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Internet Archive as a default host-of-record for startups

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Re: Internet Archive as a default host-of-record for startups

#41

Post by treesknees »

rectang wrote: post #10
kodah wrote: post #3

Personally, I think eternally archiving everything and infinitely available public data has been not-so-great. If this was an "archive with consent" sort of system, then sure. My response may be better summarized as, "Does IA support robots.txt, and if not why?"

Throughout human history, records have been forgotten, rewritten, changed, mutated, degraded, eroded away to nothingness. "The internet is forever" has always struck me as inhumane. Make a mistake or expose a weakness on the internet and it will always accompany you. It turns out that the internet is not always forever. I find that comforting.

Depends on how you think of "forever". If you post an embarrassing video and someone saves and reposts it with your name attached, odds are that video isn't going to be around in 200 years. But what about the next 10, 20 or 40 years? In the context of your overall professional adult life, that's a long time.

"The Internet is forever" isn't some natural law by which all content abides as though it can never disappear. It's a warning that you don't control the content once it's accessible on the Internet.

Re: Internet Archive as a default host-of-record for startups

#42

Post by ghaff »

netrus wrote: post #21
garaetjjte wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're consenting by posting it on public internet in the first place.

Do you think most people who post publicly on the internet would agree if asked? I think most people would like to have a choice to make old stuff disappear. If most people think so, THAT should be the rule. You might not like that and argue that there is no way to enforce it, but that does not mean it is a good rule to assume consent.

There are two things:

1.) Most people won't opt-in because a significant majority accept defaults and don't opt into most things.

2.) For people like yourself probing a bit deeper, you might well ask whether you really want to give up your ability to decide you don't want something you thought was so funny when you wrote it at 20 now that you're a politician running for office or up for a political appointment.

Re: Internet Archive as a default host-of-record for startups

#44

Post by ghaff »

ImprobableTruth wrote: post #31
orev wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Content posted on a web site is NOT “public” (domain), it is (in the US) automatically copyrighted to the author, unless they specifically waive those rights. Just because you can see it through a browser doesn’t in any way mean you can make it yours and do what you want with it.

We store books in public libraries even if they aren't public domain and authors can do nothing to prevent them from doing so.

First sale doctrine in the US. If I buy a physical book, I can give it, loan it, throw it in the trash, etc. This doesn't apply to making electronic copies--see what happened with Google Books for example.

Re: Internet Archive as a default host-of-record for startups

#45

Post by zamadatix »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #13
simonw wrote: post #9

The feature I most want from the Internet Archive is the ability to donate them an old domain name and enough cash to renew it for the next hundred years such that they can keep an archived version of a site available (without breaking any incoming links) for a very long time. They would also need to be able to handle legal administration costs of things like DMCA take-down notices, but I assume they already have to…

A far cheaper solution is a browser extension that looks up DNS differently based on the age of a the link. It wouldn't be hard to maintain a hand-crafted database of when domains are reused for something completely different, or even when the same conceptual website has breakages, and use that to choose between Internet Archive or live web accordingly. When one is browsing from an internet archive page, the date is…

Trying to figure out the age of links referenced against a hand crafted database (or trying to figure out if the current version is "too different" based on age automatically) using a browser extension only serves to create an unreliable solution for a few using the extension. Cheaper sure but it's also doing a whole lot less.

Alternative content addressed systems may also work better for finding the content than someone hosting your DNS records for a long time but the bulk of the problem space is in guaranteeing active hosting in a way viewable to viewers of the age will be available for many years not addressing the content. On top of hosting and addressing the Internet Archive offers the ability to view old content on modern browsers even if modern browsers have 0 support for such content anymore (or if browsers ever had support at all even). Forward compatibility isn't something solved by a protocol.

Re: Internet Archive as a default host-of-record for startups

#46

Post by hluska »

EGreg wrote: post #12
simonw wrote: post #9

The feature I most want from the Internet Archive is the ability to donate them an old domain name and enough cash to renew it for the next hundred years such that they can keep an archived version of a site available (without breaking any incoming links) for a very long time. They would also need to be able to handle legal administration costs of things like DMCA take-down notices, but I assume they already have to…

Why not use MaidSAFE or IPFS for that?

That doesn’t solve the ‘everyone you know is dead’ problem.

Re: Internet Archive as a default host-of-record for startups

#47

Post by maxbond »

tonymet wrote: post #43

Is it really worth archiving ?

It's difficult to know beforehand! A startup might be a total flop that delivers nothing of value to us now, but it might be a valuable datapoint for future historians to understand how startup culture changed and evolved. Or it may be interesting to future founders - I've seen some startups with perfectly fine ideas fail, and then a few years later, someone succeeds doing something very similar.

This may not be the best example, but while I'm sure the Rosetta Stone, being a treaty, likely would have seemed like something worth preserving, would anyone have imagined that it would be the pivotal document in understanding ancient Egyptian? That it would be one of the most important documents of all time?

Re: Internet Archive as a default host-of-record for startups

#48

Post by magila »

alberth wrote: post #19

>>” I wonder if there could be a world where the IA acts as a default host-of-record for startups, with a super-easy CDN relationship such that the content” Doesn’t IA already partner with Cloudflare to do exactly what Carmack is suggesting. https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-always-online-and-th...

You still need to provide a separate origin server (i.e. host-of-record) when using Always Online. AO is designed to use IA as a backstop when your origin server goes down.

Re: Internet Archive as a default host-of-record for startups

#49

Post by mwattsun »

lelandfe wrote: post #40
mwattsun wrote: post #30

I think it's interesting to think about what we have lost because we couldn't keep everything from a 100 years ago and what society 100 years from now will be grateful we preserved. Off the top of my head, we lost a lot of common wisdom in dealing with the flu pandemic of 1918 because personal letters and most newspapers were not preserved. I think 100 years from now they might wish we had preserved more from margina…

An excellent place to start is talking to your parents and grandparents and recording their history and stories online.

That's a good suggestion I've been following

Re: Internet Archive as a default host-of-record for startups

#50

Post by frakkingcylons »

EGreg wrote: post #12
simonw wrote: post #9

The feature I most want from the Internet Archive is the ability to donate them an old domain name and enough cash to renew it for the next hundred years such that they can keep an archived version of a site available (without breaking any incoming links) for a very long time. They would also need to be able to handle legal administration costs of things like DMCA take-down notices, but I assume they already have to…

Why not use MaidSAFE or IPFS for that?

With regards to IPFS, you'd need to find a pinning service that offers long-term contracts. Moreover, I have more confidence in the Internet Archive in being around in 10, 20, 30 years compared to any existing pinning service. That's not meant to be a slight against said pinning services, just that the IA is well established in their role.
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