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Internet Archive breached again through stolen access tokens

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Re: Internet Archive breached again through stolen access tokens

#291

Post by bastawhiz »

jonny_eh wrote: post #252
jdiff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to get brought at least once in the comments for every one of these articles that pops up. The IA has tried distributing their stores, but nowhere near enough people actually put their storage where their mouths are.

Nearly every entry in the library has a torrent file (which is a distributed storage system), but with the index pages down, they're not accessible.

I can hardly find a healthy torrent for an obscure feature film that I care about. How am I supposed to find a healthy torrent for a random web page from the aughts?

Re: Internet Archive breached again through stolen access tokens

#292

Post by master-lincoln »

AlienRobot wrote: post #188
TZubiri wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you keep the definition of legality without a centralizing authority?

A tracker is a centralized authority.

But legality doesn't have a central authority. What is illegal in one jurisdiction is ok in another

Re: Internet Archive breached again through stolen access tokens

#293

Post by elihu »

MathMonkeyMan wrote: post #200
dokyun wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The group that claimed to be responsible for the first hack was said to be Russian-based, anti-U.S., pro-Palestine, and their reasoning for the attack was because of IA's violation of copyright.... I think you should draw your own more informed conclusions, but it smells a lot like feds to me.

What do Palestine, Russia, and the U.S. have to do with the Internet Archive? The Internet Archive is a supremely boring target politically.

It seems plausible to me that someone is just trying to exacerbate political/social conflict. Russia has been known to do such things, and they often take multiple sides just to sow chaos. Self-identifying as Palestinian activists would be an effective way to get more people mad that otherwise wouldn't care.

This is also right before a major U.S. election, and that might not be a coincidence. Someone might be trying to get Trump elected by drawing attention to the Israel-Gaza conflict, a topic that isn't exactly a winning issue for Harris.

That's just one possibility of many though. I mean, might just be regular assholes that happen to also be pro-Palestinian. Or pro-Hamas, which isn't necessarily the same thing.

Re: Internet Archive breached again through stolen access tokens

#294

Post by master-lincoln »

TZubiri wrote: post #228
jonhohle wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way? Torrents are used all over for content delivery. Battle.net uses a proprietary version of BitTorrent. It’s now owned by Microsoft. There’s many more legitimate uses as commented by many others. Criminals using tools does not make the tools criminal.

It's a matter of numbers, if tens of thousands of criminals use tech X, and it has few genuine uses, it's going to be restricted. This has precedent in illegal drug categorization, it's not just about the damage, but its ratio of noxious to helpful use.

This precedent is problematic I think. It seems like the populist way of addressing issues. Always just following the biggest outcry instead of the symptoms. Just because there are currently more illegitimate users for a a thing we shouldn't prevent legitimate uses I think. The ratio might just be skewed because in the legitimate world you grow your audience with marketing investing tons of capital, while for illegitimate use cases, the marketing is often just word of mouth because of features.

Re: Internet Archive breached again through stolen access tokens

#295

Post by sumtechguy »

jonny_eh wrote: post #252
jdiff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to get brought at least once in the comments for every one of these articles that pops up. The IA has tried distributing their stores, but nowhere near enough people actually put their storage where their mouths are.

Nearly every entry in the library has a torrent file (which is a distributed storage system), but with the index pages down, they're not accessible.

The problem with their torrents is they are usually broken. Lots of complaints on them being broken. But no one fixing it.

Re: Internet Archive breached again through stolen access tokens

#296

Post by jpc0 »

db48x wrote: post #238
thimabi wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claiming to have deleted something while just having hidden from public view… that’s basically begging content owners to sue and very easily win damages.

Copyright only regulates the distribution of copies of copyrighted works. Possessing copies and distributing copies to other people are two different things. If you were photocopying a textbook and giving it to your classmates, the publisher could have their lawyer send you a Cease and Desist letter telling you to stop (or else). But if they told you to burn your copy of the textbook then they would be overreaching,…

I'm not going to look up legal precedent, hire a lawyer if you want that.

You are wrong, copyright specifically prohibits copying, not distribution. They can get a cease and desist that requests you destroy property and they ca get a court order backing that which will put you into contempt of court if you fail to do so.

Proving damages is easier with distribution, but that is a civil matter not a criminal matter.

Re: Internet Archive breached again through stolen access tokens

#297

Post by wl »

db48x wrote: post #29
thaumasiotes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a terrible solution. The Wayback Machine takes down their snapshots at the request of whoever controls the domain. That's not archival. If the state of a webpage in the past matters to you, you need a record that won't cease to exist when your opposition asks it to. This is the concept behind perma.cc.

No, they don’t delete the archived content. When the domain’s robots.txt file bans spidering, then the Wayback Machine _hides_ the content archived at that domain. It is still stored and maintained, but it isn’t distributed via the website. The content will be unhidden if the robots.txt file stops banning spiders, or if an appropriate request is made.

They ignore robots.txt these days.

Re: Internet Archive breached again through stolen access tokens

#298

Post by stavros »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #273
stavros wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I designed a system where you could say "donate this spare 2 TB of my disk space to the Internet Archive" and the IA would push 2 TB of data to you. This system also has the property that it can be reconstructed if the IA (or whatever provider) goes away. Unfortunately, when I talked to a few archival teams (including the IA) about whether they'd be interested in using it, I either got no response or a negative one.

Because the incentive will be archiving things they believe should be archived, you need the process to begin with what urls do you want to be archiving, then people will be incentivized for archiving the juicy stuff IA is used for and you just throw some stuff they didn't ask to archive in the remit of them storing what they want.

I don't think that's necessarily true, I have a spare TB that I'd be glad to donate to the IA to store whatever they want in.

Re: Internet Archive breached again through stolen access tokens

#299

Post by Wheatman »

highwaylights wrote: post #270
jonny_eh wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly every entry in the library has a torrent file (which is a distributed storage system), but with the index pages down, they're not accessible.

You're correct, but even then you've still the problem of storage - the torrents are only useful (and there's a lot of them) if a sustainable number of seeds remain available.

How abiut torrenting a collection of websites in one collection?

You can distribute less popular websites with more used ones to avoid losing it? And Torrents are good with transfering large files in my experience.

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