shoehorn "business opportunity" into everything is a big part of why things are the way they are.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Good point. We wouldn't be talking if there were no mutual exchange of value to be had.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Internet Archive solved it. Your bookmark action should kick off an archival job, and link to the Internet Archive link, with whatever bookmarking tool you're using acting as a database of Internet Archive links.

crystaln 2y ago

You’d think they’d want the mtv brand associated with the history of music and being a good custodian of culture. If not then what is the brand?

johnnyanmac 2y ago
you (fortunately) haven't watched the last 20 years of MTV. It's one of the biggest jokes in the medium that MTV was ever about Music Television. They are clearly fine associating the brand with the most bottom bog reality shows as long as the views come in and the budget is non-existant. Wouldn't be the first brand Viacom/Paramount gutted.
- decremental 2y ago
  [dead]
rchaud 2y ago
The last time this was true was a quarter of a century ago.
dehrmann 2y ago
Jackass, The Real World, Jersey Shore. And I'm 15 years behind.
- tomwheeler 2y ago
  You describe a diversity of programming far beyond what they now offer, which seems to be one long block of a show called Ridiculousness.

onion2k 2y ago

This really only tells us that there's nothing special about digital archives. They can come and go just like physical archives. If you want something to be available for longer than it's commercial lifespan you need to put it in a library or an archive that's designed and funded with the specific goal of preserving things.

eclecticfrank 2y ago
Agreed, for MTV the (archival) content might have just served to generate search hits, eyeballs and ad-serving space. A library has a different set of goals with the same content.
LVB 2y ago
When I’m in a library, or perhaps a Goodwill store, and see some woefully out-of-date volume (that 1991 copy of “Let’s Go: Chicago”), I think about how it survives because it takes work to remove it. Multiply this by the number of physical copies that can be scattered about, and it just seems more intrinsically stable than a purely digital work. Sure, we could be making infinite digital copies, but it seems like so far we’re cool with 2 (the original, and internet archive)

chiefalchemist 2y ago

There's also content being "lost" to paywalls / sign-up walls. A couple of days ago I went to access an article I've shared to others a couple of times a year for close to 20 years. Not now! "Must sign up and sign in to view content". We were promised 21st Century jetpacks and all we get are same old dated mindsets, dated biz models, etc. p.s. While we're on the subject, anyone want to recommend a Firefox extension that does full page capture (read: not a screen shot)? And then a simple in-browser DB for saving / cataloguing with tags or similar?

nradov 2y ago
Someone has to pay the content creators or else very little content will be created. What new business model would you propose as an alternative to pay walls? I do pay subscription fees for high quality journalism but most of what's out there is just low-effort slop, churned out to drive tiny bits of advertising revenue.
- chiefalchemist 2y ago
  A universal pay as you consume. That is, one "wallet" with "credits" but many / all sites would be something new. Or even credits at a solo site level. It's not about time but articles reads (i.e., actual usage). Also, ending my subscription shouldn't end my access, just access to new content (i.e., content I did not pay for). And maybe the older content gets ads as a supplemental. My beef with the 20 yr old article is... it's been openly available... and it's 20 yrs old. Now I need to sign in to see it? That's not a paywall. At this point, that's just stupid.
  - nradov 2y ago
    People have been proposing "pay as you consume" systems for decades but no one has ever figured out a sustainable business model. The overhead of accepting and distributing small payments appears to be too high, especially after dealing with fraud and chargebacks. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/

Xeyz0r 2y ago

A valuable resource documenting decades of cultural and musical history is lost. This can hinder future research... And nostalgic exploration. Such a pity!

rchaud 2y ago

I encourage everybody to check out your local magazine rack. Many music publications (Rolling Stone, Uncut, others) are putting out "book-a-zines" or "Ultimate Guide to Band X" style compilations containing original photos, interviews and reviews from the magazines ' archives. In a world where anything online is link-rotting or pay walled, or copyrighted by Getty images, these are a way to build your own collection of non-404'ing information. I have a few of these: Nirvana, Joy Division, Pink Floyd, Uncut Guide to Shoegaze. For $15 or so each, it's not a bad deal, about the cost of a CD. Full-size colour pictures look way better than the low res images found online too.

bobbob1921 2y ago

Can someone explain why wayback machine and the other archive services aren’t filling in this gap/working in this case? (I.e., the article seems to say all archives are gone , I understand why mtvnews.com is now in-accessible, but why would the wayback machines archives be gone also ,just because the parent/ source website was shut down?) tks

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
toyg 2y ago
> but according to Hiatt older MTV News articles do not show up via Wayback Machine. So not all, only "older" articles are not available. Wayback Machine only works after someone submits the site for archival; the old site might have used something that made it hard to archive content; and I expect MTV pre-dates the Internet Archive. Any of those factors might result in WM missing stuff. It's not magic.
entrepy123 2y ago
> why would the wayback machines archives be gone also I don't know for sure, but, as a hypothetical example, in this case, MTV could have requested that IA take down the archives from that time period. (That is, if MTV can prove they owned the domain during the archive period [probably pretty easy]), and if they still hold the copyright to that work [probably], then they could essentially issue a DMCA takedown request [by email], with which IA would most likely comply [there are some HN and IA forum posts about this I think].) > just because the parent/ source website was shut down The "just because" part is not a well-founded assumption AFAICT. For all we know, there could have been a request like above. > why wayback machine and the other archive services aren’t filling in this gap/working in this case? I see no evidence that IA isn't working in this case, if working is defined as including having a process for handling valid takedown requests that must be acted on according to the rules they follow. I hope that helps. Again I don't know if this is what happened, it's all hypothetical.
- archagon 2y ago

subsubzero 2y ago

This sets a scary precedent regarding reporting and the capture of history in general. If all of a few decades worth of music history disappears due to a companies financial health(no company is around forever). We basically lose that data forever and history is wiped out. With most news data now being online this could happen to any news going forward and a great loss to society. Internet Archive does a good job(they are a very small outfit) but there should be a organization (non-profit that all news/media sites could pay into) that would archive everything ever created online so as to have this content available for future generations.

superidiot1932 2y ago
Blockchain solves this, it is possible to fund immutable data archival and ordering using a blockchain cryptocurrency.
- janalsncm 2y ago
  Unless you’re referring to storing all of this information on-chain (and not a reference to it), no it does not.
  - superidiot1932 2y ago
    Yes that is the idea, there already are successful blockchains such as arweave that functions like this.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      There's potential there. You only need to store part of the chain and there's an incentive to keep rare blocks. But the mining is optimized for storing as big of a fraction of the chain as possible, so I worry that the future of it devolves into a few big nodes and everyone else dropping out.
- snapcaster 2y ago
  No it doesn't you're misinformed good luck avoiding scammers out there

nbzso 2y ago

The moment media went digital, journalism died. Coincidence?

TheDudeMan 2y ago

Is this stuff not in the Internet Archive? Why not? I'm not disparaging; I'm just asking what the reason is. What causes something to be in the Internet Archive in the first place?

nektro 2y ago

was this done with no announcement? with no chance for external groups to archive?