Internet Archive is in trouble?

[reaction]

I'm a massive fan of archive.org, I donate monthly and use their libraries extensively, especially for my older PCs. It would be a monumental loss if the site were forced to be shutdown or being heavily gutted. I really, really hope and pray this doesn't happen.

[Walter confetti]

Yeah, now i understand it better, sure it's a big trouble for the site, both for it's indipendece and for they profit (if any profit is taken), but looks like the other stuff like software and wayback machine will remain unaltered... For now.

[smeghammer]

Well, arguments about legalities of copyrighted stuff notwithstanding, it seems like the whole world is downloading from archive.org...

 

I'm trying to download the rest of the big arse ZIP files from the wad-archive dump.

 

Last week, I was downloading a single zipped file (about 4GB) in somewhere between 20 mins and an hour. Now it is telling me 15-20 hours... Was the same yesterday too, and reading this thread suggested a reason as to why.

[Biz!]

11 hours ago, Bauul said:

 

I suspect you haven't read 1984 if you believe America is literally the same as a nation where being simply too enthusiastic about something will have you executed by the state.

I've started to read it, and enjoy it. I've added that at the end as something all in good fun.

[MFG38]

17 hours ago, Biz! said:

Fuck America, wish it wasn't the best place to live in right now

 

With minimum wage apparently still being unlivably low, a health care system that bankrupts a 6-digit number of people on a yearly basis, more school shootings than in the entire rest of the world combined (or what feels like it anyway) and the anti-trans legislation that's been implemented in some states, I for one hesitate to say it is.

[dasho]

17 minutes ago, MFG38 said:

 

With minimum wage apparently still being unlivably low, a health care system that bankrupts a 6-digit number of people on a yearly basis, more school shootings than in the entire rest of the world combined (or what feels like it anyway) and the anti-trans legislation that's been implemented in some states, I for one hesitate to say it is.

 

[EraserheadBaby]

18 hours ago, Biz! said:

Anyway, the old people congress just focus on the economy, and not the people, which is why the lower class are in a constant state of going deeper and deeper into poverty, and the middle class live on the edge.

 

And yet we keep voting in the same people year after year.  I think the populous is just as bad as Congress.  And politcal figures are picked from the populous. It's like George Carlin said, "garbage in. garbage out."

[Biodegradable]

Can we not stink up this thread with unrelated political crap?

 

Please and thank you.

[IncompA]

2 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

Can we not stink up this thread with unrelated political crap?

 

Please and thank you.

What did you think was going to happen?

[Mr. Freeze]

I don't think the IA is going away, but the National Emergency Library was a monumentally stupid idea. 

[LexiMax]

3 hours ago, EraserheadBaby said:

And yet we keep voting in the same people year after year.

 

The underlying problem is that mainstream political discourse is shaped by people with loads of money who want to become de-facto kings that rule over fiefdoms, and it's really easy to distract people when you play to their deep-seated prejudices and fears.  However, the real problem is that despite the rich playing this awful game, it's not really their fault on an individual level - if they try to be magnanimous, they will be out-maneuvered by other rich and power-hungry shitheads.

 

The issues here are systemic, and ones we have yet to figure out the solution to as a species.  It has been thousands of years since the agricultural revolution, and humanity as a whole has yet to figure out a stable and equitable form of government that lasts longer than a few generations.  Recognizing that our political system results in electing the same grifters over and over again is a start, but there are tangible things you can do with that knowledge to improve your situation.  The trouble is, most of them involve tearing down your own culturally-ingrained ideas of nationalism and being willing to leave for greener pastures.  But recognizing when shifts in the political winds are out of your control is important for your own self-preservation, and you shouldn't be loyal to a state or community that has no loyalty to you.

Edited March 28, 2023 by LexiMax

[Panzermann11]

OH GOD PLEASE NO. I use Internet Archive to find old, obsucre and rare software that's hard to find anywhere else. If Internet Archive is closed down, that'd mean tons and tons of media becoming lost forever. That includes Wayback Machine and many long-gone old websites aswell.

Edited April 4, 2023 by Panzermann11

[ＤΞＬＴΛ]

This is pretty saddening for me as IA is where I found the likes of doom, heretic, hexen, strife, quake, quake 2, and a handful of sound effect libraries, it was also where I found gzdoom builder, and I think UDB too if I recall correctly, as well as a game I used to play somewhere around 2015 called "scorched earth", a REALLY old game that runs on DOS and it's about tanks and shit and it's really fucking fun!.

 

In my dead-serious, incredibly sincere opinion, the politicians in question can very well go fuck themselves with rotten moose heads should they win and internet archive gets taken down.

 

Because in the end, the politicians get what they want, no amount of donations and money is going to stop some cranky-manky, Alzheimer's-ridden, 268 year old man in a dark blue suit and red tie who only gives a shit about money and nothing else.

 

Best case scenario however, is that if they win, they'll just ban IA like what China or North Korea did with some social media sites, making IA still accessible through different severs across the world such as Switzerland or New Zealand or by VPN*

 

*Of course, that's the perfect world, it's still going to get taken down to some degree, reality is a cruel mistress and we're all just oblivious to it.

