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Ask HN: Why doesn't archive.today get shut down?

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Ask HN: Why doesn't archive.today get shut down?

#1

Post by PaulHoule »

So far as I can tell you can use archive.ph to bypass paywalls on most news sites.

Scientific journal publishers have gotten crackdowns on sites like sci-hub, music companies got Napster shut down, there has been a continuous game of whac-a-mole against torrent sites like the Pirate Bay.

archive.ph never seems to be the focus of a controversy, I never hear about anytbody trying to shut them down, they don't even seem to be struggling with technical countermeasures against their paywall bypass.

Once in a while you see a crazy rant like

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ypw5mj/dear-gamergate-please-stop-stealing-our-shit

but there is no real movement against this site.

How do they get away with it?

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't archive.today get shut down?

#2

Post by MrWiffles »

To the best of my admittedly limited knowledge on the subject, they're relatively new so most news sites aren't terribly aware of them yet, and most people aren't technology-savvy enough to be aware of their existence and ability to make use of them outside circles like ours here on HN and related occupations/sites/etc. That said, they're also not doing anything shady to get by the paywall either. The version they're presenting you is the exact same version the news sites are presenting search engines in order to grab search engine traffic. The news sites are literally participating in an intentional bait-and-switch scheme to bait people with relevant search results that are NOT paywalled, then when a human browser gets there, they throw up a paywalled version in your face via user agent detection, mandatory javascript, etc. (various means are used). archive.ph simply mimics a search engine indexer to get an un-paywalled version, same as Google or any other search engine, in order to retrieve the cleaned up version of the article without a paywall there, and serves that content to the end user. It's not stealing content not already offered in other forms anyway, it's just removing an artificial dark pattern that's literally intended to bait and switch people in the first place. Kind of makes for a weak argument if they do bring it to court in the first place; glass houses, throwing stones and all that.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't archive.today get shut down?

#4

Post by CodeWriter23 »

MrWiffles wrote: post #2

To the best of my admittedly limited knowledge on the subject, they're relatively new so most news sites aren't terribly aware of them yet, and most people aren't technology-savvy enough to be aware of their existence and ability to make use of them outside circles like ours here on HN and related occupations/sites/etc. That said, they're also not doing anything shady to get by the paywall either. The version they're…

Testimonial: I've observed mere users on Facebook using archive.ph and web.archive.org to make "backups" of pages they think will be taken down. Not wide usage to be sure but definitely outside of the techie/HN type community.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't archive.today get shut down?

#6

Post by troydavis »

MrWiffles wrote: post #2

To the best of my admittedly limited knowledge on the subject, they're relatively new so most news sites aren't terribly aware of them yet, and most people aren't technology-savvy enough to be aware of their existence and ability to make use of them outside circles like ours here on HN and related occupations/sites/etc. That said, they're also not doing anything shady to get by the paywall either. The version they're…

> they're relatively new so most news sites aren't terribly aware of them yet

It’s been around for many years. Here’s a bit of the history: https://twitter.com/archiveis

(If anyone is feeling generous, Archive.today accepts donations at https://liberapay.com/archiveis/donate . The “Donate” link on the site header also links to that URL.)

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't archive.today get shut down?

#7

Post by superkuh »

Why would it get shut down? Companies like Google and Cloudflare do the same thing with AMP based re-hosting of websites without consent. Some site signs up for AMP for it's domain, then any links from that site to other 3rd party sites get sucked up by Google/Cloudflare and re-hosted as an AMP site on their servers without the 3rd party site getting hits from the actual people clicking links.

Re-hosting is not a crime. I mirror sites locally and put them up on a domain subdirectory all the time. I've done it since before the web was commercial.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't archive.today get shut down?

#8

Post by PaulHoule »

MrWiffles wrote: post #2

To the best of my admittedly limited knowledge on the subject, they're relatively new so most news sites aren't terribly aware of them yet, and most people aren't technology-savvy enough to be aware of their existence and ability to make use of them outside circles like ours here on HN and related occupations/sites/etc. That said, they're also not doing anything shady to get by the paywall either. The version they're…

Wikipedia says they have been around since 2012

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today

My guess is that people in the media are pretty aware of how to bypass paywalls because they have to do it to do their jobs (it used to be you could log into most of them with "media/media"; even The New York Times admits that reporters don't get paid enough to afford subscriptions to all of the newspapers that they need to use for fact checking and investigation.)

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