I just sent a DMCA takedown last week to remove my site. They’ve claimed to follow meta tags and robots.txt since 1998, but no, they had over 1,000,000 of my pages going back that far. They even had the robots.txt configured for them archived from 1998.
I’m tired of people linking to archived versions of things that I worked hard to create. Sites like Wikipedia were archiving urls and then linking to the archive, effectively removing branding and blocking user engagement.
Not to mention that I’m losing advertising revenue if someone views the site in an archive. I have fewer problems with archiving if the original site is gone, but to mirror and republish active content with no supported way to prevent it short of legal action is ridiculous. Not to mention that I lose control over what’s done with that content – are they going to let Google train AI on it with their new partnership?
I’m not a fan. They could easily allow people to block archiving, but they choose not to. They offer a way to circumvent artist or owner control, and I’m surprised that they still exist.
So… That’s what I think is wrong with them.
From a security perspective it’s terrible that they were breached. But it is kind of ironic – maybe they can think of it as an archive of their passwords or something.
I completely understood. No one is going to IA as their first stop. They’re only going there if they want to see a history change or if the original site is gone.
Because if you’re referencing something specific, why would you take the chance that someone changes that page? Are you going to monitor that from then on and make sure it’s still correct/relevant? No, you take what is effectively a screenshot and link to that.
You aren’t really thinking about this from any standpoint except your advertising revenue.
I’m thinking about it from the perspective of an artist or creator under existing copyright law. You can’t just take someone’s work and republish it.
It’s not allowed with books, it’s not allowed with music, and it’s not even allowed with public sculpture. If a sculpture shows up in a movie scene, they need the artist’s permission and may have to pay a licensing fee.
Why should the creation of text on the internet have lesser protections?
But copyright law is deeply rooted in damages, and if advertising revenue is lost that’s a very real example.
And I have recourse; I used it. I used current law (DMCA) to remove over 1,000,000 pages because it was my legal right to remove infringing content. If it had been legal, they wouldn’t have had to remove it.
This conversation makes me want to throw up, as most discussions that revolve around the DMCA usually do. Using rights under the DMCA doesn’t put you in very good company.
Technically, each time that it is viewed it is a republication from copyright perspective. It’s a digital copy that is redistributed; the original copy that was made doesn’t go away when someone views it. There’s not just one copy that people pass around like a library book.
how do you expect an archive to happen if they are not allowed to archive while it is still up. How are you suposed to track changed or see how the world has shifted. This is a very narrow and in my opinion selfish way to view the world
A couple of good examples are lifehacker.com and lifehack.org. Both sites used to have excellent content. The sites are still up and running, but the first one has turned into a collection of listicles and the second is an ad for an “AI-powered life coach”. All of that old content is gone and is only accessible through the Internet Archive.
In fact, many domains never shut down, they just change owners or change direction.
I think there should at least be a recognized way to opt-out that archive.org actually follows. For years they told people to put
User-agent: ia_archiverDisallow:
in robots.txt, but they still archived content from those sites. They refuse to publish what IP addresses they pull content down from, but that would be a trivial thing to do. They refuse to use a UserAgent that you can filter on.
If you want to be a library, be open and honest about it. There’s no need to sneak around.
About the only thing I can agree with you on here is I don’t like when people on Wikipedia archive a link and then list that as the primary source in the reference instead of the original link. Wikipedia (at least in English) has a proper method to follow for citations with links and the archived version should only become the primary if the original source is dead or has changed and no longer covers the reference.
They should also honor a DMCA takedown and robots.txt, but at least with the DMCA I’m sure there’s a backlog. Personally I’ve always appreciated the archive’s existence, though, and would think their impact is small enough that it’s better to have them than block them.
I just sent a DMCA takedown last week to remove my site. They’ve claimed to follow meta tags and robots.txt since 1998, but no, they had over 1,000,000 of my pages going back that far. They even had the robots.txt configured for them archived from 1998.
I’m tired of people linking to archived versions of things that I worked hard to create. Sites like Wikipedia were archiving urls and then linking to the archive, effectively removing branding and blocking user engagement.
Not to mention that I’m losing advertising revenue if someone views the site in an archive. I have fewer problems with archiving if the original site is gone, but to mirror and republish active content with no supported way to prevent it short of legal action is ridiculous. Not to mention that I lose control over what’s done with that content – are they going to let Google train AI on it with their new partnership?
