Internet Archive's San Francisco Home Badly Damaged By Fire

Rambo Tribble writes "The San Francisco building housing the Internet Archive, and its popular Wayback Machine, has suffered a serious fire. While no archived data was destroyed, materials awaiting archival were. Rebuilding will be a major undertaking, and the group is soliciting donations."

Comments

almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[rubycodez]

the modern day Library of Alexandra burning

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[i kan reed]

I forgot that the library of Alexandria had a big pile of archived cat photos.

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[Anonymous Coward]

And "Under Construction" gifs.

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[ibwolf]

Unlike the ancient library of Alexandria, IA has offsite backups of everything. So, no, this is nothing at all like that.

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[CanHasDIY]

Are you implying that it was arson?

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't that simple. The items that burned could have been originals -- that had not yet been digitized.

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[Culture20]

It was in Egypt.

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[Warbothong]

the modern day Library of Alexandra burning

That's precisely why the Library of Alexandra hosts a mirror of the Internet Archive http://archive.bibalex.org/

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[rubycodez]

I have sad news for you, in the real world having offsite backups does not mean you can quickly recover from a disaster, or even recover at all, or that even all the data really is there and recoverable.

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[fritsd]

I thought one of the off-site backups of IA WAS actually in the modern library of Al Iskandarya.

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[icebike]

Wait, originals for the way-back machine?

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[mcgrew]

My old web site is there... most of it, anyway. Good to see that the archived data are safe. And even without lolcats it's a treasure trove, the archive's music section alone is worth a visit.

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[morgauxo]

yes. archive.org archives a lot more than just the internet.

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[behrooz0az]

Your real world is designed by congressmen, us developers tend to make recoverable backups.

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[rubycodez]

not the norm, most developers are the very worst offenders in that regard, the only realm in which their practices are even more egregrious is security.

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[behrooz0az]

On the security part I have to agree, maybe bacause it's my area of work and I see how they mess up every single day.
I may have been just lucky around backups, my reason for having trust in most backups is that nowadays most libraries, databases and such have their own backup system that makes less developers get NIH and go for custom backups.It's just an opinion.

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[petsounds]

They also archive public-domain films (and possibly other things). Additionally, the Way-back Machine sadly only started archiving sites a couple years after the web was already being used. So one would hope a few of these pioneering sites are still out there on backup tapes, somewhere.

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[Anonymous Coward]

Further proof that nothing is safe in this world as long as the weakest of minds have access to false dichotomies.

Pointing to some made-up nonsense to suggest that you're not defiling (really destroying) the commons (really the mind) is one thing; using that same nonsense to suggest that the endangerment of the only archive of our collective culture is trivial is another entirely. Comments like yours make me feel sorry that I know better.

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[bibicare]

I don't think so , may be we confuse about it. www.bibicare.vn

Re:almost could have been like 48 B.C.

[Anonymous Coward]

And just like that event, nothing of value was lost.

Arson!

[fustakrakich]

Somebody wants their shit to disappear for good.

Re:Arson!

[Joining Yet Again]

This sounds more likely to me. Fire doesn't spread quickly in a building built specifically to protect property from fire damage (the most immediate threat to any library).

Re:Arson!

[darrellg1]

Like the government whistleblower protection website?

Re:Arson!

[rubycodez]

healthcare.gov is self-immolating

Re:Arson!

[Anonymous Coward]

Every machine room I've been in has some kind of gas extinguisher system. Bad to breath in, but addresses fires very well apparently. I'd like to see what actually burned down, the building perhaps? Because there's no way any non-trivial machine room from the 80s onwards would let fire ruin equipment.

Re:Arson!

[techsimian]

The building wasn't built specifically for the internet archive...it was a Christian science reading room (and church if memory serves)

NSA?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I bet it was a jealous neighbor. ;-)

Fire. Exclamation Mark.

[Anonymous Coward]

So let's say they lost the archive, couln't they just rescan everything? I don't get it.

Re:Fire. Exclamation Mark.

[Bill Dimm]

They store a history of each webpage, not just the most recent version.

Re:Fire. Exclamation Mark.

