6 ms·

One day left to help Internet Archive reach its donation goal

220 points by striking 12y ago

nodata 12y ago
A supporter will match 2-1, so your 10 bucks becomes 30 bucks :)
- eveningcoffee 12y ago
  Who is this supporter?
judah 12y ago
Didn't hear about this until now. Just donated because I want archive.org to life a long time. The do an important and unique service for the entire web.
saganus 12y ago
Done. I also didn't hear about this until now, but surely the 2-to-1 matching is very nice. We really need to donate to this kinds of projects. We can't let our technological past be forgotten, I think.
unicornporn 12y ago
I really dig the basic idea of the IA and I'm an avid user of the site. But, it kind of scares me that they in one sentence say that they will "make our cultural treasures accessible to everyone. Forever." and in the next one asks for money to make it happen. "Forever" is a bold statement and I can't be the only one that sees a contradiction in this. I guess what they're saying is: if the money runs out the data will disappear. I've worked closely with archivists and preservationists in the cultural heritage sector and I know that to keep the sacred promise of saving something for an eternity you have to have strategies for what you save in the first place. However, I don't see a clear strategy with the IA. The Internet Archive (not the Wayback Machine part of it) is basically a site where I can upload whatever digital litter I like as long as it's not protected by copyright and they (without questions asked) store it "forever". It's fantastic in a sense. But is it sustainable in the long run? For the the Wayback Machine I can force a snapshot of a site whenever I like and as often as I please. I stumbled across the snapshot for this page today [ https://web.archive.org/web/20140415000000*/http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/02/economist-explains-16 https://web.archive.org/web/20140415000000*/http://www.econo... ] and I think it illustrates what I'm trying to say. During march 2014 there was up to 4 snapshots a day, while august did not have a single snapshot. I guess people where trigger happy with the "Save Page Now" [ https://archive.org/web/ https://archive.org/web/ ] feature when the article got publicity. Could it perhaps be a better idea to snapshot at certain times and find smart algos that can detect important changes in the page? I'd love to hear some replies to my criticism. I say what I say because I love the IA and I hope it's being taken care of in a way that will truly make it be there forever.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  It would work if they have capital to the point where they can run the site on the interest/dividends paid out on investing that capital. I highly doubt they are in that position but there is a scheme where that will work.
  - Kalium 12y ago
    That would likely require a very substantial amount of capital. I too doubt they are in such a position.
    - walterbell 12y ago
      List of sponsors: http://archive.org/about/credits.php http://archive.org/about/credits.php
      - unicornporn 12y ago
        Made me very happy to see Library of Congress there.
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    Until the next 2008. It seems like a financial crisis would put that plan into a tailspin. And there have been a bunch of those in my lifetime. I wonder if there's anything with more permanence?
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      2008 was a non-event in those terms. I'm not much of a stock buff but if you're going to be in for the long haul you should evaluate the stock market over the long haul.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - 12y ago
eveningcoffee 12y ago
Who is this supporter?
- eveningcoffee 12y ago
  To elaborate - if I am going to spend my money, I want to know who is benefiting from it. In this campaign, some not specified contributor will have 2 times more (moral) influence than all smaller contributors combined. Somebody will get its dose of feel good and I want to know who it is.
fdsary 12y ago
Does archive.org let you download dumps of all of their data? If they make a weekly torrent containing their whole data-set it would be easily immortalised...
- pronoiac 12y ago
  They hit 10 petabytes two years ago* - which is 10000 terabytes. Torrents don't really cut it at that scale. * http://blog.archive.org/2012/10/26/10000000000000000-bytes-archived/ http://blog.archive.org/2012/10/26/10000000000000000-bytes-a...
  - kanzure 12y ago
    > They hit 10 petabytes two years ago* - which is 10000 terabytes. Torrents don't really cut it at that scale. I see no reason why torrents couldn't handle this. Data transport through bittorrent still works even with large numbers of bytes.
    - pronoiac 12y ago
      You could use floppies to transfer terabytes of data, but that doesn't make it a good idea.
    - pronoiac 12y ago
      At these scales, bandwidth to disks isn't trivial - at a gigabyte a second, it would still take over 130 days to build the checksums for the torrent. I don't think Bittorrent fundamentally allows multithreaded torrent generation. I think they bundle their data into WARCs of a few (dozen?) megabytes. Copying those around is much more straightforward, with much lower latency.
      - zamalek 12y ago
        I think he could have meant that some DHT could have been used, it needn't be specifically torrents. You could then volunteer your machine to redundantly store, say, 5GB of the archive. If you are willing to spend time copying files around you should donate: your pay-per-hour probably far exceeds the time it would take you to dilly dally with billions of WARCs. Even if you flip burgers for a living. There are far better ways to contribute than by typing 'cp'.
bane 12y ago
Done. archive.org is a shining jewel on the Internet. In many ways it's the fulfillment of the promise the Internet once held of globally accessible information.
benchmark6 12y ago
I really don't understand how they can be fine with so much illegal content hosted on the site. Ex: https://archive.org/details/JohnMayerMusic https://archive.org/details/JohnMayerMusic This is being featured on the homepage! No way this is in the public domain.
- ghaff 12y ago
  Did you read the detailed Rights section on the home page?
  - benchmark6 12y ago
    Of course not, do most people? What are you referring to, that they will take things down only when a complaint is filed? That doesn't really speak to the quality of the archive that it's there in the first place.
    - Squarel 12y ago
      Perhaps most people do not, but one would expect that those making assumptions about the legality, or lack of, of the content would have a look
    - ghaff 12y ago
      It's pretty hard to miss. On the link you provided, it's a great big section right below the top one which explains which John Mayer recordings are not allowed on archive.org and which are. More broadly, archive.org does operate in a legally gray area. But by trying to be a comprehensive archive but providing straightforward mechanisms for rights holders to opt out (including retroactively)--and by being a non-profit that doesn't run advertising--they seem to strike a reasonable balance for most people.
      - benchmark6 12y ago
        I see, FYI this notice is nowhere in the new beta site. I see it in the original.
g_lined 12y ago
I agree this is a great cause, but did I miss why there is only 1 day to go until a goal is reached? They don't explain the consequences of only getting USD1.48 million instead of 1.5. There is someone who said (I'm sorry I can't find the quote) that they don't donate to charities who don't specify an aim for a campaign or how they will know if they've succeeded. I like the spirit of this and feel that more information is better than just "Come on, guys, we need 1.5mil before 12am!".
Renaud 12y ago
I'm glad they accept donations in bitcoins (not converted). I've been donating some of my early-mined bitcoins to charities. I tend to be more generous with them than I could be with a straight credit card payment. There must be a psychological effect at play there. https://archive.org/donate/bitcoin.php https://archive.org/donate/bitcoin.php

