Internet Archive Hosts 24-Hour Fund-Raising Telethon (archive.org)

martiniturbide writes: The Internet Archive, the online non-profit library that stores almost everything that is digital, the same one that hosts a lot of classic games , hosts a massive collection of MAME ROMs and runs the WayBackMachine to preserve the internet web pages.... started running an old fashioned, 24-hour fundraising telethon earlier today, 19 December, at 12:00 PM PST (20:00 UTC). This live event is being hosted by Michelle Krasowski and Jason Scott (the guy from Textfiles.com that Wants Your AOL & Shovelware CDs) with the support of several guests. You can visit the telethon live video and donate to support this library.

Comments

Re:These people need to get a life

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you so concerned with what other people are doing? Is your life really that empty?

Jason Scott is a cool guy

[Transist]

Definitely support the work he does. Slight tangent, but if you haven't seen this DEFCON talk of his, you really should. It's hilarious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

How do they Regularly Pay for It?

[wisnoskij]

I have to assume this will bring in peanuts. The Internet Archive not only hosts a backup of the entire internet, they host a backup with multiple chronological versions of the internet. I always assumed they must have backers with some huge pockets. How do they normally pay for stuff, and does this fund raising imply that they could be having financial difficulties?

Re:How do they Regularly Pay for It?

[KGIII]

Dunno but I just sent a donation a few minutes ago. I donated a bit not too long ago to a side-project. I forgot the name but it was for saving some old manuals in text form - the guy from textfiles.com as I recall. I should probably set up a recurring monthly donation but I try to limit my monthly spending and then, at the end of the month, I'll often just donate what I have left to some needy projects or whatnot. I kind of divide it all up between them if I'm under my monthly budget.

Hmm... I wonder how difficult it will be to get some sort of trust configured and setup? Something that can donate the profits from a bunch of shares or interest - a managed trust where I can just add companies to donate to. I should look into that. It's probably not all that difficult and would probably be better than my current haphazard system where I do one round at the start of the year and then I just do things monthly as I feel like it or notice.

At any rate, it wasn't a very big donation. I spent a lot of money in the past few months - up to and including having someone accompany my dog on a flight from Maine to Florida and they just got here yesterday. I'm not actually sure what I've spent. It's been a while now that I've been on the road. It'd be better, for me at least, if they'd done this closer to the start of the year. At least then I'd know better what I've spent and what a reasonable figure might be. Maybe one of them is here and can let me know if they prefer a larger, single, payment or if they'd like smaller payments at a more consistent rate of, say, monthly payments instead?

Re:How do they Regularly Pay for It?

[Anonymous Coward]

They take donations all year long, but usually do an end-of-year drive in December. I suspect the distribution of donations would not be a particularly big deal, but if you want to be sure, shoot an e-mail to donations@archive.org.

Re:How do they Regularly Pay for It?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet Archive has a variety of funding sources - from individual donations (small and large), to government grants, to their "commercial" Archive-It arm that scans collections for other libraries and such. The donation drive is a yearly thing - they are not in any particular financial hardship right now, but it's important to keep a steady stream of donations going.

As it turns out, it isn't *that* expensive to archive the intenet. You're not going to run it from the average disposable income, of course, but the Internet Archive optimizes for shoestring-budgetting. They're not a commercial organization, don't have shareholders to answer to, have a *lot* of volunteer contributions, and can spend almost the entirety of their time and money on their actual purpose for existence: preservation through publication.

On that note, you might find this to be an interesting read: https://medium.com/message/never-trust-a-corporation-to-do-a-librarys-job-f58db4673351

Re:How do they Regularly Pay for It?

[KGIII]

Thanks! I'll have to ask them to put me on a list that they can ping if they have an interesting project coming up and are needing extra funding to assist with that. It's surely part ego but I really prefer those types of targeted donations as opposed to my traditional yearly or monthly giving. I dunno... Something about helping to solve a specific problem just makes me feel good? It's not really easy to explain and I'm not entirely sure why it is that it makes it seem more significant to me.

Re:How do they Regularly Pay for It?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just you. Studies show that adding some sort of verb language to a request drastically increases the amount of money people are willing to donate. That is why you see things like "Donate to the RNC today, so we can take back Washington" or "Donate to keep a Democrat in the White House." That is now starting to become more common on charitable giving. Interestingly, the more specific you are, while maintaining general interest, the better off you are; however, you can get too specific, in which case you end up raising less. The thinking there is that you end up describing something people aren't interested in or don't think requires as much money and the donation will be wasted.

Re:How do they Regularly Pay for It?

[drinkypoo]

The Internet Archive not only hosts a backup of the entire internet,

Not only don't they, but they let the current domain holder determine whether content archived when someone else owned the domain determine whether content will be shown. That crops up for me more than half the time. Otherwise, I might donate.

