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The Wayback Machine, Friend or Foe?
ShaunC asks: "As the webmaster of numerous sites, I'm curious how others feel about the Wayback Machine. What particularly interests me is the fact that the Machine is a relatively new animal, yet it contains snapshots from my sites dating back to 1998. I can't help but wonder: where did they get such old copies of my websites, and who gave them permission to make those copies? I certainly didn't provide either. Perhaps I'm too much of a purist, but I've always seen the internet as an ever-changing medium, not a permanent one. Archives have bothered me ever since the fledgling days of DejaNews." This site last made an appearance on Slashdot, earlier this year. Internet archival sites are right smack in the crosshairs
of copyright, but they are useful. Anyone who has ever used Google's cache (and there are plenty of those links on Slashdot) can attest to this. Of course, the issue that may bug many content providers is how to opt-out of such services, since some see it as a copyright violation. Is it possible to balance the issues of copyright and history, or will these two Internet resources find themselves in legal trouble in the future?
"The way I see it, archives are much like SPAM; I never opted in, why should it be my responsibility to opt out? I manage a number of domains and the process of refining robots.txt files and submitting myself to the Wayback Machine for removal seems to be intrusive. Worse, domains I've abandoned (which have lapsed or been re-registered by someone else) are forever archived in the Machine and I have no way to exclude them. Why should I have to deliberately remove my copyrighted material from an archive which was never granted permission to replicate that material in the first place?"
It's a scary thought that things kids are saying on message boards when they're teenagers are going to be back to haunt them when they apply for jobs in their mid 40s...
I mean, if everything I posted on BBSes in the 1980s were still attributable to me... yikes.
Remember kids. Use a nickname, and change it frequently if you ever want to run for any kind of office.
I think the question is not about its being publicly available, but rather about it archiving web pages that were taken down at later dates for various reasons.
Its legally grey, and all it really takes is for some paranoid person to sue, and then the fireworks start.
IANAL.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
When I first discovered it, it was a lot of fun. Much nostalgia; it was fun seeing earlier verisons of my webpages. Some go back quite a number of years.
On the other hand, I was horrified when I realized that there was full archiving of www.dramex.org. If you visit that site, you will see that there are a large number of scripts (as in plays), many of which have restrictions on use. Over the years, we've had people request that scripts be removed from the site; of course, we did so. However, they weren't necessarily removed from the archive, and an archive keeps them forever. Specifically with the wayback machine, I was able to submit stuff that removed the specific directories I was worried about (they don't archive the scripts from www.dramex.org, just the "front page" stuff which is all part of the fun), and keep them from doing it again.
I like the idea of archives; it preserves history. The web is a transient medium, but not entirely. Yes, much of the content is dynamic and should only be dynamic. Some of it, though, is like the front page of a newspaper. Each day, what's on "today's front page" is different-- but there is value and use in seeing what was on the front page in any day in history.
But sometimes you need to delete something and make sure it really is no longer available. When you don't completely control your site (i.e. somebody else archives it, rather than just mirrors it), that becomes impossible.
newspaper.(Incremental backups can have a similar issue. If you only back up files which are "newer than the last backup", your backup doesn't have the information about files which have been *deleted* since the last backup. When you restore, you might find some files there you thought shouldn't exist any more.)
(Dramex.org has changed so that it's not straightforward to get directly to the scripts any more. META tags tell the search engines to leave the actual scripts alone, and you can only get the text itself via CGI. Yes, it's easy to subvert if you put your mind to it, but at least you do have to put your mind to it, and automated search engines or archivers won't. 90% of the security for 1% of the effort.)
-Rob
As a webmaster of various sites, I have no problem with archives.. if I didn't want people to see my stuff, I wouldn't have put it on the internet in the first place.
where did they get such old copies of my websites, and who gave them permission to make those copies?
They probably got the copies the same way everybody else did - by surfing. You (implicitly) gave them permission to cache your sites by not including an appropriate entry in your robots.txt.
The way I see it, archives are much like SPAM; I never opted in, why should it be my responsibility to opt out?
Archives are nothing like spam. Spam is primarily harrassment. These guys aren't harrassing you. They did ask your permission (by way of checking your robots.txt). If you've since changed your mind, it's your responsibility to notify them.
Google caches material too - do you consider them to be spam as well?
Archive sites provide a valuable resource to the rest of the 'net. If you don't like it, put an appropriate entry in your robots.txt file, and be done with it.
I doubt that I'm alone in my belief that it is always tragic when any piece of information--no matter how trivial--is lost forever.