220 points by striking 12y ago

nodata 12y ago

A supporter will match 2-1, so your 10 bucks becomes 30 bucks :)

eveningcoffee 12y ago
Who is this supporter?

judah 12y ago

Didn't hear about this until now. Just donated because I want archive.org to life a long time. The do an important and unique service for the entire web.

saganus 12y ago

Done. I also didn't hear about this until now, but surely the 2-to-1 matching is very nice. We really need to donate to this kinds of projects. We can't let our technological past be forgotten, I think.

unicornporn 12y ago

I really dig the basic idea of the IA and I'm an avid user of the site. But, it kind of scares me that they in one sentence say that they will "make our cultural treasures accessible to everyone. Forever." and in the next one asks for money to make it happen. "Forever" is a bold statement and I can't be the only one that sees a contradiction in this. I guess what they're saying is: if the money runs out the data will disappear. I've worked closely with archivists and preservationists in the cultural heritage sector and I know that to keep the sacred promise of saving something for an eternity you have to have strategies for what you save in the first place. However, I don't see a clear strategy with the IA. The Internet Archive (not the Wayback Machine part of it) is basically a site where I can upload whatever digital litter I like as long as it's not protected by copyright and they (without questions asked) store it "forever". It's fantastic in a sense. But is it sustainable in the long run? For the the Wayback Machine I can force a snapshot of a site whenever I like and as often as I please. I stumbled across the snapshot for this page today [ https://web.archive.org/web/20140415000000*/http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/02/economist-explains-16 https://web.archive.org/web/20140415000000*/http://www.econo... ] and I think it illustrates what I'm trying to say. During march 2014 there was up to 4 snapshots a day, while august did not have a single snapshot. I guess people where trigger happy with the "Save Page Now" [ https://archive.org/web/ https://archive.org/web/ ] feature when the article got publicity. Could it perhaps be a better idea to snapshot at certain times and find smart algos that can detect important changes in the page? I'd love to hear some replies to my criticism. I say what I say because I love the IA and I hope it's being taken care of in a way that will truly make it be there forever.