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming this is serious, yeah, you don't get it.
I assume you're talking about the scanned books there.
There's a lot more than that at Internet Archive.

Re:Fire. Exclamation Mark.

[Skapare]

They lost physical materials they were scanning. Those that had not yet been scanned cannot be scanned now, unless there are other copies of them somewhere.

Why is the archive worth preserving?

[kaputtfurleben]

Aside from the chuckle I get from visiting geocities pages once a decade, what reasons are there for helping to preserve it? Is the preservation of old internet sites anything more than a curiousity that will end up in museums? Is it useful to the human race in some way?

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[fustakrakich]

Because.
Yes.
Yes.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[ibwolf]

Aside from the chuckle I get from visiting geocities pages once a decade, what reasons are there for helping to preserve it?

Is the preservation of old internet sites anything more than a curiousity that will end up in museums? Is it useful to the human race in some way?

Is the preservation of old manuscripts anything more than a curiousity that will end up in museums?

Is the preservation of old books anything more than a curiousity that will end up in museums?

Is the preservation of old newspapers anything more than a curiousity that will end up in museums?

Is the preservation of old films anything more than a curiousity that will end up in museums?

The internet is just the latest evolution of information sharing. We've found (often the hard way) that information is generally worth preserving. While a lot of what is on the Internet today will never be of interest to anyone, it is impossible to guess very accurately at what will be of interest. Often the things no one thought had any long term value at the time of their creation, wind up being the most valuable to future generations of researchers.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[Anonymous Coward]

I concur. We necessitate no dihydrogen monoxide at present time, do allow for the dastardly rascal to be consumed by conflagration.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just sites -= it preserves warez collections too. Unfortunately.

Maybe a bunch of those were in the fire.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[vux984]

Is the preservation of old internet sites anything more than a curiousity that will end up in museums? Is it useful to the human race in some way?

Most of its not. Someone's blog or twitter feed today will be the future's Diary of Anne Frank. Its hard to know now what is or will be important 50, 100, or 1000 years from now.

Its also useful in the shorter term for everything from investigating crime ( a new lead in a cold case brings to light a new suspect, and suddenly some chatter on geocities or other long defunct page is relevant evidence), to fighting bogus patents (groklaw used to reference the archive to cite prior art), to looking at documentation for older things... where the manufacturer has removed the documentation pages / gone of out business, the support forums removed, end user hosted fansites/discussion etc have gone dormant, abandoned and eventually disappears. Much of it still searchable & recoverable in the archive.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[Hatta]

Are you fucking kidding me? Archaeologists get excited digging through ancient garbage. How can there be any doubt that relics from the birth of the internet won't be incredibly informative to future civilizations?

It's attitudes like yours that caused so many silent films or early episodes of Doctor Who to be lost to time.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[Culture20]

I find personally useful info on IA about once a year. Two days ago I confirmed what software a group was using a few years ago (the project lead didn't remember, and the website has changed many times since that software list was displayed. Knowing that software 'a name was important for work.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[fritsd]

Google "wayback archive SCO" for a joke. Also, we have always been at war with East-Asia. All the up-to-date websites say so.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[Anrego]

Somewhat off topic, but unfortunately the fact that a current domain owner can use robots.txt to prevent the display of information from previous owners of the domain is a frustrating hindrance to it's use by fan/community sites.

The classic go to example is jumptheshark.com. TV guide bought it, destroyed it, and put up a robots.txt that prevents using archive.org to view the old (and interesting) community provided content.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though there may be a low signal to noise ratio for truly useful information, its often hard to know which bits of information will be useful to who in the future. So its easier to scrape everything and let others decide what is important after the fact. And if you don't scape the information today, it may be gone tomorrow.

