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

If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

sbstatesman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 614 posts

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#541

Post by fsflover »

tristor wrote: post #91
misnome wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IA losing and getting shut down because "information wants to be free, man" is completely detrimental to trying to move that agenda forwards. "First principles" means jack shit if your company to build that world gets wiped off the map because you did something incredibly obviously stupidly illegal and handed the "MAFIAA lawyers" your own ass on a silver platter.

Maybe my viewpoint on this is informed by long-standing desire to basically start something like IA but in a way which is protected from the acts of nation-states. The fundamental problem with human society is that the power structures are always co-opted by elites for their own purposes rather than the purposes of society as a whole, it doesn't matter what the system of those power structures is, in all cases they g…

> long-standing desire to basically start something like IA but in a way which is protected from the acts of nation-states

Try something like https://geti2p.net for that.

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#542

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

GenericDev wrote: post #308

I'm so sick of modern businesses and their vampire approach on creativity and intelligent property. I see a lot of comments in this thread with what about-isms or "I don't care, we wouldn't miss anything", but these people are short-sighted. And to be honest the hacker news community is frequently the community I loathe to engage in these topics with. Because they are always looking forward with very little respect f…

OK, let's stop licking Oligarch Gates' boot. Let's remove copyright from software and watch MSFT go into free fall.

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#544

Post by groby_b »

fsflover wrote: post #540
groby_b wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, frankly, hot air. The IA resisted nothing, achieved nothing, made nobody's life better, and created an opportunity for bad precedent. It was an utterly boneheaded move. (It has also nothing to do with "exhaustive preservation")

Giving access to knowledge to people is the opposite of nothing.

That knowledge was readily available through numerous other legal channels. Libraries do virtual lending.

What the IA did in that instance was a reckless gesture that did not change actual ability to access. That's worse than nothing, it's a net negative.

You seem to somehow conflate this instance with everything else the IA does. I'm not debating that their overall purpose is good and necessary. I'm saying this particular action was a spectacularly bad idea.

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#545

Post by pasquinelli »

chroma wrote: post #361
pasquinelli wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you don't export culture, you export stuff. it sounds like you're disgreeing with "america runs on money, not culture", but the fact you conflate culture with, like, movies sold internationally proves the point: american culture is in the form of market transactions. given that, how do you end up with "culturally too big to fail?" and i'd dispute that entertainment is our #1 export. not all exports are on the books;…

You can look this information up pretty easily.[1] If you only count physical goods, the US's biggest exports are cars, aircraft, petroleum, food, drugs, industrial machinery, and semiconductors. Even if we count the value of all the military equipment sold to allies such as the Netherlands, France, Japan, Korea, the UK, etc, and we count all the Ukraine aid, the total value last year was $205.6 billion. That's less…

>> not all exports are on the books

> You can look this information up pretty easily.

if you read what i wrote carefully you'll see you can't just look this information up pretty easily.

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#546

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

TylerE wrote: post #371
i_k_k wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because government, and the tax dollars that support it, are how we, as a society, take collective action?

Why is an archive of DPTeview something that is more important than covering basic things like health care (especially mental) that we do terribly at? Why can’t those who care about or undertake the effort? Thousands of nonprofit private historical societies exist.

interesting questions, but since there's no mutual exclusivity in real life, they aren't relevant to the real question, whether taxpayers believe there is value there

after all, congress could decide to cover this AND healthcare, they just don't want to do either

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#547

Post by eschaton »

sekai wrote: post #287
misnome wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IA losing and getting shut down because "information wants to be free, man" is completely detrimental to trying to move that agenda forwards. "First principles" means jack shit if your company to build that world gets wiped off the map because you did something incredibly obviously stupidly illegal and handed the "MAFIAA lawyers" your own ass on a silver platter.

> IA losing and getting shut down because "information wants to be free, man" is completely detrimental to trying to move that agenda forwards. Shutting down? Let's not jump to conclusions here, they would not shut down even if they lost.

That depends entirely on what kind of monetary and non-monetary damages a court may award the plaintiffs. They could easily wind up owing enough money they have to shut down, or even being shut down entirely by a court.

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#548

Post by justinclift »

MrVandemar wrote: post #503
justinclift wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm. When they decided to do something so boneheaded, and so obviously going-to-seriously-piss-off a bunch of famously deep pocketed litigious publishers, they crossed a whole bunch of lines. Not just a "this was a bad decision" line, but past a few others as well. eg "reckless behaviour", "wilful disregard", and probably more. :( Hopefully some kind of Hail Mary saves the day. But at the _very_ least the senior peo…

> Hmmm. When they decided to do something so boneheaded, and so obviously going-to-seriously-piss-off a bunch of famously deep pocketed litigious publishers, they crossed a whole bunch of lines. But if no-one pushes against the encroaching draconian copyright laws, then they will continue to get worse. The IA has a philosophy that is counter to a lot of entrenched mainstream organisation, and this move was aligned wi…

> But if no-one pushes against the encroaching draconian copyright laws, then they will continue to get worse.

While that's true, having our custodian of archiving the internet bet the farm on stupid shit like this is outstandingly irresponsible. :(

So yeah, applaud places which do it all you want. And I'll be right there with you in a lot of cases.

But this? This was far past just stupid. :(

Re: If we lose the Internet Archive, we’re screwed

#549

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #480
twblalock wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm saying is that the things the people who work at Internet Archive care about may not be the same as what end users care about. I think the end users care mainly about the Wayback Machine.

The Wayback Machine accounts for about half of archive.org's pageviews. You think most other people mainly care about the thing you mainly care about. Happens all the time.

it looks like the wayback machine accounts for more than half of archive.org's page views [1], making that poster's hypothesis correct

[1] https://analytics1.archive.org/stats/pageviews.php

Post reply on HN