
It’s Time to Archive the Internet Archive - tosh
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dzg8n/archiving-the-internet-archive-sued-by-publishers
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thephyber
I suppose now is the time that most of us figure out exactly how much of a
project IA was and what we actually stand to lose if/when it goes offline.

IA has stored lots of public domain works like the audio for JFK speeches that
I found really interesting. It's a trip to listen to an incredibly articulate
and witty president[1].

[1]
[https://archive.org/details/jfks19610427](https://archive.org/details/jfks19610427)

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propter_hoc
That was a great speech, thank you for sharing it.

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blakesterz
That title caught me off guard. I expected to see a "Death To The Internet
Archive" hit piece, but the article says things like "The move puts one of the
internet’s largest repositories of knowledge in peril."

I think they're referring to Archive Team's plans to actually make a backup of
the entire IA (INTERNETARCHIVE.BAK)
[https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=INTERNETARCHIVE....](https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=INTERNETARCHIVE.BAK)

So something like "To save The Internet Archive It’s Time to Archive the
Internet Archive" maybe would've explained it better for me.

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Kelamir
That sounds bad... Here are the lawsuits, I think:
[https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17211300/hachette-
book-...](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17211300/hachette-book-group-
inc-v-internet-archive/)

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kixiQu
I support the emergency library initiative in theory, but in practice I really
wish they hadn't.

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2OEH8eoCRo0
Copyright term length needs to be axed- this is theft.

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DanBC
How long do you think copyright should last for?

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jeffersont
The original term (28 years) was okay. If these guys sue for 150,000USD per
infringement and there are 1.4 million documents as the article says, they can
sue for 210 trillion dollars. Doesn't something about that strike you as
absurd?

~~~
DanBC
The amount of money is different to the length of time protection lasts
though, isn't it?

When you sort by year published the IA has a bunch of stuff from the past 5
years, and a lot of stuff that's still in print.

A lot of these are not abandoned or orphaned works.

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nine_k
The next person to start an Internet Archive, please heed!

\- Make your main org a non-profit, and let it keep all the public domain
stuff. Keep it insulated from everything else as much as possible. Deny as
much liability as legally possible.

\- If you decide to dabble in _any_ non-public-domain activity, such as
keeping a library of copyrighted books you _rent_ , keep it legally completely
insulated from the public domain archive. If you decide to run several of
them, keep each siloed away from the others. If you can, stay away from that
completely.

Else a single misstep (admittedly both magnanimous and gross) like IA has made
will sink all of your work, including the completely unrelated, and _much_
more valuable public-domain archive.

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s1artibartfast
Unforounately, it seems that the IA is legally in the wrong here.

Controlled Digital Lending allows libraries use technical controls to ensure a
consistent “owned-to-loaned” ratio, meaning the library circulates the exact
number of copies of a specific title it owns, regardless of format.

The IA is saying to hell with the owned to loaned rato, and therefore no
longer falls under CDL.

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xtiansimon
> "The IA is saying to hell with the owned to loaned rato"

What are you referring to? You mean their Emergency pandemic action?

I borrow things form Archive.org and had to wait (same experience as my public
library's e-services). They may have blundered by not realizing how precarious
their legal position is with copyright law. Where has Archive made
inflammatory statements like you suggest?

~~~
s1artibartfast
It is in the FAQ and the primary basis for the suit

"we are taking the extraordinary measure to suspend waitlists on our lending
collection through the duration of the US national emergency to meet the
educational and inspirational needs of a global community of readers and
learners. "

[https://help.archive.org/hc/en-
us/articles/360042654251-Nati...](https://help.archive.org/hc/en-
us/articles/360042654251-National-Emergency-Library-FAQs)

"saying to hell with" something is clearly figurative speech. They knew
exactly what they were doing when they disabled their wait-list system and
willfully breaking the law.

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xtiansimon
Bombastic

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s1artibartfast
?

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nine_k
BTW I wonder if there is a benevolent billionaire to buy the public-domain
part from IA, right with the storage used for it, and keep it running for some
more time? I think even a simple multi-millionaire would qualify, too!

I _hope_ they had enough sense to keep public-domain and copyrighted works
well-separated.

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captn3m0
I'm considering backing some of it on Docker Hub. Docker Images are cached,
de-duplicated, and the ToS supports media content inside container images.

And if you create layers/images nicely - then downloads are optimized as well
(each layer can be downloaded individually)

