
One day left to help Internet Archive reach its donation goal - striking
https://archive.org/donate/?1
======
unicornporn
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.econo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140415000000*/http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-
explains/2014/02/economist-explains-16) ] 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
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
That would likely require a very substantial amount of capital. I too doubt
they are in such a position.

~~~
walterbell
List of sponsors:
[http://archive.org/about/credits.php](http://archive.org/about/credits.php)

~~~
unicornporn
Made me very happy to see Library of Congress there.

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saganus
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.

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judah
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.

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Renaud
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)

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bane
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.

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

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g_lined
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!".

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fdsary
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
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-a...](http://blog.archive.org/2012/10/26/10000000000000000-bytes-archived/)

~~~
kanzure
> 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
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
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'.

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eveningcoffee
Who is this supporter?

~~~
eveningcoffee
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.

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benchmark6
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
Did you read the detailed Rights section on the home page?

~~~
benchmark6
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.

~~~
ghaff
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
I see, FYI this notice is nowhere in the new beta site. I see it in the
original.

