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Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

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Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

#231

Post by rkagerer »

narrator wrote: post #45
jedberg wrote: post #10

It's like the burning of the Library of Alexandria all over again. We don't know exactly what was in the library when it burned. We assume it was all great works of intellectualism, but it could very well have been the fanfics of their time.

I think one of the unintended consequences of privacy legislation is it will support the burning the library of Alexandria over and over again. The default corporate posture will be : Delete all the data! It's a liability and figuring out what we can keep is an enormous headache.

Well, to some degree it is a liability. It just took this long and some accidents for them to finally figure it out.

That attitude will create a problem - a.k.a. opportunity - for others to come in and solve. Google got rich by scraping the internet and solving the headache of how to find decent content. If there's value in some of this data headed to the dump, it gives a chance for someone to do the same. Who knows, they might even find a way to do in a privacy-respecting manner.

Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

#232

Post by userbinator »

PopeRigby wrote: post #204
userbinator wrote: post #15

The "dark side" of web scrapers has always been one step ahead with things like IP bans and CAPTCHA solvers, maybe it's time to get their assistance... as the old saying goes, "an enemy of an enemy is a friend".

Who are the dark side of web scrapers?

The shady SEO people (including the social media account farmers) and the spammers, who seem to always find a way around everything that's put in place against them.

Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

#233

Post by notduncansmith »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #196
paulcole wrote: post #189

Verizon isn’t a charity. Why would they offer any assistance?

This would fall under "marketing" from a accountant's perspective.

Then again, maybe they figure they’ll get more press coverage by being dicks about it than they would by being decent.

Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

#234

Post by john_moscow »

pmoriarty wrote: post #11

There have to be some Verizon or Yahoo employees on HN who are reading this. Can any of you shed some light on why Verizon and Yahoo aren't cooperating with the Archive Team to archive this valuable historical content? (If you don't feel comfortable commenting with your regular HN account, maybe you could do so with a throwaway account?) Also, is it possible for any of you to bring this issue to the attention of uppe…

Pure speculation, but if you publish something created by another person without an explicit permission by them, it may open you up for a lawsuit. If some groups required explicit approval by a moderator in order to read the posts, I would take it as they didn't want the content to go public.

So technically, some legal troll could post some copyrighted information, wait for it to be published on Archive, and then sue Archive for copyright infringement and Verizon for assisting it. As a non-profit, Archive will likely get away with just taking it down, but a for-profit Verizon is a wholly different story.

Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

#235

Post by Diagon »

kevingadd wrote: post #214
oieoeireoes wrote: post #202

Verizon claimed that the archivists violated the "terms of service" [1], but I couldn't find any reference to automation, downloading, crawling, or denial of service attacks that might apply. Does anyone have an idea of exactly what term or terms were violated by the archivists? [1] https://www.verizonmedia.com/policies/us/en/verizonmedia/ter...

AFAIK they hadn't started doing mass-archiving either. They were still setting up.

Correct. They had done some testing, but that's all. They were just getting yahoo id's, while iterating on software improvements, so they could then download the groups.

Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

#236

Post by 8bitsrule »

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #102

This is a wake-up call to the entire world: we cannot take internet history for granted. We need affordable, decentralized means with long-term economic incentives to archive the digital world. In a way, the digital world is far more fragile than the physical world. And the time to solve this is now.

Tragedy of The Cloud.

IIRC, Archive.org is still running its fundraiser today.

We need LOTS of publicly-sponsored and paid-for digital archival centers that, like libraries, are maintained for the common welfare. Or we could, you know, add that duty (and funding) to existing libraries! With -paid- archivists!

Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

#237

Post by 55555 »

PopeRigby wrote: post #204
userbinator wrote: post #15

The "dark side" of web scrapers has always been one step ahead with things like IP bans and CAPTCHA solvers, maybe it's time to get their assistance... as the old saying goes, "an enemy of an enemy is a friend".

Who are the dark side of web scrapers?

People who personally have 100,000 Yahoo accounts because they made them back when you could just pretend to be blind and request the captcha in spoken form, and then fed it into Google's speech to text engine, fed it back in to Yahoo, made the accounts, and who also have a botnet of a million residential IPs and can spin up a bunch of servers to run some scrapers.

Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

#238

Post by Diagon »

fortran77 wrote: post #218
jijji wrote: post #101

what a PR mess for verizon

Not really. Few people today care about Yahoo Groups, and I suspect many people wish old posts they made to the Internet would just "disappear."

If you read here you will see that there are many active groups. Even of those that aren't active, some have important history, even scientific value.

As for old posts disappearing, individuals have always been able to go to Yahoo Groups and delete posts that they later thought the better of. Group owners can also delete posts.

Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

#239

Post by Diagon »

Dignium wrote: post #158

IDK if this is any help, Verizon is holding their annual conference On Dec 10th (less 2 days away as of this writing), with C.E.O. Hans Vestberg presenting at 12:15 EST. https://www.verizon.com/about/investors/ubs-global-tmt-confe... Maybe someone can pipe up at the conference.

Dignium - is that an online conference? Do you need to own a share to get access? I'm having trouble making it out.

Re: Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14

#240

Post by blondin »

danShumway wrote: post #219
paulcole wrote: post #189

Verizon isn’t a charity. Why would they offer any assistance?

They're also not monetizing the content or doing anything with it. They're just going to throw it away. Why would they go out of their way to block archival attempts? This is the corporate equivalent of throwing your old computer into an empty ditch on the side of the road, and getting mad when someone responsible comes by to recycle it for you.

> …equivalent of throwing your old computer into an empty ditch on the side of the road, and getting mad when someone responsible comes by to recycle it for you.

a better equivalent is realizing that that computer might have important stuff and taking steps to wipe out hard drives. or retrieving those bags full of documents and letters so you can secure trashing them.

i mean, most of us do it. not saying it is right but it is the sensible thing to do. for the legal aspect and also for security.

curious, isn't archive.org affected by GDPR at all?

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