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Internet Archive is now a federal depository library
https://blog.archive.org/2025/07/24/internet-archive-designated-as-a-federal-depository-library/ https://blog.archive.org/2025/07/24/internet-archive-designa...
- MPSimmons 1y agoIs it likely that the Executive Branch would try to exert control over it to remove "inconvenient" data?
- ranger_danger 1y agoImagine having to delete their 100PB of warez.
- rwmj 1y agoWait til you hear about my local library. You can walk in and read or borrow any book without paying!
- natas 1y agoI wish my public library was free...
- GeorgeTirebiter 1y agoSounds VERY Communist, or Socialist, or some other scary thing. Are you sure it's legal? Why, the AUTHORS and PUBLISHERS are being denied the revenues they would get if you would buy the book; or at least rent it. So, are libraries theft of Authors' and Publishers' renumeration? (And, to think, the richest man in the world at the time, Andrew Carnegie, endowed so many Libraries!)
- nope577 1y agoYour shift key seems to keep getting stuck.
- 1659447091 1y agoSounds outdated! My library doesnt even require me to walk in anymore, they send any book I want to read or listen to straight to my phone, and if they don't have it I can request they acquire it and send it to me for free
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y agoWait until you hear about my private library that resides on a Synology NAS. I can access it from anywhere in the world, on any device, and it's filled with whatever books I can bother to decide that I want that title. I have about 20,000 (not counting periodicals) all carefully curated and retail quality. I even got rid of those annoying generic Bantam Press covers and replaced them with the high-res stuff off the publisher's site. Not sure what the appeal of the public library is, when you can have your own.
- thunderfork 1y ago[dead]
- BSOhealth 1y agogiven this is already happening with many other taxpayer funded datasets, will pretty on brand with this group
- jahewson 1y agoDoubtful. They’re not part of the government so the 1st amendment applies.
- odo1242 1y agoI mean, what would they do to exert control? Remove their federal depository status?
- layman51 1y agoThey already remove “inconvenient” webpages on the Wayback Machine if someone asks nicely enough. If I remember correctly, if you use it to save a software company’s documentation pages or evidence of something embarrassing like a potential data breach, they could remove it if the company asks. I think Oracle might have done something like this before.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoIf anyone reading knows an easy way to download and mirror IA pages please make it easier to find. A bot told me they offer downloads of the underlying WARC files but I could not find it
- fancy_pantser 1y agoThere are utilities to help, waybackpack comes to mind, but I haven't looked in a while. https://github.com/jsvine/waybackpack https://github.com/jsvine/waybackpack
- badlibrarian 1y agoThey locked away most .warc files due to the AI harvesting crunch.
- duskwuff 1y ago> A bot told me they offer downloads of the underlying WARC files but I could not find it The "bot" is wrong. Most of the crawl data used by the Internet Archive, particularly the Alexa crawls, isn't publicly accessible. (This is because some of it includes archived pages which have since been suppressed by the site owner - removing those pages from the archived crawl data isn't practical.) https://archive.org/details/alexacrawls https://archive.org/details/alexacrawls Common Crawl data is public, but less comprehensive than IA - https://commoncrawl.org/ https://commoncrawl.org/
- pabs3 1y agoI used wayback-machine-downloader, I think you need one of the forks to make it work though. https://github.com/hartator/wayback-machine-downloader https://github.com/hartator/wayback-machine-downloader
- chrisg23 1y agoI've heard it has already happened. Specifically the internet archive removed vidoes of the TempleOS developer Terry Davis' live streams because of problematic content. If the internet archive is already curated for content then yeah there is a 100% chance that there will be more curation of content.
- jazzyjackson 1y agoKiwifarms as well. They are a bit of a pushover when it comes to controversy.
- jprd 1y agoI thought Archive just removed access, but kept the content. I know that from a user perspective that is a distinction without a difference, but for posterity it matters. Does anyone have any facts/citations on if this is a myth/coping mechanism I created, or reality?
- cwillu 1y ago“2023 The Internet Archive, a non-profit research library, makes use of internal processes and tools, including human review and hash-matching, as well as reports from external parties to identify, disable access to, and limit the reappearance of illegal and/or proscribed violent extremist material on archive.org” https://help.archive.org/help/tco-transparency-reports/ https://help.archive.org/help/tco-transparency-reports/
- chrisg23 1y agoI wonder how many gems like this https://archive.org/details/youtube-moXX8lbnmHs https://archive.org/details/youtube-moXX8lbnmHs that could have been saved have been lost. (Obviously this one is saved, for now.) This is not to disparage the tremendous work done and being done by the IA, it's more of me lamenting the trend of our society and societies to mentally babysit people lest their mind gets exposed to something bad, with the implicit assumption that adult humans can't be trusted to see some stupid bs and react with "that was some stupid bs. I am moving it into the stupid bs bucket of things I know about".
- toomuchtodo 1y agoIt's a one way street. This provides more access to materials held by the federal gov for ingest into IA's storage system. Bit of a policy interconnect, if you will. Reminder to donate to the Archive.
- themgt 1y agoIf you see a bank that says "federally chartered" or "federal deposit insurance corporation", stay clear!
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoOfficial post: https://blog.archive.org/2025/07/24/internet-archive-designated-as-a-federal-depository-library/ https://blog.archive.org/2025/07/24/internet-archive-designa... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44677535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44677535)
- m3kw9 1y agodo we need an internet archive, archive now?
- ironmagma 1y agoI’m down to join this effort if anyone else wants to retire row in the same direction.
