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Law Prevents British Websites From Being Archived

Posted by timothy on from the there-would-be-these-things-called-hard-drives dept.

Lanxon writes "The law that allows the US Internet Archive to collect and preserve websites does not apply to British archivists. In fact, experts from the Archive and many other archivist institutions argue that the only way the millions of Britain's websites could be legally archived is if British law itself was amended, reports Wired in an investigation published today. Currently, archivists have to seek permission from webmasters of every single site before they are able to take snapshots and retain data."

3 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Scope by JumpDrive · · Score: 3, Interesting

    (No, I didn't read the article)
    I wouldn't worry about it, politicians don't read the technical details of the laws they pass either.
    Think of all those poor Brits who are going to be sued or imprisoned because they have a browser cache.

  2. Save Page As... is illegal? by HalAtWork · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So the "Save Page As..." command in the File menu is illegal in Britain?

    --
    Twinstiq, game news
  3. Re:Licence for websites by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Umm if you include one GPL library, you have to GPL the whole she-bang. The other X% of code that you wrote must now become GPL*. Good luck selling your software now that you have to release the code. That is what I would call a serious restriction.

    *For example see http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/12/10/186245/Microsoft-Finally-Open-Sources-Windows-7-Tool where Microsoft just got burned by this.