Not sure why this isn't more prominently highlighted, but this is a very culturally significant project and a custodian of a tremendous amount of Internet and WWW-oriented history. I would imagine HN would put this at the forefront of the discussions happening here.<p>I'm not affiliated, but I am a concerned netizen. All of us here have benefited from The IA. Please help raise awareness as to what is happening.<p>Read more here, and elsewhere - https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/07/14/cucd-j14.html<p>> In June 2020, four major publishers—John Wiley & Sons and three of the big five US publishers, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins and Penguin Random House—filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive, claiming the non-profit organization, “is engaged in willful mass copyright infringement.”<p>> The lawsuit stems from the corporate publishers response to an innovative temporary initiative launched by the Internet Archive during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic called the National Emergency Library. Given the impact of the public health emergency, the Internet Archive decided to ease its book lending restrictions and allow multiple people to check out the same digital copy of a book at once.<p>> Up to that point, the Internet Archive had established a practice of purchasing copies of printed books, digitizing them and lending them to borrowers one at a time. When it kicked-off the emergency lending program, the Internet Archive made it clear that this policy would be in effect until the end of the pandemic. Furthermore, the archive’s publishers said that this program was in response to library doors being closed to the public during the pandemic. Under conditions where the Internet Archive was the only means of access to titles for many people, the policy was justified and a creative response to COVID-19.
Some people here say they like the Internet Archive, and resent copyright maximalism, but wish IA would be more legally conservative around copyright law: "follow the law!" "ask permission!" "work through other libraries!"<p>They may not understand that none of what they like about the Internet Archive would've been possible without a bold willingness to probe the boundaries of copyright law.<p>If you'd asked any mainstream copyright law authority in the 1990s, they'd have likely said the entire Wayback Machine was illegal under the letter-of-the-law, and advised against even trying it. "Reckless!"<p>Only by IA actually doing it – & demonstrating the indispensibility of such a historical record to academics, policymakers, culture, & the courts – were people's mental models gradually upgraded. Now, even with little change to statutory law, most see that the <i>best</i> interpretation of the various traditional categories, exceptions, & affordances of copyright law is the one that finds legal space for a Wayback Machine.<p>Bulk-scanning books-still-in-copyright, even for private preservation/use? Was legally iffy when Google & IA started doing it; now better recognized as legitimate.<p>Accepting user/collector uploads of live concerts? Storing, serving, & providing emulated environments for old still-in-copyright retail PC/game/arcade software? Bulk-archiving & replaying TV news broadcasts? All iffy when IA started doing them, becoming accepted as reasonable over time by the demonstration-of-utility.<p>An Internet Archive that waited for legal clarity before starting such projects would still be waiting today – and we'd have neither the valuable projects, nor the accumulated experience/clarity, from the actual doing, about what is reasonable & beneficial.
I love the Internet Archive and frequently donate to them (2 times so far this year).<p>What I'd love to see improved is the ability to be less "fragile". Currently it's all located in the US and they have a huge focus on the US, both technically and politically.<p>But why not try to replicate it all over the world? There seems to have been some smaller efforts inside the Internet Archive to make it more decentralized, but it feels like it should be a much bigger focus on it.
So...they didn't think the law should apply so they just decided to ignore it?<p>What were they expecting? How can they possibly expect to win this lawsuit? I hate copyright with all my soul but this is just stupid. You can't just decide to take the law into your own hand. This is just a waste of money and effort.
This is pretty much why I stopped donating to them, not like they'll miss the sporadic $50 they'd get from me. Getting sued is a pretty obvious result of their decision to ignore copyright laws.<p>If they <i>didn't</i> realize that they'd be sued then they're hopelessly shortsighted (there's no "emergency" exemption to copyright laws, even if you can make the argument that morally there should be). If they <i>did</i> know that they'd be sued, the message they're projecting is that they have enough leftover money to burn that they can branch out from their core competencies and try their hand at legal activism.
They did a pretty dumb thing and that's me being a supporter. I <i>really</i> wished they had thought a little longer before pulling that particular stunt.
Lots of folks in the comments acting like lawful actions, by their very nature of being lawful, are correct actions. Internet Archive took extraordinary measures during extraordinary times when these same four publishers could have done something similar. They should be nationalized, dismantled, and have their archives released into the public domain, as punishment for trying to hoard our collective knowledge to themselves.
I still don't understand what compelled IA to blatantly violate copyright law like that.<p>From what I can tell, even buying a book and then digitally lending it out, isn't exactly a human right. Regardless, IA was doing that without issue for years.<p>IA then decided they were going to "lend out"as many books as they wanted. To<p>What exactly is surprising here ?