So here is an (incomplete) list of example how the Internet Archive adds real world:

1. Google cache for broken URLs
eg Website no longer exists / URL moved
eg Political dissident forced to remove/censor own online website
eg Poor man's server backup

2. Version history on important documents
eg Did Company X change their T&Cs since I signed up?
eg Government: "We've always been at war with Eurasia"

3. Accessing historical information
eg Person X claims to have worked at Company Y in 2009 - yet not on current company employee list
eg Patent defense can prove published prior art from year X

4. Historical Research
eg Compiling Wikipedia list of historical model numbers and tech specs for a product line
eg Trying to track down the original source of a meme
eg Sociology in the 22nd century - what was this thing called called twitter that my grandparents used to talk about

5. Data Mining
eg Statistics on the growth of the internet
eg This field is only just taking off, there may be many unforeseen uses here
eg Poor man's NSA PRISIM

6. Post-Apocalypse
eg After the collapse of our technological civilization the survivors are forced to rebuild all human knowledge from the one surviving copy of the Internet Archive.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[Opportunist]

Talk to the average archaeologist. And then let him lament for a moment or two on how little we know of the life of the "common man" of old. We know everything of the life of kings and emperors, and even of them we often only hear the important parts of their life. The everyday life of most of human history is in the dark, simply because nobody bothered to record it. What for, it's so common, so ordinary, why should we note down how we live our life?

Today we're often puzzled how certain things were done. We found games in the tombs of pharaohs and have no idea how to play them because nobody bothered to write down the rules to it, simply because they were so common knowledge that nobody bothered to write them down. And the same applies to a lot of other ancient knowledge that is lost simply because we do not have any records of it, either because nobody bothered to note it down, considering the information not important and so common knowledge that it's moot to write it down, or because the records were few and all of them lost in time.

Yes, that's not going to teach us any new and exciting technology. But it would teach us how our ancestors lived and we would learn about the past. It would be interesting. You may disagree, you may think it is not, but then again, who are we to say what people find interesting?

Personally, I think learning about our past is interesting. How people lived. How they thought. What they feared. What they hoped for. I'd consider the life of the average person in old times interesting. How much would you know of the US of today if you only knew about the life of presidents and some celebrities? How much of its culture, its problems and its aspirations would you understand if that's the only information you had?

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[kaputtfurleben]

It's attitudes like yours that caused so many silent films or early episodes of Doctor Who to be lost to time.

My attitude of asking a question? I didn't say the answer was "nothing," I just wasn't sure what it was. Thankfully ibwolf gave a pretty good answer.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[TheRealMindChild]

A very good use is digging up old articles/binaries from microsoft.com. Those assholes love to just delete whole eras and technology from existence. While that may be fine for most moving forward, when you need to support, say, a CNC machine that runs on a Windows 95 controller, using MS Agent 1.0 via J++ 1.1, the only way to access any resources anymore is the wayback machine

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if this was a joke in itself, but the only result for "wayback archive SCO" on google is this post.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[Hatta]

Fair enough. My apologies.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Why do you feel that the artifacts in museums aren't useful? That's a strange attitude, reminiscent of 7th graders on a field trip.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[odie5533]

A lot of great documents have been found at the ancient Oxyrhynchus garbage dump.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[Anonymous Coward]

After the Dark Ages, accurate records of Greece and Rome would have taught people lots of old and exciting technology that they had no clue about.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[mendax]

Why? Three words: history, History, HISTORY. Without a record of the past, there is no real history, only folklore.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[Somebody Is Using My]

Mind you, archeologists aren't really /excited/ about ancient garbage. It's just that is often the only record of day-to-day life that exists for many civilizations. Not only is trash preserved thanks to it being buried by the constructions of more modern civilizations but it tends to present a less biased and broader view of the culture than do surviving manuscripts or art (which tend to ignore the less-popular beliefs and usually focus only on the rich and powerful).

But for all of the usefulness of garbage, archeologists would much prefer a trove like the Internet Archive. It is a fuller record, more easily dated and sorted and offers less possibility to be confused with the remains of an earlier or later people. Plus, nobody really likes picking through trash ;-)

Then again, IA did preserve Geocities. Shafted again, Doctor Jones!

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like what?

Serious question. Of what little I know about Roman technology, I know that it was maintained and copied in most of Europe through the Dark Ages. Also, the Dark Ages is a misnomer. It was "dark" because of the fractured politics, the homogenization of religion, and perhaps the end of some strains of philosophy and art. But fundamentally it was only "dark" because of the overly romantic view we once held about the pre-Middle Ages.