Re:How do they Regularly Pay for It?

[Zero__Kelvin]

"They take donations all year long, but usually do an end-of-year drive in December."

That's weird. That's when I do my end of the year drives too!

Re:How do they Regularly Pay for It?

[KGIII]

Nice info, thanks! To give an example, someone was recently rescuing some documents. Documents I'd never need (probably) but I felt the collection, storage, and archiving of such was important. They wanted donations for that one specific thing and I was quite happy to fire up a burner email (I prefer anonymous donations, I only write off large donations to the major charities) and send some money along.

I can think of a few things that I'd find to be improvements to the system. I prefer anonymous donations but, at the same time, I don't mind being pinged when they need more money for that same cause. What I absolutely hate is the groups that spam (for lack of a better word) and use your mailing address and whatnot to ask for money every chance they get. I don't mind giving, in fact I love it and I'm very happy to be in a position where I can do so, but there's a limit to my patience.

My favorites are generally really good about doing it better, still not perfect, but better than some of the others. I've used specific email addresses and seen my name shared with other charities in the past - I know because they're now using an email that was set up just for one interaction with a catch-all address. These are some of my favorites:

Red Cross, a little spammy but not bad. They get money and blood.
Habitat for Humanity, almost not spammy enough - they get time, work, and money.
ACLU National, not bad but kind of annoying - they get yearly donations.
ACLU Maine Chapter, fantastic and pretty good at letting me know what they're looking for - they get yearly and regular donations.
Heifer International, very little begging and good information about the organization and what they're doing - they get money though I've given time as well.
EFF, not too bad at all but a bit more volume than I prefer - they get yearly and periodical donations.
Kents Hill School, absolutely perfect. They got a trust with which to provide scholarships based on essays with a preference to lower incomes and technology.

Hmm... Not doing it right and still getting money...
My alma mater, seriously? Seriously? I *know* what I donated when I sold. I know they're not impoverished. Why send me begging emails, letters, and phone solicitations every month? They get a yearly donation because I still feel obligated to give. MIT has like four of five different things to give to and they all, frequently, want more money. If I gave them everything they asked for, I'd be unable to donate to anyone else. They're kind of annoying, to be honest. They still get money. Damn it...

*sighs* As much as I hate tracking and profiling, I don't think I'd mind if they kept it internal and then used it to ask me for aid when, and only when, they're needing something that I'm interested in. Otherwise, yeah, I'll get back around to making another donation but it will usually come as I have left over money at the end of the month or at the start of the year where I budget out what I hope to spend for that year. I do not have unlimited funds and if I reduce my hoarded stash then it impacts my ability to accumulate more. Something about the tipping point you mentioned where it's no longer relevant is probably not entirely dissimilar.

At any rate, thanks for confirming what I kind of suspected but wasn't sure if it was an oddity with me. I do, at times, exhibit some strange behaviors. ;-) If you happen to recollect where I can read the study, or the abstract, then I'd be grateful. No big deal if you don't remember of can't be stuffed finding it again.

Re:How do they Regularly Pay for It?

[ibwolf]

The Internet Archive not only hosts a backup of the entire internet,

Not only don't they, but they let the current domain holder determine whether content archived when someone else owned the domain determine whether content will be shown. That crops up for me more than half the time. Otherwise, I might donate.

That's not really IA's fault. It's the fault of our copyright regime.

Re:How do they Regularly Pay for It?

[drinkypoo]

Not only don't they, but they let the current domain holder determine whether content archived when someone else owned the domain determine whether content will be shown. That crops up for me more than half the time. Otherwise, I might donate.

That's not really IA's fault. It's the fault of our copyright regime.

Bullshit. I am the copyright holder of the material in question, and they are assuming that whoever owns the domain today (which is analogous to a trademark, not copyright) has the right to control it. Explain to me how giving the current holder of the domain (and no trademark is involved, BTW) control over my copyright is the fault of "our copyright regime". You can't, because it isn't. It's the fault of the misguided way in which the IA has chosen to "comply" with copyright law, except it does no such thing. They may have a copy of my data someplace, which by the way is copyrighted, and they're controlling who may look at it (if they even have a copy) based on someone else's ownership of a domain. It makes no sense at all.

Maybe

[Frosty Piss]

Well, if they come off like the pushy elitist "Wikipedians" at Wikipedia, no money from me. But I may toss a Abraham Lincoln or two their way.

Re:Maybe

[JMJimmy]

Arguably one of the more important historical archives in the world and your support comes down to if you like the personalities?

Re:Maybe

[Frosty Piss]

Arguably one of the more important historical archives in the world

It is arguable.

your support comes down to if you like the personalities?