 

Spoiler

Thank god I'm an aussie, hopefully, IA stays up in the ol' outback down under where I can enjoy searching for old games and other stuff in peace...**

 

**again, that's that perfect world I was just talking about...

 

Spoiler

I THINK I JUST LOST FAITH IN HUMANITY.... AGAIN

 

 

[InfernalGrape]

When I go to archiveorg, it's usually for stuff that you can't often find anywhere else, even on ebay.

Eh.

[Panzermann11]

On 4/4/2023 at 9:20 PM, InfernalGrape said:

When I go to archiveorg, it's usually for stuff that you can't often find anywhere else, even on ebay.

Eh.

Are you seriously underestimating the importance of the Internet Archive?

 

If IA's gone, countless content would end up as lost media due to being hardly available anywhere else. Do you want that to happen?

Wayback Machine is also part of IA aswell, so if IA's down, we'll lose a lot of archived old sites aswell.

Edited January 4 by Panzermann11

[lazygecko]

I'm definitely seeing a worrying pattern trending in legality and copyright between this, the whole debate over AI images being co-opted by media conglomerates, as well as the recent trend of music catalogues being increasingly consolidated under corporations engaging in bad faith copyright troll litigations. I bet these parties would just love the prospect of having a system like Content ID that extends to any kind of media outside of just audio. I think the entire notion of how art and culture has worked and been shared and iterated upon historically is now coming to a head with its inherent incompatibility with the logical end point of late stage capitalism.

[Sokoro]

On 3/28/2023 at 6:28 PM, LexiMax said:

But recognizing when shifts in the political winds are out of your control is important for your own self-preservation, and you shouldn't be loyal to a state or community that has no loyalty to you.

Yeah, like Einstein did...  (stupid low IQ voters)

 

Anyway, you can not do that with one of the kind products or services, how do you pick another, when there is no another?

And my chances of starting my own archive, in my country (instead of biased USA), are in same direction as making my own electrical generator for example.

I am reliant on other people in many aspects of my life, like everybody, but people sometimes suck... and make environment for worse.

[Panzermann11]

Feel like it's time to bring this topic back up.

Edited January 6 by Panzermann11

[Aaron Blain]

I just discovered that people took it upon themselves to scrape and archive all the midi files from GeoCities, etc. I had accepted years ago that I would never hear this stuff again:

 

https://archive.org/details/themagicofmidiv1

 

I've also been learning to program for Dos and Windows 3.1, and IA's "Virtual Lending" mechanism has been amazing for me. I'm able to find stuff that no one in their right mind would regard as having practical value or being worthy of shelf space.

[Taw Tu'lki]

Looks like I'm not the only one who has the same problem

[Patrick_Plays_Doom]

if internet archive actually closes almost 1/4 of the entire internet kinda dies

and that sucks (duh)

[MrFlibble]

4 hours ago, Patrick_Plays_Doom said:

if internet archive actually closes almost 1/4 of the entire internet kinda dies

Unfortunately that's very true.

 

However, maybe it does not get closed but the outcome will force it to have a more stringent content policy, because right now it seems to have become everyone's favourite file hosting service for stuff including full versions of commercial games that have never been legally freeware. 

[Gmg]

That website will be down soon, believe me.

Edited January 5 by Gmg

[Redneckerz]

3 hours ago, Gmg said:

That website will be down soon, believe me.

Alright, random user on the internet. I'll believe you.

 

Kidding aside, the fact that dozens of games are playable and downloadable on Archive.Org is one big no-no in the face of many places. As much as i adore that it is possible, i always found it odd that while every other site got nuked for it, Archive.org somehow didn't have to.

 

Now, when it comes to archiving websites, i so wish that this will remain. Its one of, if not the biggest source for me to find obscure Doom-related stuff.. The unreleased 

Thrust total conversion was partially found because of it, as the exact filenames of its beta's were archived... same for several old hacks.

[StalkerBlade]

I like how there’s a bunch of people on this very website that spends months and even years of their lives creating absolutely free content that anyone can play at anytime..

 

..and then there’s these people that want to erase an entire website for having old, dead software from the 90s on it.

[Panzermann11]

Bad news: 500,000+ books have been removed from the Internet Archive.

This isn't looking real good, I fear other media such as software on the Archive might be next on the chopping block...

 

 

Edited June 14 by Panzermann11

[Kinsie]

44 minutes ago, Panzermann11 said:

I fear other media such as software might be next on the chopping block...

Yes. "Software". Right. And I suppose that BitTorrent client you have is exclusively for Linux ISOs.

[dasho]

55 minutes ago, Panzermann11 said:

Bad news: 500,000+ books have been removed from the Internet Archive.

This isn't looking real good, I fear other media such as software might be next on the chopping block...

 

 

 

Uhhhh just look up Internet Archive in the Wayback Machine to grab the books from before they were removed; what a nothingburger

[Panzermann11]

On 6/13/2024 at 8:25 PM, Kinsie said:

Yes. "Software". Right. And I suppose that BitTorrent client you have is exclusively for Linux ISOs.

When I mean "software", I mean media of that category in the Archive; should've clarified. And no, I don't use qBitTorrent for Linux ISO files.

Edited June 14 by Panzermann11

[Panzermann11]

On 6/13/2024 at 8:32 PM, dasho said:

 

Uhhhh just look up Internet Archive in the Wayback Machine to grab the books from before they were removed; what a nothingburger

Probably not a good time to make a joke when tons of old media are at risk of being lost...

Edited June 14 by Panzermann11