Yes, there are amazing examples of computers and other mechanical devices from Roman and Greek times. But that speaks to the diversity of peoples and the long timespan we use to demarcate those "ages". Most of the technologies that actually took hold in those times never disappeared, AFAIK. There's no reason to think that such devices hadn't existed before and after those examples. These things come and go, and only when the timing and other factors are right do they really take hold and spread.

But, more examples would be cool.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[drinkypoo]

They're already guessing as it is. They don't store everything. They also un-store things if you change your robots.txt.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[cffrost]

It's not just sites -= it preserves warez collections too. Unfortunately.

What's unfortunate about it?

Currently, the only means by which these cultural works are preserved (in a form unencumbered by DRM, and thus easily usable by current and future generations) are a) peoples' personal collections, with distribution and redundancy provided by file-sharing networks, b) web sites that host them, which are ephemeral in nature due to low funding and persistent legal attacks, and c) copies of those sites maintained by archive.org.

For-profit copyright holders that create these works have a perverse incentive to ensure their works do not survive beyond the period during which they hold a work's copyright, nor beyond the time during which the work is netting them sufficient profit. In other words, it is in the interest of a for-profit entity to have all copies of their works wiped out as soon as copyright or sufficient profitability ends — whichever comes first. I believe that this is contrary to the interests of society as a whole, and I do what I can to help perpetuate the preservation and availability of works that would otherwise be destroyed due to legal or financial incentives.

To provide just one example of the custodial role of file-sharers: I find it very unlikely that the file-sharing community would ever collectively "lose" some portion of old Doctor Who episodes — as, for the segment of society that participates in file-sharing, those episodes are artifacts of cultural significance, while for the copyright holder(s) they are mere consumer products, destined to be replaced (as opposed to added to) by other products at their whim.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[gronofer]

Actually the main thing I use archive.org for is their archive of scanned books. It's incredibly useful. The only caveat is that I find searching their site using site:archive.org on Google tends to work better than the search feature on archive.org itself.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[Xest]

Yes because in the year 9999 just before the global banking nexus is due to run out of digits for date fields, and the only way they can fix it is by deciphering an ancient language known as "COBOL" they'll have need for this archive and various things will come to light from it ranging from useful COBOL tutorials to "Why the fuck haven't we moved our banking systems off COBOL yet?" written by an ultra-intelligent ancient known as "Anonymous Coward" circa 2000 AD.

A mantra that will be taken as gospel and repeated time after time in the year 10000, before unfortunately being lost again by the year 99999.

Re:Why is the archive worth preserving?

[fritsd]

No joke; I meant http://lwn.net/Articles/45019/, after SCO had claimed every Linux user in the world owed them US$ 699, and had started to remove all evidence of their fraud from their own website in 2003; it was still in the IA Wayback Machine, but then SCO demanded that the IA remove those copies as well, because it would be detrimental to their court cases if copies of proof that they were liars and frauds still existed on the 'Net :-(

Did my small part

[RobertM1968]

Realizing just how much some of us geeks use this service, whether to search for lost content, or via using places like Wikipedia that link to original/unmodified versions of a web page, I figured I should do my part to help out - and I did. Hope others step up to the plate too. It would be a shame to have their operations hobbled because of this fire.

Re:Did my small part

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't actually RTFA, but I'm going to look into physically assisting in clean-up and repair, since I'm in town.

Re:Did my small part

[mcgrew]

Realizing just how much some of us geeks use this service, whether to search for lost content

I've done exactly that. I kept my old Quake site on CDs and lost a few in a move. Unfortunately, there are still data lost because IA didn't save everything.

Re:Did my small part

[Anonymous Coward]

I normally don't bother with donations for things like this but, as Internet Archive have a history of accepting and supporting the use of Bitcoin, I sent 100 USD worth.

Obvious.

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone should have kept a backup...

In a fireproof location.

Found out first hand

[Anonymous Coward]

...during my morning walk yesterday. BTW, the street window of the building that burned down had a very interesting 9/11 timeline display, with video captures from the various TV channels as the events unfolded. Too bad it's probably lost for good, it was one of the few notable things you'd run into while walking down Clement Street.

Re:Found out first hand

[BronsCon]

Are you pointing at a conspiracy here?

oh no my spices!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well the coment says it all.