If a person has offered that information for free at any point, to the extent that an automated script could access it, then I believe that information can be safely considered public domain. I doubt that there's any mechanism by which Richard M. Stallman could lose his mind and "rein in" all copies of GNU, or by which Stephen King could recall all his novels and refund the purchase price; once something is offered to the public, it no longer belongs exclusively to the publisher.
In my opinion, the value of archives in the future immeasurably outweighs occasional inconveniences of having information stick around longer than the author would have wished.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
If you read 1984, you might remember that the government tightly controlled all old copies of documents so that they could manipulate history as they wished. We might get into a similar situation by accident if we don't allow independent archives of electronic information.
With traditional media, you publish something on paper, but you don't get to control who puts the paper copies in which archives. That has served us well for keeping track of history, and an equivalent system needs to maintained for electronic content.
When you publish something on the web, it is publicly available via HTTP. End of story.
I don't think that that is a good enough standard. When a television show is broadcast, or when a book is published, it is publicly available -- but we don't think that the publisher looses their right to copyright protection in these cases. Publishing on the web is similar. The creator wants people to see his/her creation, but does not automatically give visitors the right to archive and retransmit the works.
So I suppose libraries should just stop carrying books because the author doesn't like what he wrote anymore? I mean, what the fuck?
I'd say it makes you more of a control freak than a purist, personally.
Seriously, how did you ever get it into your head that a medium that serves documents to the general public on demand would be somehow exempt from archiving?
Would it bother you of John Q. Savant could recite the contents of your web pages from memory ten years after you'd taken it down?
Would it bother you to learn that stock prices, perhaps the most "ever-changing" thing out there, are permanently archived by a variety of services?
Or are you just jittery at the thought that your spouse/boss/Friendly Neighborhood Representative of The Man/kids may be able to someday look at the shite you plastered all over the web in your younger days? ("Ech, that stupid Netscape 2 animated title hack--honey, you actually -did- that?")
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
By the very act of posting your site on the web you have given permission to make copies of it. Otherwise, how would anyone view it? And if no one is supposed to view it, why have you published it in a publicly accessible space?
If I went to your website 2 years ago and never closed or refreshed that browser window, would I now be violating your copyright? What if I saved the page so I could view it later offline? What if I never erased that file, would that mean that I'm violating your copyright? I have several floppies of web sites I saved at school for viewing at home from the days when I was stuck on a crappy dial-up service. Does that make me a pirate? What about all the copies of sites held in my browsers cache?
Don't get me wrong, I understand where the sentiment is coming from, even if I disagree with it. I'm just trying to point out how incongruous it is with the basic nature of computers and the internet and how they work.
These questions aside, though, I have to come down in favor of the historians. People here are always whining about old movies/books/music being lost because their owners refuse to let them go, even if they aren't using them, why should the web suffer the same fate? The rate of destruction is far faster on the internet, and since it isn't a physical media, the information has to be actively archived if it is to be preserved.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
The copies that they have archived in their databases are individual copies served from the original web requests, so they have the right to keep them. They became their copy when they were originally downloaded. Whether they have the right to make new copies and redistribute them depends on how you think fair use applies to that content.
Ultimately if a lot of people start suing them they will probably shut down the archive to public access and only allow researchers to view their original copies on site. And if you'd prefer that, well, you'll end up with the world you deserve.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
Are you ashamed of what you did back then, when you were young and foolish? Grow up -- we're all ashamed of what we did when we were young and foolish, and years from now you'll be ashamed of what you're doing today. Get over it.
Personally, I think archives are great. Whenever I design an application I always ask about archiving, because inevitably they're gonna want it and it's easier to design in from the start. Oh, you want to know what your top 10 customers ordered last Christmas? Now you tell me! Geeze, we flushed that data last February, 'cause you said once the credit card cleared you didn't care to pay for the storage. But I digress.
Someday your next client will want examples of your previous work, then you'll go crawling on your hands and knees to the Wayback Machine, begging them to show you what your pages looked like. And they'll honor your robots.txt file and tell you to get lost.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
People are just pissed about this archinving because they like the internet to be a 100% responsibility free zone - now matter what you say or do, you ca nalways change, edit or delete it later. How about standing behind your comments and opinions, instead of just deleting them when they can be held against you? Yes - use nicknames and aliases, but dont expect that the things you put out there to be temporary. You put something out into the internet, it stays there, and it can be found later, thats the power of the net, and the price you pay for it.