With more legal action on the horizon, how long before Archive.org closes?

Recent and related:

The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41447758 - Sept 2024 (783 comments)

Maybe its just me but every single time I really needed a past snapshot of a webpage, they never ever have it. Or they do and its a loading GIF because all the content is loaded from JS.

I think the fact a lot of sites are SPA or similar, and have bot blockers like Cloudflare is slowly killing their usefulness.

it may actually be reasonable to start a page under https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Category:Closing_proj... to track this

> The only one putting The Internet Archive in danger... is The Internet Archive.

Um ... no. The ones putting The Internet Archive in danger are the copyright cartels and the laws that enable them. If you "love the internet archive", you should oppose the current copyright regime.

If you think that the Internet Archive is their own worst enemy and anyone who thinks differently is wrong, then you don't actually support the work of The Internet Archive. Sure, you may like parts of it. But you oppose its core mission.

I support changing the law to allow the The Internet Archive to operate. I am sad that the current laws (apparently) may not allow it to operate. I am not dunking on everyone who thought they have a reasonable legal case. Why? Because I "love the internet archive".

Let's say that I want to back up interesting or important webpages, without the Internet Archive. What option do I have, given a URL, to archive it?

Given: 1. It may require a login, for which I already have a cookie in my everyday browser. 2. It may require complex Javascript, e.g. React applications. 3. It may require dismissing popups for: cookie consent, newsletters, optional logins or signup, etc. 4. It may require solving a captcha. I have no problem letting the script run in the background and grabbing my attention when a captcha is required.

"Internet Archive" should do a quick rebrand to "Archive of the Internet", AI for short, and as if by magic, whole copyright issues will be resolved.

Feels like comments are focusing strongly on IA, but, the legal system really made a fool of itself in this one. It's not even trying to look respectable when it acts like this. It wasn't a takedown of digital libraries at all; it was a blanket insult against all libraries.

The 2nd Court wasn't quite this bad, but if we want to write headlines, how about: "With more trash rulings, how long before the copyright system collapses?"

As ever, Mike Masnick/Techdirt have strongly polarized but great coverage. https://www.techdirt.com/2024/09/05/second-circuit-says-libr...

Don't we have a distributed alternative for that e.g. I dowbload a docker file and dedicate X TB to this proj?

Of course the individual in the end decided to somehow make the article... about himself.

We all knew that the IA was bound to be litigated out of existence at some point. But I don’t understand the authors point that it’s the IA’s fault - is there actually any way they could avoid or win an IP case ever?

Top comment from a related thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41449965

Large discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41447758

So, if the Great 78 Project lawsuit ends up in favor of record labels, which groups will be next to go after them?

Yeah, the wayback machine is clearly the most valuable service they provide by far and it would be a huge loss if liability from the other stuff forced it to close. Could it be spun off somehow?

I say this as a user of the other stuff. I just built a site that relies on them to serve classic game assets (legally, because it's just the free demo)[1]. But I'd definitely prefer that they shut that down if it could keep the wayback machine on.

[1] https://thelongestyard.link/

Intellectual property is a broken and harmful system that is really holding us back.

As a graybeard fan of IA, I find their hubris damning. If they had one thing going for themselves it was some level of grandfathered goodwill - all of which they stupidly used up for this "COVID made me do it" nonsense.

It may have always been inevitable that copyright laws would burn down our modern Library of Alexandria, but they didn't have to hand out torches like this.

Let's burn another library of Alexandria!

As a frequent user and sometimes donor, I would be a-okay if archive.org gave up on everything that isn't archiving the web. They should re-focus on delivering a better archiving solution (their current system still misses a LOT of page resources and dynamic content), and could use a revamped UX. And of course MUCH faster access to archived pages.

Basically, get better at what you're already best at. Don't be the next Mozilla.