jacquesm 12y ago
It would work if they have capital to the point where they can run the site on the interest/dividends paid out on investing that capital. I highly doubt they are in that position but there is a scheme where that will work.
- Kalium 12y ago
  That would likely require a very substantial amount of capital. I too doubt they are in such a position.
  - walterbell 12y ago
    List of sponsors: http://archive.org/about/credits.php http://archive.org/about/credits.php
    - unicornporn 12y ago
      Made me very happy to see Library of Congress there.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  Until the next 2008. It seems like a financial crisis would put that plan into a tailspin. And there have been a bunch of those in my lifetime. I wonder if there's anything with more permanence?
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    2008 was a non-event in those terms. I'm not much of a stock buff but if you're going to be in for the long haul you should evaluate the stock market over the long haul.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - 12y ago

eveningcoffee 12y ago

Who is this supporter?

eveningcoffee 12y ago
To elaborate - if I am going to spend my money, I want to know who is benefiting from it. In this campaign, some not specified contributor will have 2 times more (moral) influence than all smaller contributors combined. Somebody will get its dose of feel good and I want to know who it is.

fdsary 12y ago

Does archive.org let you download dumps of all of their data? If they make a weekly torrent containing their whole data-set it would be easily immortalised...

pronoiac 12y ago
They hit 10 petabytes two years ago* - which is 10000 terabytes. Torrents don't really cut it at that scale. * http://blog.archive.org/2012/10/26/10000000000000000-bytes-archived/ http://blog.archive.org/2012/10/26/10000000000000000-bytes-a...
- kanzure 12y ago
  > They hit 10 petabytes two years ago* - which is 10000 terabytes. Torrents don't really cut it at that scale. I see no reason why torrents couldn't handle this. Data transport through bittorrent still works even with large numbers of bytes.
  - pronoiac 12y ago
    You could use floppies to transfer terabytes of data, but that doesn't make it a good idea.
  - pronoiac 12y ago
    At these scales, bandwidth to disks isn't trivial - at a gigabyte a second, it would still take over 130 days to build the checksums for the torrent. I don't think Bittorrent fundamentally allows multithreaded torrent generation. I think they bundle their data into WARCs of a few (dozen?) megabytes. Copying those around is much more straightforward, with much lower latency.
    - zamalek 12y ago
      I think he could have meant that some DHT could have been used, it needn't be specifically torrents. You could then volunteer your machine to redundantly store, say, 5GB of the archive. If you are willing to spend time copying files around you should donate: your pay-per-hour probably far exceeds the time it would take you to dilly dally with billions of WARCs. Even if you flip burgers for a living. There are far better ways to contribute than by typing 'cp'.

bane 12y ago

Done. archive.org is a shining jewel on the Internet. In many ways it's the fulfillment of the promise the Internet once held of globally accessible information.

benchmark6 12y ago

I really don't understand how they can be fine with so much illegal content hosted on the site. Ex: https://archive.org/details/JohnMayerMusic https://archive.org/details/JohnMayerMusic This is being featured on the homepage! No way this is in the public domain.

ghaff 12y ago
Did you read the detailed Rights section on the home page?
- benchmark6 12y ago
  Of course not, do most people? What are you referring to, that they will take things down only when a complaint is filed? That doesn't really speak to the quality of the archive that it's there in the first place.
  - Squarel 12y ago
    Perhaps most people do not, but one would expect that those making assumptions about the legality, or lack of, of the content would have a look
  - ghaff 12y ago
    It's pretty hard to miss. On the link you provided, it's a great big section right below the top one which explains which John Mayer recordings are not allowed on archive.org and which are. More broadly, archive.org does operate in a legally gray area. But by trying to be a comprehensive archive but providing straightforward mechanisms for rights holders to opt out (including retroactively)--and by being a non-profit that doesn't run advertising--they seem to strike a reasonable balance for most people.
    - benchmark6 12y ago
      I see, FYI this notice is nowhere in the new beta site. I see it in the original.

g_lined 12y ago

I agree this is a great cause, but did I miss why there is only 1 day to go until a goal is reached? They don't explain the consequences of only getting USD1.48 million instead of 1.5. There is someone who said (I'm sorry I can't find the quote) that they don't donate to charities who don't specify an aim for a campaign or how they will know if they've succeeded. I like the spirit of this and feel that more information is better than just "Come on, guys, we need 1.5mil before 12am!".

Renaud 12y ago

I'm glad they accept donations in bitcoins (not converted). I've been donating some of my early-mined bitcoins to charities. I tend to be more generous with them than I could be with a straight credit card payment. There must be a psychological effect at play there. https://archive.org/donate/bitcoin.php https://archive.org/donate/bitcoin.php