I read on HN an insightful rationalization of IA's heeding of requests to hide content: Making data unavailable without protest - while continuing to silently collect it - minimizes controversy and potential blocking or censorship, a short-term sacrifice for its mission of giving longevity to internet content.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21012643" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21012643</a><p>In that context, NEL was quite a foolish thing to do.<p>But wait, that's <i>not</i> its mission - <a href="https://archive.org/about" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/about</a> explains how IA's mission of 'Universal Access to All Knowledge' and status as a library entail 'paying special attention to books'. That'd be the rationale for NEL, then?
The centralization of the IA should've got more attention sooner. I've worried that the Wayback Machine will only remain up for another couple of years as a result of the IA's actions. It has saved me countless times in the past, but it's sadly a one-of-a-kind, fragile trove of data in the hands of an organization that didn't keep their ideals separate from reality.<p>I feel they should be taking steps immediately to ensure that at least the data of the Wayback Archive will outlive the whims of IA-the-organization in the coming decades/centuries, before it's too late. There's probably a lot of people willing to help out with such a replication task.
I agree with the Internet Archive on philosophical/ideological grounds and support their actions overall...<p>_However_, they have to operate under the same BS everyone else does, so it seems naïve for them to take reckless actions that could put them in this position
Archive.org (the Internet Archive) is doing important, critical work to build and maintain an archival copy of everything.<p>If you have not used the system, spend some time and discover the gems that are included in its collection. <a href="https://archive.org" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org</a> Offer suggestions and get involved.<p>On July 15th I attended the Archive Open House and spoke with Brewster about the ambitious plans through the coming year and the next few decades. There is a lot that needs to be done.<p>The Archive needs your moral, political, and monetary support. To donate: <a href="https://archive.org/donate" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/donate</a> .
Slightly off topic. What is the tech stack and architecture of "archive.org". How do they manage such huge storage. How do they forecast and how much does it cost per year to manage existing storage ? I could not find any links?
Has there been any progress in software to allow individual unaffiliated volunteers to help make decentralized third-party backups of the Internet Archive's WWW Wayback machine data?<p>My opinion is that it may be difficult to find enough volunteer storage to fit the entire Archive, but if we focus on prioritizing plaintext HTML, plus perhaps graphics included in web pages constrained to a size limit, we can do it.
IA being sued out of existence would fit perfectly into this dumpster fire of a timeline.<p>Right now it's one of the few easily accessible places on the web that haven't completely caved in to copyright and moderation censorship, the only way to keep web "news media" somewhat accountable by having an actual historical record one can point at.<p>Once that's gone, misinformation serving pro-US narratives will go into complete overdrive and the web will be dead [0] for good.<p>[0] <a href="https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html" rel="nofollow">https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.htm...</a>
I believe there are certain large corporations(far larger then Harper Collins et al.) which would benefit from an enlarging of the domain of fair use around now.<p>Those pockets are large, and the display of the dollar does more to sway Judges than any real interpretation of the law.<p>It is safe to say that they will succeed in their (seemingly useless) endeavor.
Personally, I'm thrilled to hear this. The Internet Archive has already made a choice to self censor material that they had previously made available. To be willing to censor some material, but playing "innocent" when it comes to being <i>required</i> to censor themselves in other ways is hypocritical at best.
I'm torn about this. I don't want my money going to silly lawsuits, I want it to go towards archiving important cultural goods.<p>Copyright infringement is exactly what makes it possible to provide me with that collection of Windows 7 UI sounds and similar things, but I don't know about books. There are already people archiving books and providing them to people for free, so I think this is not a role the Internet Archive needs to fill.<p>Save the money and fight battles that matter more ...
I never understood how the IA can get away with copying all those websites and all their content as if copyright did not exist.<p>Can anybody enlighten me how they have not been sued into oblivion and sit in prison already?
It's disappointing to hear, with the number of people here claiming how IA has run afoul of the copyright law, that it's an open-and-shut case and there is nothing more to discuss. I feel like the air of the hacker spirit on the website is greatly diminished when we take an ice-cold approach to a difficult problem like this.<p>I for one commend them for doing a noble thing in a very turbulent time. We didn't know how the pandemic was going to play out early on in 2020 and they went ahead to help out in any way they could. Perhaps the US Federal Government will give them some kind of an exemption (if such a thing exists). I'm sure they can find a case where their action is justified in the eyes of law.