I’m not a fan. They could easily allow people to block archiving, but they choose not to. They offer a way to circumvent artist or owner control, and I’m surprised that they still exist.
So… That’s what I think is wrong with them.
From a security perspective it’s terrible that they were breached. But it is kind of ironic – maybe they can think of it as an archive of their passwords or something.
No one is using Internet Archive to bypass ads. Anyone who would think of doing that already has ad blockers on.
You misunderstood. If they view the site at Internet Archive, our site loses on the opportunity for ad revenue.
I completely understood. No one is going to IA as their first stop. They’re only going there if they want to see a history change or if the original site is gone.
Yes, some wikipedia editors are submitting the pages to archive.org and then linking to that instead of to the actual source.
So when you go to the Wikipedia page it takes you straight to archive.org – that is their first stop.
Because if you’re referencing something specific, why would you take the chance that someone changes that page? Are you going to monitor that from then on and make sure it’s still correct/relevant? No, you take what is effectively a screenshot and link to that.
You aren’t really thinking about this from any standpoint except your advertising revenue.
I’m thinking about it from the perspective of an artist or creator under existing copyright law. You can’t just take someone’s work and republish it.
It’s not allowed with books, it’s not allowed with music, and it’s not even allowed with public sculpture. If a sculpture shows up in a movie scene, they need the artist’s permission and may have to pay a licensing fee.
Why should the creation of text on the internet have lesser protections?
But copyright law is deeply rooted in damages, and if advertising revenue is lost that’s a very real example.
And I have recourse; I used it. I used current law (DMCA) to remove over 1,000,000 pages because it was my legal right to remove infringing content. If it had been legal, they wouldn’t have had to remove it.
This conversation makes me want to throw up, as most discussions that revolve around the DMCA usually do. Using rights under the DMCA doesn’t put you in very good company.
Have you ever heard of the mysterious places called “libraries”? IA does not “republish” anything, it is an archive.
Technically, each time that it is viewed it is a republication from copyright perspective. It’s a digital copy that is redistributed; the original copy that was made doesn’t go away when someone views it. There’s not just one copy that people pass around like a library book.
Wait, people prefer the archived version? Too much ads?
Removed by mod
Did you just draw comparison between redistribution of publicly available content and…rape? Dang.
Hey, if they choose to wrap their comments in completely inane reasoning they should be allowed to.
I 100% agree with you. I’m also allowed to call them out on their bullshit haha
deleted by creator
Meaning, your content changes often?
I only try to understand why you seem to be especiallly affected.
how do you expect an archive to happen if they are not allowed to archive while it is still up. How are you suposed to track changed or see how the world has shifted. This is a very narrow and in my opinion selfish way to view the world
I don’t want them publishing their archive while it’s up. If they archive but don’t republish while the site exists then there’s less damage.
I support the concept of archiving and screenshotting. I have my own linkwarden server set up and I use it all the time.
But I don’t republish anything that I archive because that dilutes the value of the original creator.
A couple of good examples are lifehacker.com and lifehack.org. Both sites used to have excellent content. The sites are still up and running, but the first one has turned into a collection of listicles and the second is an ad for an “AI-powered life coach”. All of that old content is gone and is only accessible through the Internet Archive.
In fact, many domains never shut down, they just change owners or change direction.
Again, isn’t that the site’s prerogative?
I think there should at least be a recognized way to opt-out that archive.org actually follows. For years they told people to put
User-agent: ia_archiver Disallow:in robots.txt, but they still archived content from those sites. They refuse to publish what IP addresses they pull content down from, but that would be a trivial thing to do. They refuse to use a UserAgent that you can filter on.
If you want to be a library, be open and honest about it. There’s no need to sneak around.
About the only thing I can agree with you on here is I don’t like when people on Wikipedia archive a link and then list that as the primary source in the reference instead of the original link. Wikipedia (at least in English) has a proper method to follow for citations with links and the archived version should only become the primary if the original source is dead or has changed and no longer covers the reference.
They should also honor a DMCA takedown and robots.txt, but at least with the DMCA I’m sure there’s a backlog. Personally I’ve always appreciated the archive’s existence, though, and would think their impact is small enough that it’s better to have them than block them.