Re:oh no my spices!

[Anonymous Coward]

It sure dos.

Fire insurance

[sanjosanjo]

Not that they don't deserve donations, but why do they need to solicit for funds for this purpose? Wouldn't fire insurance cover the losses?

Re:Fire insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

It was just a publicity stunt designed to get media exposure and solicit donations.

Re:Fire insurance

[SJHillman]

Fire insurance might cover the physical materials that were damaged, but they probably won't cover the time and associated costs of rebuilding the information, not to mention lost time.

Re:Fire insurance

[terbeaux]

The San Francisco hackerspace NoiseBridge apparently just waived terrorism insurance, "until we're absolutely sure we want to hire a terrorist full-time." https://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/2013-November/040296.html HAH!

Re:Fire insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

It was just a publicity stunt designed to get media exposure and solicit donations.

Like the fire at the Reichstag?

Re:Fire insurance

[sandytaru]

Fire insurance is usually inadequate to cover the total losses. It'll cover the value of the building as-is, and the loss of the hardware and physical items things were stored on. If they want to rebuild on the same site, it will often cost a lot more depending on the condition of the building.

In Athens, GA, the Georgia Theater burned down a few years back. They opted to rebuild on-site and use as much of the shell of the old building as possible, but fire insurance covered maybe half of the final cost because the old building was about fifty years out of code and needed major work anyway. They're still accepting donations to help out with the cost of the rebuild, and probably will owe on the new mortgage for a long, long time.

Re:Fire insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

You're allowed to modify your coverage to more realistic limits. My homeowner's agent always puts up a mild fuss when I want to modify my coverage, but I know for a fact that the default coverage they offer is insufficient to replace my home in the event of a total loss. Since I work in the construction industry I know pretty well what it will cost to rebuild my house from scratch, and it's about 40% more than their default insurance plan. I suspect they like to compete on the low prices underselling yields, and they like being off the hook for the full cost of actually rebuilding. That's the only reason I can figure for their protests when I insist on increasing my dwelling coverage.

Re:Fire insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a very good policy then. Its called being under insured.

Re:Fire insurance

[Skapare]

Sounds like someone didn't get the correct insurance.

Re:Fire insurance

[sandytaru]

I wouldn't be surprised. They also had a lot of logistical challenges due to the location (intersection of two busy one way streets, ew) and the age of the building itself (well over a hundred years old, probably approaching 150 years.) They also decided to do improvements to the sound components and stage lighting - if you have to rebuild, why not go better at the same time? The final bill was over a million dollars, but the result was a better venue with great sound and about double the people capacity. I've gone to a few concerts since the rebuild and it's a marked improvement overall.

It would have been way cheaper to bulldoze and start from scratch, but they wanted to keep the original brick walls. (Just after the fire, the iconic movie marquee outside said "Ouch" - at least it survived!)

MPAA probably did it

[doas777]

they were likely worried that the archive had scraped ISOHunt the way ArchiveTeam did.

With be a major undertaking.

[halfEvilTech]

Did the fire also damage the grammar capabilities as well?

Re:With be a major undertaking.

[NonUniqueNickname]

Did the fire also damage the grammar capabilities as well?

This message brought to you by the National Socialist Grammar Nazis and the Department of Redundancy Dept.

Donations?

[jonnythan]

Did these guys not have insurance? Why do they need donations?

Serious question.

Re:Donations?

[Anrego]

I'm donating either way. Even though I don't use the service very often, I like that it's there and think it provides an important service.

That said I do agree this is a question that should be answered if they are asking for money. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I'm assuming insurance would be expensive due to the nature of their work (storing lots of old books) or payout would be low (technology depreciates really fast..) or hard to insure custom built equipment.

Re:Donations?

[geekoid]

Insurance doesn't cover the man time to get everything working again, as well as other ancillary costs.

Two words: historical revisionism

[pr0t0]

It helps to prevent history from being rewritten by the history writers, the liars, and the pretenders. I'd say its utility is beyond measure.

Why San Francisco?

[Spy Handler]

If you want to archive and preserve data long term, wouldn't you want a stable location, someplace that doesn't suffer from 9+ magnitude earthquakes every century or so? And btw SF is overdue for one of these big ones.