- doener 1y agoBack in the days when things were sane my first thought reading this headline would have been: Nice, that‘s sounds official and important. Nowadays my first thought is: Wait, does this mean Trump can mess around with this?
- dsadfjasdf 1y agoyes trump is on the computer messing around with this
- stillwzcited 1y agoI’m still excited about it. I hope that all of the world libraries join with the internet archive into a global cooperative. I also hope there is a secret sub-basement in a different dimension that contains powerful artifacts, guarded by a master librarian. A man can dream can’t he?
- bigstrat2003 1y agoThat says more about you than it says about the times, I'm afraid. Your first thought should still be the former, not the latter.
- bdhcuidbebe 1y agoRead the news, bro.
- herbst 1y agoWouldn't be the first time in history a falling empire tries to control the narrative by burning books
- lucb1e 1y agoI'm having trouble finding what this means. Does IA now have new obligations, or gets new information, or something else, or all of the above? The submission says: > These records account for “millions and millions of pages” that can take up entire floors of public libraries, Kahle said. San Diego’s public library gave up its federal depository status in 2020 because its government documents took up so much space and often went unused. [...] The GPO [...] has ramped up efforts to digitize the Federal Depository Library Program. Does IA now have to store floors upon floors of paper copies of information, at least until it got digitized? Or are they now merely obliged to host the digital materials insofar as they already exist? That sounds like what they are doing already for the whole web, and also apparently since 2022 when they started "Democracy’s Library, a free online compendium of government research and publications", just that now they're legally obliged to do this or something? What I find on doi.gov[1] is "The mission of Federal depository libraries is to provide local, free access to information from the Federal government" and nothing really further on what this concretely means. Sounds like just an obligation though? What I find on gpo.gov[2] is "The Federal Depository Library Program [ensures] that the American public has access to Government information in depository libraries". Could mean anything. The program ensures that, but let's assume that means the designated libraries ensure that, so then do these libraries get extra info that the public doesn't get (but in order to disseminate them to the public)? Makes no sense either The GPO page and the submission also say that "Members of Congress may designate up to two qualified libraries." Did they get picked and now it's IA's obligation, or did IA ask for this? What do they get out of it? [1] https://www.doi.gov/library/collections/federal-documents https://www.doi.gov/library/collections/federal-documents [2] https://www.gpo.gov/how-to-work-with-us/agency/services-for-agencies/federal-depository-library-program https://www.gpo.gov/how-to-work-with-us/agency/services-for-...
- bmurray7jhu 1y agoUnneeded materials from other depository libraries can now be transferred to the Internet Archive. Under 44 USC § 1912, depository libraries may dispose of outdated material, but must first offer to transfer to nearby depository institutions.
- dylan604 1y agoWhat is "outdated material" for a library? Isn't that precisely where you go to find "outdated material" is a library's archives?
- ocdtrekkie 1y agoLibraries have an entire concept of weeding, and numerous criteria for doing so: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weeding_(library) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weeding_(library) Libraries are constantly bringing in new materials and very few are capable of constantly increasing in size to match. I believe national libraries like the Library of Congress tend not to weed, but they do have to offload material to satellite locations and storage facilities.
- chpatrick 1y agoStuff like the printed tax code of 1965 or Borland Pascal 1992 manual. Once you have it digitized it's a waste of space for libraries to have a physical copy because basically no one needs it.
- Jarwain 1y agoIn other words, a depository is cold storage
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago"California Sen. Alex Padilla made the designation in a letter sent Thursday to the Government Publishing Office" What does this mean. U.S. Senators can unilaterally designate federal depositories?
- ssalka 1y agoIt sounds like it was at the request of IA: > "...in response to the enclosed letter I received from the Founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive, Mr. Brewster Kahle, I am designating the Internet Archive as a federal depository library in California." Which seems a lot more agreeable than unilateral designation (which is also how I initially read this).
- permo-w 1y agoa small scroll: >Under federal law, members of Congress can designate up to two qualified libraries for federal depository status.
- ocdtrekkie 1y agoMy take on this is that in desperation to become a real library despite Kahle's radical hatred of content creators, Kahle will end up dragging the legislative narrative in a direction that takes down real libraries with him. He will almost certainly broadcast his status as a federal depository library as part of his defenses in his numerous lawsuits. One selfish man unwilling to recognize he is doing more harm than good.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoThey were already recognized by the state of California as a library, and have received federal funds for infrastructure under that designation. They’ve also been accepted into consortiums made up of other libraries in the US. Whether you believe they’re a library is immaterial.
- badlibrarian 1y agoA federal Judge also ruled that "IA does not perform the traditional functions of a library." https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/2024.09.04-Dkt-306-OPINION-affirming-judgment-of-the-district-court-by-SJM-BR-MAK-FILED.3633246-23-1260-Enter8.pdf https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/2024.09.04... Brewster has a friend in a state senator and he's trying to do what he can to preserve his section 108 privileges. He's removed over a million items in the past year after being repeatedly sued for copyright infringement, and leaked millions of private communications with patrons including passports and driver licenses. That's the undercurrent here. Egos aside, the goal isn't to be a library: it's providing access to knowledge. But when your site is on the blocklist at public library terminals because you keep getting flagged for copyright violations and child pornography, maybe you're not on the path.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mdp2021 1y agoUnclear expression, since the goal of a library is «providing access to knowledge». Maybe the point is about the future of those services.
- ironmagma 1y agoIf only they’d hire some more people to get their search function working.