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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."

18 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Scope by goldaryn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    (No, I didn't read the article) Surely this restriction would only apply to British "archivists"? What if you are caching this page from an American server? Or Sweden? ;-) I don't know how Google's cache works, but I imagine it must be national for speed reasons Does that mean they are infringing UK law?

    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. Google FTW by cosm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In case it gets slashdotted, heres the cached version of the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003

    --
    'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
    1. Re:Google FTW by MichaelSmith · · Score: 5, Funny

      Google is so going to gaol.

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      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    2. Re:Google FTW by Homburg · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, it's the regular copyright law that legitimizes the dumbassery. The Legal Deposit Libraries Act provides a partial relief from this, in that it exempts deposit libraries from aspects of copyright law in copying online material if they are doing so for the purposes of archiving materials covered by the act. The problem is that, at the moment, websites are not specifically covered by the act, which gives the government the power to set up regulations covering non-print media, without specifying any particular non-print media.

      This is why the summary is wrong to claim that the law would have to be changed to permit archiving of websites; as TFA says, all it would take is the government issuing relevant regulations under the act, which the consultation document (linked from the article) suggests they have a fairly clear plan to do.

  3. They already ask everyone... by mjperson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From the article:

    "The team currently has to contact the copyright holder of every website it wants to archive and this process has just a 24 percent response rate."

    Actually, I'd say they have almost a 100% response rate. They ask the copyright holder, "May I please have a copy of your content?" and in most cases, they receive a response within 500 milliseconds saying, "Sure! Here it is!"

    1. Re:They already ask everyone... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      let's not assume that permitting someone to view a copy somehow grants them license to retain, redistribute, or otherwise archive that copy. These are very different legal concepts.

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

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

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    1. Re:Save Page As... is illegal? by biryokumaru · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Only if you save it under httpd/html.

      --
      When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
    2. Re:Save Page As... is illegal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      God... people are DUMB...

      Sure. Some can't even see the difference between cache and archive.

  5. Re:On Interwebz = No Control by techno-vampire · · Score: 2, Informative
    good luck enforcing who can have that content!

    There's a considerable difference between allowing people to download and view content and allowing them to put it up in a publicly available archive. As British law reads (No, IANAL, but unlike most Slashdotters, I RTFA before posting.) you have to get permission for each and every site you archive this way, making any British archive strictly opt in. It would quite literally take an act of Parliament to change this.

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  6. Britain is down the drain already by unity100 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    just the laws and motions they have put in motion in the last month are appalling enough. leaving aside what has been happening in the last years. i guess a british citizen's freedoms in britain reached the level that is comparable with a moroccan in morocco. it really feels like a horror movie. albeit, real.

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    Read radical news here
  7. Re:Licence for websites by kimvette · · Score: 2, Informative

    A stance more like the BSD licence (do what you want with it as long as you give credit) than the GPL licence (lots of restrictions on redistribution).

    There is NOT a lot of restrictions with the GPL license; in fact it is quite simple. If you want to distribute a program using GPL code or derived GPL code, you release the component (or derivative) as GPL, including source. That is not a lot of restrictions. All it does is ensure that people share and share alike, something most people learn by kindergarten but quickly forget.

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  8. Utterly nonsensical summary by martin-boundary · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The summary is utterly nonsensical. The US Internet Archive referred to in the summary is US-based, and the laws that apply to it are US laws, not British laws. That means there's no issue for the US IA.

    In fact, TFA talks about a different organization, the UK Internet Archive, which is presumably based in the UK and under UK jurisdiction. The British laws affect the UK IA, not the US IA.

  9. Re:On Interwebz = No Control by Homburg · · Score: 2, Informative

    It would quite literally take an act of Parliament to change this.

    As TFA says, it wouldn't take an act of Parliament - the 2003 Legal Deposit Libraries act gives the government the power to issue regulations concerning the archiving of non-print media.

  10. Robots.txt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Why not update robots.txt to flag that permission is granted to archive the site?

  11. Historical Black Hole by grapeape · · Score: 2, Informative

    Does anyone else worry that in the current age with technology constantly butting heads with rights holders that in the future historians will likely find large gaps of history simply missing? I have a feeling things will end up very similar to the hollywood and the bbc in the 60's and 70's when vast amounts of movies and television episodes were destroyed or wiped simply to clear space in the vaults. Take Dr Who for instance, most of the William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton seasons are gone forever. In the states nearly all of the Jack Parr episodes of the Tonight Show are gone as well.

  12. Re:"The first thing we do... by Illogical+Spock · · Score: 2, Funny

    This reminds me of an episode of Simpsons, where someone asks Homer something like "do you imagine what would be a world without lawyers?", and he starts imagine a green, sunny field, with everyone singing, dancing and very happy. :-)

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    --- Illogical Spock