I'd pick a small city in the Rocky mountains, far from earthquakes, floods and riots.

Re:Why San Francisco?

[geekoid]

overdue as in, past the statistical average point.
It's not like a clock.

And they back up out of state.

The Rocky Mountains have storms, floods, and a lack of talent.

Re:Why San Francisco?

[Anonymous Coward]

The mid-west has floods and tornadoes
The south-east has hurricanes
The north-east has snow storms and occasional hurricanes
The north-west has endless rain and meth-addicts

They certainly need an off-site backup but no place in the U.S. is without some danger.

Re:Why San Francisco?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no lack of talent in Colorado! Heck, they made a movie about this area...Wargames, anyone?

Re:Why San Francisco?

[melikamp]

An earthquake can hardly damage permanent data storage, as long as the building is structurally sound.

What concerns me more is that they are paying SF rent, when they could probably save a boatload of money by locating the archive pretty much anywhere else. But then again, may be they are saving on Internet that way...

Re:Why San Francisco?

[fishybell]

The Rocky Mountains have storms, floods, and a lack of talent.

<sarcasm>...and that's exactly why the NSA built their archive there...</sarcasm>

Re:Why San Francisco?

[Swave An deBwoner]

Not so. Their rent was extremely low due to the clever use of their Wayback Machine which permitted them to sign a 1000-year lease in 1906 when nobody else wanted to rent there anymore. You should check the Archive.

Re:Why San Francisco?

[mythosaz]

Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada

...and it isn't all heat, either. Arizona ranges from blazing hot Phoenix to freezing cold Flagstaff.

Re:Why San Francisco?

[evilviper]

If you want to archive and preserve data long term, wouldn't you want a stable location, someplace that doesn't suffer from 9+ magnitude earthquakes every century or so?

Every part of the US has some sort of horrible risk of natural disasters. Flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, land slides, forest fires, ice storms, etc. Nowhere you can pick would be entirely safe.

Besides, this is DIGITAL, not physical archiving, and your "small city" in a "stable location" may not even have decent internet access, which is required resource #1. As long as they have off-site backups, it doesn't matter where their headquarters is located.

Re:Why San Francisco?

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical coastal nutjob. I quite enjoy living thousands of miles away from the nearest large body of water.

Donations

[ArcadeMan]

FYI, they also accept donations in Bitcoins.

Suspicious

[Anonymous Coward]

Suspicious; fascists need to destroy and re-write history

Knowledge

[Immerial]

MIT OpenCourseWare (https://archive.org/details/mit_ocw) stores a copy of all the videos on its site on the Internet Archive. Currently that is 75 full video lecture courses and 17 full audio lectures courses, plus a ton of smaller one-offs and mini-series video and audio files. Over a thousand hours of teaching. I would like to think that would be something of use to the human race.

Do they have a list....

[c-A-d]

of the materials they were going to Archive? Perhaps getting a lot of people to dig into their personal libraries might help fill in the gaps.

No prob we'll just restore it from Wayback Machine

[WillAffleckUW]

No problem, we can just restore it from the Wayback Machine.

Um.

Donation

[halcyon1234]

I just dropped $25 on a reprinted card game from 20 years ago.

Yeah, I think I can spare another $25 for this site that I've used way, way more than once.

Bitcoin

[Richy_T]

They take Bitcoin donations. I'm in.

That's unfortunate

[Anonymous Coward]

I use the wayback machine at least once a month.
Good luck Internet archive.

Like arstechnica plagiarists?

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'unhistory' part I already knew they did- http://slashdot.org/submission/3098429/ars-technica-writer-plagiarizes-space-history-posts - they're a site that claims to never delete a post (they did when I got death threats directed MY WAY there, years ago circa 2000-2001 though on their forums) - FUNNY how they did that one, eh?

NOT!

* They TRULY are, the shitweasels of the internet!

APK

P.S.=> Reminds me of how Jeremy Reimer's "History of the GUI" was a HUGE plagiaristic RIP-OFF of the works & words of Douglas Englebart (no originality on Reimer's part)... apk