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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."

10 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.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
  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. 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.

    --
    Read radical news here
  5. 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!
  6. 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.

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

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