Slashdot Mirror
The Internet Archive Is Building a Canadian Copy To Protect Itself From Trump (theverge.com)
The Internet Archive, a digital library nonprofit that preserves billions of webpages for the historical record, is building a backup archive in Canada after the election of Donald Trump. The Verge adds: Today, it began collecting donations for the Internet Archive of Canada, intended to create a copy of the archive outside the United States. "On November 9th in America, we woke up to a new administration promising radical change," writes founder Brewster Kahle. "It was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change. For us, it means keeping our cultural materials safe, private and perpetually accessible. It means preparing for a web that may face greater restrictions. It means serving patrons in a world in which government surveillance is not going away; indeed it looks like it will increase."
With Trumps position on libel laws, smart move to project against legal action.
Still need to project against the ever-in-the-news cyber vulnerabilities. In today's world, physical location only goes so far.
If you have a domain name under which you have a lot of content -- an example is kuro5hin.org -- and, after a decade or so you find yourself impoverished and stressed to the point that you can't renew the domain registration (as did Rusty Foster), a domain squatter jumps on it and holds it hostage for thousands of dollars. When that happens, frequently even "The Wayback Machine" is told to deep-six the archived content by the simple expedient of placing a robots.txt file in the home directory of the hijacked domain. "The Wayback Machine" then dutifully removes public access to the content. OH but the fun doesn't stop there! So now let's say you fork over the ransom money to the domain squatter, get the domain name back and remove the robots.txt. Of course "The Wayback Machine" then restores public access to all those articles... right?
WRONG!
archive.org does keep it stored and it is accessible to those with insider status, but no more public access EVER.
There really is value in hoarding history and if you can get away with it by doing it "on accident" all the better!
Seastead this.
They should be keeping copies of the archive in multiple locations, along with parity files which can be used to validate potentially compromised and reconstruct corrupted data. That way if one location goes down or is destroyed (fires happen), you still have copies elsewhere. If one site gets hacked and the data changed, you can cross-reference the parity info with other sites to determine which is real and which is modified, and revert the changed data. Kinda like a worldwide ZFS or RAID 5.
Trump makes for a convenient excuse. But given that they're literally keeping snapshots of history, they should already be taking these steps just to safeguard the integrity of the data.
I would think a more decentralized solution would be in line. Home servers, or for the oppressed low cost ISP tier masses, "peer to peer"..., or for the really oppressed, "sneakernet".
Having the internet archive in a single place, with any sort of centralized authority was a bad idea from the beginning. Centralized services are targets, end of story, game over.
America is the only place in the world where it is legally permitted to criticize anyone and everyone.
See, for example: The creepy tyranny of Canada's hate speech laws
See that "Preview" button?
At least three backups, Iceland, Russia and China. Not that Russia and China are great, their data will likely have to be encrypted...but they are among the few that won't just take an American order and execute.
Each should have a provision for marking part of its dataset 'edited by court order' (in the foreign copies, so out of the crooked courts reach).
Canada's hate speech laws are awful, almost rival Muslim nations for 'worst practice'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Yes, but that's a part of the consistent pattern. The Democrats use a need of the people to create enhanced government power. (Never mind whether it's a real need of the people, it just needs to be sold as one.) Then the Republicans take power and use that increased power for elitist ends. Then the Democrats take power and use a need of the people to create enhanced government power.....
At no point in the cycle is the government power decreased, despite the rhetoric sometimes used by the Republicans.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Lincoln didn't have the power to suspend Habeas Corpus. Roosevelt didn't have the power to send American citizens of Japanese-decent to internment camps.
You are wrong, the Supreme Court said that he did and it was Constitutional, and that's the only legal opinion that matters. In addition Korematsu v. United States has not been overturned.
You are also wrong about Lincoln suspending Habeas Corpus; that is explicitly allowed by the Constitution: "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it" The Civil War was most certainly rebellion; thus explicitly allowed.
Congratulations on batting 0 for 2. (I'm in no way stating that I agree with the laws; only that the actions were lawful according to the court case and letter of the law. )