If you want my hard earned money, yes, I expect you to try and no be a bunch of elitist assholes like the average Wikipedia "admin", otherwise you will do without my cash.

Re:Maybe

[AthanasiusKircher]

Arguably one of the more important historical archives in the world and your support comes down to if you like the personalities?

Absolutely, when it's relevant. GP mentioned Wikipedia -- the personalities of the people running and managing Wikipedia are shaping the format of the project. Personally, I think that has caused the project to have fundamental flaws and should either die or morph into something better. Until that culture of personalities is changed, there's no way I will support Wikipedia, and in fact I'll argue with anyone I can that they should not only NOT support it but should actively work against it... I think the future of knowledge and the fundamental nature of epistemology is at stake.

With the Internet Archive, I've heard the values of the project and the people running it. Unlike Wikipedia, I think those values of those people are worth supporting, because they are likely to lead to a long-term sustainable archive.

It's not so much the personalities themselves, as much as how those personalities are reflected in the values and priorities of the project. And yes, those are important, because an archive done poorly with poor decisions made because of bad values is potentially worse... because such a bad archive will suck money and resources away from the building of a better alternative, as Wikipedia has done.

Re:Maybe

[drinkypoo]

but you have no access to the NSA archive...

I have no access to what I want from the wayback machine, either. The current holder of the circus.com domain has set their robots.txt in such a way that the archive has chosen to interpret as "do not serve data from the archive for this domain" ... in spite of the fact that I hold the copyright on the data in question, I am not permitted to access it because of the inexplicable policies of the archive. This is why I will not give them money. They are holding my copyrighted data hostage, if they have it at all. I have no way to even know if they have my data!

Re:Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps Wikipedia needs elitists administering the project? This prevents the infinite assortment of lunatics, conspiracy theorists and people with political motivations from hijacking the site. But tell us more about your 'hard earned' $5 that you were never going to give anyway.

how can we forget?

[Anonymous Coward]

unrememberable? before madison ave.FUDge took over? https://web.archive.org/web/19980113191222/http://slashdot.org/ .. http://web.archive.org/web/20010301045659/http://slashdot.org/ .. thanks rob,, almost sold out? greed fear & ego are not our best features? your questions for ed snowden continues... ask as many questions as you like but try to stay on topic... thanks again moms

Site Down - YouTube Link

[BinBoy]

The site is down. You can view it on a live YouTube stream. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Check also YouTube Live

[martiniturbide]

It seems that Telethon.archive.org died.... they are also on YouTube Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Check also YouTube Live

[dejitaru]

Maybe they already archived it? :)

Why? The NSA will store it all for you...

[MindPrison]

...at the costs of mandatory taxes anyway.

I kinda liked the WayBackMachine when it came out, it was a fun novelty to look back at past web pages and things I used to draw back then, but after 20-30 years on the net or so, I'm inclined to think that we may not WANT to store our every move on the net, what might seem innocent now may not be so in 30 years.

Besides...isn't the NSA already doing that? They've probably got WayBetterFunding than the WayBackMachine folks.

Re:These people need to get a life

[timrod]

Actually, archive.org makes a pretty big impact in a lot of fields, most notably data-based journalism and computer-assisted reporting. There are a lot of government agencies that will have story-relevant data up that they then wind up taking down - sometimes because of storage costs, other times because they're trying to hide something.

hysteria repeals itself?

[Anonymous Coward]

longing for the old hat soft shoe burlesque of the '90s? http://web.archive.org/web/20040306050033/http://www.theonion.com/index.php?i=1 .. chuckling our way to the bank? .. http://web.archive.org/web/20020326231217/http://wired.com/ .. monkeys still fail to shoot each other, share their bananas & honor ms. monkey every day... still not missing not having hymens as well?

Maybe

[waspleg]

but you have no access to the NSA archive...

masssive turnout archive.org

[Anonymous Coward]

great site,,, always useful,, thanks.. keeps it real for us... our (current) history is like a jumble of media generated wmd on credit cabal deceptive nefariousness? read the teepeeleaks etchings again... please.. thanks

Re:These people need to get a life

[dejitaru]

It's not just about nostalgia (though I do like to see some of the old stuff they have, especially the old sites they archived). But it is about history and about the history of the web and technology. Your concept of thinking is in line with burning all of the history books, because, I mean that was all in the past, who cares about the history... right? p.s. AOL disks were essential back in the day. If it wasn't for AOL and their shoveling of floppies and CDs I would had to have lived my teenage years w/o all the free floppy disks and coasters :(

Re:These people need to get a life

[Zontar The Mindless]

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

sure

[Anonymous Coward]

let's fund the software piracy "preservation" mission creep.