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Blocking the Internet Archive Won’t Stop AI, But It Will Erase the Web’s Historical Record

⁨548⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Beep@lemmus.org⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/blocking-internet-archive-wont-stop-ai-it-will-erase-webs-historical-record

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Comments

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  • 9point6@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I feel like this has been one of my soapbox things for a while now, but

    Americans, the Internet Archive and Wikipedia stand as two of the biggest contributions to human knowledge preservation in all of history. To lose either would be a huge backslide for us as a civilization, and it never really seemed like a genuine threat until recent events over there.

    I know there’s a lot of other shit going on right now, but you must do what you can to ensure both are able to continue their work.

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    • Sturgist@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Americans

      It’s not the public. It’s the corporate copyright and IP holders. Because why should preservation efforts be allowed when the rights holders are letting the IP rot, and sometimes actively deleting source code?

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      • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        It’s not that Americans are against either of these per se; it’s that they’re indifferent. Ignoring people brainwashed against the right-wing propaganda against Wikipedia, sane Americans largely take Wikipedia for granted. I don’t mean that bitterly; I mean that it’s been there for 25 years, its quality is better than ever, finances are good, and everyday people therefore don’t consider how unstable its position really is and how irreplaceable it is.

        As for the IA, sample 1000 American adults. I’ll bet you five or fewer could tell you what the hell an “Internet Archive” is.

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    • MagicShel@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      America is currently run by chaos goblins, and frankly even in the post-Trump era, it’s likely that the right will remain chaos goblins for some time. Given that we have only two parties, our policies are bound to be volatile.

      In light of that, I would strongly recommend other nations step up with alternatives to function as a backup to American institutions that the world has come to rely on. Think of us as a close friend with sudden-onset schizophrenia and act accordingly.

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      • leoj@piefed.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        yeah that comment is kind of tone deaf, appealing to American’s who are clearly under strain and factually fighting a cyber and information civil war, while not even discussing any shared responsibility to create a back up or alternative… Thanks guys.

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    • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I still wish someone, somewhere could have backed up Geocities. That was a huge chunk of Internet history lost.

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      • SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        A decent amount of Geocities sites are backed up on the Wayback machine and/or restored via other projects.

        Protoweb is really cool, if you wanna browse the internet like its the late 90s again

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      • NormDeplume@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Iirc there’s a torrent of it out there, check tpb. I know I grabbed it a while back, iirc it was like 50gb

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    • SippyCup@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      One of my senators is a trust fund baby who started out in venture capital. My other senator insists on receiving fucking faxes. Neither respond to constituents.

      My congressman, famous coward Don Bacon, is retiring to take a lobbying job at a defense contractor and was never receptive to feedback anyway. On account of being a coward and all.

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      • Crozekiel@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I wrote one of my representatives once to tell him I disagreed with his stance on some tech-related bill or another several years ago, and urged him to reconsider. I got a canned response from his office thanking me for “my support” and basically “agreeing” with me that the rep’s original stance is correct and good and just, with a little sprinkle of obviously not understanding the bill at all dusted throughout. He is still my representative like 12 years later. I still get his newsletter in my e-mail regularly because his “unsubscribe” link doesn’t work (never mind that I never subscribed to a newsletter, I e-mailed my representative…).

        Our system is far more broken than anyone wants to admit.

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    • entropiclyclaude@lemmy.wtf ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Between volunteering, documenting ICE terrorism against my neighbors in Minneapolis, and the purposeful onslaught by the Epstein Class and their illegal wars - it’s a lot to do bro.

      Maybe someone in Europe can take control of the sites. Move it under Norwegian sovereignty laws or something.

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    • chunes@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      You can easily download wikipedia to a USB drive. Do it yourself pal

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      • 9point6@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Already got a copy on my NAS, I update it every year or two when I remember to.

        But you’ve missed the point, my personal access to Wikipedia is not equivalent to the free access of information to everyone. The information just existing somewhere isn’t enough.

        And anyway a person can’t practically keep their own copy of the Internet Archive. It takes up something like a quarter of an exabyte

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    • reksas@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      if we cant protect them, we didnt deserve them in the first place.

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  • bampop@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    AI my ass, they just don’t want people to bypass the paywall

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  • lyralycan@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Cloudflare only just started redirecting to the Archive if a site they protect goes offline. Which I feel is a 200IQ feature.

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  • null@lemmy.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The NYT doesn’t seem to dislike the Internet Achive specifically. They just want to protect their content from AI scrapers.

    I’m not sure what the solution is, but I know any legislation that would address it likely won’t be around until one or both sites go under.

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    • frongt@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      They could whitelist the archivers or contribute directly.

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  • TheWilliamist@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Damn, that’s a lot of SuperMicro servers…

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    • rabber@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      They have a rack in my datacenter and it’s the exact same servers haha

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  • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    didn’t the internet archive start ddosing that one dude’s blog or was that just one part of it.

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