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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

#51

Post by codedokode »

jdiff wrote: post #39
nacozarina wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If they were any good at it, they'd have blocked the Internet Archive via robots.txt. For some inexplicable reason, IA responds to that by wiping out past, present, and future archivals of that site. They haven't taken that easy step, so I doubt they'd go the further, more involved step of focusing on this smaller actor.

IA also blocks some content in Russia, for example this [1] says: "This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine in your region.". I was sincerely surprised to learn that while not paying much attention to US copyright law, they have high respect for messages from Vladimir.

(in case someone is curious what about is that article, it is a fictional comparison of life of a fictional character in Springfield, USA and Chusovoy, USSR in 80s and I cannot even understand why it was banned in Russia)

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250418160713/https://habr.com/...

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

#52

Post by Wowfunhappy »

attila-lendvai wrote: post #21
mattmaroon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#53

Post by Plasmoid2000ad »

A_Venom_Roll wrote: post #32

Archive.is doesn't work on all sites to bypass the paywall. Media companies that are truly concerned about this should modify their paywall configuration.

I've seen some theories or maybe more like guesses as to how the paywall bypass works - I don't think anyone (or at least no one posting places like here) seems to know.

One I saw suggested they've a set of subscriptions to the paywalled sites and some minimal custom work to hide the signed in account used - which seems plausible. That makes the defense most likely used to catch the account used and ban them - which would be a right pain.

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

#54

Post by mchanson »

breppp wrote: post #37
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/…

That would work but it is a very risky technique. For the mere mortal in your example this means possible jail time just to get some site closed down. For law enforcement personnel, at the very least would mean an end of a career if caught (also possible jail time)

You are naive about cops, at least in the US, and what they will or will not do and what consequence they may or may not face.

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

#56

Post by j-bos »

iamnothere wrote: post #50
dude187 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same technique that people on Reddit use to take down subreddits that don't agree with the carefully curated "hive mind".

I don’t know why you are downvoted, this is absolutely what happened semi-frequently until Reddit was finally forced to crack down on it. The same thing happened on Twitter/X for a while where bots would mass reply to targeted users with gore and CSAM.

I've been seeing something similar on some youtube videos, endless unflagged comments advocating hatred and violence, completely unrelated to the video topic or channel.

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

#57

Post by codedokode »

breppp wrote: post #37
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/…

That would work but it is a very risky technique. For the mere mortal in your example this means possible jail time just to get some site closed down. For law enforcement personnel, at the very least would mean an end of a career if caught (also possible jail time)

You could use something that is legal in one country, and illegal in another country, for example, an anime-style drawing of a young girl, or a textual description.

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

#58

Post by _yb2s »

breppp wrote: post #37
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/…

That would work but it is a very risky technique. For the mere mortal in your example this means possible jail time just to get some site closed down. For law enforcement personnel, at the very least would mean an end of a career if caught (also possible jail time)

The current federal government in the USA actively encourages federal agents to use illegal and unethical methods, and promised them protection and immunity.

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

#59

Post by BoppreH »

So they're pressuring a DNS resolver to block a specific website? That seems like an incredibly slippery slope.

What stops them from forcing Chrome to block the website, or LetsEncrypt to not issue any more certificates for the domain, or Microsoft and Apple to add them to their firewalls? Hell, can they go after the infrastructure software developers and say, force nginx to add a check and refuse to serve the domain?

Then what happens when a fake report is sent to an open source project without budget for lawyers?

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

#60

Post by j-bos »

anal_reactor wrote: post #55

Different question, but what are realistic use cases of archive.today that could be interesting for average person?

Have you ever wanted to reread an old article/blog from a ling dead website? Needed to compare the old TOS with the latest TOS? Been looking for what was that video on your playlist about that got removed from youtube? Things like that are fairly average. It can also be helpful for dispute resolutuon and holding public parties to account.
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