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Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

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Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#21

Post by attila-lendvai »

mattmaroon wrote: post #12
supriyo-biswas wrote: post #6

Its interesting that being unable to find a legal route to dig up dirt on archive.is, they're going the route of CSAM allegations. I first heard of this technique on a discussion on Lowendtalk from a hoster discussing how pressure campaigns were orchestrated. The host used to host VMs for a customer that was not well liked but otherwise within the bounds of free speech in the US (I guess something on the order of KF/…

I doubt they’d have to. If the site truly doesn’t remove CSAM automatically I’ve no doubt plenty of it would end up there organically. You wouldn’t have to upload any anywhere, you’d only need to know some URLs to look for which presumably any major law enforcement agency would.

they removed it promptly.

remember: god kills a kitten every time you comment/assume something without reading it...

Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#22

Post by attila-lendvai »

HeckFeck wrote: post #11
supriyo-biswas wrote: post #6

Its interesting that being unable to find a legal route to dig up dirt on archive.is, they're going the route of CSAM allegations. I first heard of this technique on a discussion on Lowendtalk from a hoster discussing how pressure campaigns were orchestrated. The host used to host VMs for a customer that was not well liked but otherwise within the bounds of free speech in the US (I guess something on the order of KF/…

[flagged]

wait...! do you mean the commenter or the people in law enforcement?

Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#23

Post by rs186 »

I still can't wrap my head around why a DNS provider is required to block websites, especially one that is not associated with ISP or used as default on any device. Oversimplifying this, it's a glorified hash map, so whoever wants to take down the illegal content should just deal with the website owner?

Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#24

Post by attila-lendvai »

master_crab wrote: post #7

This just shows that LCEN, DMCA, etc are poorly crafted laws. They ineffectually stop the abuse they claim to end (like copyright infringement). But it does allow large organizations a cudgel to protect their own IP.

...or their goal is simply not what they advertise.

Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#25

Post by codedokode »

I used the site several times to archive some page or send it to someone who cannot access the site directly. I never archived anything illegal and never stumbled upon illegal things there. So I don't know why they want to arrest the owner.

Also the site is pretty advanced, it can handle complicated sites and even social networks.

> But because it can also be used to bypass paywalls

How? Does the site pay for subscription for every newspaper?

> Unfortunately, we couldn’t dig any deeper about who exactly is behind WAAD.

That's a red flag. Why would an NGO doing work for the public hide its founder(s) and information about itself? Using NGOs to suggest/promote/lobby certain decisions is a well known trick in authoritarian countries to pretend the idea is coming from "the people", not from the government. I hope nobody falls for such tricks today.

Furthermore, they seem to have no way to donate them money. That's even the redder flag.

Also France doesn't have a good reputation in relation to the observing rule of law. For example, they arrested Russian agent^w enterpreneur Durov, owner of Telegram, claiming they have lot of evidence against him involved in drug trafficking, fraud and money laundering [1], but a year later let him free (supposedly after he did what they wanted). France also bars popular unwanted candidates from elections. Both these cases strongly resemble what Russia does.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_and_indictment_of_Pavel...

Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#28

Post by pimlottc »

mattmaroon wrote: post #14
nikanj wrote: post #4

archive.is is frequently used to bypass paywalls, I wonder if this is motivated by that somehow

100%. It's like Lenin said, you look for the person who will benefit… and, uh, uh, you know… You know, you'll uh, uh—well, you know what I'm trying to say…

I’m not sure what you’re referencing, but the principal goes back way back to the Romans: Cui bono? [0]

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono%3F

Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#29

Post by JKCalhoun »

rs186 wrote: post #23

I still can't wrap my head around why a DNS provider is required to block websites, especially one that is not associated with ISP or used as default on any device. Oversimplifying this, it's a glorified hash map, so whoever wants to take down the illegal content should just deal with the website owner?

Presumably they have failed to do the latter and are just reaching at this point.

Re: Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today

#30

Post by pimlottc »

pogue wrote: post #15
nikanj wrote: post #4

archive.is is frequently used to bypass paywalls, I wonder if this is motivated by that somehow

That's most likely the reason pressure is being put on them. Big media companies successfully shutdown 12ft.io, which was used to bypass paywalls, and forced the BPC (Bypass Paywalls Chrome) browser extension off the Mozilla Extension store, then Gitlab, then Github. Now the dev is hosting it on a Russian Github clone, presumably making it untouchable. Since archive[.]today is using some very obscure hosting methods…

What obscure methods are they using?
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