Slashdot Mirror
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?"
We have right to live, feed, have children, work, be under cover. We have no right to copy. Copying is free! And don't restrict rights of other to access to information, please!
(yes I know about to copy and copyright)
Man, I've found pages from old porn sites I worked on that never made it out of the fuckin' ISP. (Management troubles, A.K.A. intertcine warfare.)
What a STUPENDOUS waste of storage.
Who the fuck paid for all these drives?
Do his doctors know he's off his meds?
Could I get him to donate a few terabytes to my boxen?
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