Save the Wayback Machine! - Internet Archive under assault
Reported by Jeff Benson...
The Internet Archive is a massive endeavor... it's an online library aiming to "provide Universal Access to All Knowledge." It has digitized millions of web pages, movies, photos, recordings, software programs, and books that might otherwise be lost to history.
In March, as the COVID-19 pandemic led to the shutdown of public libraries, the Internet Archive created the National Emergency Library and temporarily suspended book waitlists, through the end of June. In doing so, it essentially allowed for a single copy of a book to be downloaded an infinite number of times.
Book publishers weren't happy. Last Monday, Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley... four publishing behemoths... sued the organization. The lawsuit argues that "IA’s actions grossly exceed legitimate library services, do violence to the Copyright Act, and constitute willful digital piracy on an industrial scale."
As this blog's readership knows, the Internet Archives is one of the organizations we financially support (the list of orgs supported by Tek-Gnostics is listed on the right-side column below). This massive archive is an essential feature for on-line communities worldwide. In these days of routine censorship, the work that the Internet Archive does has never been more important.
This is a call to action. If there was ever a time to show your support, this is it. Any support that you can muster would be greatly appreciated by us... and net-tribes everywhere! Please do what you can...
Comments
You really do need support to stop you from doing something as incredibly stupid, again.
That said, of course there's good reason to save it in some way or other.
The ambition to save everything is not a realistic one. Not, if one (1) entity must do it. A number of "libraries" saving parts of everything could be connected to do something like The Internet Archive. Alone you do not have a chance. You need to diversify. That would be an interesting challenge. This is, I guess, what you must have in mind when backing up the present data and it must be done by a program guessing the type of information, to split it to different servers.
Whew!