Earlier quoted context omitted.
The internet has given everyone the tools to publish a personal newsletter/blog/profile-page, just as only the few could do so earlier. It not only allows essentially-free publishing to the whole public, but also extreme narrowcasting with any level of access-control one desires. You've not made a case that personal writings should be treated any differently, on either copyright or privacy grounds, nor that the law d…
> How heavenly it might be if only every paid employee (and potentially, compensated advocate) of big tech, big copyright, big nation-state, big regulation, and big ideologies – as they pile-on the votes & comments here & elsewhere – were similarly open about their affiliations! Luckily I'm not paid to talk about privacy. While there's probably some people who monetize privacy they're usually looked at negatively. Ap…
> Doesn't really matter, disclose your affiliations - especially for the kind of wild statements you make (eg: comparing thread commenters to "big tech, big copyright, big nation-state, big regulation, and big ideologies".)
My current & prior affiliations are well-disclosed – better than yours, it seems.
And I wasn't "comparing" commenters to those things, I was pointing out: many pseudonymous voters, & commenters, here are often in the employ of, & de facto advocates for, the very topics of contentious discussion – such as Google, the US federal government, the entertainment industry, activist organizations, etc – with no disclosure.
So to harp on my open book of work history is again odd.
> I agree, commons is the wrong term, "fair use" is what IA legally rides on.
Indeed, it was unfair of you to characterize my arguments, or separately any rationales used by the Internet Archive, as involving a simplistic 'commons' assertion.
> I've also proposed ways to [make their services less harmful] that you have not responded to.
I've not noticed these proposals, just vague platitudes about "trying to establish consensus in good faith first" – what does that mean? – or an example of one person (Manley) who consciously chose to publish a life-archive along with their suicide note (!). How exactly does that outlier case convert to actionable policies for a web library, that legitimately seeks to be as comprehensive about publicly-published web materials as traditional printed-material libraries?
> Regulation will solve anyone who wants to host or do business on US soil.
No, it can't 'solve', and barely even helps, because the most serious threats are from government who themselves use regulations to force the violation of privacy – as with KYC rules, or demands for intercept capabilities – and from aggressive sub-state actors whose activites are largely invisible to regulators.
You're still alleging non-specific "harm" from the Archive without examples or magnitudes.
If the Archive helps makes people aware that what they've published persists in the public record unless they take conscious other steps, and lets them both correct the storage that surprised them, and leads them towards the truly-reliable practices for avoiding unwanted disclosure/persistence, it's done a better job than those promising safety from superficial 'regulation' that doesn't actually limit most threats.
Archiving publically-offered web pages isn't a "privacy-eroding tool" no matter how many times you repeat that allegation - it's a tool for cultural memory, honest history, and teaching people the ground realities of privacy (or lack thereof) in these new media. Directing ire at the Archive's well-behaved collection activities is getting angry at the smoke alarm, not the fire.