Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service • Hacker News Board

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#21

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 5:10 PM UTC

JackC wrote: post #18

Hi! Perma is made by the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, which I direct, and I wrote a bunch of the early code for it back in 2015 or so. For HN readers, I'd suggest checking out https://tools.perma.cc/ , where we post a bunch of the open source work that backs this. Due to the shift from warc to wacz, (a zipped-web-archive format developed by WebRecorder), it's now possible to pass around fully interactive high fide…

I think the main question is:

- Why is it better than internet archive?

I personally see the benefit as potentially having internet archive stopping being the only game in town, but even that comes with certain costs ( which may not be great to the community as a whole -- depending on who you ask ).

I would love to hear your perspective on where you stand as related to other providers of similar services.

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#22

Post by Pikamander2 » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 5:13 PM UTC

Does this solve any of the problems that other link shorteners have, like eventually breaking when the site goes bankrupt or getting blocked by sites like Reddit due to their ability to conceal spam?

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#23

Post by itscrush » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 5:14 PM UTC

DanAtC wrote: post #12

Using a country code TLD is a bold choice https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/10/io_domain_uk_mauritiu...

Is the best counter here to acquire a brand tld to operate themselves (setting aside all the linkrot it generates)? They've certainly got the resources when you compare against other brand tlds that this could have been an option.

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#24

Post by LightHugger » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 5:14 PM UTC

There have been cases where companies convinced internet archive to take down archives of sites for various reasons, ranging from copyright concerns to social outrage, how do you plan to handle these eventualities?

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#25

Post by moralestapia » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 5:21 PM UTC

aghilmort wrote: post #17

how does this compare contrast with DOI - complements, replaces, etc.?

They're very different things.

DOI is pretty much a giant, curated, hash table. DOI does not store any data, it's only a map of numbers to strings.

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#26

Post by ForceBru » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 5:24 PM UTC

aghilmort wrote: post #17

how does this compare contrast with DOI - complements, replaces, etc.?

As I understand it, this physically stores the saved pages. DOI simply hands out identifiers and doesn't store anything.

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#27

Post by bArray » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 5:27 PM UTC

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #21

JackC wrote: post #18

Hi! Perma is made by the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, which I direct, and I wrote a bunch of the early code for it back in 2015 or so. For HN readers, I'd suggest checking out https://tools.perma.cc/ , where we post a bunch of the open source work that backs this. Due to the shift from warc to wacz, (a zipped-web-archive format developed by WebRecorder), it's now possible to pass around fully interactive high fide…

I think the main question is: - Why is it better than internet archive? I personally see the benefit as potentially having internet archive stopping being the only game in town, but even that comes with certain costs ( which may not be great to the community as a whole -- depending on who you ask ). I would love to hear your perspective on where you stand as related to other providers of similar services.

> - Why is it better than internet archive?

With the internet archive, the purpose seems to be for public archiving. One could imagine a use-case where you want non-public archives, and are therefore not subject to any take-down requests, especially if they are considered court evidence for example.

By paying directly for your links to be archived, it directly helps fund the service and therefore keep it going. You would want to see some guarantees in the contract about pricing if you were to long-term rely on the service.

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#28

Post by jmuguy » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

Why use the cc tld? I'm guessing that choice was made a while back? Unfortunately due to its association with phishing etc, that immediately gave me the impression that the service isn't legit.

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#29

Post by bArray » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 5:33 PM UTC

Personally, I started building tooling around Data URIs to provide permanent archives to external resources. You can only really store text or single images like this, and you have to get the size below 16KB [1] (64kB at a push) to be reliable. You can do some form of compression, but it would be nicer to have support for longer Data URIs.

I've literally embedded these into PDFs and all sorts, all of which still open today. It doesn't really increase the document size notably, but does make them more robust.

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/695167

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#30

Post by dylan604 » Mon, Feb 10, 2025, 5:39 PM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #15

dylan604 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Please note that this is a statement of Perma.cc’s present intent in the event the project winds down. Perma.cc may revise or amend this page at any time. Nothing on this page is intended to, nor may it be read to, create a legal or contractual right for users or obligation for Perma.cc, under the Perma.cc Terms of Use or otherwise." So, yeah, nothing is different than anyone else, other than they have a "cunning pl…

You can’t actually create a contractual right without consideration and they appear to be a free service. They can only promise to do their best.

Right, which makes this whole contingency plan worth less than the ink and paper it is written. It's their weasel words of saying they know that their entire marketing plan of "permanent" anything is outlandish. However, this is the exact type of marketing that attracts VCs. Might as well add "making the world a better place" in there too