It pains me to say it, but that might actually be something that a blockchain can really actually be used for. Just watch out for a 51% attack.
Does any outside service check the integrity of the content on Web Archive?
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Re: Does any outside service check the integrity of the content on Web Archive?
#12The power of the IA is deleting things that should not be remembered, not altering copies.
Re: Does any outside service check the integrity of the content on Web Archive?
#13TinyURL.com was accused of something similar. They offered a "link shortening" service. But if you linked to a page on Amazon, they'd wait a few years and then swap in their own referrer code in place of yours.
When confronted, they claimed this was the nefarious work of a third-party to whom they'd outsourced their link-redirecting...
Re: Does any outside service check the integrity of the content on Web Archive?
#14The power of the IA is deleting things that should not be remembered, not altering copies.
You are incorrect, its both.
Re: Does any outside service check the integrity of the content on Web Archive?
#15Re: Does any outside service check the integrity of the content on Web Archive?
#16It pains me to say it, but that might actually be something that a blockchain can really actually be used for. Just watch out for a 51% attack.
Blockchain with Proof of Authority and distribution of said authority across geographic and (to a degree) professional boundaries might help. If the institutions with authority are, for example, every legal depository, W3C, the IA, a UN agency, and selected non-Western institutions, performing a 51% attack would be very difficult. It'd be more centralized than people think of with blockchain, but it would be decentralized among institutions and geography which means that if there was a war in Canada/the US in 50-100 years, we wouldn't have to worry about losing our digital heritage. It also means that if the US or Canada do turn into authoritarian states in the next ~100-200 years that they can't start scrubbing the archive.
I respect the IA greatly, but it's currently a single point of failure and vulnerable to geopolitical disruptions on a long enough scale. They're also playing a dangerous game in mixing their archival work and political activism. (That I agree with said activism doesn't keep it from being dangerous to the continued existence of the Archive).