
Archiving the alternative press threatened by wealthy buyers - thisisparker
https://freedom.press/news/archiving-alternative-press-threatened-wealthy-buyers/
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pasbesoin
For years, I've used the Firefox extension Scrapbook to quickly grab and store
copies of articles of particular interest to me.

This has worked well, including effectively en masse over the course my
browsing, and has stored copies locally, under my control.

With Firefox 57 and web extensions, Scrapbook was effectively killed. Even the
possible continuation under ScrapbookX or another fork, if that happens,
appears as if it will have to write everything to browser-managed and
constrained storage.

Now, I find my ability to conveniently and effectively maintain my own "record
of events" becoming significantly constrained.

Aside from the technical side of my life, this makes it more difficult to keep
track of all the political lies and backtracking I encounter, for the purpose
of keeping straight what's happened and also potentially calling out such lies
when I need to.

In a time where the Web seems to be more and more controlled by vested and
reactionary interests, I find it all the more important that my user agent
does what _I_ want and need it to, including facilitating collecting and
maintaining the records of interest and importance to me.

Security and protecting my private data are important to me. But so is not
being dependent upon a Web that is increasingly fluid and manipulated, to
maintain my access to its public record.

P.S. This also extends to my concern over the recently "baked-in"
functionality for secured content management (DRM), and how this may be
increasingly used in future to further lock up Web content.

What happens when our history is per forced maintained solely on commercial
servers subject to commercial interests and manipulation?

I'm sorry if I sound like a pessimist, but in my experience, in general, "if
they can, they will" \-- sooner or later.

P.P.S. Yes, I can still "Save as...", or see whether the site "prints" as a
usable PDF. And, in the short term, use a legacy version or fork of Firefox.

For the time being. But this is more cumbersome and time consuming than
Scrapbook. And, per DRM and also what I feel to be a continuing trend, one
step in a continuing trend towards user and public constraint.

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moonka
It's frustrating when information disappears from the web. I suspect things
like this and the Internet Archive will become very useful for historians as
time goes on.

~~~
indubitable
And the NSA. They are creating one of the most in depth and far reaching
collections of human interaction, all the way down to the most private and
intimate level. Long after we're all dead, and presumably technology is
developed to trivially crack current encryption, that data will provide a
level of information and detail unlike anything before.

I have no love for what they're doing in the present, but at the same time the
'time capsule' they're creating is going to be an unimaginably valuable gift
to the future, if it is not deleted. At some point we may even reach a point
where you could feed the information into an AI with the goal of it producing
simulations that would strongly resemble the times which could be used for
teaching, education, and more. And what a key time now is as in one human
lifetime we develop the internet, automation, likely become a multiplanetary
species, and so much more. Funny coincidence we happen to live in this time...

~~~
pmoriarty
I'm not sure how interested the NSA would be in archiving information that's
100 or more years old, especially as the cost of doing so might become very
significant for that volume of data. It's also far from clear that they'd ever
give this information to any other agency or corporation for safekeeping, even
if they no longer have a use for it themselves. They might not ever even give
researchers access to it.

~~~
indubitable
Check out the Utah Data Center [1]. They are already creating storage on the
order of exabytes in a single facility. As storage technology improves, we can
expect to see that capacity grow rapidly. Assuming they retain the data, over
time it would be declassified and made legally available. The big question is
whether or not they retain it. At the minimum, I doubt they'd even consider
deleting anything until current encryption is cracked to enable them to
decrypt the bulk 'line tap' style collections.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center)

------
Animats
_" He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past
controls the future"_ \- Orwell

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fallingfrog
Wow, this is such a great idea! I wonder though how long it will take before
the Freedom of the Press foundation will be labeled as a terrorist
organization, or a tool of a foreign power, or something like that? Probably
as soon as they archive something that turns out to be politically
inconvenient for someone powerful.

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rapnie
use decentralized p2p technology to archive your information, like
[https://datproject.org](https://datproject.org)

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JBReefer
It really freaks me out that no one ever talks about Bezos owning the
Washington Post. Shouldn't that be a huge deal?

I realize this is more aimed at DNAInfo style sites being shutdown, and based
on the rest of the content has an agenda, but man, that's a big issue that's
never mentioned.

