Internet Archive in Trouble?

[PsychicTaco115]

Thoughts? This could be huge if this happens and reinforces the "archive EVERYTHING" mentality I have.

 

[lil devils x]

Ugh Now we need a back up for the back up. Where will I get all my discontinued SIMS sites CC?!!

 

[Worgen]

Leonard French did a vid about this.

 

[SupahEwok]

Data is ephemeral, and the vast majority of human knowledge and records have been lost to the ages. Our pace of data consumption is simply so fast now that we can see it happen in a fraction of a human lifetime.

Works of art and knowledge being lost is no great tragedy, it is simply the nature of an entropic universe. One might as well cry over the innumerable lost arts, crafts, and traditions of the Sumerians, the Mayans, and the Xia Chinese, some of the earliest civilizations in their parts of the world that we have found enough records of to be able to name them, before considering the tens of thousands of years of human history before them for which we don't have any sort of records.

It's mortal vanity to think that anything which we create is of such value to the material universe that it not only will withstand the eons, it deserves to do so.

All this to say: I don't back up my computer, and do not feel guilty about it whatsoever.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Internet Archive did a very helpful, noble, and explicitly illegal thing, in such a way that required publishers to sue or lose the ability to control their digital distribution.

It would be like if GameStop started uploading roms of its used game library without the rights-holder's permission. Even if they were DRMed to self destruct after a couple of weeks, they'd get sued into oblivion

 

[SilentPony]

Internet Archive did a very helpful, noble, and explicitly illegal thing, in such a way that required publishers to sue or lose the ability to control their digital distribution.

You can only get away with publishing other peoples' stuff for so long in the digital age. I think its called the eBaum's World Effect

 

[Agema]

So, can anyone usefully explain why in heaven's name the IA decided to do that? I mean, it strikes me as phenomenally stupid, despite the good intentions.

Secondly, it can get sued, but I'm pretty sure that all it requires to save it is money. Either let it fall and buy up the assets with a new organisation, or just pay off the irate publishers. Open your pockets, guys.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

So, can anyone usefully explain why in heaven's name the IA decided to do that? I mean, it strikes me as phenomenally stupid, despite the good intentions.

It's classed as an online library, so like a regular library, it can "lend out" digital goods.

Unfortunately, it didn't actually have the authority to lend out unlimited numbers of digital goods like it thought it did.

 

[Gordon_4]

eBaum's World

I think I just felt myself age twenty years.

It's classed as an online library, so like a regular library, it can "lend out" digital goods.

Unfortunately, it didn't actually have the authority to lend out unlimited numbers of digital goods like it thought it did.

Well, it should probably restructure itself to be like an actual archive. You can go there, you can observe the material. Even experience it. But it does not leave the four walls of the archive.

 

[Agema]

Unfortunately, it didn't actually have the authority to lend out unlimited numbers of digital goods like it thought it did.

Sure. But, this strikes me as a pretty basic thing to not notice. Even with my hardly vast job experience in middling organisational seniority, the first question I'd be asking about making shedloads of copyrighted material accessible free over the net is "Have we cleared this with legal?"

 

[BrawlMan]

The publishers have a point, but my issue is why the fuck you guys waited so long? You had forever to do this.