It was up for a while, but now it's down again. First they were hacked, then had to fend off Denial of Service attacks. Obviously, still having issues.
Yeah, I've actually been a little concerned about it. I tend to use it rather extensively. Plus they just lost some copyright issues case. Its not been a good year the Internet Archive.
@richpowers Please post a couple of the details, or links to the issues you mentioned.
Most recent:
The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case
https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-loses-hachette-books-case-appeal/
Inside the $621 Million Legal Battle for the ‘Soul of the Internet'
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/internet-archive-major-label-music-lawsuit-1235105273/
Why a ruling against the Internet Archive threatens the future of America’s libraries https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/2024/09/11/1103838/why-a-ruling-against-the-internet-archive-threatens-the-future-of-americas-libraries/amp/
The Internet Archive’s Fight to Save Itself
https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-memory-wayback-machine-lawsuits/
Internet Archive just lost its appeal over ebook lending
https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/4/24235958/internet-archive-loses-appeal-ebook-lending
Summarize the Internet Archive current legal battles concerning copyright
ChatGPT:
The Internet Archive is currently involved in legal battles over copyright issues, primarily focused on its lending practices and digital book collection.
1. Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) Lawsuit: The Internet Archive has been sued by four major publishers—Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley—over its Controlled Digital Lending program. The program allows the Archive to lend digital copies of books in its collection on a one-to-one basis, meaning for every digital loan, a physical copy is kept inaccessible. The publishers argue that this practice violates copyright laws, as the Archive didn't have permission to distribute the books digitally. In March 2023, a U.S. judge ruled in favor of the publishers, finding the Internet Archive’s actions were not covered by the doctrine of fair use.
2. National Emergency Library: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Internet Archive temporarily offered the National Emergency Library, suspending its one-to-one lending policy to allow more access to books for remote learners. This move drew more criticism from publishers, who saw it as further infringing on their copyrights, accelerating the legal challenges.
The Archive argues that its practices are meant to increase access to knowledge and preserve information, citing fair use and the importance of public access to books. However, the courts so far have sided with the publishers, and the case may continue to higher courts. The outcome of these legal battles could have significant implications for how digital libraries operate in the future.
I had really like the Rolling Stone story linked above. When I read it it was full view but now I see it wants to subcribe to read the rest of it. Bummer.
But I did so happen to save a few experts from it a week or two ago:
It's always been a bit of a myth that the Internet Archive contains only public domain material.
In actual fact, much of the content has copyright attached to it. The Archive relies on the doctrine of 'fair use', which has a much broader application in the U.S. than in most other countries. And, of course, 'fair use' is open to interpretation, to the Internet Archive, its users, owners of the copyrighted material and unfortunately, the least competent of all, judges.
The Wayback Machine is a good example of what copyright owners, now attempting to monetize their websites (never mind the more nefarious pursuits), find objectionable. The Machine has captured entire websites over the years, and makes those websites available to everyone. What may be hidden behind a paywall now could be accessible through the Machine. What is now payware software, but free in the past, can be downloaded through old websites (I've done it for freeware software that can't be found today through bad links).
I've often wondered how the Internet Archive is allowed to do what they do. Turns out, they may not be.
Determining fair use is a complicated thing, and I'm not going to attempt to do it here. I'd recommend googling the term, as there are multiple good articles on the internet, from legal experts, that describe it better than I ever could.
Unfortunately, judges appear to be ruling that what the Internet Archive is doing in multiple instances isn't fair use.
As usual, the media is blowing it out of proportion, as they usually do. I don't think that this will mean the end of digital archives or even this particular digital archive (there are many, particularly at universities, which probably have a better shot at claiming fair use for educational purposes anyway). It may mean that access to the copyrighted material contained within these archives will be restricted until the material falls into the public domain. That's bad, but not the end of man(person?) kind as we know it.
There still is a lot contained within the Internet Archive in the Public Domain. All recordings and music released in 1924 (100 years) and earlier. Books, film, magazines, etc. released in 1929 and earlier (95 years). Material that never was copyrighted (early on, you had to register that copyright, and prominently display it in a particular format) or fell out of copyright and was never renewed (the claim for most Old Time Radio shows).
What makes things infinitely more complicated is that this discussion is only concerned with the U.S. Each and every country has its own copyright laws, and by downloading material from the Internet Archive, you could be breaking them.
As an example, there is much more music in the Public Domain in Canada than in the U.S. Old Time Radio is more problematic, and is reliant more on creator rights expiring rather than registration renewal or registration period. Other countries? The permutations make my head spin. England has even had material officially fall out of copyright, and then put back in (which should never happen in the U.S. or Canada).
@artisan-radio I too always wondered how that got away with it to. Same goes for sites like worldradiohistory.com
I generally agree with the concept of copywrite laws, however when it comes to out of print books and magazines that have no particular monetary value anymore, and is useful for nothing other than research purposes, it just seem wrong to withhold it from the public because someone copyrighted it 40 or 50 years ago.
Without sites like the Internet archive and World Radio History, these old magazines and books would be inaccessible and the history contained in them would just rot away. I really feel the copyright laws in this respect are unreasonable and detrimental. The ones holding the copyright generally cant make money off these old magazine and books anymore because generally they are not relevant to today's society.
So with copyright, it becomes a case of it's no value to us anymore, but you cant have access to it either. Let it rot.
That's not reasonable.
There are 2 reasons for copyright laws.
One is to protect the monetary rights of the creator.
The other is to put a limit on the duration of the protection, so that works can enter the public domain and you don't lose history.
Initially, copyright was for 25 years, with an additional 25 years if you applied for it. That seems reasonable to me.
Unfortunately, greed has gotten in the way of common sense, and the duration has been extended well beyond what is reasonable.
And as Rich Powers points out, this is particularly true for out of print and dated stuff. Even if the current laws were kept, there should be some proviso that if the copyright owner doesn't do anything with the work for a certain period, it falls into the public domain.
Then again, when do laws have to make sense?
The AI bots procedure is also facing similar copyright infringement charges, however I dont see how that's the same situation, as the bots aren't copying articles and books, but rather just gathering information from them, which is quite different (New York Times is one of the big objectors who say IA should not be permitted to crawl their site).
Also everytime I turn around it seems I hear about another music artist selling off the rights to their music because their not making any money from the royalties anyway.. Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks, Bruce Springsteen', Neil Young, Justin Beiber.. the list goes on.. How can anyone say with a straight face that music royalties are collected to support the artist? It's not, it's for BMI and ASCAP and so forth, not the artist.
IA seems to be back up, at least for now.
Yep, good to see.
Speaking of which, take a look at this forum 22 years ago.. https://web.archive.org/web/20040313183150/http://www.part15.us/
NOT!
The Internet Archive is back (until, of course, it's not).
Latest Internet Archive Status & Good Description of What Happened