Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

There’s a simple alternative to the current web

hapgood.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 148 posts

Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web

#61

Post by DanBC »

idlewords wrote: post #6

Clearly I'm a biased observer, but I really think people should take steps to archive stuff that is important to them. Of course it's terrible when large sites go offline and take vast swaths of the Internet with them, and we should continue to shame the ones that do it. At the same time, if something is really important to you, you shouldn't store it in the form of links to random third-party servers. One problem we…

Many people just don't have the clue to make usable local archives.

You're also proposing mass copyright infringement which - stupidly in this example - is not legal.

Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web

#62

Post by sillysaurus3 »

DanBC wrote: post #61
idlewords wrote: post #6

Clearly I'm a biased observer, but I really think people should take steps to archive stuff that is important to them. Of course it's terrible when large sites go offline and take vast swaths of the Internet with them, and we should continue to shame the ones that do it. At the same time, if something is really important to you, you shouldn't store it in the form of links to random third-party servers. One problem we…

Many people just don't have the clue to make usable local archives. You're also proposing mass copyright infringement which - stupidly in this example - is not legal.

Is saving a webpage to your local harddrive copyright infringement? The data is already on your local system when you view a webpage.

Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web

#64

Post by Springtime »

MetaCosm wrote: post #51
idlewords wrote: post #6

Clearly I'm a biased observer, but I really think people should take steps to archive stuff that is important to them. Of course it's terrible when large sites go offline and take vast swaths of the Internet with them, and we should continue to shame the ones that do it. At the same time, if something is really important to you, you shouldn't store it in the form of links to random third-party servers. One problem we…

> Clearly I'm a biased observer, but I really think people should take steps to archive stuff that is important to them. I recently converted all my bookmarks to saved copies of the pages in Evernote. This means I have full text search over everything I "bookmark" -- still have the links -- and never lose it regardless of what happens. In this process, I was shocked at the number of 404s I encountered from relatively…

Since 2008 or so I've been saving all pages that I would otherwise be bookmarking. Only in MHT format, but it's convenient. After reading a few quotes on linkrot years ago, and noticing many pages I'd come back to 404'ing I decided bookmarks are useless long term (or even at times short term).

Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web

#65

Post by tedks »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #62
DanBC wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people just don't have the clue to make usable local archives. You're also proposing mass copyright infringement which - stupidly in this example - is not legal.

Is saving a webpage to your local harddrive copyright infringement? The data is already on your local system when you view a webpage.

Copyright is a legal construct, not a technical construct. It doesn't matter where the data is. If a judge decides it's copyright infringement to save webpages, it will be. I can't imagine that the WSJ or any other paywalled institution wouldn't consider saving pages locally to be copyright infringement; how would they enforce a limit on article views?

Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web

#66

Post by anon4 »

DanBC wrote: post #61
idlewords wrote: post #6

Clearly I'm a biased observer, but I really think people should take steps to archive stuff that is important to them. Of course it's terrible when large sites go offline and take vast swaths of the Internet with them, and we should continue to shame the ones that do it. At the same time, if something is really important to you, you shouldn't store it in the form of links to random third-party servers. One problem we…

Many people just don't have the clue to make usable local archives. You're also proposing mass copyright infringement which - stupidly in this example - is not legal.

If the system itself is federated the same way as the rest of the data, then it doesn't matter if it's legal or not.

You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs and you can't fix the world without breaking a few laws.

Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web

#67

Post by lutusp »

> There’s actually a pretty simple alternative to the current web. In federated wiki, when you find a page you like, you curate it to your own server (which may even be running on your laptop). That forms part of a named-content system, and if later that page disappears at the source, the system can find dozens of curated copies across the web.

This is a simple and very bad idea. If it were the norm, instead of one or no copies of a particular work online, you would have any number of "curated" copies of uncertain vintage, downloaded at different times in the lifetime of an original whose content might well have changed as time passed. You would have curations of curations, and curations of those, ad infinitum.

Pages that depended on remote Web content (increasingly common) and/or that linked to online references, would gradually become unreadable or incomprehensible as its links vanished into other offline "curations".

Not to mention the copyright issues. And I'm not crazy about the term "curation" either -- it's obviously meant to try to elevate the practice of downloading anything we please, without regard to copyright.

Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web

#68

Post by idlewords »

tedks wrote: post #65
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is saving a webpage to your local harddrive copyright infringement? The data is already on your local system when you view a webpage.

Copyright is a legal construct, not a technical construct. It doesn't matter where the data is. If a judge decides it's copyright infringement to save webpages, it will be. I can't imagine that the WSJ or any other paywalled institution wouldn't consider saving pages locally to be copyright infringement; how would they enforce a limit on article views?

It doesn't matter what the WSJ thinks, it matters how the law sees this. Let's wait for one of the nice real HN lawyers to answer!

Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web

#69

Post by lutusp »

anon4 wrote: post #66
DanBC wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people just don't have the clue to make usable local archives. You're also proposing mass copyright infringement which - stupidly in this example - is not legal.

If the system itself is federated the same way as the rest of the data, then it doesn't matter if it's legal or not. You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs and you can't fix the world without breaking a few laws.

> You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs and you can't fix the world without breaking a few laws.

I desperately want to see you present this as your defense in a court of law.

Re: There’s a simple alternative to the current web

#70

Post by sroerick »

idlewords wrote: post #6

Clearly I'm a biased observer, but I really think people should take steps to archive stuff that is important to them. Of course it's terrible when large sites go offline and take vast swaths of the Internet with them, and we should continue to shame the ones that do it. At the same time, if something is really important to you, you shouldn't store it in the form of links to random third-party servers. One problem we…

Slightly related to this, the other day I tried to download every youtube video in my watch history.

Turns out it's pretty much impossible. The Youtube API only delivers about 20 results, which is a bug that has existed for about 2 years. I tried manually loading the watch history page, and was only able to get about 1000 out of ~8000 results. When I selected those 1000 results and tried to add them to a playlist, the interface crashed.

Does anyone have a solution for this, or is my watch history just at the mercy of Google?

Post reply on HN