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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.
It means serving patrons in a world in which government surveillance is not going away; indeed it looks like it will increase.
Why didn't they start this years ago when Obama extended and expanded the Patriot Act? Sounds like more leftist hypocrisy and hyperbole to me.
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.
Nah. Put it in Mexico; it will be protected by a big wall.
Really to protect from Trump? I'm not a supporter, but the paranoid reactions to his presidency are just insane. If that truly is the reason, it is just nuts.
That should have been done years ago. It's stupid to keep something unique, important, and easily duplicated in a single country. The "Trump" point is that some people think he's got a low regard for constitutional rights, and will pack the Supreme Court to this end. This could make it possible (and legal) for the government to effectively revise history by editing the archives.
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.
Not with the Liberals in power, Trudeau and Trump are far apart ideologically.
Now if it was the dearly departed Lord Steven Harper was in power I would be much more concerned about this happening. As someone who voted for the Cons in the past but didn't this past election I can't see them getting into power anytime soon, they went off the rails in their last term in office and during the last election. The "barbaric cultural practices" garbage they proposed will haunt them for a long time to come.
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.
The progressive elements have become nothing if predictable. It wasn't that long ago that Obama got the Nobel Peace prize simply for being elected President. Now we have the opposite but equal over-reaction with. Instead of Obama saving the world, we have Trump destroying it. I have no doubt that just like Obama didn't earn the Nobel Peace prize, Trump won't earn the terror his election has triggered.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
Obama's the one that let the NSA capture all the communications in the US.
If history has shown us anything, it's that both the left and the right will attempt to expunge information from archives...but the left does it on a bigger scale. Look a the Cultural Revolution under Mao, or the various programs under Lenin and Stalin. Heck, just look how the left in the US is rewriting history.
Nothing to see here folks, other than unfounded paranoia.
How about Russia?
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?
Canada and the UK have already been passing Orwellian internet surveillance and anti-free-speech laws on their own just fine without any influence from Trump. Moving the Internet Archive to Canada over concerns about possible libel laws and oppression is like responding to a fear of increased crime in your neighborhood by moving to Detroit.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The Charter of Rights is close to the strength of the 1st amendment.
The main difference is section 1 of the Charter which is "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." The allows us do things like limit political donations.
We also have a hate speech law, but it is applied only in extraordinary cases and most prosecutions go allow the way to the supreme court.
I've decided to build a giant dome with battery powered artificial "sunlight" as I heard Trump is going to outlaw the sun. I've also added some support braces into my home's roof in case the sky does actually fall, and I've heard a credible rumor that he may in fact be a transgendered succubus.
Geez people get a grip. It's like half the population of the country is throwing a temper tantrum like a toddler who acts like the world is ending because they can't get the toy they want. Under a Trump presidency - some things will not go the way you want. That $15 minimum wage ain't happening and student loans for useless degrees aren't going to be forgiven. Overall though - things aren't going to change much.
Sit back, and relax. Maybe you'll like the way he handles the country, but probably not. Regardless, the country isn't going to fall apart.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
The bilingual requirement is only for governments and companies making business in the province of Quebec. It does not force companies to translate anything if they're not going to open shop there. Hell, many governmental institutions outside of Quebec and businesses (both in and outside of Quebec) don't follow those rules and nothing happens. I'm never quite sure why Americans are so quick to hate on bilingualism when there's almost as much Spanish being spoken in the US as French in Canada, proportionally speaking (and Spanish is growing, unlike French). You guys were literally built on immigration, and not all of that came from Britain, far from it.
As for free speech, yes Canadian law is stricter, but it's specifically to protect against libel or hate speech. There has not been any significant change in what courts consider to be "hate speech"; the definition is very narrow and basically covers things like the KKK or Nazism. Libel has to be ruled upon by courts as well, and means that the claims were intended to harm and were not truthful (facts cannot be libel) in the first place: they have no place on an archive anyway.
I'll ignore all the political aspects of this discussion and simply point out that this is a rather expensive proposition. I don't see a recent size estimate, but we know that the site increased from 10PB to 15PB between 2012 and 2014, so it's reasonable to estimate that it's around 23PB today.
How expensive is 23PB of storage, including the serves themselves? If we use BackBlaze's cost estimates (they build custom high-density chassis) of $0.036/GB, we get a figure of roughly $868k USD spread across 49x4U servers. Of course, that's just the hardware. The colocation space (including power and connectivity) would be at least $10,000 CAD per month.
They should have multiple copies of their data, but that takes cash. That said, Canada seems an extremely silly location to pick for their only backup. It was probably picked because it was cheap to access.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
All the anti-US stuff, put it on the Russian mirrors, and all the anti-Putin stuff, put it on US mirrors. What could possibly go wrong?
Actually, the whole story is funny - the internet archive making a copy of itself to put on another server. That's YUUUUUUUUUUGE!!!
We do not have 1/4 the free speech laws as America. In fact right now we are looking at Bill C-16, which may class improper pronoun use as harassment. Making it entirely possibly that every time someone transitions, all archives of their past gender would need to be updated or erased. While I am not positive this one law is a serious threat to The Internet Archive operating in Canada, it shows how tenuous their situation would be if they operated in Canada.
This is as ridiculous as American citizens talking about moving to Canada. You already need id to vote here and we do not allow illegal immigrants to stay in the country. We are the exact thing all these people do not want America to become.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
isnt canada still technically ruled by the queen of england??
No Canada is technically ruled by the Queen of Canada. The title is held by the same person but it is entirely separate and equal to her title as the Queen of England. The Canadian and UK Parliaments are equal but separate: no law passed by the UK parliament affects Canada and no law passed by the Canadian parliament affects the UK. But please don't let these facts get in the way of a good rant...
The trouble with Trump is that between his complete lack of experience in government, and his continued declarations of clearly unconstitutional ideas, he's an unknown. Most people don't have a reason to be terrified of anything, this is true. However, it gives people an opportunity to take stock of things and do a little risk assessment.
In this case, I think it's a good move. Not because Trump will ruin the world, but becuase "Oh, hey, now that you mention it, all this really really important information in a single country is a pretty dumb move, because, laws and stuff can change."
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. )
OMG. I just love the histairia.
Conservative, mod down for violating
You are legally permitted in Canada to criticize anyone and everyone. You are just not allowed to do it in any way that incites hatred or promotes genocide.
According to Wikipedia (emphasis is mine):
Under section 318 of the Criminal Code it is illegal to promote genocide. Under section 319, it is illegal to publicly incite hatred against people based on their colour, race, religion, ethnic origin, and sexual orientation, except where the statements made are true or are made in good faith
In addition to Canada, most European countries have similar laws, i have lived there and I don't think it limits one's abilities to express one's opinions if one has any respect for the historical truth so I would be interested to know where you think the problem is with this law.
You seem to think the law magically enforces itself.